The New Hacker's Dictionary

FUD wars /fuhd worz/ n.

[from FUD] Political posturing engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to protect their own shares. The Unix International vs. OSF conflict about Unix standards was one outstanding example; Microsoft vs. Netscape vs. W3C about HTML standards is another.

fudge //

1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it -- I'll fix it later."

2. n. The resulting code.

fudge factor // n.

[common] A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms 'tolerance' and slop are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. A good example is the 'fuzz' typically allowed in floating-point calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import. See also coefficient of X.

fuel up // vi.

To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a great-wall!" See also oriental food.

Full Monty // n.

See monty, sense 2.

fum // n.

[XEROX PARC] At PARC, often the third of the standard metasyntactic variables (after foo and bar). Competes with baz, which is more common outside PARC.