= E =
=====

   :earthquake: n.  [IBM] The ultimate real-world shock test for
computer hardware.  Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the
Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test
quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.

   :Easter egg: n.  [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt    observed
in the U.S. and many parts of Europe] 1. A message hidden    in the
object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by    persons
disassembling or browsing the code.  2. A message, graphic,    or sound
effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in    response
to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes,    intended as a
joke or to display program credits.  One well-known    early Easter egg
found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond    to the command
`make love' with `not war?'.  Many    personal computers have much more
elaborate eggs hidden in ROM,    including lists of the developers'
names, political exhortations,    snatches of music, and (in one case)
graphics images of the entire    development team.

   :Easter egging: n.  [IBM] The act of replacing unrelated
components more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will
go away.  Hackers consider this the normal operating mode of    {field
circus} techs and do not love them for it.  See also the    jokes under
{field circus}.  Compare {shotgun debugging}.

   :eat flaming death: imp.  A construction popularized among
hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposedly derive from    a
famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic    that
ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something    of the
sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign    Theatre's 1975
album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own"    a character won the
right to scream "Eat flaming death, fascist    media pigs" in the
middle of Oscar night on a game show; this may    have been an
influence).  Used in humorously overblown expressions    of hostility.
"Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"

   :EBCDIC:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ n.
[abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An
alleged character set used on IBM {dinosaur}s.  It exists in at
least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such
delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of
several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern
computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies
according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at).  IBM
adapted EBCDIC from {{punched card}} code in the early 1960s and
promulgated it as a customer-control tactic (see {connector
conspiracy}), spurning the already established ASCII standard.
Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems company, but IBM's own
description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert between them
is still internally classified top-secret, burn-before-reading.
Hackers blanch at the very _name_ of EBCDIC and consider it a
manifestation of purest {evil}.  See also {fear and    loathing}.

   :echo: [FidoNet] n.  A {topic group} on {FidoNet}'s    echomail
system.  Compare {newsgroup}.

   :ECP: /E-C-P/ n.  See {spam} and {velveeta}.

   :egosurf: vi.  To search the net for your name or links    to your
web pages.  Perhaps connected to long-established SF-fan    slang
`egoscan', to search for one's name in a fanzine.

   :eighty-column mind: n.  [IBM] The sort said to be possessed by
persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was
traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet).  It is said
that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder
of IBM, will be buried `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being
the bottom of the card).  This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402
and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel
called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which are as    follows:

        He died at the console
        Of hunger and thirst.
        Next day he was buried,
        Face down, 9-edge first.

The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate    IBM's
customer base and its thinking.  This only began to change in the
mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of    the
{killer micro}.  See {IBM}, {fear and loathing},    {card walloper}.

   :El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n.  The road
mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San Francisco
peninsula.  It originally extended all the way down to Mexico City;
many portions of the old road are still intact.  Navigation on the
San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real,
which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't    really
north-south in many places.  El Camino Real runs right past    Stanford
University and so is familiar to hackers.

   The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/)
means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'.  In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to seven
significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger
floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant
digits (other languages have similar `real' types).

   When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
 long road El Camino Real was.  Making a pun on `real', he started
calling it `El Camino Double Precision' -- but when the hacker    was
told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it    `El
Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck.  (See {bignum}.)

   [GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was
in fact himself --ESR]

   In recent years, the synonym `El Camino Virtual' has been
reported as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley.
Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard
to refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as
"El Camino Imaginary".  One popular theory is that the    intersection
is located near Moffett Field - where they keep all    those complex
planes.

   :elder days: n.  The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly,    pre-1980);
the era of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {{ITS}}, and the    ARPANET.  This
term has been rather consciously adopted from    J. R. R. Tolkien's
fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings".     Compare {Iron Age}; see also
{elvish} and {Great Worm}.

   :elegant: adj.  [common; from mathematical usage]    Combining
simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of    design.  Higher
praise than `clever', `winning', or even    {cuspy}.

   The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de
Saint-Exupe'ry, probably best known for his classic children's    book
"The Little Prince", was also an aircraft designer.  He    gave us
perhaps the best definition of engineering elegance when he    said "A
designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there    is nothing
left to add, but when there is nothing left to take    away."

   :elephantine: adj.  Used of programs or systems that are both
conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on    {brute
force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in    source form.  An
elephantine program may be functional and even    friendly, but (as in
the old joke about being in bed with an    elephant) it's tough to have
around all the same (and, like a    pachyderm, difficult to maintain).
In extreme cases, hackers have    been known to make trumpeting sounds
or perform expressive    proboscatory mime at the mention of the
offending program.  Usage:    semi-humorous.  Compare `has the elephant
nature' and the    somewhat more pejorative {monstrosity}.  See also
{second-system effect} and {baroque}.

   :elevator controller: n.  An archetypal dumb embedded-systems
application, like {toaster} (which superseded it).  During one
period (1983-84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C
standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a
really stupid, memory-limited computation environment.  "You can't
require `printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library    --
what if you're targeting an elevator controller?"  Elevator
controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of
several {holy wars}.

   :elite: adj.  Clueful.  Plugged-in.  One of the    cognoscenti.
Also used as a general positive adjective.  This term    is not
actually hacker slang in the strict sense; it is used    primarily by
crackers and {warez d00dz}, for which reason    hackers use it only
with heavy irony.  The term used to    refer to the folks allowed in to
the "hidden" or "privileged"    sections of BBSes in the early 1980s
(which, typically, contained    pirated software). Frequently, early
boards would only let you    post, or even see, a certain subset of the
sections (or `boards')    on a BBS. Those who got to the frequently
legendary `triple super    secret' boards were elite. Misspellings of
this term in warez d00dz    style abound; the forms `eleet', and
`31337' (among others)    have been sighted.

   A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose
{lamer}.

   :ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ n.  [AI community] The    tendency
of humans to attach associations to terms from prior    experience.
For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol    `+' that makes
it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just    that people associate
it with addition.  Using `+' or `plus'    to mean addition in a
computer language is taking advantage of the    ELIZA effect.

   This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum,
 which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of
the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the
patient.  It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution
of key words into canned phrases.  It was so convincing, however,
that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very    emotionally
caught up in dealing with ELIZA.  All this was due to    people's
tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer    never put
there.  The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when    writing a
programming language, but it can blind you to serious    shortcomings
when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system.     Compare
{ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.     Sources for a clone of the
original Eliza are available at
`ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c'.

   :elvish: n.  1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms
resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the "Book    of
Kells".  Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The    Lord of
The Rings" as an orthography for his fictional `elvish'    languages,
this system (which is both visually and phonetically    {elegant}) has
long fascinated hackers (who tend to be intrigued    by artificial
languages in general).  It is traditional for    graphics printers,
plotters, window systems, and the like to    support a Feanorian
typeface as one of their demo items.  See also    {elder days}.  2. By
extension, any odd or unreadable typeface    produced by a graphics
device.  3. The typeface mundanely called    `Bo"cklin', an art-Noveau
display font.

   :EMACS: /ee'maks/ n.  [from Editing MACroS] The ne plus    ultra of
hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire    LISP
system inside it.  It was originally written by Richard    Stallman in
{TECO} under {{ITS}} at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554    described it as
"an advanced, self-documenting, customizable,    extensible real-time
display editor".  It has since been    reimplemented any number of
times, by various hackers, and versions    exist that run under most
major operating systems.  Perhaps the    most widely used version, also
written by Stallman and now called    "{GNU} EMACS" or {GNUMACS}, runs
principally under Unix.     (Its close relative XEmacs is the second
most popular version.)  It    includes facilities to run compilation
subprocesses and send and    receive mail or news; many hackers spend
up to 80% of their    {tube time} inside it.  Other variants include
{GOSMACS}, CCA    EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove,
epsilon, and    MicroEMACS.  (Though we use the original all-caps
spelling here, it    is nowadays very commonly `Emacs'.)

   Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as an
overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the
editor does not (yet) include.  Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too
{heavyweight} and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the    name as
`Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance    on
keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}.  Other spoof    expansions
include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping' (from    when that
was a lot of {core}), `Eventually `malloc()'s All    Computer Storage',
and `EMACS Makes A Computer Slow' (see    {{recursive acronym}}).  See
also {vi}.

   :email: /ee'mayl/  (also written `e-mail' and `E-mail')    1. n.
Electronic mail automatically passed through computer    networks
and/or via modems over common-carrier lines.  Contrast    {snail-mail},
{paper-net}, {voice-net}.  See {network    address}.  2. vt. To send
electronic mail.

   Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED;
it means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged in a
net or open work".  A use from 1480 is given. The word is probably
derived from French `e'maille'' (enameled) and related to Old    French
`emmailleu"re' (network).  A French correspondent tells    us that in
modern French, `email' is a hard enamel obtained by    heating special
paints in a furnace; an `emailleur' (no final e) is    a craftsman who
makes email (he generally paints some objects    (like, say, jewelry)
and cooks them in a furnace).

   There are numerous spelling variants of this word.  In Internet
traffic up to 1995, `email' predominates, `e-mail' runs a
not-too-distant second, and `E-mail' and `Email' are a distant    third
and fourth.

   :emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n.  [common] An ASCII glyph    used to
indicate an emotional state in email or news.  Although    originally
intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other    explicit humor
indication) are virtually required under certain    circumstances in
high-volume text-only communication forums such as    Usenet; the lack
of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what    were intended to
be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise    non-100%-serious
comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always    even by {newbie}s),
resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.

   Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in
common use.  These include:

    :-)
          `smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,
          occasionally sarcasm)

    :-(
          `frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)

    ;-)
          `half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious}); also known as
          `semi-smiley' or `winkey face'.

    :-/
          `wry face'

(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head
sideways, to the left.)

   The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered.
Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX;
see also {bixie}.  On {Usenet}, `smiley' is often used as a    generic
term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically    for the
happy-face emoticon.

   It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on
the CMU {bboard} systems sometime between early 1981 and    mid-1982.
He later wrote: "I wish I had saved the original post,    or at least
recorded the date for posterity, but I had no idea that    I was
starting something that would soon pollute all the world's
communication channels."  [GLS confirms that he remembers this
original posting].

   Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of
loserhood!  More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that
you've gone over the line.

   :EMP: /E-M-P/  See {spam}.

   :empire: n.  Any of a family of military simulations derived    from
a game written by Peter Langston many years ago.  A number of
multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication exist,
and one single-player version implemented for both Unix and VMS;    the
latter is even available as MS-DOS freeware.  All are    notoriously
addictive.  Of various commercial derivatives the    best known is
probably "Empire Deluxe" on PCs and Amigas.

   Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet    by
up to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to    a
couple of months (long term).  The amount of sleep you can get    while
playing is a function of the rate at which updates occur and    the
number of co-rulers of your country.  Empire server software is
available for unix-like machines, and clients for Unix and other
platforms.  A comprehensive history of the game is available at
`http://empire.idlpaper.com/infopages/History.html'.  The    Empire
resource site is at `http://empire.idlpaper.com/'.

   :engine: n.  1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some
function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}.     Today
we have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser    printer.
2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that    does a lot
of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.

   The hacker senses of `engine' are actually close to its original,
pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity').  This sense had    not
been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
explains why he named the stored-program computer that    he designed
in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.

   :English:  1. n. obs. The source code for a program, which may    be
in any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary
produced from it by a compiler.  The idea behind the term is that    to
a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming
language is at least as readable as English.  Usage: mostly by
old-time hackers, though recognizable in context.  2. The official
name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System,
actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of
grandeur.  The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and you    can
program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s    without quite
running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

   :enhancement: n.  Common {marketroid}-speak for a bug    {fix}.
This abuse of language is a popular and time-tested way    to turn
incompetence into increased revenue.  A hacker being ironic    would
instead call the fix a {feature} -- or perhaps save some    effort by
declaring the bug itself to be a feature.

   :ENQ: /enkw/ or /enk/  [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire    for
0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's    availability.
After opening a {talk mode} connection to someone    apparently in
heavy hack mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?'    (the SYNs
representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect    a return of
{ACK} or {NAK} depending on whether or not the    person felt
interruptible.  Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the    usage of `FOO?'
listed under {talk mode}.

   :EOF: /E-O-F/ n.  [abbreviation, `End Of File']    1. [techspeak]
The {out-of-band} value returned by C's    sequential character-input
functions (and their equivalents in    other environments) when end of
file has been reached.  This value    is usually -1 under C libraries
postdating V6 Unix, but was    originally 0.  DOS hackers think EOF is
^Z, and a few Amiga hackers    think it's ^\.  2. [Unix] The keyboard
character (usually control-D,    the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission)
character) that is mapped by    the terminal driver into an end-of-file
condition.  3. Used by    extension in non-computer contexts when a
human is doing something    that can be modeled as a sequential read
and can't go further.     "Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics
to post as a joke, but    I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had
was a {JCL} manual."     See also {EOL}.

   :EOL: /E-O-L/ n.  [End Of Line] Syn. for {newline},    derived
perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal.  Now rare, but    widely
recognized and occasionally used for brevity.  Used in the    example
entry under {BNF}.  See also {EOF}.

   :EOU: /E-O-U/ n.  The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control
character (End Of User) that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode
on receipt.  This construction parodies the numerous obscure
delimiter and control characters left in ASCII from the days when    it
was associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers
(e.g., FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT).  It is worth
remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a
lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was
nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in
front of a {tube} or flatscreen today.

   :epoch: n.  [Unix: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] The    time
and date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and
timestamp values.  Under most Unix versions the epoch is 00:00:00
GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of November 17, 1858
(base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides); on a
Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning January 1 1904.  System time
is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the epoch.  Weird    problems
may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap    around}), which is
not necessarily a rare event; on systems    counting 10 ticks per
second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is    good only for 6.8 years.
The 1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is    good only until January 18,
2038, assuming at least some software    continues to consider it
signed and that word lengths don't    increase by then.  See also {wall
time}.

   :epsilon:  [see {delta}] 1. n. A small quantity of    anything.
"The cost is epsilon."  2. adj. Very small,    negligible; less than
{marginal}.  "We can get this feature for    epsilon cost."  3. `within
epsilon of': close enough to be    indistinguishable for all practical
purposes, even closer than    being `within delta of'.  "That's not
what I asked for, but it's    within epsilon of what I wanted."
Alternatively, it may mean not    close enough, but very little is
required to get it there: "My    program is within epsilon of working."

   :epsilon squared: n.  A quantity even smaller than    {epsilon}, as
small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to    something normal;
completely negligible.  If you buy a    supercomputer for a million
dollars, the cost of the    thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is
{epsilon}, and the    cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is
epsilon squared.     Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the
noise}.

   :era: n.  Syn. {epoch}.  Webster's Unabridged makes these    words
almost synonymous, but `era' more often connotes a span of    time
rather than a point in time, whereas the reverse is true for
{epoch}.  The {epoch} usage is recommended.

   :Eric Conspiracy: n.  A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers
named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting ca. 1987; this was doubtless influenced    by the
numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre.  There    do indeed
seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in    hackerdom than the
frequency of these three traits can account for    unless they are
correlated in some arcane way.  Well-known examples    include Eric
Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under    {indent style}) and
Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor    has heard from about
fifteen others by email, and the organization    line `Eric Conspiracy
Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly    from more than one site.
See the Eric Conspiracy Web Page at
`http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ecsl/' for full details.

   :Eris: /e'ris/ n.  The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord,
Confusion, and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to
Discordia and she was worshiped by that name in Rome.  Not a very
friendly deity in the Classical original, she was reinvented as a
more benign personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by
the adherents of {Discordianism} and has since been a    semi-serious
subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures,    including
hackerdom.  See {Discordianism}, {Church of the    SubGenius}.

   :erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ n.  [Helsinki University of    Technology,
Finland] n. English-language university slang for    electronics.
Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good    electronics
excites them and makes them warm.

   :error 33: [XEROX PARC] n.  1. Predicating one research effort
upon the success of another.  2. Allowing your own research effort
to be placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a
research effort or not).

   :eurodemo: /yoor'o-dem`-o/  a {demo}, sense 4

   :evil: adj.  As used by hackers, implies that some system,
program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to    be
not worth the bother of dealing with.  Unlike the adjectives in    the
{cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil'    does not imply
incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of    goals or design
criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's.     This usage is
more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a    moral one in the
mainstream sense.  "We thought about adding a    {Blue Glue} interface
but decided it was too evil to deal    with."  "{TECO} is neat, but it
can be pretty evil if you're    prone to typos."  Often pronounced with
the first syllable    lengthened, as /eeee'vil/.  Compare {evil and
rude}.

   :evil and rude: adj.  Both {evil} and {rude}, but with    the
additional connotation that the rudeness was due to malice    rather
than incompetence.  Thus, for example: Microsoft's Windows    NT is
evil because it's a competent implementation of a bad    design; it's
rude because it's gratuitously incompatible with    Unix in places
where compatibility would have been as easy and    effective to do; but
it's evil and rude because the    incompatibilities are apparently
there not to fix design bugs in    Unix but rather to lock hapless
customers and developers into the    Microsoft way.  Hackish evil and
rude is close to the    mainstream sense of `evil'.

   :Evil Empire: n.  [from Ronald Reagan's famous    characterization
of the communist Soviet Union] Formerly {IBM},    now Microsoft.
Functionally, the company most hackers love to hate    at any given
time.  Hackers like to see themselves as romantic    rebels against the
Evil Empire, and frequently adopt this role    to the point of
ascribing rather more power and malice to the    Empire than it
actually has.  See also {Borg} and search for    Evil Empire
(http://pages.prodigy.net/rkusnery/amsind.html)    pages on the Web.

   :exa-: /ek's*/ pref.  [SI] See {{quantifiers}}.

   :examining the entrails: n.  The process of {grovel}ling    through
a {core dump} or hex image in an attempt to discover the    bug that
brought a program or system down.  The reference is to    divination
from the entrails of a sacrified animal.  Compare    {runes},
{incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}.

   :EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt.  To exchange two things,    each for
the other; to swap places.  If you point to two people    sitting down
and say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade    places.  EXCH, meaning
EXCHange, was originally the name of a    PDP-10 instruction that
exchanged the contents of a register and a    memory location.  Many
newer hackers are probably thinking instead    of the {{PostScript}}
exchange operator (which is usually written    in lowercase).

   :excl: /eks'kl/ n.  Abbreviation for `exclamation point'.     See
{bang}, {shriek}, {{ASCII}}.

   :EXE: /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ n.  An executable    binary
file.  Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and    TWENEX) use
the extension .EXE to mark such files.  This usage is    also
occasionally found among Unix programmers even though Unix
executables don't have any required suffix.

   :exec: /eg-zek'/ or /eks'ek/ vt., n.  1. [Unix: from    `execute']
Synonym for {chain}, derives from the    `exec(2)' call.  2. [from
`executive'] obs. The command    interpreter for an {OS} (see {shell});
term esp. used    around mainframes, and prob. derived from UNIVAC's
archaic EXEC 2    and EXEC 8 operating systems.  3. At IBM and VM/CMS
shops, the    equivalent of a shell command file (among VM/CMS users).

   The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is
_not_ used.  To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program,    never a
person.

   :exercise, left as an: adj.  [from technical books] Used to
complete a proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid    one
entirely.  The complete phrase is: "The proof [or `the rest']    is
left as an exercise for the reader."  This comment _has_
occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors
possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the
capabilities of their audiences.

   :Exon: /eks'on/ excl.  A generic obscenity that quickly    entered
wide use on the Internet and Usenet after {Black    Thursday}. From the
last name of Senator James Exon    (Democrat-Nebraska), primary author
of the {CDA}.

   :Exploder: n.  Used within Microsoft to refer to the    Windows
Explorer, the interface component of Windows 95 and WinNT    4. Our
spies report that most of the heavy guns at MS came from a    Unix
background and use command line utilities; even they are    scornful of
the over-gingerbreaded {WIMP environment}s that they    have been
called upon to create.

   :exploit: n.  [originally cracker slang] 1. A vulnerability    in
software that can be used for breaking security or otherwise
attacking an Internet host over the network.  The {Ping O'    Death} is
a famous exploit. 2. More grammatically,  program that    exploits an
exploit in sense 1,

   :external memory: n.  A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written
notes.  "Hold on while I write that to external memory".  The
analogy is with store or DRAM versus nonvolatile disk storage on
computers.

   :eye candy:  /i:' kand`ee/ n.  [from mainstream slang    "ear
candy"] A display of some sort that's presented to {luser}s    to keep
them distracted while the program performs necessary    background
tasks.  "Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end    {slurp}s that
{BLOB} into core."

   :eyeball search: n.,v.  To look for something in a mass of    code
or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to    using
some sort of pattern matching software like {grep} or any    other
automated search tool.  Also called a {vgrep}; compare    {vdiff},
{desk check}.

