SEX
/seks/ [Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] 1. Software EXchange. A
technique invented by the blue-green algae hundreds of
millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had
been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are
popular among hackers and others (of course, these are no
longer limited to exchanges of genetic software). In general,
SEX parties are a {Good Thing}, but unprotected SEX can
propagate a {virus}. See also {pubic directory}.
2. The {mnemonic} often used for Sign EXtend, a machine
instruction found in the {PDP-11} and many other
architectures. The {RCA 1802} chip used in the early {Elf}
and SuperElf {personal computers} had a "SEt X register" SEX
instruction, but this seems to have had little folkloric
impact.
DEC's engineers nearly got a {PDP-11} {assembler} that used
the "SEX" mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once)
marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the
last time this happened, either. The author of "The Intel
8086 Primer", who was one of the original designers of the
{Intel 8086}, noted that there was originally a "SEX"
instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel
management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and
thus the instruction was renamed "CBW" and "CWD" (depending on
what was being extended). The {Intel 8048} (the
{microcontroller} used in {IBM PC} keyboards) is also missing
straight "SEX" but has logical-or and logical-and instructions
"ORL" and "ANL".
The {Motorola 6809}, used in the UK's "{Dragon 32}" {personal
computer}, actually had an official "SEX" instruction; the
{6502} in the {Apple II} with which it competed did not.
British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after
all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical
level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an
apple.
[{Jargon File}]
(1998-03-03)