Computing: A Hacker's Dictionary - Softcover

McKie, Roy; Beard, Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761117741 ISBN 13: 9780761117742

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company, 1999

Synopsis

Beard & McKie are back. The author and the illustrator who created Sailing (a New York Times bestseller with 710,000 copies in print), as well as Golfing, Fishing, and other well-defined dictionaries--which together have over 2.3 million copies in print--now turn their unflinchingly funny eye to America's newest obsession, computing. For frustrated Web surfers, confused number crunchers, for the crazed the possessed, and the befuddled, it makes perfect fun of the machine we love to hate.

Computing covers it all, from hardware (any portion of a computer system that you can actually smack, thump, slam, punch, bash, whack, or clobber) to program ( a set of instructions for converting informational input into an emotional outburst). There are technical terms--Web browser (an Internet navigation program that gives computer users instant access to more than one billion advertisements); cultural phenomena--techie (a nerd with a Porsche); lingo--e-mail (a highly efficient method of wasting the countless working hours saved by the introduction of data-processing systems); and common words given new meaning in the computer age--instructions (a collection of Finnish proverbs with the words "User's Manual" printed on the cover).

About this title

About the Authors

Roy McKie illustrated all the well-defined dictionaries. He also illustrated many Dr. Seuss Beginning books, which have over 20 million copies in print.

Henry Beard is the cofounder of National Lampoon. He is also the author of Golfing, Sailing and other well-defined dictionaries, as well as Zen for Cats, The Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf and dozens of other books.

From the Back Cover

Bit, bomb, Boolean logic & the pleasures of multitasking.

A lexicon bringing new meaning to cyberspace.

INCLUDING:

Address. The specific place in a computer's memory where a particular item of data has been lost.

Hardware. Any portion of a computer system that you can actually smack, thump, slam, punch, bash, whack, or clobber.

Nerd. A geek with stock options.

Web browser. An Internet navigation program that gives computer users instant access to more than one billion advertisements.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Arrow keys

A set of four keys that move the cursor too far up, too far down, too far left, or too far right.

Backup copy

A missing disk or tape that contains lost data.

Bug

An unplanned troublesome characteristic of a program, as opposed to an irritating feature that was consciously designed or deliberately included.

Chat room

Online forum which, in a miracle of modern Internet communications, permits many users at widely separated locations often hundreds or even thousands of miles apart to simultaneously bore each other to death.

Page break

The point at which text in a word-processing program flows over to a new page, which occurs right after a heading or title, or halfway through a short list, or in the middle of a word, or just before the last line of a quote.

Search engine

A program that helps you locate something on the Internet by reducing the number of possible locations where it can be found from 4 million to 50,000.

Excerpted from Computing. Copyright (c) 1999 by Henry Beard and Roy McKie. Reprinted with permission by Workman Publishing.

Edition details

• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761117741
• ISBN 13: 9780761117742
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112