transitive verb

• To stress-test a piece of hardware or software

  I banged on the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once. I guess it is ready for release.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting.

  I finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; I guess they'll turn the electricity back on next week...

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

verb

• to accumulate of a number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater efficiency.

  I'm batching up those letters to send sometime

  I'm batching up bottles to take to the recycling center.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• acronym for "be back later". Used mainly in computer-based conversation (instant messaging, email, text messaging, etc.)

  by Tensore @., Feb 04 2005.

noun

• features added to something to make it nicer, but which don't affect core functionality.

  Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• Noun. synonym weed

  Here's some grade A beta.

  by Brendan, Dec 06 2002.

noun

• This term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. "Alpha Test" was the unit, module, or component test phase; "Beta Test" was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design, and the D test was the C test repeated after the model had been in production a while.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• Mostly working, but still under test.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• Anything that is new and experimental.

  His girlfriend is in beta

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• outdoors. Also Big Blue Room. (The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night.))

  He can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere in the Big Room.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• 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". Sometimes amplified as "the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky".

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• Excuse for all mail that has not been sent.

  I mailed you those figures last week; they must have landed in the bit bucket.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• 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."

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• The ideal location for all unwanted mail responses:

  Flames about this article to the bit bucket.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• A hypothetical disease that causes unused programs or features to stop working after sufficient time has passed, or causes old documents to become corrupted, even if "nothing has changed." The term software rot is almost synonymous. Software rot is the effect; bit rot the cause.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

interjection

• exclamation of unhappiness.

  by WalterGR, Sacramento, CA, USA, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• The totality of all blogs.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• a link to other bloggers' blogs on a blog.

  by WalterGR, Sacramento, CA, USA, Aug 14 2009.

transitive verb

• To remove (files and directories) from permanent storage, generally by accident.

  He reformatted the wrong partition and blew away last night's netnews.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

• to out-perform.

  The new model blew away the competition.

  by WalterGR, Sacramento, CA, USA, Aug 26 2009.

noun

• A notional instrument for measuring bogosity.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• The degree to which something is bogus. Bogosity is measured with a bogometer; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say

  My bogometer just triggered

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.

noun

• The act of telling someone everything one knows about a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually analogous to an operating system "core dump".

  You'll have to give me a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new job at HackerCorp.

  by The Jargon File, Aug 14 2009.