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lines in order to reach new MUDs, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto Internet ("Wow! It's in America!") and complaining when he is not allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start and conversation with "Are you male or female?" (and follow it up with "Got any good numbers/IDs/passwords?") and will not talk to someone physically present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same machine that he is using and enter talk mode. Compare newbie, tourist, weenie, twink, terminal junkie, warez d00dz. |
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spoiler n. [Usenet] 1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense when reading the book or watching the movie. 2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle, thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct answer (see also interesting). Either sense readily forms compounds like. total spoiler, quasi-spoiler and even pseudo-spoiler. |
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By convention, articles which are spoilers in either sense should contain the word 'spoiler' in the Subject: line, or guarantee via various tricks that the answer appears only after several screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via rot13, or some combination of these techniques. |
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sponge n. [Unix] A special case of a filter that reads its entire input before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility. Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently overwrite the input file with the output data stream. If a file system has versioning (as ITS did and VMS does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new version. See also slurp. |
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spool vi. [from early IBM 'Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line', but this acronym is widely thought to have been contrived for effect] To send files to some device or program (a spooler) that queues them up and does something useful with them later. Without qualification, the spooler is the print spooler controlling output of jobs to a printer; but the term has been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters and graphics devices) and occasionally even for input devices. See also demon. |
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spool file n. Any file to which data is spooled to await the next stage of processing. Especially used in circumstances where spooling the data copes with a mismatch between speeds in two devices or pieces of software. For example, when you send mail under Unix, it's typically copied to a spool file to await a transport demon's attentions. This is borderline techspeak. |
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