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21-letter words containing h, a, m, 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.
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • of time and the river — a novel (1935) by Thomas Wolfe.
  • ophthalmia neonatorum — inflammation of the eyes of a newborn child due to an infectious disease, as gonorrhea, contracted during birth from the infected mother.
  • peephole optimisation — (compiler)   A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
  • peephole optimization — peephole optimisation
  • pentamethylenediamine — cadaverine.
  • 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.
  • ploughman's spikenard — a European plant, Inula conyza, with tubular yellowish flower heads surrounded by purple bracts: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • potassium thiocyanate — a colorless, crystalline, hygroscopic, water-soluble solid, KSCN, used chiefly in the manufacture of chemicals, dyes, and drugs.
  • privacy enhanced mail —
  • 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
  • propantheline bromide — a substance, C 2 3 H 3 0 BrNO 3 , used in the treatment of peptic ulcers.
  • psychomotor agitation — agitation (def 3).
  • psychomotor-agitation — the act or process of agitating; state of being agitated: She left in great agitation.
  • purchasing department — the group of staff within an organization that is responsible for buying goods or products
  • reading comprehension — a text that students use to help them improve their reading skills, by reading it and answering questions relating to the text. Sometimes used as a test or examination of reading skills. A reading comprehension can be in the student's own or another language
  • recompression chamber — hyperbaric chamber.
  • record of achievement — a statement of the personal and educational development of each pupil
  • reinforcement therapy — a behavior modification technique in which appropriate behavior is strengthened through systematic reinforcement.
  • replacement algorithm — The method used to determine which entry in an associative cache to flush to main memory when it is desired to cache a new block of data. The "least recently used" algorithm flushed the block which has not been accessed for the longest time. A random replacement algorithm picks any block with equal probability.
  • reverberation chamber — a room with walls that reflect sound. It is used to make acoustic measurements and as a source of reverberant sound to be mixed with direct sound for recording or broadcasting
  • roman catholic church — the Christian church of which the pope, or bishop of Rome, is the supreme head.
  • s-k reduction machine — An abstract machine defined by Professor David Turner to evaluate combinator expressions represented as binary graphs. Named after the two basic combinators, S and K.
  • salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
  • schema definition set — (SDS) Something in Portable Common Tool Environment.
  • shams ud-din mohammed — (Shams ud-din Mohammed) c1320–89? Persian poet.
  • sherman antitrust act — an act of Congress (1890) prohibiting any contract, conspiracy, or combination of business interests in restraint of foreign or interstate trade.
  • siamese fighting fish — a labyrinth fish, Betta splendens, that has been bred for centuries to develop brilliant coloration, very long fins, and pugnacity.
  • sick to one's stomach — afflicted with ill health or disease; ailing.
  • slatwall merchandiser — A slatwall merchandiser is a three-dimensional display unit with grooves cut into its surface into which metal hanging rails can be fixed at various heights.
  • somatotrophic-hormone — a hormone secreted by the anterior pituitary gland, that stimulates growth in humans.
  • splice the main brace — to join together or unite (two ropes or parts of a rope) by the interweaving of strands.
  • statistical mechanics — the science that deals with average properties of the molecules, atoms, or elementary particles in random motion in a system of many such particles and relates these properties to the thermodynamic and other macroscopic properties of the system.
  • swim against the tide — to resist prevailing opinion
  • sympathetic vibration — a vibration induced by resonance.
  • symphonie fantastique — a programmatic symphony (1830–31) in five movements by Hector Berlioz.
  • the executive mansion — the White House
  • the man in the street — If you talk about the man in the street or the man or woman in the street, you mean ordinary people in general.
  • the moral high ground — If you say that someone has taken the moral high ground, you mean that they consider that their policies and actions are morally superior to the policies and actions of their rivals.
  • therapeutic community — a group-based form of therapy for mental disorders, sometimes residential
  • thermal decomposition — Thermal decomposition is the process in which a chemical species breaks down when its temperature is increased.
  • thermal power station — a power station in which heat is converted into electricity
  • to lay something bare — If you lay something bare, you uncover it completely so that it can then be seen.
  • to live hand to mouth — If someone lives hand to mouth or lives from hand to mouth, they have hardly enough food or money to live on.
  • to my way of thinking — You add to my way of thinking to a statement in order to indicate that you are giving your opinion.
  • trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
  • weinberg-salam theory — electroweak theory.
  • what price something? — what are the chances of something happening now?
  • william the conqueror — ("the Conqueror") 1027–87, duke of Normandy 1035–87; king of England 1066–87 (son of Robert I, duke of Normandy).
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