Word: lexicons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...deadlock (a situation wherein two or more processes are unable to proceed because each is waiting for the other to do something. This is the electronic equivalent of gridlock, a lovely, virtually perfect word that describes automobile traffic paralyzed both ways through an intersection). The hacker's lexicon is endless and weirdly witty, and inspiring in a peculiar way: the human language is caught there precisely in the act of improvisation as it moves through a strange new country. The mind is making itself at home in the mysteries and possibilities of the machines...
BEFORE 1980, a "hit list" was something only rival Mafia families worried about. But when the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) adapted the concept to U.S. Senate races by targeting liberal Democrats for an onslaught of negative media advertising, "hit list" joined the American political lexicon for good. And the committee's sharpshooters hit their marks with stunning accuracy--NCPAC-backed conservatives handily defeated progressive stalwarts like George McGovern, Frank Church and Birch Bayh. The chilling words of NCPAC chief Terry Dolan--"we want people to hate Birch Bayh without even knowing why"--conveyed an unmistakable message to jittery...
Smaller firms like Axlon, IXO and Lexicon are coming out with palm-size terminals that have little or no memory but full keyboards and telephone jacks, so that users can contact data banks like Dow Jones from telephones anywhere. If brokerage houses and banking chains will cooperate, and if the Government will change its regulations, such machines could be used to move money from one account to another or order securities without going through brokers or tellers. Predicts Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell: "People will not pay bills by check within five years...
FREE SPEECH In the lexicon of American political jargon, perhaps no two words are as revered. Certainly more are as immune from harm, those who succeed in choking their unpopular stands in the mantle of free speech invevitably appear heroic dissidents, defined by their willingness to challenge the accepted and tempt the wrath of contemptuous majorities...
...reputation as a pragmatist and a reformer, Deng realizes as clearly as Grličkov that for a Communist, pragmatism and reform must end where genuine pluralism and power-sharing begin. On that point, Deng and Brezhnev are still comrades. Of all the buzz words in the Marxist lexicon, none is more telling than "struggle." It is Marxism, both the theory and the practice, stripped to its essence. What distinguishes the Soviet prototype of Communism is the ingenious and terrible way that the struggle to prevail against all challenges has been institutionalized throughout society...