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making '-oid' jargon for almost that long [though GLS and I can personally confirm only that they were already common in the mid-1970sESR]. |
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-ware suff. [from 'software'] Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of software. For examples, see careware, crippleware, crudware, freeware, fritterware, guiltware, liveware, meatware, payware, psychedelicware, shareware, shelfware, vaporware, wetware. |
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/dev/null /dev-nuhl/ n. [from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional 'black hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to. A controversial posting, for example, might end "Kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null." See bit bucket. |
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0 Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter 'O' (the 15th letter of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more like an American football stood on end (or the reverse), you're probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom ø is a letter, curse this arrangement). If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse this arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a reversed slash. And yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters, but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in the upper-left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet? |
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1TBS // n. The "One True Brace Style"; see indent style. |
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120 reset /wuhn-twen'tee ree'set/ n. [from 120 volts, U.S. wall voltage] To cycle power on a machine in order to reset or unjam it. Compare Big Red Switch, power cycle. |
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