Scor­pio News

debugging v.       The act of removing bugs from a program. The number of bugs found is always one less than the number of bugs present.

disk n.       A flat rectangular object bearing no relation to a disk, used to store data and programs.

disk drive n.       A machine for wearing out disks and for overwriting important data.

EBCDIC n.       A table of numbers and letters designed to make communications between computers standardized unless it is calfed ASCII.

format n.       A conspiracy between manufacturers to ensure disk incompatibility.

format v.       The act of instantly destroying any required data. Particularly where backup copies do not exist.

hard disk n.       A more expensive and intricate version of a disk drive, usually justified where speed and data size are not a prime consideration.

head crash n.       A particularly useful way of explaining loss of data or justifying large service charges. The deliberate act of an inanimate object, the hard disk, to behave in a perverse animate way in loading the disk drive head physically on to the hard disk whilst it is in motion.

head crash v.       Banging of the head on the terminal to alleviate the anguish caused by the use of a computer.

IBM n.       A large faceless international conspiracy of non-political computer salesmen dedicated to complete world domination and to propagating the Great American Dream.

language n.       A syntactical grammar used by the programmer to write a program. Simple languages are usually easier to learn then Serbo-Croat whilst some complex languages look more Like Mandarin Chinese

mainframe n.       A large and complex machine designed to maintain the mystique and mystery surrounding systems analysts and programmers.

microcomputer n.       A smaller less complex one operator version of the mainframe designed to produce symptoms of acute frustration in operator.

manual n.       A door stop or table support. A printed list of instructions for using a program; a manual must be written in an incomprehensible language and have little relation to the program in question. The size of the manual is in inverse proportion to the complexity of the program.

modem n.       A display box to advertise either a red triangle sticker or a green circle sticker Green circle stickers ate officially preferred, red circle stickers are cheaper and more useful.

network n.       A method of connecting a number of computers together in such a fashion that the degree of frustration caused by using the network increases with the square of the number of computers connected.

object n.       The string-of-number instructions to a computer produced by assembling a fully understandable source program into totally incomprehensible garbage.

operating system n.       An interface program between the computer and the program to ensure that program interchange is impossible.

peripheral device n.       An adjunct to a computer the purpose of which is to translate the results of computation into such a form that can be understood by the average moron of another computer.