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    The Jargon File - The Hacker's Dictionary - On The Media

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    The Jargon File - The Hacker's Dictionary - On The Media

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    Hacker Slanks

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    The Jargon File - The Hacker's Dictionary - On the Media

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    73 views3 pages

    The Jargon File - The Hacker's Dictionary - On The Media

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    Ri Ze
    Hacker Slanks

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    WHERE TO LISTEN CONTACT US

    THE JARGON FILE - THE HACKER'S DICTIONARY


    Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 01:15 PM

    By Alex Goldman

    Share Tweet 9 Like 0

    Think you're 31337? Ever produce a hamster, or are you only


    producing crock? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? If
    the answer's yes, then you're probably familiar with the dictionary
    of hacker slang called The Jargon File.
    Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice
    All week we've been obliquely referencing what author Steven
    for Leakers, and More
    Levy calls "the hacker ethic" - the notion that information wants to
    An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
    be free, and the more information sharing, the better. This
    Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
    concept covers not only programs and ideas, it covers lingo. Enter A Journalistic Civil War Odyssey
    the Rosetta Stone of the hacker world: The Jargon File. A New Incentive for Cord Cutters
    A Source for Sources
    (MIT Press)
    Web Only Audio Extra - TV Cord Cutters
    Angelina Jolie's Secret Test Results
    JOIN THE DISCUSSION [2] With IRS Scandal, Conservative Bloggers
    Feel Vindicated
    gedanken: /g@� dahn� kn/, adj. Brooke Gladstone + Cyndi Lauper

    Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested.


    FEEDS
    The Hacker's Dictionary is now in its third edition, but rather than being on the forefront of the hacker On The Media : Latest Episodes (Atom)
    slang vanguard, it feels more like a time capsule of the burgeoning On The Media : Latest Stories (Atom)
    On the Media Feed (Atom)
    The Jargon File began as just a couple of pages of definitions, compiled by a computer scientist
    hack week Feed (Atom)
    named Raphael Finkel at SAIL, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1975. At the time, On The Media Podcast
    there existed a kind of proto-internet called ARPANET that primarily connected research universities
    and a few tech companies. Hacking luminaries of the era like Richard Stallman and Tim
    Anderson contributed definitions to the file in its early years.

    As the hacker community grew, The Jargon File made its way to numerous other universities and
    institutions, and the number of definitions in the jargon file exploded. By 1983, there were enough
    definitions and enough interest to publish The Jargon File in book form. For print, it was edited by a
    hacker named Guy Steele, rechristened The Hacker's Dictionary, and published by MIT Press.

    monkey up: vt.

    To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely crufty and
    consciously temporary solution. Compare hack up, kluge up, cruft together.

    Even though The Jargon File was and remains a collaborative effort, a custodian was needed to seed
    the file with the latest terms and definitions. Between 1983 and 1990, the rate at which definitions
    were added slowed considerably. At least until a hacker named Eric Raymond took over the
    maintenance of The Jargon File in 1990.

    "I got interested, I started making changes, and the previous editor handed me the baton," says
    Raymond. "That's how it works in the hacker culture - authority follows from accepting
    responsibility." One of his first moves as editor was to open the jargon file to everyone, which
    resulted in an influx of hundreds of new contributions.

    splork!

    [Usenet; common] The sound of coffee (or other beverage) hitting the monitor and/or keyboard after being
    forced out of the mouth via the nose. It usually follows an unexpectedly funny thing in a Usenet post.
    Compare snarf.

    The Hacker's Dictionary is now in its third edition, but rather than being on the forefront of the hacker
    slang vanguard, it feels more like a time capsule of the burgeoning hacker world. Raymond says the
    sheer volume of niche cultures on the internet has made The Jargon File somewhat obsolete. "I think
    this is because as the Internet has gone mainstream, most of the jargon formation associated with it
    is no longer being done by people inside the hacker culture," says Raymond. "Rather, you get lots of
    little subcultures - *on* the Internet, but not *of* it - forming their own memes."

    However, Raymond points out that The Jargon File was invaluable in making hacker culture
    accessible to those on the outside. "By showing people that the native culture of the Internet's
    engineers is benign and playful, I think it helped us head off some pretty serious threats to electronic
    civil liberties," says Raymond. "It had another effect I didn't really anticipate, which was to enable the
    hacker culture to acculturate newbies at a tremendously increased rate. This might not sound very
    important to someone who's not inside that culture already, but the second-order effects included
    the rise of the open-source software movement, and everything that proceeded from that."

    TAGS: hack week

    MORE IN: On the Media »

    ALEX GOLDMAN
    Alex Goldman is a producer for On the Media. One time he got run over by a car.

    Comments [2] Leave a comment RSS Feed for Comments

    Ben Baker from S. Georgia


    This story is a partial waste of time. A word is defined by common and mass use. That the word "hacker" has been
    redefined by common use is evidence of an evolving language. Consider the word "gay" which has completely
    changed within my lifetime.

    If hackers of any stripe do not like this, they are welcome to learn another language or, a la Esperanto, create their
    own and leave modern English to the rest of us.

    The story was not a complete waste of time in that it discussed the present hacker culture and it's impact on society.
    That was good and interesting. The premise of the story is the wast.

    Sep. 27 2011 08:33 AM

    Geoffrey Mattson from Silicon Valley


    I have to disagree with the commentator's attribution of the word hacking to some railroad model club at MIT during
    the dawn of the microprocessor age.
    The term has been used for decades to mean a sloppy, ad hoc creative effort or to describe a person who habitually
    makes such an effort. Hasn't he term been applied to writers and journalists for years (as in "hack writer").

    In software, hacking has always had two connotations. One implies sloppiness and expedience. This pejorative
    version is used in phrases such as "Look at this code. What a hack!".
    But it also became respected when it referred to a programmer who was creatively expedient and tenacious. Some
    of these programmers used "hacking" methodology to penetrate private networks and computers. Hence the term
    "hacking".

    At least that's my understanding.

    Sep. 26 2011 09:31 PM

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