:copper: n. Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a
core conductor of copper —- or aluminum! Opposed to {light
pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link.
:copy protection: n. A class of (occasionally clever) methods for
preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and
legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
:copybroke: /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. 1. [play on `copyright'] Used
to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been
`broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme
disabled. Syn. {copywronged}. 2. Copy-protected software
which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has confused
the anti-piracy check.
:copyleft: /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. 1. The
copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU}
{EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse
and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {General
Public Virus}). 2. By extension, any copyright notice intended to
achieve similar aims.
:copywronged: /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for {copybroke}.
:core: n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. Some derived idioms are quite current; `in core', for example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in favor. Commonwealth hackish prefers {store}.
:core cancer: n. A process which exhibits a slow but inexorable resource {leak} —- like a cancer, it kills by crowding out productive `tissue'.
:core dump: n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or registering extreme shock. "He dumped core. All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology: "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare {bits}, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one knows about a topic (syn. {brain dump}), esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at Columbia). See {core}.
:core leak: n. Syn. {memory leak}.
:Core Wars: n. A game between `assembler' programs in a simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by overwriting it. Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually devised by Victor Vyssotsky, Robert Morris, and Dennis Ritchie in the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on a PDP-1 at Bell Labs). See {core}.