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bletcherous /blech' -rs/ adj. Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced.) See losing, cretinous, bagbiting, bogus, and random. The term bletcherous applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for cretinous. By contrast, something that is losing or bagbiting may be failing to meet objective criteria. See also bogus and random, which have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the above. |
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blink vi.,n. To use a navigator or off-line message reader to minimize time spent on-line to a commercial network service. As of late 1994, this term was said to be in wide use in the UK, but is rare or unknown in the US. |
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blinkenlights /blink'n-ltz/ n. Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a dinosaur. Derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One version ran in its entirety as follows: |
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This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford University and had already gone international by the early 1960s, when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with the word 'blinkenlights'. |
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In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in fractured English, one of which is reproduced here: |
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ATTENTION |
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This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment. Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights. |
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