:USENET: /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `Users' Network'] n. A distributed {bboard} (bulletin board) system supported mainly by UNIX machines. Originally implemented in 1979-1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility in existence. As of early 1991, it hosts well over 700 {newsgroup}s and an average of 16 megabytes (the equivalent of several thousand paper pages) of new technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and {flamage} every day.
:user: n. 1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer, using it as a means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See {real user}. 2. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks silly questions. [GLS observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true that users ask questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or deep. Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently because the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the documentation before bothering the maintainer.] See {luser}. 3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully, without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them.
The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes of people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and {luser}s. The users are looked down on by hackers to some extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as `real winners'.) The term is a relative one: a skilled hacker may be a user with respect to some program he himself does not hack. A LISP hacker might be one who maintains LISP or one who uses LISP (but with the skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, whether skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context.
:user-friendly: adj. Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in
a critical tone, to describe systems that hold the user's hand so
obsessively that they make it painful for the more experienced and
knowledgeable to get any work done. See {menuitis}, {drool-proof
paper}, {Macintrash}, {user-obsequious}.
:user-obsequious: adj. Emphatic form of {user-friendly}. Connotes
a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded
that it is nearly unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and
only a fool will want to use it." See {WIMP environment},
{Macintrash}.
:USG UNIX: /U-S-G yoo'niks/ n. Refers to AT&T UNIX
commercial versions after {Version 7}, especially System III and
System V releases 1, 2, and 3. So called because during most of
the life-span of those versions AT&T's support crew was called the
`UNIX Support Group'. See {BSD}, {{UNIX}}.
:UTSL: // [UNIX] n. On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in `Star Wars') —- analogous to {RTFM} but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would be best off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals or broadcasting questions that haven't attracted {wizard}s to answer them. In theory, this is appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a UNIX source license; in practice, bootlegs of UNIX source code (made precisely for reference purposes) are so ubiquitous that one may utter this at almost anyone on the network without concern. In the near future (this written in 1991) source licenses may become even less important; after the recent release of the Mach 3.0 microkernel, given the continuing efforts of the {GNU} project, and with the 4.4BSD release on the horizon, complete free source code for UNIX-clone toolsets and kernels should soon be widely available.
:UUCPNET: n. The store-and-forward network consisting of all the world's connected UNIX machines (and others running some clone of the UUCP (UNIX-to-UNIX CoPy) software). Any machine reachable only via a {bang path} is on UUCPNET. See {network address}.
= V = =====
:vadding: /vad'ing/ [from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e., {ADVENT}), used to avoid a particular {admin}'s continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the game] n. A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the covert exploration of the `secret' parts of large buildings —- basements, roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, and the like. A few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order to synthesize vadding keys. The verb is `to vad' (compare {phreaking}; see also {hack}, sense 9). This term dates from the late 1970s, before which such activity was simply called `hacking'; the older usage is still prevalent at MIT.