blivet
/bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of
manure in a five-pound bag"] 1. An intractable problem.
2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks.
3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it
has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks.
4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort.
5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo.
6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a denial-of-service attack
performed by hogging limited resources that have no access controls (for
example, shared spool space on a multi-user system).
This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental
physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random
object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of frob). It has also been
used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged
fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realises that
the parts fit together in an impossible way.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
BLISS-36 « blit « blitter « blivet » bloat »
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