crayon
:crayon: n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More
specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably
male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender).
Systems types who have a Unix background tend not to be described as
crayons. 2. Formerly, anyone who worked for Cray Research; since the
buyout by SGI, anyone they inherited from Cray. Nowadays, often applied
to any SGI employee who either works at one of the former Cray Research
facilities (i.e. Eagan Minnesota and Chippewa Falls Wisconsin) or works
primarily in vector computing aspects of the business. Sometimes
considered mildly offensive by those to whom it is applied, particularly
those whose work has nothing to do with vector computing. 3. A
computron
(sense 2) that participates only in number-crunching
4. A
unit of computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a
standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola crayon
promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free sharpener.
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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