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random: adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird.
“The system's been behaving pretty randomly.” 2. Assorted; undistinguished. “Who was at the
conference?” “Just a bunch of random business
types.” 3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. “He's
just a random loser.” 4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized.
“The program has a random set of misfeatures.” “That's a
random name for that function.” “Well, all the names were
chosen pretty randomly.” 5. In no particular order, though deterministic. “The I/O
channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen
randomly.” 6. Arbitrary. “It generates a random name for the scratch
file.” 7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a
particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have
been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for
values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it
without first saving four extra registers. What
randomness! 8. n. A random hacker; used
particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and
generally get in the way. 9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker
(or, sometimes, anyone not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of
sense 2. “I went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms
asking bogus questions”. 10. n. (occasional MIT usage)
One who lives at Random Hall. See also J. Random,
some random X. 11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly
out-of-the-blue. As in: “Stop being so random!” This sense
equates to ‘hatstand’, taken from the Viz comic character
“Roger Irrelevant - He's completely Hatstand.”
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