Vulcan nerve pinch

:Vulcan nerve pinch: n. [from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On PC clones this is Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns, L1-A; on Macintoshes, it is - or --! On IRIX,

, which kills and restarts the X server, is sometimes called a vulcan nerve pinch. Also called three-finger salute and `Vulcan death grip'. At shops with a lot of Microsoft Windows machines, this is often called the `Microsoft Maneuver' because of the distressing frequency with which Microsoft's unreliable software requires it. Compare quadruple bucky

Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =

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