Angel Investor:: Family members with savings account(s)
Bad Day (1): Your consultant hands you both his card, and his lawyers, at the same time.
Bad Day (2): Microsoft just announced they were entering your product/service space
Board of Directors: The fools who believed your business plan, often Angel and VC investors.
CLEC: Competitive Local Exchange Carrier aka Ma Bell Wannabe
Chief Executive Officer: Person whose firing can help/hurt stock values. Sacrificial Lamb.
Chief Financial Officer: Responsible for hiding money for the CEO,CTO,CFO and CVO for the post dot bomb fallout or the successful IPO.
Chief Technical Officer: Speaker to geeks, geekspeak to english translator for investors.
Chief Visionary Officer: Had the original idea, bad at running business and the VC had to come up with a kewl title to keep him/her out of the way.
Client/Server: Buzzword: Big server does work for small computer
Consultant: A Geek with a tie (see Geek, Nerd)
Customer Service Representative: Phone/Email Abuse Buffer and the insane person that thinks that this is better than flipping burgers while hoping for a sysadmin job to open up.
Cyber: A prefix added to normal things to make them seem kewl
DAPS: Dog and Pony Show as seen on some dotbomb documentation: internal DAPS documentation copyright 2001.
DDOS/Distributed Denial of Service Attack: Hooligans ringing your doorbell and running
Dilbert: Cartoon based on real life
Dot.Gone: What you call a dot.bomb that just dissappears. Anacom.com is a good example, they just disappeared.
DotBomb: An implosively failed DotCom (see DotCom)
DotCom: A business with an expensive web site and no actual product, their business is acquiring investment capital. DotCom's can become DotBombs when the VC dries up.
DotFuse: A DotCom that has the fuse lit, may explode, could smolder for months.
E: A letter IBM has trademarked and placed before normal words to internet enable them.
E-Commerce Architect: Goes to meetings
E-Commerce Client Programmer: The Visual Basic guy... does pretty Winders client code to talk to the real servers (see Client/Server)
E-Commerce Engineer: makes what the E-Commerce Architect came up with in meetings actually work in the real world.
Enterprise (software/services): a large, risk-averse company, whose executives use the term to flatter themselves by pretending that they’re engaged in something brave, noble, and dangerous.
E-Tailer: A DotCom with actual products to sell. Beware of Virtual E-Tailers, they actually sell someone elses products for them. (See Virtual)
Evangelist: Can make you BELIEVE - does dog and pony shows for investors.
Expert: A Geek from far far away (see Geek, Consultant and Nerd)
FREE! Software (Very Capitalist): Try it! Get hooked, and then we charge you a lot for commercial use like: Oracle Software Download
FUD: Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - Often used by Microsoft's marketing department.
Fire and Forget (1): What newbies think they can do with servers on the 'net Running a real server is a constant effort, updates, patches, maintenance, verifying proper operations... all very important in the real world. Even 'internet appliances' need to be updated sometimes.
Fire and Forget (2): Really useful missiles in games... lock on, fire, and go on to the next target. The Fire and Forget Missile will demolish what you pointed it at even if it moves.
Fire and Forget (3): What you do to employee's of Dot Bombs.
Free Software (Capitalist): "Free" software, see: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
Geek: A professional nerd (ie: he gets paid for it)
Good Day (1): Your partner buys you out in cash plus some good incentives and perks.
HPFM: Hocus Pocus Fucking Magic - As in, "We used state of the art HPFM technology to differentiate our technology from our competition."
Hardware: Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.
ILEC: Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier aka Ma Bell - The people that have had the local benevolent monopoly for the last few decades.
IPO: A 'legal' PONZI Scheme. also known as Illegal Ponzi Operation.
IWF: Idiot With Firewall The guy that once he gets a system showing him unwanted hits from the 'net goes nuts over each one... sending email and calling the FBI for each one.
Internet Day Trading: A risky form of online gambling, slightly more expensive than simply burning hundred-dollar bills but without the entertainment value afforded by such a practice.
JAVA: A family of languages with much hype around them.. originally created by Sun MicroSystems for appliances, turned into a means of inflating Sun's stock prices and keeping lawyers and marketing droids buzzword compliant. (See FUD)
Java Encrypted Smart Card: A mysteriously buzzword compliant e-commerce infrastructure enabling technology.
Lemming: People who follow the buzzword compliant visionary (who really has no clue) anywhere.. even down the toilet
Linux: What Microsoft Fears Most: An operating system that works and is widely supported. And it's free! (see: linux.org)
MCSE: Certifies that the owner of has paid Microsoft and/or it's minions several thousands of dollars. Warning; Some MCSE graduates really do know what they are doing.
Nerd: The guy with the broken glasses and bad social skills that talked like a computer.
ODFM: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing - Really kewl and effective way to modulate data efficiently on an analog carrier wave.
Perl: Perfectly Eclectic Rubbish Lister Created by Larry Wall, its a scripting language that works pretty well and most of the working internet and working web pages use it somehow/somewhere. Thanks Larry! www.perl.org
Reality Impaired: Usually a good problem to have if you are a sales weasel, but it's a fancy name for lying.
Riding the horse: Ok, so you know they company you are working for is doomed and you will soon be unemployed. You ride the horse until it dies. Maybe during the ride you will find a healthier horse, sometimes you have to walk.
SBA: Small Business Administration: Will underwrite loan at bank with everything you and your family owns as collateral.
Salesperson: aka Sales Weasel, Sales Drone, Liar... Responsible for customer relations until the nanosecond the contract is signed, then unavailable at any expense.
Software: Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.
Solution: Lots of software and vendors that should work together but don't.
Stock Options: A way to keep your geeks from laughing out loud in front of investors
SysAdmin: Human Packet Sniffer and E-Mail Monitor
Technician: The willing, led by the unknowing, who has done so much with so little for so long, he is now qualified to do anything with nothing (often Linux is the nothing that makes it possible).
TeleBomb: A telecommunications centric version of a DotBomb. Many CLEC's become TeleBombs.
Unix: A family of operating systems that require the use of a keyboard as well as a mouse
Non-Microsoft
Sun,SCO,BSD,FreeBSD,OpenBSD,Linux... Mac OS X..
OS's that work and don't crash (much).
Value Added Reseller: The guy who knows where to buy it cheap and how much you expect to pay for it.
Venture Capitalist: Rich Lawyer gone bad
Virtual: Almost like the real thing. Digital Masterbation.
Vulture Capitalist: See Venture Capitalist
WDM: Wavelength Division Multiplexing - Shining different colored flashlights down the same strand of fiber.
WebMaster: Graphics Designer on an Ego Trip.
dot-snot: A young arrogant and self important who got rich from a dot-com.
entrepregeek: A geek with entreprenurial as well as technical skills.
error: id10t: Error code given to people to alert other tech support people: "It's an ID TEN T problem, tell the manufacturer when you call them and they'll under understand.."
error: io.sys: See id10t, same problem, although io.sys is a real file on a DOS/Winders systems, here it stands for Idiot Operator.
free software (lower case): really free software, see: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
geek: circus carny folks that were in the freak show without a real anomoly were often called 'geeks': like the man the bites the heads off of chickens.
honeynet: A network that looks normal and subject to breakins but is actually closely monitored for suspicious activity and break ins. A trap to catch phrackers and phreaks.
millionerd: Bill Gates
sneaker/sandal millionaire: Young person who made a million dollars while wearing sandals or sneakers, usually at a dotcom or technology company
software release: Alpha: Programmer thinks it works.
software release: Beta: It works on the programmers system twice in a row (see Alpha, Gamma and Production)
software release: Gamma: It works on the programmers friends system (see Beta, Gamma and Production)
software release: Production: It worked on the salespersons laptop long enough to sell it to the customer. (see Alpha Beta, and Gamma)
software release: Vaporware: The saleperson described the software well enough to sell it to the customer without a working demo, then describes it to the programmer.
wonk: 'know' spelled backwards, from the baby boomer generation for bookworm, now a nerd or geek
yettie: Young Entrepreneurial Techno Twenty-Somthing, a high tech yuppie