[Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] n.
1. Software EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae
hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which
had been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular
among hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to
exchanges of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a {Good
Thing}, but unprotected SEX can propagate a {virus}. See also {pubic
directory}.
2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a machine
instruction found in the {PDP-11} and many other architectures. The
RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf personal computers
had a `SEt X register' SEX instruction, but this seems to have had
little folkloric impact. The Data General instruction set also had
SEX.
{DEC}'s engineers nearly got a {PDP-11} assembler that used the SEX
mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't
asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last time this happened,
either. The author of The Intel 8086 Primer, who was one of the
original designers of the 8086, noted that there was originally a SEX
instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel management got
cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction
was renamed CBW and CWD (depending on what was being extended).
Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC
keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has logical-or and
logical-and instructions ORL and ANL.
The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and in
U.K.'s `Dragon 32' personal computer, actually had an official SEX
instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which it competed did not.
British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it
was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex
with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {Commonwealth Hackish}{condom}{pubic directory}{virgin}{virus}]