blivet

   [allegedly  from  a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of
   manure in a five-pound bag"]

   1. An intractable problem.

   2.  A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it
   breaks.

   3.  A  tool  that  has  been  hacked  over  by  so  many  incompetent
   programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks.

   4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort.

   5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo.

   6.   In   the   subjargon   of   computer   security  specialists,  a
   denial-of-service  attack performed by hogging limited resources that
   have  no  access  controls  (for  example,  shared  spool  space on a
   multi-user system).

   This  term  has  other  meanings  in  other technical cultures; among
   experimental  physicists  and  hardware engineers of various kinds it
   seems  to  mean  any  random  object  of  unknown purpose (similar to
   hackish  use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing
   trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to
   depict  a  three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts
   fit together in an impossible way.

   

   This is a blivet

[glossary]