|
|
|
|
|
|
|
also molly-guard). Compare power cycle, three-finger salute, 120 reset; see also scram switch. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Big Room, the n. The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations. "He can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
big win n. Serendipity. "Yes, those two physicists discovered high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule. Small mistake; big win!" See win big. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
big-endian adj. [From Swift's Gulliver's Travels via the famous paper On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, dated April 1, 1980] 1. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric representation, the most significant byte has the lowest address (the word is stored 'big-end-first'). Most processors, including the IBM 370 family, the PDP-10, the Motorola microprocessor families, and most of the various RISC designs current in late 1995, are big-endian. Big-endian byte order is also sometimes called network order. See little-endian, middle-endian, NUXI problem, swab. 2. An Internet address the wrong way round. Most of the world follows the Internet standard and writes email addresses starting with the name of the computer and ending up with the name of the country. In the U.K. the Joint Networking Team had decided to do it the other way round before the Internet domain standard was established. Most gateway sites have ad-hockery in their mailers to handle this, but can still be confused. In particular, the address me@uk.ac.bris.pys.as could be interpreted in JANET's big-endian way as one in the U.K. (domain uk) or in the standard little-endian way as one in the domain as (American Samoa) on the opposite side of the world. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
bignum /big'nuhm/ n. [orig. from MIT MacLISP] 1. [techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers. 2. More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!" 3. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice especially a roll of double fives or double sixes (compare moby, sense 4). See also E1 Camino Bignum. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sense 1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages provide a kind of data called 'integer', but such computer integers are usually very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than 231 (2,147,483,648) |
|
|
|
|
|