drop-outs

1. A variety of "power glitch" (see glitch); momentary 0

voltage on the electrical mains.

2. Missing characters in typed input due to software

malfunction or system saturation (one cause of such behaviour

under Unix when a bad connection to a modem swamps the

processor with spurious character interrupts; see screamingtty).

3. Mental glitches; used as a way of describing those

occasions when the mind just seems to shut down for a couple

of beats. See glitch, fried.

[Jargon File]

(2001-02-22)