The New Hacker's Dictionary

batbelt // n.

Many hackers routinely hang numerous devices such as pagers, cell-phones, personal organizers, leatherman multitools, pocket knives, flashlights, walkie-talkies, even miniature computers from their belts. When many of these devices are worn at once, the hacker's belt somewhat resembles Batman's utility belt; hence it is referred to as a batbelt.

batch // adj.

1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive command input are often referred to as 'batch mode' switches. A 'batch file' is a series of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running in batch mode.

2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. "I finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; I guess they'll turn the electricity back on next week..."

3. 'batching up': Accumulation of a number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater efficiency. "I'm batching up those letters to send sometime" "I'm batching up bottles to take to the recycling center."

bathtub curve // n.

Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time: initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it 'tires out'. See also burn-in period, infant mortality.

baud /bawd/ n.

[simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The technical meaning is 'level transitions per second'; this coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing or stop bits. Most hackers are aware of these nuances but blithely ignore them.

Historical note: 'baud' was originally a unit of telegraph signalling speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at the November, 1926 conference of the Comité Consultatif International Des Communications Télégraphiques as an improvement on the then standard practice of referring to line speeds in terms of words per minute, and named for Jean Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French engineer who did a lot of pioneering work in early teleprinters.