21-letter words containing f, a, r, g, i, n
- nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
- one foot in the grave — near to death
- performance-enhancing — noting or relating to a drug or other substance used to improve one's performance in a sport or other activity requiring strength, stamina, etc.: The use of performance-enhancing steroids by athletes is banned.
- profit-sharing scheme — a scheme employing profit-sharing; a system in which a portion of the net profit of a business is distributed to its employees, usually in proportion to their wages or their length of service
- radius of convergence — a positive number so related to a given power series that the power series converges for every number whose absolute value is less than this particular number.
- range of significance — the set of subjects for which a given predicate is intelligible
- reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- referential integrity — (database) A collection of properties which should be possessed by data in a relational database. For example, in a database of family members, if we enter A as a spouse of B, we should also enter B as a spouse of A. Similarly, if we remove one end of the relationship we should also remove the other.
- rutherford scattering — the scattering of an alpha particle through a large angle with respect to the original direction of motion of the particle, caused by an atom (Rutherford atom) with most of the mass and all of the positive electric charge concentrated at a center or nucleus.
- satisficing behaviour — the form of behaviour demonstrated by firms who seek satisfactory profits and satisfactory growth rather than maximum profits
- sing a different tune — a succession of musical sounds forming an air or melody, with or without the harmony accompanying it.
- single parent benefit — a form of government funded financial assistance paid to single parents
- snap one's fingers at — any of the terminal members of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
- sovereign wealth fund — an investment fund created using the financial assets of a national government
- split-finger fastball — a type of fastball that sinks abruptly as it nears home plate, thrown with the grip used for a forkball
- stem-and-leaf diagram — a histogram in which the data points falling within each class interval are listed in order
- surface friction drag — the part of the drag on a body moving through a fluid that is dependent on the nature of the surface of the body
- take one's finger out — stop delaying or procrastinating
- the acting profession — actors considered as a group
- the shipping forecast — a radio broadcast made by the BBC of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the British Isles
- tide-generating force — the difference between the force of gravity exerted by the moon or the sun on a particle of water in the ocean and that exerted on an equal mass of matter at the centre of the earth. The lunar tide-generating forces are about 2.2 times greater than are the solar ones
- to have green fingers — If someone has green fingers, they are very good at gardening and their plants grow well.
- virginia (rail) fence — a zigzag fence made of rails laid across one another at the ends
- whip-and-tongue graft — a graft prepared by cutting both the scion and the stock in a sloping direction and inserting a tongue in the scion into a slit in the stock.