As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who habitually
reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect premises and cannot
be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is not generally used in
its other senses, i.e., to describe a person with a native incapacity
to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed, in hackish experience many
fools are capable of reasoning all too effectively in executing their
errors. See also {cretin}, {loser}, {fool file}.
The Algol 68-R compiler used to initialize its storage to the
character string "F00LF00LF00LF00L..." because as a pointer or as a
floating point number it caused a crash, and as an integer or a
character string it was very recognizable in a dump. Sadly, one day a
very senior professor at Nottingham University wrote a program that
called him a fool. He proceeded to demonstrate the correctness of
this assertion by lobbying the university (not quite successfully) to
forbid the use of Algol on its computers. See also {DEADBEEF}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {DAU}{DEADBEEF}]