:psyton: /si:'ton/ /n./ [TMRC] The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching. [This term appears to have been largely superseded by {bogon}; see also {quantum bogodynamics}. —ESR]
:pubic directory: /pyoob'ik d*-rek't*-ree/) /n./ [NYU]
(also `pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) The `pub'
(public) directory on a machine that allows {FTP} access. So
called because it is the default location for {SEX} (sense 1).
"I'll have the source in the pube directory by Friday."
:puff: /vt./ To decompress data that has been crunched by
Huffman coding. At least one widely distributed Huffman decoder
program was actually *named* `PUFF', but these days it is
usually packaged with the encoder. Oppose {huff}, see
{inflate}.
:punched card:: n.obs. [techspeak] (alt. `punch card') The signature medium of computing's {Stone Age}, now obsolescent outside of some IBM shops. The punched card actually predated computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control device for mechanical looms. The version patented by Hollerith and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is a widespread myth that it was designed to fit in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills, but recent investigations have falsified this.
IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80 columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various times.
The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See {chad}, {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green card}, {dusty deck}, {lace card}, {card walloper}.
:punt: /v./ [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt!">[ 1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. "Let's punt the movie tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get this feature in, but I decided to punt" may mean that you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to put in the feature. 2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the {Right Thing} is and resort to an inefficient hack. 3. A design decision to defer solving a problem, typically because one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an algorithmic solution. "No way to know what the right form to dump the graph in is — we'll punt that for now." 4. To hand a tricky implementation problem off to some other section of the design. "It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's punt to the runtime system."
:Purple Book: /n./ 1. The "System V Interface Definition".
The covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade
of off-lavender. 2. Syn. {Wizard Book}. Donald Lewine's
"POSIX Programmer's Guide" (O'Reilly, 1991, ISBN
0-937175-73-0). See also {{book titles}}.
:purple wire: /n./ [IBM] Wire installed by Field Engineers to work
around problems discovered during testing or debugging. These are
called `purple wires' even when (as is frequently the case) their
actual physical color is yellow…. Compare {blue wire},
{yellow wire}, and {red wire}.
:push: [from the operation that puts the current information on a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack] (Also PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /push'J/, the latter based on the PDP-10 procedure call instruction.) 1. To put something onto a {stack} or {pdl}. If one says that something has been pushed onto one's stack, it means that the Damoclean list of things hanging over ones's head has grown longer and heavier yet. This may also imply that one will deal with it *before* other pending items; otherwise one might say that the thing was `added to my queue'. 2. /vi./ To enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion for later. Antonym of {pop}; see also {stack}, {pdl}.