:tweeter: /n./ [University of Waterloo] Syn. {perf}, {chad} (sense 1). This term (like {woofer}) has been in use at Waterloo since 1972 but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word refers to the treble speaker(s) on a hi-fi.
:TWENEX:: /twe'neks/ /n./ The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC — the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10 — preferred by most PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10 (that is, by those who were not {{ITS}} or {{WAITS}} partisans). TOPS-20 began in 1969 as Bolt, Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating system using special paging hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all of the systems on the ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to TENEX from BBN and began work to make it their own. The first in-house code name for the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating System); when customers started asking questions, the name was changed to SNARK so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any project called VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was briefly reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when someone objected that `krans' meant `funeral wreath' in Swedish (though some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply `wreath'; this part of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately DEC picked TOPS-20 as the name of the operating system, and it was as TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of its origins, quickly dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of `twenty TENEX'), even though by this point very little of the original TENEX code remained (analogously to the differences between AT&T V6 Unix and BSD). DEC people cringed when they heard "TWENEX", but the term caught on nevertheless (the written abbreviation `20x' was also used). TWENEX was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a period in the early 1980s when it commanded as fervent a culture of partisans as Unix or ITS — but DEC's decision to scrap all the internal rivals to the VAX architecture and its relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in the sun. DEC attempted to convince TOPS-20 users to convert to {VMS}, but instead, by the late 1980s, most of the TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to Unix.
:twiddle: /n./ 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, `~'). Also called
`squiggle', `sqiggle' (sic — pronounced /skig'l/), and
`twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and
insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and
generates several new ones (see also {shotgun debugging}).
3. /vt./ To change something in a small way. Bits, for example,
are
often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knob implies much less sense
of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see {frobnicate}. To
speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't
specify what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a bit' has a more
specific meaning (see {bit twiddling}, {toggle}).
:twilight zone: /n./ [IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where {IRC} operators live. An {op} is said to have a "connection to the twilight zone".
:twink: /twink/ /n./ [UCSC] Equivalent to {read-only user}. Also reported on the Usenet group soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs (compare mainstream `chick').
:twirling baton: /n./ [PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|\-/|\- which produces an animated twirling baton. If you output it with a single backspace between characters, the baton spins in place. If you output the sequence BS SP between characters, the baton spins from left to right. If you output BS SP BS BS between characters, the baton spins from right to left.
The twirling baton was a popular component of animated signature files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The `archie' Internet service is perhaps the best-known baton program today; it uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating that the program is working on a query.
:two pi: /quant./ The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form: "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years later…"
:two-to-the-N: /quant./ An amount much larger than {N} but smaller than {infinity}. "I have 2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means you probably won't show up.
:twonkie: /twon'kee/ /n./ The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang with a small t) the male equivalent of `chick'); a useless `feature' added to look sexy and placate a {marketroid} (compare {Saturday-night special}). The term may also be related to "The Twonky", title menace of a classic SF short story by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore), first published in the September 1942 "Astounding Science Fiction" and subsequently much anthologized.