:glork: /glork/ 1. /interj./ Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of two hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. /vt./ Similar to {glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked itself." See also {glark}.
:glue: /n./ Generic term for any interface logic or protocol
that connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue Glue} is
IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to
connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.
:gnarly: /nar'lee/ /adj./ Both {obscure} and {hairy}
(sense 1). "{Yow!} — the tuned assembler implementation of
BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage
in surfer slang.
:GNU: /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not Unix!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A Unix-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. One of its slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}, {Linux}. 2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.
:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ /n./ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}. Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.
:go flatline: /v./ [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death] (also adjectival `flatlined'). 1. To {die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
:go root: /vi./ [Unix] To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where /v./ `root' refers to animal sex.
:go-faster stripes: /n./ [UK] Syn. {chrome}. Mainstream in some parts of UK.
:gobble: /vt./ 1. To consume, usu. used with `up'. "The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer." 2. To obtain, usu. used with `down'. "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also {snarf}.
:Godwin's Law: /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows
longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler
approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once
this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis
has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's
Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on
thread length in those groups.