:ventilator card: /n./ Syn. {lace card}.
:Venus flytrap: /n./ [after the insect-eating plant] See {firewall machine}.
:verbage: /ver'b*j/ /n./ A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of {verbiage} that assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare {content-free}. More pejorative than `verbiage'.
:verbiage: /n./ When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers to {{documentation}}. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream `verbiage' to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the motives behind its production have little to do with the ostensible subject.
:Version 7: alt. V7 /vee' se'vn/ /n./ The first widely distributed version of {Unix}, released unsupported by Bell Labs in 1978. The term is used adjectivally to describe Unix features and programs that date from that release, and are thus guaranteed to be present and portable in all Unix versions (this was the standard gauge of portability before the POSIX and IEEE 1003 standards). Note that this usage does *not* derive from the release being the "seventh version of {Unix}"; research {Unix} at Bell Labs has traditionally been numbered according to the edition of the associated documentation. Indeed, only the widely-distributed Sixth and Seventh Editions are widely known as V[67]; the OS that might today be known as `V10' is instead known in full as "Tenth Edition Research Unix" or just "Tenth Edition" for short. For this reason, "V7" is often read by cognoscenti as "Seventh Edition". See {BSD}, {USG Unix}, {{Unix}}. Some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel bloat still maintain that V7 was the Last True Unix.
:vgrep: /vee'grep/ /v.,n./ Visual grep. The operation of finding patterns in a file optically rather than digitally (also called an `optical grep'). See {grep}; compare {vdiff}.
:vi: /V-I/, *not* /vi:/ and *never* /siks/ /n./ [from `Visual Interface'] A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for an early {BSD} release. Became the de facto standard Unix editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of MIT until the rise of {EMACS} after about 1984. Tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no indication of which mode the editor is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). Nevertheless it is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even EMACS fans often resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of EMACS). See {holy wars}.
:videotex: /n. obs./ An electronic service offering people the privilege of paying to read the weather on their television screens instead of having somebody read it to them for free while they brush their teeth. The idea bombed everywhere it wasn't government-subsidized, because by the time videotex was practical the installed base of personal computers could hook up to timesharing services and do the things for which videotex might have been worthwhile better and cheaper. Videotex planners badly overestimated both the appeal of getting information from a computer and the cost of local intelligence at the user's end. Like the {gorilla arm} effect, this has been a cautionary tale to hackers ever since. See also {vannevar}.
:virgin: /adj./ Unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again." (Esp. useful after contracting a {virus} through {SEX}.) Also, by extension, buffers and the like within a program that have not yet been used.
:virtual: /adj./ [via the technical term `virtual memory',
prob. from the term `virtual image' in optics] 1. Common
alternative to {logical}; often used to refer to the artificial
objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than physical
memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way to
manage
access to shared resources. 2. Simulated; performing the functions
of something that isn't really there. An imaginative child's doll
may be a virtual playmate. Oppose {real}.