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DEC PMed the machine. Earlier versions of this entry were based on that story; this one has been corrected from an interview with the hapless sysop. ESR] |
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scream and die v. Syn. cough and die, but connotes that an error message was printed or displayed before the program crashed. |
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screaming tty n. [Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of random characters at the operating system. This can happen if the terminal is either disconnected or connected to a powered-off terminal but still enabled for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or simple bad luck can start such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty or two can seriously degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix system; the arriving "characters" are treated as userid/password pairs and tested as such. The Unix password encryption algorithm is designed to be computationally intensive in order to foil brute-force crack attacks, so although none of the logins succeeds; the overhead of rejecting them all can be substantial. |
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screw n. [MIT] A lose, usually in software. Especially used for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature. This use has become quite widespread outside MIT. |
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screwage /skroo' j/ n. Like lossage but connotes that the failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy or a mere bug. |
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scribble n. To modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor program went berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "It was working fine until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low core." Synonymous with trash; compare mung, which conveys a bit more intention, and mangle, which is more violent and final. |
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scrog /skrog/ vt. [Bell Labs] To damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure. "The list header got scrogged." Also reported as skrog, and ascribed to the comic strip "The Wizard of Id". Compare scag; possibly the two are related. Equivalent to scribble or mangle. |
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scrool /skrool/ n. [from the pioneering Roundtable chat system in Houston ca. 1984; probably originated as a typo for 'scroll'] The log of old messages, available for later perusal or to help one get back in synch with the conversation. It was originally called the scrool monster, because an early version of |
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