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go flatline: v. [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon
brain-death] (also adjectival flatlined). 1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp.
irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human
death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
controlled shutdown. “You can suffer file damage if you shut down
Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline.” 3. Of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees
is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
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