random

1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird.

"The system's been behaving pretty randomly."

2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?"

"Just a bunch of random business types."

3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. "He's

just a random loser."

4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organised.

"The program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a

random name for that function." "Well, all the names were

chosen pretty randomly."

5. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O

channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is

chosen randomly."

6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch

file."

7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e. poorly done and for no good

apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file

name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler

routine that could easily have been coded using only three

registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with

non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it

without first saving four extra registers. What randomness!

8. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students

who soak up computer time and generally get in the way.

9. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not

known to the hacker speaking). "I went to the talk, but the

audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions".

10. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See

also J. Random, some random X.

[Jargon File]

(1995-12-05)