oriental food n.

Hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine, especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such as Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has also been observed in subcultures that overlap heavily with hackerdom, most notably science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but is sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish dinner expedition to be the best local Chinese place and be right at least three times out of four. See also ravs, great-wall, stir-fried random, laser chicken, Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. Thai, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular.

orphan n.

[Unix] A process whose parent has died; one inherited by init(1). Compare zombie.

orphaned i-node /or'f*nd i:'nohd/ n.

[Unix] 1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in the directories of a filesystem. 2. By extension, a pejorative for any person no longer serving a useful function within some organization, esp. lion food without subordinates.

orthogonal adj.

[from mathematics] Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. For example, in architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX where all or nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal. Or, in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal, but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any one of these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in comments on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the discussion, but...."

OS /O-S/

1. [Operating System] n. An abbreviation heavily used in email, occasionally in speech. 2. n. obs. On ITS, an output spy. See "OS and JEDGAR" in Appendix A.

OS/2 /O S too/ n.

The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second time, either. Often called `Half-an-OS'. Mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers -- the design was so baroque, and the implementation of 1.x so bad, that 3 years after introduction you could still count the major apps shipping for it on the fingers of two hands -- in unary. The 2.x versions are said to have improved somewhat, and informed hackers now rate them superior to Microsoft Windows (an endorsement which, however, could easily be construed as damning with faint praise). See monstrosity, cretinous, second-system effect.

OSS

Written-only acronym for "Open Source Software" (see open source. This is a rather ugly TLA, and the principals in the open-source movement don't use it, but it has (perhaps inevitably) spread through the trade press like kudzu.

OSU /O-S-U/ n. obs.

[TMRC] Acronym for Officially Sanctioned User; a user who is recognized as such by the computer authorities and allowed to use the computer above the objections of the security monitor.

OTOH //

[Usenet; very common] On The Other Hand.

out-of-band adj.

[from telecommunications and network theory] 1. In software, describes values of a function which are not in its `natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some kind of exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example, return a nonnegative integral value, but indicate failure with an out-of-band return value of -1. Compare hidden flag, green bytes, fence. 2. Also sometimes used to describe what communications people call `shift characters', such as the ESC that leads control sequences for many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit Baudot codes. 3. In personal communication, using methods other than email, such as telephones or snail-mail.

overclock /oh'vr-klok'/ vt.

To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put some slop into the specification to account for manufacturing tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent crashes, and can even burn things out, since power dissipation is directly proportional to clock frequency. People who make a hobby of this are sometimes called "overclockers"; they are thrilled that they can run their 450MHz CPU at 500MHz, even though they can only tell the difference by running a benchmark program.

overflow bit n.

1. [techspeak] A flag on some processors indicating an attempt to calculate a result too large for a register to hold. 2. More generally, an indication of any kind of capacity overload condition. "Well, the Ada description was baroque all right, but I could hack it OK until they got to the exception handling ... that set my overflow bit." 3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesn't get to make a trip to the Room of Porcelain Fixtures: "I'd better process an internal interrupt before the overflow bit gets set."

overflow pdl n.

[MIT] The place where you put things when your PDL is full. If you don't have one and too many things get pushed, you forget something. The overflow pdl for a person's memory might be a memo pad. This usage inspired the following doggerel:

Hey, diddle, diddle
The overflow pdl
To get a little more stack;
If that's not enough
Then you lose it all,
And have to pop all the way back.
-The Great Quux

The term `pdl' (see PDL) seems to be primarily an MITism; outside MIT this term is replaced by `overflow stack' (but that wouldn't rhyme with `diddle').

overrun n.

1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two characters and the machine takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the interrupt, at least one character will be lost. 2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to pay my electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four phone calls in 3 minutes last night and lost your message to overrun." When thrashing at tasks, the next person to make a request might be told "Overrun!" Compare firehose syndrome. 3. More loosely, may refer to a buffer overflow not necessarily related to processing time (as in overrun screw).

overrun screw n.

[C programming] A variety of fandango on core produced by scribbling past the end of an array (C implementations typically have no checks for this error). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to smash the stack -- often resulting in heisenbugs of the most diabolical subtlety. The term `overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with malloc(3); this typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the arena, producing massive lossage within malloc and often a core dump on the next operation to use stdio(3) or malloc(3) itself. See spam, overrun; see also memory leak, memory smash, aliasing bug, precedence lossage, fandango on core, secondary damage.

= P =

• P-mail:
• P.O.D.:
• packet over air:
• padded cell:
• page in:
• page out:
• pain in the net:
• Pangloss parity:
• paper-net:
• param:
• PARC:
• parent message:
• parity errors:
• Parkinson's Law of Data:
• parm:
• parse:
• Pascal:
• pastie:
• patch:
• patch pumpkin:
• patch space:
• path:
• pathological:
• payware:
• PBD:
• PC-ism:
• PD:
• PDL:
• PDP-10:
• PDP-20:
• PEBKAC:
• peek:
• pencil and paper:
• Pentagram Pro:
• Pentium:
• peon:
• percent-S:
• perf:
• perfect programmer syndrome:
• Perl:
• person of no account:
• pessimal:
• pessimizing compiler:
• peta-:
• PETSCII:
• PFY:
• phage:
• phase:
• phase of the moon:
• phase-wrapping:
• PHB:
• phreaker:
• phreaking:
• pico-:
• pig-tail:
• pilot error:
• ping:
• Ping O' Death:
• ping storm:
• pink wire:
• pipe:
• pistol:
• pixel sort:
• pizza box:
• plaid screen:
• plain-ASCII:
• plan file:
• platinum-iridium:
• playpen:
• playte:
• plingnet:
• plokta:
• plonk:
• plug-and-pray:
• plugh:
• plumbing:
• PM:
• pnambic:
• pod:
• point-and-drool interface:
• pointy hat:
• pointy-haired:
• poke:
• poll:
• polygon pusher:
• POM:
• pop:
• POPJ:
• poser:
• post:
• postcardware:
• posting:
• postmaster:
• PostScript:
• pound on:
• power cycle:
• power hit:
• PPN:
• pr0n:
• precedence lossage:
• prepend:
• prestidigitization:
• pretty pictures:
• prettyprint:
• pretzel key:
• priesthood:
• prime time:
• print:
• printing discussion:
• priority interrupt:
• profile:
• progasm:
• proggy:
• proglet:
• program:
• Programmer's Cheer:
• programming:
• programming fluid:
• propeller head:
• propeller key:
• proprietary:
• protocol:
• provocative maintenance:
• prowler:
• pseudo:
• pseudoprime:
• pseudosuit:
• psychedelicware:
• psyton:
• pubic directory:
• puff:
• pumpkin holder:
• pumpking:
• punched card:
• punt:
• Purple Book:
• purple wire:
• push:
• Python: