:rotary debugger: /n./ [Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage. See {pizza, ANSI standard}.
:round tape: /n./ Industry-standard 1/2-inch magnetic tape (7- or 9-track) on traditional circular reels. See {macrotape}, oppose {square tape}.
:RSN: /R-S-N/ /adj./ See {Real Soon Now}.
:RTBM: /R-T-B-M/ /imp./ [Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant
of {RTFM}; expands to `Read The Bloody Manual'. RTBM is often
the entire text of the first reply to a question from a
{newbie}; the *second* would escalate to "RTFM".
:RTFAQ: /R-T-F-A-Q/ /imp./ [Usenet: primarily written, by
analogy with {RTFM}] Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an
exhortation that the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's
{FAQ list} before posting questions.
:RTFB: /R-T-F-B/ /imp./ [Unix] Acronym for `Read The Fucking Binary'. Used when neither documentation nor source for the problem at hand exists, and the only thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and directly analyze the assembler or even the machine code. "No source for the buggy port driver? Aaargh! I *hate* proprietary operating systems. Time to RTFB."
Of the various RTF? forms, `RTFB' is the least pejorative against anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer; the anger here is directed at the absence of both source *and* adequate documentation.
:RTFM: /R-T-F-M/ /imp./ [Unix] Acronym for `Read The Fucking Manual'. 1. Used by {guru}s to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. Compare {Don't do that, then!}. 2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking out of {randomness}. "No, I can't figure out how to interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also {FM}, {RTFAQ}, {RTFB}, {RTFS}, {RTM}, all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare {UTSL}.
:RTFS: /R-T-F-S/ [Unix] 1. /imp./ Acronym for `Read The
Fucking Source'. Variant form of {RTFM}, used when the problem
at hand is not necessarily obvious and not answerable from the
manuals — or the manuals are not yet written and maybe never will
be. For even trickier situations, see {RTFB}. Unlike RTFM, the
anger inherent in RTFS is not usually directed at the person asking
the question, but rather at the people who failed to provide
adequate documentation. 2. /imp./ `Read The Fucking Standard';
this
oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g., a language or
operating system interface) has actually been codified in a
ratified standards document. The existence of these standards
documents (and the technically inappropriate but politically
mandated compromises that they inevitably contain, and the
impenetrable {legalese} in which they are invariably written,
and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are
produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain
amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems they use.
(Hackers feel that such ambiguities are acceptable as long as the
{Right Thing} to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly,
this casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when
a system becomes popular in the {Real World}.) Since a hacker
is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and
technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be
directed as much against the standard as against the person who
ought to read it.
:RTI: /R-T-I/ /interj./ The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on many computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant `RETI' is found among former Z80 hackers (almost nobody programs these things in assembler anymore). Equivalent to "Now, where was I?" or used to end a conversational digression. See {pop}; see also {POPJ}.