Re: Abbreviations

[Steve Fouts <sfouts -at- ELLISON -dot- SC -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

|} From TECHWR-L -at- VM1 -dot- ucc -dot- okstate -dot- edu Fri Sep  3 06:36:55 1993
|} Date:         Fri, 3 Sep 1993 07:31:55 -0400
|} Reply-To: "Technical Writers List; for all Technical Communication issues"
 |} From: "Michele Gordan (RV)" <micheleg -at- OSCAR -dot- IMS -dot- BELLCORE -dot- COM>
|}
|} What does "Flames to:" mean?
|}

From the "Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang..."

Both entries edited:

:flame: 1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and
   provoke.  2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some
   relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous
   attitude.  3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with
   hostility at a particular person or people.  4. n. An instance of
   flaming.  When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy,
   one might tell the participants "Now you're just flaming"

:bit bucket: n. 1. The universal data sink (originally, the
   mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end
   of a register during a shift instruction).  Discarded, lost, or
   destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'.  On
   {{UNIX}}, often used for {/dev/null} 2. The place where all lost
   mail and news messages eventually go. 3. The ideal location for all
   unwanted mail responses: "Flames about this article to the bit
   bucket."  Such a request is guaranteed to overflow one's mailbox
   with flames.

   This term is used purely in jest.  It is based on the fanciful
   notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only
   misplaced.  This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term
   `bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time
   hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the CPU
   stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them `out of the
   bit box'.  See also {chad box}.

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