Coping with a hydraulic {glitch}.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-07-24. The previous one
is 73-05-28.)
[very common; from German `glitschig' slippery, via Yiddish
`glitshen', to slide or skid]
1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity,
or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in
electric service is specifically called a power glitch (also {power
hit}), of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers.
In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and
then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say, "Sorry,
I just glitched".
2. vi. To commit a glitch. See {gritch}.
3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp. several lines at a
time. {WAITS} terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous
scrolling, which is distracting to the eye.
4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.
All these uses of glitch derive from the specific technical meaning
the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is now
techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit change,
and the outputs change to some {random} value for some very brief
time before they settle down to the correct value. If another circuit
inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the random value,
the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug (a glitch is one
of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).
Coping with a hydraulic {glitch}.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-07-24. The previous one
is 73-05-28.)
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {bug}{drop-outs}{fried}{glitch}{glork}{gritch}{magic cookie}{off the trolley}{page out}{power hit}]