randomness

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."

[Jargon File]