Across
- 4. To imperfectly transform information.
- 8. Said of people, this indicates a poor memory, usually short-term. This usage is analogical to the same term applied to data compression and analysis.
- 10. Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media from one machine to another. “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.”
- 13. A controlled environment within which potentially dangerous programs are run. Used esp. in reference to Java implementations.
- 14. A technical subject that is known to be able to absorb infinite amounts of discussion time without more than an infinitesimal probability of arrival at a conclusion or consensus.
- 16. A situation wherein two or more processes are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do something.
- 17. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation) are said to do this.
- 19. To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools.
Down
- 1. Mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data structures or algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know: “I think you can find that in _____"
- 2. Technical disputes over minor, marginal issues conducted while more serious ones are being overlooked.
- 3. The conventions of politeness recognized on Usenet, such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups and refraining from commercial pluggery outside the biz groups.
- 5. Hardware or software activity designed to start or keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they interact.
- 6. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge.
- 7. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money into a vending machine and having it fall immediately into the coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go away.
- 9. The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages for indexing in the search engine's database. Also called a bot.
- 11. [from Russian ‘nyet’ = no] A network, when it is acting flaky or is down. Compare notwork.
- 12. Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations in a given environment. One step below bulletproof. Carries the additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful attention to detail.
- 13. To watch packets traversing a network.
- 15. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic.
- 16. Interim software used internally for testing.
- 18. [Unix] The superuser account that ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a Unix system.