bomb
1. <software> General synonym for crash except that it is not used as a
noun. Especially used of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less
than 32K stack, it'll bomb".
2. <operating system> Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a Unix
"panic" or Amiga guru, in which icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom
clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died. On the Macintosh,
this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number
indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga guru meditation number. MS-DOS
computers tend to lock up in this situation.
3. <software> A piece of code embedded in a program that remains dormant
until it is triggered. Logic bombs are triggered by an event whereas time bombs
are triggered either after a set amount of time has elapsed, or when a specific
date is reached.
[Jargon File]
(1996-12-08)
Nearby terms:
boink « BOLERO « Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc. «
bomb
» bon » bondage-and-discipline language » bonk/oif
|
