1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
2. A {hack} or {crock} that depends on a complex combination of
coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock
depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack can
output characters 40--57 by putting the character in the four-bit
accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits -- the low 2
bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!"
3. Of people, synonymous with flakiness. The connotation is that the
person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or
inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother
inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena
anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real
complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."
Despite the negative connotations of most jargon uses of this term
have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable
resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and elsewhere.
Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have a hard time
generating high-quality randomness, so hackers have sometimes felt
the need to built special-purpose contraptions for this purpose
alone. One well-known website offers random bits generated by
radioactive decay. Another derives random bits from chaotic systems
in analog electronics. Originally, the latter site got its random
bits by doing photometry on lava lamps. Hackers invariably found this
hilarious. If you have to ask why, you'll never get it.)
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {bogon}{cosmic rays}{random}{RTFM}]