:dirty power: /n./ Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively known as {power hit}s).
:disclaimer: /n./ [Usenet] Statement ritually appended to many Usenet postings (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of the organization running the machine through which the article entered the network.
:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ /n./ The veneration of {Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers. Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's novel "{Illuminatus!}" as a sort of self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners — it should on no account be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from "Principia Discordia": "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati. See {Religion} in Appendix B, {Church of the SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.
:disk farm: /n./ (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).
:display hack: /n./ A program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD Unix `rain(6)' program, `worms(6)' on miscellaneous Unixes, and the {X} `kaleid(1)' program. Display hacks can also be implemented without programming by creating text files containing numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal; one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The {hack value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the size of the code. Syn. {psychedelicware}.
:Dissociated Press: /n./ [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps
inspired by a reference in the 1950 Bugs Bunny cartoon
"What's Up, Doc?">[ An algorithm for transforming any text
into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by
passing it through a {marketroid}. The algorithm starts by
printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text.
Then at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the
original text of the last N words (or letters) already
printed and then prints the next word or letter. {EMACS} has a
handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-based
Dissociated Press applied to an earlier version of this Jargon
File:
wart: /n./ A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question.
Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to the same source:
window sysIWYG: /n./ A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered /interj./ Indeed spectace logic or problem!
A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window sysIWYG' and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques called `travesty generators' have been employed with considerable satirical effect to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see {pseudo}.