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beige toaster n. A Macintosh. See toaster; compare Macintrash, maggotbox. |
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bells and whistles n. [by analogy with the toyboxes on theater organs] Features added to a program or system to make it more flavorful from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from chrome, which is intended to attract users. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle. |
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bells, whistles, and gongs n. A standard elaborated form of bells and whistles; typically said with a pronounced and ironic accent on the 'gongs'. |
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benchmark [techspeak] n. An inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see h), the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see gabriel), the SPEC-mark suite, and LINPACK. See also machoflops, MIPS, smoke and mirrors. |
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Berkeley Quality Software adj. (often abbreviated 'BQS') Term used in a pejorative sense to refer to software that was apparently created by rather spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some unique problem. It usually has nonexistent, incomplete, or incorrect documentation, has been tested on at least two examples, and core dumps when anyone else attempts to use it. This term was frequently applied to early versions of the dbx (1) debugger. See also Berzerkeley. |
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Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berk'lee/, not /bark'lee/ as in British Received Pronunciation. |
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berklix /berk'liks/ n.,adj. [contraction of 'Berkeley Unix'] See BSD. Not used at Berkeley itself. May be more common among suits attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers, who usually just say 'BSD'. |
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Berzerkeley /b r-zer'klee/ n. [from 'berserk', via the name of a now-deceased record label] Humorous distortion of 'Berkeley' used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the BSD Unix hackers. See software bloat, Missed'em-five, Berkeley Quality Software. |
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Mainstream use of this term in reference to the cultural and political peculiarities of UC Berkeley as a whole has been reported from as far back as the 1960s. |
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