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The ultimate pnambic product was "Dan Bricklin's Demo", a program which supported flashy user-interface design prototyping. There is a related maxim among hackers: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." See magic, sense 1, for illumination of this point. |
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pod n. [allegedly from abbreviation POD for 'Prince Of Darkness'] A Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to it. Not to be confused with P.O.D.. |
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point-and-drool interface n. Parody of the techspeak term 'point-and-shoot interface', describing a windows, icons, and mouse-based interface such as is found on the Macintosh. The implication, of course, is that such an interface is only suitable for idiots. See for the rest of us, WIMP environment, Macintrash, drool-proof paper. Also point-and-grunt interface. |
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poll v.,n. 1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has been registered. 2. To repeatedly call or check with someone: "I keep polling him, but he's not answering his phone; he must be swapped out." 3. To ask. "Lunch? I poll for a takeout order daily." |
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polygon pusher n. A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical layout level (which requires drawing lots of multi-colored polygons). Also rectangle slinger. |
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POM /P-O-M/ n. Common abbreviation for phase of the moon. Usage: usually in the phrase POM-dependent, which means flaky. |
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pop /pop/ [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are usually saved on the stack] (also capitalized 'POP') 1. vt. To remove something from a stack or pdl. If a person says he/she has popped something from his stack, that means he/she has finally finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging overhead. 2. When a discussion gets to a level of detail so deep that the main point of the discussion is being lost, someone will shout "Pop!", meaning "Get back up to a higher level!" The shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger pointing to the ceiling. |
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