:toad: /vt./ [MUD] 1. Notionally, to change a {MUD} player into a toad. 2. To permanently and totally exile a player from the MUD. A very serious action, which can only be done by a MUD {wizard}; often involves a lot of debate among the other characters first. See also {frog}, {FOD}.

:toast: 1. /n./ Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh … I think the serial board is toast." 2. /vt./ To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual rebooting. "Rick just toasted the {firewall machine} again." Compare {fried}.

:toaster: /n./ 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see {elevator controller}). "{DWIM} for an assembler? That'd be as silly as running Unix on your toaster!" 2. A very, very dumb computer. "You could run this program on any dumb toaster." See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige toaster}. 3. A Macintosh, esp. the Classic Mac. Some hold that this is implied by sense 2. 4. A peripheral device. "I bought my box without toasters, but since then I've added two boards and a second disk drive."

:toeprint: /n./ A {footprint} of especially small size.

:toggle: /vt./ To change a {bit} from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light switches, though the word `toggle' actually refers to the mechanism that keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped rather than to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking about toggling bits.)

:tool: 1. /n./ A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a cross-referencing program. Oppose {app}, {operating system}. 2. [Unix] An application program with a simple, `transparent' (typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used in programmed combination with other tools (see {filter}, {plumbing}). 3. [MIT: general to students there] /vi./ To work; to study (connotes tedium). The TMRC Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to the grindstone". See {hack}. 4. /n./ [MIT] A student who studies too much and hacks too little. (MIT's student humor magazine rejoices in the name "Tool and Die".)

:toolsmith: /n./ The software equivalent of a tool-and-die
specialist; one who specializes in making the {tool}s with which
other programmers create applications. Many hackers consider this
more fun than applications per se; to understand why, see
{uninteresting}. Jon Bentley, in the "Bumper-Sticker Computer
Science" chapter of his book "More Programming Pearls",
quotes Dick Sites from DEC as saying "I'd rather write programs to
write programs than write programs".

:topic drift: /n./ Term used on GEnie, Usenet and other
electronic fora to describe the tendency of a {thread} to drift
away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the
Subject header of the originating message), or the results of that
tendency. Often used in gentle reminders that the discussion has
strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with a question
about Niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the sexual
habits of the common marmoset. Now *that's* topic drift!"

:topic group: /n./ Syn. {forum}.

:TOPS-10:: /tops-ten/ /n./ DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled {PDP-10} machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix A. See also {{ITS}}, {{TOPS-20}}, {{TWENEX}}, {VMS}, {operating system}. TOPS-10 was sometimes called BOTS-10 (from `bottoms-ten') as a comment on the inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything.