brain-damaged

:brain-damaged: adj. 1. [common; generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell Multics }] adj. Obviously wrong; cretinous demented There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six monocase characters per file name? Now _that's_ brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with the product it is intended to sell. Syn. crippleware

Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =

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