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|} 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}.