The New Hacker's Dictionary

TINLC //

Abbreviation: "There Is No Lumber Cartel". See Lumber Cartel. TINLC is a takeoff on TINC.

tip of the ice-cube // n.

[IBM] The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in situations where 'tip of the iceberg' might be appropriate if the subject were at all important.

tired iron // n.

[IBM] Hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a dinosaur.

tits on a keyboard // n.

Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered. Usually on the 5 of a numeric keypad, and on the F and J of a QWERTY keyboard; but older Macs, perverse as usual, had them on the D and K keys (this changed in 1999).

TLA /T-L-A/ n.

[Three-Letter Acronym]

1. Self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is infested.

2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of 'ETLA' (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term 'SFLA' (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also YABA.

The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.