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Address ; talk about Announce ; At announce time, a product is assigned ; a number instead of a name, with the ; result that not even the developers know ; what it is anymore... APL bigot ; same thing as any other <language> bigot Attrition ; GAFIAtion Bad Information ; lies Bean Counter ; pedantic materialist Bells and Whistles ; Frills added to a program or machine, to ; make it more exciting without making it ; much better BiCapitalization ; Russian abbreviation (e g VisiCalc) Big Blue ; Data Processing Division of IBM Big Blue Zoo ; The Rochester lab, Minnesota Big Red Switch ; The PC Power On/Off button Binary Aboriginal ; A "Real Programmer" in the extreme Bit-bucket ; "Black Hole" Blem ; Any bug or problem (cf 'bl Blue Glue ; SNA (Systems Network Architecture) Blue Sky ; An idea not inhibited by the practical, ; possible, political or popular trends Blue Suiter ; Someone professionally wearing a tie, ; notably an IBM marketing representative Blue Wire ; Hardware fix Boa ; The big fat cables lurking under the ; floor of any large computer installa- ; tion. It is rumoured that System/370 ; channel cables are limited to 200 ft ; because beyond that length the Boas ; get dangerous... Boondoggle ; Conference with a large admixture of ; pleasure with business Branch to Fishkill ; Any unexpected jump in a program which ; produces catastrophic or just plain ; weird results Breakage ; The extra people that must be added to ; an organisation because the Plan has ; changed Bridge ; Unsubstantiated facts used to explain ; one set of data in terms of another Bubblegum ; The B|blingen lab, Germany Bullet ; One of a list of items to be emphasized ; (from the item sign against it) Burn ; Make a copy BWQ ; Buzz Word Quotient Candy-Striped ; Highest security class Casters Up Mode ; A totally unusable state (of hardware) Diff ; Make a list of changes ( like Filecom) Easter Egging ; Replacing unrelated parts and hoping the ; malfunction goes away Earthquake ; Real life shock test for computer equip- ; ment. Contrary to popular belief, recent ; earthquakes near California plants were ; not initiated by IBM as part of the ; Quality testing program. End User ; A hypothetical non-IBM person, probably ; of IQ < 80 ('room-temperature IQ') who is ; expected to represent the biggest group ; of users of IBM equipment in the future Enhancement ; A fix for a problem that has been reported ; too often to be ignored Europe ; That part of the (IBM) world that consists of ; Israel, South Africa and the European ; countries Exciting ; The lowest interest ranking for speeches ; and papers delivered at internal meetings, ; the complete sequence being: exciting, ; interesting, mind-boggling, and ; IBM Registered Confidential Fall Over ; ABEND, crash Fat, Dumb and Happy ; Typically used of a project's manage- ; ment who think their project is com- ; petitive when it's not FBC ; Funny Black Connector The hermaphrodite ; connector used in the cabling system Footprint ; 1.The floor space taken up by some piece ; of computer equipment. 2.The audit trail ; left by a program so that a recovery pro- ; gram(mer) can determine the areas of ; storage that the first program stepped ; upon. Glass ; Silicon chips Green Lightning ; Apparently randomly flashing streaks on ; the face of the 3278-9 terminals while a ; programmable symbol set is being loaded. ; This hardware bug was not fixed, as some ; bright spark suggested that this 'would ; let the user know that something is ; happening'. It certainly does. Hot-Key ; Keystroke (or combination thereof) that ; switches environments. IBMois ; Strange French dialect. Ibmox ; To copy xerographically. I didn't change anything ; Plaintive cry preceding feelings of the ; cold pricklies. The proper reply is: ; 'Then it works just the same as it did ; before, right?' Incent ; To motivate with the carrot. Ironmonger ; Hardware specialist (derog) Kahuna ; (orig: Hawaiian witch doctor) guru, wizard KISS principle ; 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' Lightning Bolt 505 ; Error msg for systems crash (cf 'Shazam') Lion Food ; Middle management or hq staff. Origin: ; the old joke that goes something like this: ; Two lions escape from a zoo and split up ; to improve their chances, after agreeing ; to meet after two months. When they do ; meet, one is skinny and the other over- ; weight. Thin one: 'How did you manage? ; I ate a person once, and they came searching ; the whole country for me. Since then, I've ; had to eat mice, insects, even grass.' ; Fat one: 'Well, I hid near an IBM office ; and preyed a manager a day. And they ; never noticed.' LSD ; Improper behavior on business premises ; (Liquor, Sex, and Drugs) Lunatic Fringe ; Customers who will always take Release 1 ; of any new product. Open Kimono ; Reveal everything Open Switch ; An unresolved issue Play Pen ; Room where programmers work Pokieland ; The Poughkeepsie area Programming ; The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper Rococo ; See Bells & Whistles ROJ ; Retired On the Job. Someone just marking time ; instead of doing his job. Sandbender ; Person involved with silicon lithography ; and the physical design of chips. Seven Dwarves ; Nowadays only 6 at most. Burroughs, Honey- ; well, NCR, Univac, CDC and DEC Splat ; '*' Susie Cobol ; A programmer straight out of training ; school who knows everything except the ; benefits of comments in plain English. ; Also (fashionable among personkind these ; days to avoid accusations of sexism) ; Sammy Cobol. The Silent Majority ; End Users with an IQ < 70 Tinstaafl ; There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch Tip of the ice cube ; The visible part of something very small ; and insignificant. Tired Iron ; DP equipment that is perfectly functional ; but has been superseded by a new line of ; devices. Token Ring ; A local area network architecture. 'One ; Ring to Rule Them All, One Ring to Find ; Them, One Ring to Bring Them All And in ; the Darkness Bind Them, in a LAN with ; more nodes where the stations lie'. Toy ; A computer program that can be understood Trailing Edge ; Slow to change Trivial ; Possible TCB ; Trouble Came Back. Intermittent or difficult- ; to-reproduce problem which has failed to ; respond to neglect. Tuesday ; The DAy of the Announcment. Tyranosaure ; REXX, when used in France. User-cuddly ; Extremely friendly software or documentation Verbiage ; Documentation Warm Fuzzies ; Opposite of Cold Pricklies Yellow Wire ; Hardware fix Zipperhead ; One who has a closed mind (said to be most ; frequently used in Development Labs). 80-column mind ; Usually of people to whom the transition ; from card to tape was a traumatic experience ; (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet) ; It is said that these people will be buried ; '9-EDGE-FORWARD-FACE-DOWN'.