= U = =====
:u-: /pref./ Written shorthand for {micro-}; techspeak when
applied to metric units, jargon when used otherwise. Derived from
the Greek letter "mu", the first letter of "micro" (and which
letter looks a lot like the English letter "u").
:UBD: /U-B-D/ /n./ [abbreviation for `User Brain Damage']
An abbreviation used to close out trouble reports obviously due to
utter cluelessness on the user's part. Compare {pilot error};
oppose {PBD}; see also {brain-damaged}.
:UN*X: /n./ Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a
trademark of AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly
{(TM)} typography.
Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating
systems. Ironically, lawyers now say that the requirement for the
TM-postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is
entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a
psychological connection to practice in certain religions
(especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never
written out in full, e.g., `YHWH' or `G—d' is used. See also
{glob}.
:undefined external reference: /excl./ [Unix] A message from Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag loose ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion.
:under the hood: /adj./ [hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the speaker is about to enable the listener to {grok} it. "Let's now look under the hood to see how …." 2. Can also imply that the implementation is much simpler than the appearance would indicate: "Under the hood, we are just fork/execing the shell." 3. Inside a chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz 68030!"
:undocumented feature: /n./ See {feature}.
:uninteresting: /adj./ 1. Said of a problem that, although {nontrivial}, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and code.
Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. *Real* hackers (see {toolsmith}) generalize uninteresting problems enough to make them interesting and solve them — thus solving the original problem as a special case (and, it must be admitted, occasionally turning a molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into a tectonic plate). See {WOMBAT}, {SMOP}; compare {toy problem}, oppose {interesting}.
:Unix:: /yoo'niks/ /n./ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was `UNICS'] (also `UNIX') An interactive time-sharing system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in Unix's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972—1974, making it the first source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix had become the most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world. Many people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see {Unix weenie} and {Unix conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). See {Version 7}, {BSD}, {USG Unix}, {Linux}.