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Bomb




1. <software> General synonym for crash except that it is not used as a noun.

Especially used of software or OS failures.

"Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb".

2. <operating system> Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a Unix "panic" or Amiga guru, in which icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died.

On the Macintosh, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga guru meditation number.

MS-DOS computers tend to lock up in this situation.

3. <software> A piece of code embedded in a program that remains dormant until it is triggered.

Logic bombs are triggered by an event whereas time bombs are triggered either after a set amount of time has elapsed, or when a specific date is reached.

[Jargon File]



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