random
:random: adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition);
weird. "The system's been behaving pretty randomly." 2. Assorted;
undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a bunch of random
business types." 3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected.
"He's just a random loser." 4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen;
not well organized. "The program has a random set of misfeatures."
"That's a random name for that function." "Well, all the names were
chosen pretty randomly." 5. In no particular order, though
deterministic. "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is
opened one is chosen randomly." 6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random
name for the scratch file." 7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and
for no good apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file
name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine
that could easily have been coded using only three registers, but
redundantly uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so
that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra
registers. What randomness
8. n. A random hacker; used particularly
of high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in
the way. 9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not
known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I went to the
talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions". 10.
n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also {J. Random}
}, some random X
11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or
something similarly out-of-the-blue. As in: "Stop being so random!" This
sense equates to `hatstand', taken from the Viz comic character "Roger
Irrelevant - He's completely Hatstand."
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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