| slovo | definícia |
vax
(encz) | vax,očkovací látka n: [slang.] Jiří Drbálek |
vax
(encz) | vax,očkování n: [slang.] Jiří Drbálek |
vax
(encz) | vax,vakcína n: [slang.] Jiří Drbálek |
vax
(encz) | VAX, |
vax
(foldoc) | VAX
/vaks/ (Virtual Address eXtension) The most
successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly
excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its
release in 1978 and its eclipse by killer micros after about
1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favourite machine,
especially after the 1982 release of 4.2BSD Unix.
Especially noted for its large, {assembly
code}-programmer-friendly instruction set - an asset that
became a liability after the RISC revolution.
VAX is also a British brand of {carpet cleaner
(http://vax.co.uk/)} whose advertising slogan, "Nothing
sucks like a VAX!" became a battle-cry of RISC partisans. It
is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually entered a
licencing deal that allowed them to market VAX computers in
the UK in return for not challenging the carpet cleaner
trademark in the US.
The slogan originated in the late 1960s as "Nothing sucks like
Electrolux", Electrolux AB being a rival Swedish company. It
became a classic textbook example of the perils of not knowing
the local idiom, which is ironic because, according to the
Electrolux press manager in 1996, the double entendre was
intentional. VAX copied the slogan in their promotions in
1986-1987, and it surfaced in New Zealand TV ads as recently
as 1992!
[Jargon File]
(2000-09-28)
|
vax
(jargon) | VAX
/vaks/, n.
1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer design
in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor, the {PDP-11
}. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse by killer micros after
about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all,
esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD Unix (see BSD). Especially noted
for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set — an asset
that became a liability after the RISC revolution.
It is worth noting that the standard plural of VAX was ‘vaxen’ and that VAX
system operators were sometimes referred to as ‘vaxherds’
2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because its sales
pitch, “Nothing sucks like a VAX!” became a sort of battle-cry of RISC
partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually entered a
cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people that allowed them to market
VAX computers in the U.K. in return for not challenging the vacuum cleaner
trademark in the U.S.
A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was “Nothing
sucks like Electrolux”. It has apparently become a classic example (used in
advertising textbooks) of the perils of not knowing the local idiom. But in
1996, the press manager of Electrolux AB, while confirming that the company
used this slogan in the late 1960s, also tells us that their marketing
people were fully aware of the possible double entendre and intended it to
gain attention.
And gain attention it did — the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people thought the
slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British hackers report
that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we have one report from a
New Zealander that the infamous slogan surfaced there in TV ads for the
product in 1992.
|
vax
(vera) | VAX
Virtual Address eXtension (DEC, VAX)
|
| | podobné slovo | definícia |
anti-vax
(encz) | anti-vax,protiočkovací adj: [slang.] Jiří Drbálek |
anti-vaxxer
(encz) | anti-vaxxer,odpůrce očkování n: [slang.] Jiří Drbálek |
microvax
(encz) | MicroVAX, |
microvaxes
(encz) | MicroVAXes, |
vax
(encz) | vax,očkovací látka n: [slang.] Jiří Drbálekvax,očkování n: [slang.] Jiří Drbálekvax,vakcína n: [slang.] Jiří DrbálekVAX, |
vaxes
(encz) | VAXes, |
Plasmodium vivax
(gcide) | Malaria parasite \Malaria parasite\
Any of several minute protozoans of the genus Plasmodium
(syn. Haematozoon) which in their adult condition live in
the tissues of mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles (which
see) and when transferred to the blood of man, by the bite of
the mosquito, produce malaria.
Note: The young parasites, or sporozoites, enter the red
blood corpuscles, growing at their expense, undergoing
sporulation, and finally destroying the corpuscles,
thus liberating in the blood plasma an immense number
of small spores called merozoites. An indefinite but
not ultimated number of such generations may follow,
but if meanwhile the host is bitten by a mosquito, the
parasites develop into gametes in the stomach of the
insect. These conjugate, the zygote thus produced
divides, forming spores, and eventually sporozoites,
which, penetrating to the salivary glands of the
mosquito, may be introduced into a new host. The
attacks of the disease coincide with the dissolution of
the corpuscles and liberation of the spores and
products of growth of the parasites into the blood
plasma. Several species of the parasite are
distinguished, as Plasmodium vivax, producing tertian
malaria; Plasmodium malariae, quartan malaria; and
Plasmodium (subgenus Laverania) falciferum, the
malarial fever of summer and autumn common in the
tropics.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.] |
plasmodium vivax
(wn) | Plasmodium vivax
n 1: parasitic protozoan of the genus Plasmodium that causes
malaria in humans [syn: plasmodium, Plasmodium vivax,
malaria parasite] |
pneumovax
(wn) | Pneumovax
n 1: vaccine (trade name Pneumovax) effective against the 23
most common strains of pneumococcus [syn: {pneumococcal
vaccine}, Pneumovax] |
extensible vax editor
(foldoc) | Extensible VAX Editor
EVE
(EVE) A DEC product implemented using DEC's
Text Processing Utility (TPU).
[Details?]
(2000-05-08)
|
kgbvax
(foldoc) | kremvax
kgbvax
/krem-vaks/ (Or kgbvax) Originally, a fictitious Usenet site
at the Kremlin, named like the then large number of Usenet
VAXen with names of the form foovax. Kremvax was announced
on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by
Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually
forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other
fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and
kgbvax. This was probably the funniest of the many April
Fool's forgeries perpetrated on Usenet (which has negligible
security against them), because the notion that Usenet might
ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at
the time.
In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine
site in Moscow, demos.su, joined Usenet. Some readers
needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just
another prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and
the major poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of
all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and
at one point twitted some credulous readers by blandly
asserting that he *was* a hoax!
Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site
*named* kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into truth and
demonstrating that the hackish sense of humour transcends
cultural barriers. Mr. Antonov also contributed some
Russian-language material for the Jargon File.
In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an
electronic centre of the anti-communist resistance during the
bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three
days the Soviet UUCP network centreed on kremvax became the
only trustworthy news source for many places within the USSR.
Though the sysops were concentrating on internal
communications, cross-border postings included immediate
transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the
coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's
streets. In those hours, years of speculation that
totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on
politically-loaded information in the age of computer
networking were proved devastatingly accurate - and the
original kremvax joke became a reality as Yeltsin and the new
Russian revolutionaries of "glasnost" and "perestroika" made
kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to the
West.
[Jargon File]
|
kremvax
(foldoc) | kremvax
kgbvax
/krem-vaks/ (Or kgbvax) Originally, a fictitious Usenet site
at the Kremlin, named like the then large number of Usenet
VAXen with names of the form foovax. Kremvax was announced
on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by
Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually
forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other
fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and
kgbvax. This was probably the funniest of the many April
Fool's forgeries perpetrated on Usenet (which has negligible
security against them), because the notion that Usenet might
ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at
the time.
In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine
site in Moscow, demos.su, joined Usenet. Some readers
needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just
another prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and
the major poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of
all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and
at one point twitted some credulous readers by blandly
asserting that he *was* a hoax!
Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site
*named* kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into truth and
demonstrating that the hackish sense of humour transcends
cultural barriers. Mr. Antonov also contributed some
Russian-language material for the Jargon File.
In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an
electronic centre of the anti-communist resistance during the
bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three
days the Soviet UUCP network centreed on kremvax became the
only trustworthy news source for many places within the USSR.
Though the sysops were concentrating on internal
communications, cross-border postings included immediate
transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the
coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's
streets. In those hours, years of speculation that
totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on
politically-loaded information in the age of computer
networking were proved devastatingly accurate - and the
original kremvax joke became a reality as Yeltsin and the new
Russian revolutionaries of "glasnost" and "perestroika" made
kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to the
West.
[Jargon File]
|
mcvax
(foldoc) | mcvax
mcvax.cwi.nl used to be the international backbone node of
EUnet, the European Unix network. It was located in
Amsterdam, Netherlands and belonged to "Centrum voor Wiskunde
en Informatica" (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science)
which is an institute belonging to a foundation called
"Mathematisch Centrum". Since the first mcvax was on of the
first VAXen in Europe and one of it's first uucp
connections was to a machine called decvax it was quickly
christened mcvax. Some also say this was done to give Jim
McKie a nice mail address: mcvax!mckie. But this is certainly
not true at all. The function of EUnet international backbone
moved to another VAX later but the name moved with it, because
in those days of mainly uucp based mail and before widespread
use of pathalias it was simply not feasible to rename the
machine to "europa" as was suggested at one stage.
Mcsun (or relay.eu.net or net.eu.relay in some parts of
Europe) replaced the international backbone host of EUnet
around 1990. This machine was donated by Sun Microsystems
owned by the European Unix Systems User Group (EUUG). It
was located about 5m from where mcvax used to be and operated
by the same people.
Mcvax has finally ceased to exist in the domain and uucp
namespaces. It still exists in the EARN/BITNET
namespace.
[Posting by Daniel Karrenberg to eunet.general].
(1990-03-02)
|
vax
(foldoc) | VAX
/vaks/ (Virtual Address eXtension) The most
successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly
excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its
release in 1978 and its eclipse by killer micros after about
1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favourite machine,
especially after the 1982 release of 4.2BSD Unix.
Especially noted for its large, {assembly
code}-programmer-friendly instruction set - an asset that
became a liability after the RISC revolution.
VAX is also a British brand of {carpet cleaner
(http://vax.co.uk/)} whose advertising slogan, "Nothing
sucks like a VAX!" became a battle-cry of RISC partisans. It
is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually entered a
licencing deal that allowed them to market VAX computers in
the UK in return for not challenging the carpet cleaner
trademark in the US.
The slogan originated in the late 1960s as "Nothing sucks like
Electrolux", Electrolux AB being a rival Swedish company. It
became a classic textbook example of the perils of not knowing
the local idiom, which is ironic because, according to the
Electrolux press manager in 1996, the double entendre was
intentional. VAX copied the slogan in their promotions in
1986-1987, and it surfaced in New Zealand TV ads as recently
as 1992!
[Jargon File]
(2000-09-28)
|
vax document
(foldoc) | VAX DOCUMENT
A document preparation system from DEC.
|
vax mips
(foldoc) | VAX MIPS
VUP
(Or VAX Unit of Performance, VUP) The processing
power normally attributed to a Digital Equipment Corporation
VAX 11/780. Future VAX systems were rated according to this
scale (e.g. VAX 8350's being 2.7 VUPs per CPU). A MicroVAX
II is normally associated with 0.9 VUPs and at a later time
the MicroVUP was coined to rate VAX workstations. The use
of the VUP by Digital Equipment Corporation has been replaced
with more standard benchmarks (SPECint and SPECfp) in the
DEC Alpha processor systems.
(1996-08-22)
|
vax/vms
(foldoc) | Virtual Memory System
OpenVMS
VAX/VMS
VMS
(VMS) DEC's proprietary {operating
system} originally produced for its VAX minicomputer.
VMS V1 was released in August 1978. VMS was renamed "OpenVMS"
around version 5.5. The first version of VMS on DEC Alpha
was known as OpenVMS for AXP V1.0, and the correct way to
refer to the operating system now is OpenVMS for VAX or
OpenVMS for Alpha. The renaming also signified the fact that
the X/Open consortium had certified OpenVMS as having a high
support for POSIX standards.
VMS is one of the most secure operating systems on the market
(making it popular in financial institutions). It currently
(October 1997) has the best clustering capability (both
number and distance) and is very scalable with binaries
portable from small desktop workstations up to huge
mainframes.
Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably be
the hacker's favourite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist;
though true, this makes VMS fans furious.
{FAQ
(http://cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/comp/os/vms/top.html)}.
Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.os.vms.
[How does its performance compare with other OSes?]
(1999-06-03)
|
vaxectomy
(foldoc) | VAXectomy
/vak-sek't*-mee/ (By analogy with "vasectomy")
Removal of a VAX. DEC's Microvaxen, especially, are
much slower than newer RISC-based workstations such as the
SPARC. Thus, if one knows one has a replacement coming, VAX
removal can be cause for celebration.
[Jargon File]
(1995-02-20)
|
vaxen
(foldoc) | VAXen
/vak'sn/ (From "oxen", perhaps influenced by "vixen") The
plural canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX
computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty
vaxen."
See boxen.
[Jargon File]
(1995-02-20)
|
vaxherd
(foldoc) | vaxherd
/vaks'herd/ ["oxherd"] An operator who tends one or more
VAXen.
[Jargon File]
|
vaxism
(foldoc) | vaxism
/vak'sizm/ A piece of code that exhibits vaxocentrism in
critical areas. Compare PC-ism, Unixism.
|
vaxocentrism
(foldoc) | vaxocentrism
/vak"soh-sen"trizm/ [analogy with "ethnocentrism"] A notional
disease said to afflict C programmers who persist in coding
according to certain assumptions that are valid (especially
under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these are:
1. The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe
because it is all bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0.
Problem: this may instead cause an illegal-address trap on
non-VAXen, and even on VAXen under OSes other than BSD Unix.
Usually this is an implicit assumption of sloppy code
(forgetting to check the pointer before using it), rather than
deliberate exploitation of a misfeature.
2. The assumption that characters are signed.
3. The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be
cast into a pointer to any other type. A stronger form of
this is the assumption that all pointers are the same size and
format, which means you don't have to worry about getting the
casts or types correct in calls. Problem: this fails on
word-oriented machines or others with multiple pointer
formats.
4. The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored
in memory, on a stack, contiguously, and in strictly ascending
or descending order. Problem: this fails on many RISC
architectures.
5. The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same
size, and that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables
(and vice-versa) and drawn back out without being truncated or
mangled. Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or
word-oriented machines with funny pointer formats.
6. The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at
any byte address in memory (for example, that you can freely
construct and dereference a pointer to a word- or
greater-sized object at an odd char address). Problem: this
fails on many (especially RISC) architectures better optimised
for HLL execution speed, and can cause an illegal address
fault or bus error.
7. The (related) assumption that there is no padding at the
end of types and that in an array you can thus step right from
the last byte of a previous component to the first byte of the
next one. This is not only machine- but compiler-dependent.
8. The assumption that memory address space is globally flat
and that the array reference "foo[-1]" is necessarily valid.
Problem: this fails at 0, or other places on segment-addressed
machines like Intel chips (yes, segmentation is universally
considered a brain-damaged way to design machines (see
moby), but that is a separate issue).
9. The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with
no special considerations. Problem: this fails on segmented
architectures and under non-virtual-addressing environments.
10. The assumption that the stack can be as large as memory.
Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or almost
anything else without virtual addressing and a paged stack.
11. The assumption that bits and addressable units within an
object are ordered in the same way and that this order is a
constant of nature. Problem: this fails on big-endian
machines.
12. The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers
to different objects not located within the same array, or to
objects of different types. Problem: the former fails on
segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented machines
or others with multiple pointer formats.
13. The assumption that an "int" is 32 bits, or (nearly
equivalently) the assumption that "sizeof(int) ==
sizeof(long)". Problem: this fails on PDP-11s, {Intel
80286}-based systems and even on Intel 80386 and {Motorola
68000} systems under some compilers.
14. The assumption that "argv[]" is writable. Problem: this
fails in many embedded-systems C environments and even under a
few flavours of Unix.
Note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism
even if he or she has never seen a VAX. Some of these
assumptions (especially 2--5) were valid on the PDP-11, the
original C machine, and became endemic years before the VAX.
The terms "vaxocentricity" and "all-the-world"s-a-VAX
syndrome' have been used synonymously.
[Jargon File]
|
vaxset
(foldoc) | VAXset
A set of software development tools from DEC, including a
language-sensitive editor, compilers etc.
|
vaxstation
(foldoc) | VAXstation
A family of workstations from DEC based on their VAX
computer architecture.
(1995-02-03)
|
kgbvax
(jargon) | kgbvax
/K·G·B'vaks/, n.
See kremvax.
|
kremvax
(jargon) | kremvax
/krem·vaks/, n.
[from the then-large number of Usenet VAXen with names of the form
foovax] Originally, a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin, announced on
April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader
Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema as
an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were
moskvax and kgbvax. This was probably the funniest of the many April
Fool's forgeries perpetrated on Usenet (which has negligible security
against them), because the notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the Iron
Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time.
In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in Moscow,
demos.su, joined Usenet. Some readers needed convincing that the postings
from it weren't just another prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at
Demos and the major poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of
all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and at one point
twitted some credulous readers by blandly asserting that he was a hoax!
Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site named
kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into fact and demonstrating that the
hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers. [Mr. Antonov also
contributed the Russian-language material for this lexicon. —ESR]
In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an electronic
center of the anti-communist resistance during the bungled hard-line coup
of August 1991. During those three days the Soviet UUCP network centered on
kremvax became the only trustworthy news source for many places within the
USSR. Though the sysops were concentrating on internal communications,
cross-border postings included immediate transliterations of Boris
Yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the
demonstrations in Moscow's streets. In those hours, years of speculation
that totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on
politically-loaded information in the age of computer networking were
proved devastatingly accurate — and the original kremvax joke became a
reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries of glasnost and
perestroika made kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to
the West.
|
vax
(jargon) | VAX
/vaks/, n.
1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer design
in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor, the {PDP-11
}. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse by killer micros after
about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all,
esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD Unix (see BSD). Especially noted
for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set — an asset
that became a liability after the RISC revolution.
It is worth noting that the standard plural of VAX was ‘vaxen’ and that VAX
system operators were sometimes referred to as ‘vaxherds’
2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because its sales
pitch, “Nothing sucks like a VAX!” became a sort of battle-cry of RISC
partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually entered a
cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people that allowed them to market
VAX computers in the U.K. in return for not challenging the vacuum cleaner
trademark in the U.S.
A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was “Nothing
sucks like Electrolux”. It has apparently become a classic example (used in
advertising textbooks) of the perils of not knowing the local idiom. But in
1996, the press manager of Electrolux AB, while confirming that the company
used this slogan in the late 1960s, also tells us that their marketing
people were fully aware of the possible double entendre and intended it to
gain attention.
And gain attention it did — the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people thought the
slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British hackers report
that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we have one report from a
New Zealander that the infamous slogan surfaced there in TV ads for the
product in 1992.
|
vaxen
(jargon) | VAXen
/vak'sn/, n.
[from ‘oxen’, perhaps influenced by ‘vixen’] (alt.: vaxen) The plural
canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. “Our
installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen.” See boxen.
|
vaxocentrism
(jargon) | vaxocentrism
/vak`soh·sen'trizm/, n.
[analogy with ‘ethnocentrism’] A notional disease said to afflict C
programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are
valid (esp. under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these are:
1. The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because it is
all bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0. Problem: this may instead
cause an illegal-address trap on non-VAXen, and even on VAXen under
OSes other than BSD Unix. Usually this is an implicit assumption of
sloppy code (forgetting to check the pointer before using it), rather
than deliberate exploitation of a misfeature.
2. The assumption that characters are signed.
3. The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be cast into a
pointer to any other type. A stronger form of this is the assumption
that all pointers are the same size and format, which means you don't
have to worry about getting the casts or types correct in calls.
Problem: this fails on word-oriented machines or others with multiple
pointer formats.
4. The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in memory,
on a stack, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or descending
order. Problem: this fails on many RISC architectures.
5. The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same size, and
that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables (and vice-versa)
and drawn back out without being truncated or mangled. Problem: this
fails on segmented architectures or word-oriented machines with funny
pointer formats.
6. The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any byte
address in memory (for example, that you can freely construct and
dereference a pointer to a word- or greater-sized object at an odd char
address). Problem: this fails on many (esp. RISC) architectures better
optimized for HLL execution speed, and can cause an illegal address
fault or bus error.
7. The (related) assumption that there is no padding at the end of types
and that in an array you can thus step right from the last byte of a
previous component to the first byte of the next one. This is not only
machine- but compiler-dependent.
8. The assumption that memory address space is globally flat and that the
array reference foo[-1] is necessarily valid. Problem: this fails at 0,
or other places on segment-addressed machines like Intel chips (yes,
segmentation is universally considered a brain-damaged way to design
machines (see moby), but that is a separate issue).
9. The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no special
considerations. Problem: this fails on segmented architectures and
under non-virtual-addressing environments.
10. The assumption that the stack can be as large as memory. Problem: this
fails on segmented architectures or almost anything else without
virtual addressing and a paged stack.
11. The assumption that bits and addressable units within an object are
ordered in the same way and that this order is a constant of nature.
Problem: this fails on big-endian machines.
12. The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to different
objects not located within the same array, or to objects of different
types. Problem: the former fails on segmented architectures, the latter
on word-oriented machines or others with multiple pointer formats.
13. The assumption that an int is 32 bits, or (nearly equivalently) the
assumption that sizeof(int) == sizeof(long). Problem: this fails on {
PDP-11}s, 286-based systems and even on 386 and 68000 systems under
some compilers (and on 64-bit systems like the Alpha, of course).
14. The assumption that argv[] is writable. Problem: this fails in many
embedded-systems C environments and even under a few flavors of Unix.
Note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism even if he or
she has never seen a VAX. Some of these assumptions (esp. 2--5) were
valid on the PDP-11, the original C machine, and became endemic years
before the VAX. The terms vaxocentricity and all-the-world's-a-VAX syndrome
have been used synonymously.
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vax
(vera) | VAX
Virtual Address eXtension (DEC, VAX)
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vaxeln
(vera) | VAXELN
Virtual Address eXtension Executive for Local area Networks (OS,
DEC)
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