:flag day: /n./ A software change that is neither forward- nor backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to reverse. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all users?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word {flag} to mean a variable that has two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the {{Multics}} timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also {backward combatability}.
:flaky: /adj./ (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent {lossage}. This use is of course related to the common slang use of the word to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is flaky is working, sort of — enough that you are tempted to try to use it — but fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.
:flamage: /flay'm*j/ /n./ Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings to {Usenet} or other electronic {fora}. Often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. See {flame}, also {dahmum}.
:flame: 1. /vi./ To post an email message intended to insult
and provoke. 2. /vi./ To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some
relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous
attitude. 3. /vt./ Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with
hostility
at a particular person or people. 4. /n./ An instance of flaming.
When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might
tell the participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all
that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).
The term may have been independently invented at several different places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI (among many other places) from as far back as 1969.
It is possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida", Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.
:flame bait: /n./ A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that invites flames in reply. See also {troll}.
:flame on: vi.,/interj./ 1. To begin to {flame}. The punning reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely recognized. 2. To continue to flame. See {rave}, {burble}.
:flame war: /n./ (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as {Usenet}.
:flamer: /n./ One who habitually {flame}s. Said esp. of obnoxious {Usenet} personalities.