:boxen: /bok'sn/ /pl.n./ [by analogy with {VAXen}]
Fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `Unix
boxen', used to describe commodity {{Unix}} hardware. The
connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.
:boxology: /bok-sol'*-jee/ /n./ Syn. {ASCII art}. This
term implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow
drawings. "His report has a lot of boxology in it." Compare
{macrology}.
:bozotic: /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ /adj./ [from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky}, {demented}. Note that the noun `bozo' occurs in slang, but the mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in New England) `bozoish'.
:BQS: /B-Q-S/ /adj./ Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.
:brain dump: /n./ The act of telling someone everything one knows about a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually analogous to an operating system {core dump} in that it saves a lot of useful {state} before an exit. "You'll have to give me a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new job at HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense 4). At Sun, this is also known as `TOI' (transfer of information).
:brain fart: /n./ The actual result of a {braino}, as opposed to the mental glitch that is the braino itself. E.g., typing `dir' on a Unix box after a session with DOS.
:brain-damaged: /adj./ 1. [generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell {{Multics}}] /adj./ Obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six monocase characters per file name? Now *that's* brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is intended to sell. Syn. {crippleware}.
:brain-dead: /adj./ Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. "This comm program doesn't know how to send a break — how brain-dead!"
:braino: /bray'no/ /n./ Syn. for {thinko}. See also {brain fart}.
:branch to Fishkill: /n./ [IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities] Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See {jump off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}.