Online Computer Terms Dictionary - K

killer micro

[Popularised by Eugene Brooks] A microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the killer micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers. Used especially of RISC architectures.

The popularity of the phrase "attack of the killer micros" is doubtless reinforced by the movie title "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" (one of the canonical examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful among hackers). This has even more flavour now that killer micros have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations) but in hordes (within massively parallel computers).

[Jargon File]

killer poke

A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of invalid values (see poke) into a memory-mapped control register; used especially of various fairly well-known tricks on bitty boxes without hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore PET) that can overload analog electronics in the monitor.

See also HCF.

(1994-11-04)

kill file

[Usenet] Per-user file(s) used by some Usenet reading programs (originally Larry Wall's rn) to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject) to one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's newsreader in future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in other media. See also plonk.

[Jargon File]