CANONICAL adj. The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way." CATATONIA (kat-uh-toe'nee-uh) n. A condition of suspended animation in which the system is in a wedged (CATATONIC) state. CDR (ku'der) [from LISP] v. With "down", to trace down a list of elements. "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. CHINE NUAL n. The Lisp Machine Manual, so called because the title is wrapped around the cover so only those letters show. CHOMP v. To lose; to chew on something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See BAGBITER. A hand gesture commonly accompanies this, consisting of the four fingers held together as if in a mitten or hand puppet, and the fingers and thumb open and close rapidly to illustrate a biting action. The gesture alone means CHOMP CHOMP (see Verb Doubling). CLOSE n. Abbreviation for "close (or right) parenthesis", used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. See OPEN. COKEBOTTLE n. Any very unusual character. MIT people complain about the "control-meta-cokebottle" commands at SAIL, and SAIL people complain about the "altmode-altmode-cokebottle" commands at MIT. COM MODE (variant: COMM MODE) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all, providing a means of conversation among hackers] n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another in this way. Com mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally: BCNU Be seeing you. BTW By the way... BYE? Are you ready to unlink? (This is the standard way to end a com mode conversation; the other person types BYE to confirm, or else continues the conversation.) CUL See you later. FOO? A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? Often used in the case of unexpected links, meaning also "Sorry if I butted in" (linker) or "What's up?" (linkee). FYI For your information... GA Go ahead (used when two people have tried to type simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to the other). HELLOP A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? (An instance of the "-P" convention.) MtFBWY May the Force be with you. (From Star Wars.) NIL No (see the main entry for NIL). OBTW Oh, by the way... R U THERE? Are you there? SEC Wait a second (sometimes written SEC...). T Yes (see the main entry for T). TNX Thanks. TNX 1.0E6 Thanks a million (humorous). <double CRLF> When the typing party has finished, he types two CRLF's to signal that he is done; this leaves a blank line between individual "speeches" in the conversation, making it easier to re-read the preceding text. <name>: When three or more terminals are linked, each speech is preceded by the typist's login name and a colon (or a hyphen) to indicate who is typing. The login name often is shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a single letter) during a very long conversation. /\/\/\ The equivalent of a giggle. At Stanford, where the link feature is implemented by "talk loops", the term TALK MODE is used in place of COM MODE. Most of the above "sub-jargon" is used at both Stanford and MIT. CONNECTOR CONSPIRACY [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. CONS [from LISP] 1. v. To add a new element to a list. 2. CONS UP: v. To synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an example". CRASH 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the system (q.v., definition #1), sometimes of magnetic disk drives. "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash which entails the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a "head crash". 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?" Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing spacewar crashed the system." Sometimes said of people. See GRONK OUT. CRETIN 1. n. Congenital loser (q.v.). 2. CRETINOUS: adj. See BLETCHEROUS and BAGBITING. Usage: somewhat ad hominem. CRLF (cur'lif, sometimes crul'lif) n. A carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). See TERPRI. CROCK [probably from "layman" slang, which in turn may be derived from "crock of shit"] n. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. Example: Using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user is a crock. Also, a technique that works acceptably but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. CRUFTY [from "cruddy"] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly overly complex. "This is standard old crufty DEC software". Hence CRUFT, n. shoddy construction. Also CRUFT, v. [from hand cruft, pun on hand craft] to write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup. Hence CRUFT, n. disgusting mess. 3. Generally unpleasant. CRUFTY or CRUFTIE n. A small crufty object (see FROB); often one which doesn't fit well into the scheme of things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties (or, random cruft)." [Note: Does CRUFT have anything to do with the Cruft Lab at Harvard? I don't know, though I was a Harvard student. - GLS] CRUNCH v. 1. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation which is nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality being imbedded in a loop from 1 to 1000000000. "FORTRAN programs do mostly number crunching." 2. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as counting repeated characters (such as spaces) the term is doubly appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the construction "file crunch(ing)" to distinguish it from "number crunch(ing)".) 3. n. The character "#". Usage: used at Xerox and CMU, among other places. Other names for "#" include SHARP, NUMBER, HASH, PIG-PEN, POUND-SIGN, and MESH. GLS adds: I recall reading somewhere that most of these are names for the # symbol IN CONTEXT. The name for the sign itself is "octothorp". CTY (city) n. The terminal physically associated with a computer's operating console. CUSPY [from the DEC acronym CUSP, for Commonly Used System Program, i.e., a utility program used by many people] (WPI) adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A program which performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy. See RUDE.