:wart: /n./ A small, {crock}y {feature} that sticks out of an otherwise {clean} design. Something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule. For example, in some versions of `csh(1)', single quotes literalize every character inside them except `!'. In ANSI C, the `??' syntax used for obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also {miswart}.
:washing machine: /n./ 1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs — and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also {walking drives}. The thick channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see {hose}, sense 3). 2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively for {washing software}. CMU has clusters of these.
:washing software: /n./ The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more often when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up and merge together all of the various changes that have been made to the source.
:water MIPS: /n./ (see {MIPS}, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional {mainframe} type.
:wave a dead chicken: /v./ To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}.
:weasel: /n./ [Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with {loser}.
:web pointer: /n./ A World Wide Web {URL}. See also {hotlink}, which has slightly different connotations.
:webmaster: /n./ [WWW: from {postmaster}] The person at a site providing World Wide Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.
:wedged: /adj./ 1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it {deadlock}s with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also {gronk}, {locked up}, {hosed}. 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged — he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.
There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial inversion; however, it may actually have originated with older `hot-press' printing technology in which physical type elements were locked into type frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this had been done, no changes in the typesetting for that page could be made.