The New Hacker's Dictionary

J. Random /J rand'm/ n.

[common; generalized from J. Random Hacker] Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; any old. 'J. Random' is often prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly 'some particular' or 'any specific one'. "Would you let J. Random Loser marry your daughter?" The most common uses are 'J. Random Hacker', 'J. Random Loser', and 'J. Random Nerd' ("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to gun down other people?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of random in any sense.

J. Random Hacker /J rand'm hak'r/ n.

[very common] A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. This term is one of the oldest in the jargon, apparently going back to MIT in the 1960s. See random, Suzie COBOL. This may originally have been inspired by 'J. Fred Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days of TMRC, and was probably influenced by 'J. Presper Eckert' (one of the co-inventors of the electronic computer).

See also Fred Foobar.

jack in // v.

To log on to a machine or connect to a network or BBS, esp. for purposes of entering a virtual reality simulation such as a MUD or IRC (leaving is "jacking out"). This term derives from cyberpunk SF, in which it was used for the act of plugging an electrode set into neural sockets in order to interface the brain directly to a virtual reality. It is primarily used by MUD and IRC fans and younger hackers on BBS systems.

jaggies /jag'eez/ n.

The 'stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).

Java //

An object-oriented language originally developed at Sun by James Gosling (and known by the name "Oak") with the intention of being the successor to C++ (the project was however originally sold to Sun as an embedded language for use in set-top boxes). After the great Internet explosion of 1993-1994, Java was hacked into a byte-interpreted language and became the focus of a relentless hype campaign by Sun, which touted it as the new language of choice for distributed applications.

Java is indeed a stronger and cleaner design than C++ and has been embraced by many in the hacker community -- but it has been a considerable source of frustration to many others, for reasons ranging from uneven support on different Web browser platforms, performance issues, and some notorious deficiencies of some of the standard toolkits (AWT in particular). Microsoft's determined attempts to corrupt the language (which it rightly sees as a threat to its OS monopoly) have not helped. As of 1999, these issues are still in the process of being resolved.