Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has
propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are
now available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape
are now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic
Debugging Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT
abbreviation. Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known
pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (C14-H9-Cl5) should
be minimal since each attacks a different, and apparently
mutually exclusive, class of bugs.

(The `tape' referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but paper.)
Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the
handbook after the {suit}s took over and DEC became much more
`businesslike'.

The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's
more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original {TMRC} lexicon,
reports that he named `DDT' after a similar tool on the TX-0
computer, the direct ancestor of the PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln
Lab in 1957. The debugger on that ground-breaking machine (the
first transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT
(FLexowriter Interrogation Tape).

:de-rezz: /dee-rez'/ [from `de-resolve' via the movie
"Tron"] (also `derez') 1. /vi./ To disappear or dissolve; the
image that goes with it is of an object breaking up into raster
lines and static and then dissolving. Occasionally used of a
person who seems to have suddenly `fuzzed out' mentally rather than
physically. Usage: extremely silly, also rare. This verb was
actually invented as *fictional* hacker jargon, and adopted in