SEX
/seks/ [Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] 1. Software EXchange. A technique invented
by the blue-green algae hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their
evolution, which had been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are
popular among hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to
exchanges of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a Good Thing, but
unprotected SEX can propagate a virus. See also pubic directory.
2. The mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a machine instruction found in the
PDP-11 and many other architectures. The RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and
SuperElf personal computers had a "SEt X register" SEX instruction, but this
seems to have had little folkloric impact.
DEC's engineers nearly got a PDP-11 assembler that used the "SEX" mnemonic out
the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a
change. That wasn't the last time this happened, either. The author of "The
Intel 8086 Primer", who was one of the original designers of the Intel 8086,
noted that there was originally a "SEX" instruction on that processor, too. He
says that Intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and
thus the instruction was renamed "CBW" and "CWD" (depending on what was being
extended). The Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC keyboards) is also
missing straight "SEX" but has logical-or and logical-and instructions "ORL" and
"ANL".
The Motorola 6809, used in the UK's "Dragon 32" personal computer, actually had
an official "SEX" instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which it competed
did not. British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it
was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex with a
dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.
[Jargon File]
(1998-03-03)
Nearby terms:
set-top box « SEUS « seven layer model « SEX
» sexadecimal » sex changer » SEXI
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