Computing: A Hacker's Dictionary

by Henry N. Beard

Beard & McKie are back. The author and the illustrator who created Sailing (a New York Times bestseller with 710,000 copies in print), as well as Golfing, Fishing, and other well-defined dictionaries--which together have over 2.3 million copies in print--now turn their unflinchingly funny eye to America's newest obsession, computing. For frustrated Web surfers, confused number crunchers, for the crazed the possessed, and the befuddled, it makes perfect fun of the machine we love to hate. Computing covers it all, from hardware (any portion of a computer system that you can actually smack, thump, slam, punch, bash, whack, or clobber) to program ( a set of instructions for converting informational input into an emotional outburst). There are technical terms--Web browser (an Internet navigation program that gives computer users instant access to more than one billion advertisements); cultural phenomena--techie (a nerd with a Porsche); lingo--e-mail (a highly efficient method of wasting the countless working hours saved by the introduction of data-processing systems); and common words given new meaning in the computer age--instructions (a collection of Finnish proverbs with the words "User's Manual" printed on the cover).

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Henry N. Beard (born ca. 1945) is an American humorist, one of the founders of the magazine National Lampoon and the author of several best-selling books.

Beard, a great-grandson of Vice President John C. Breckinridge, was born into a well-to-do family and grew up at the Westbury Hotel on East 69th Street in Manhattan. His relationship with his parents was cool, to judge by his quip "I never saw my mother up close."

He attended the Taft School, where he was a leader at the humor magazine, and he decided to become a humorous writer after reading Catch-22.

He then went to Harvard University from which he graduated in 1967 and joined its humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon, which circulated nationally. Much of the credit for the Lampoon's success during the mid 1960s is given to Beard and Douglas Kenney, who was in the class a year after Beard's. In 1968, Beard and Kenney wrote the successful parody Bored of the Rings.

In 1969, Beard, Kenney and Rob Hoffman became the founding editors of the National Lampoon, which reached a monthly circulation of over 830,000 in 1974 (and the October issue of that year topped a million sales). One of Beard's short stories published there, "The Last Recall", was included in the 1973 Best Detective Stories of the Year. During the early 1970s, Beard was also in the Army Reserve, which he hated.

In 1975 the three founders cashed in on a buy-out agreement for National Lampoon; and Beard left the magazine. After an "unhappy" attempt at screenwriting, he turned to writing humorous books.

Reviews

[Bob Simms]

My wife bought me this book for Christmas. Most people in the industry invent or collect their own funny definitions of things IT. This was basically the same joke over and over. The theme is computers are complex and break a lot, so an spreadsheet messes up your finances quicker than pen and paper. Once you've heard a few defintitions, with a few shining exceptions, you know what the next defintion is going to be. Still, as a cistern-top book to dip into, it's okay, especially for the non-IT professional.

[Jorge]

A good, good, book !!