Sysadmin Lingo
The computer profession, along with all professions, has its own
terminology and tech-speak. But unlike most professions, the
computer industry's lingo is constantly changing; many times at a
rate that most people can't keep up with it all.
Sysadmin Terms
- Headless Workstation
- KVM
- dongle
- spam
- turnkey
- bounced mail
- rpm, tarball
- SAP/BASIS
Morphed Words
Due mostly to Holy Wars in the computer field many common names
get deliberatly changed into something a bit insulting.
- Microsloth
- Microshaft
- M$
- Netwait
- Nutscrape
- OpenStupid
- OpenWimp
- Intergrief
Madeup Words
Some terms are simply made up. Either evolved in places like USENET,
or coined by programmers or authors.
- Script Kiddies
- Slashdotted
- butt-magic
- script-fu
Unpronouncable Words
It is very common to try and pronounce acronyms or other names
that otherwise would look unpronouncable.
- fsck
- Filesystem Check, pronounces "f suck"
- scsi
- Small Computer System Interface, pronounces "scuzzy"
Deliberate Miss-spellings
This is usually the realm of the Script Kiddies. The worst example
I've found so far is from the bofh
site and consists of...
DOODZ!!!!!! W3R3 CAN 1 F1ND SUM K3WL W4REZ
Acronyms
Almost all professions have their set of acronyms, but computer
science seems to try and take them to ridiculous extremes.
Many acronyms are self-referential, or deliberatly spelled wrong
in order to make the acronym pronouncable or interesting.
Computer Science Acronyms
- PINE
- Rumored to have originally stood for Pine Is Not Elm
- Currently stands for Program for Internet News & Email
- HURD
- Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons
- Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth
- DOS
- Disk Operating System
- D.o.S.
- Denial of Service
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Last Modified:
K. Scott Rowe