:drop-outs: /n./ 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see
{glitch}); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains.
2. Missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or
system saturation (one cause of such behavior under Unix when a bad
connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character
interrupts; see {screaming tty}). 3. Mental glitches; used as a
way of describing those occasions when the mind just seems to shut
down for a couple of beats. See {glitch}, {fried}.

:drugged: /adj./ (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid,
heading toward {brain-damaged}. Often accompanied by a
pantomime of toking a joint. 2. Of hardware, very slow relative to
normal performance.

:drum: adj, /n./ Ancient techspeak term referring to slow,
cylindrical magnetic media that were once state-of-the-art storage
devices. Under BSD Unix the disk partition used for swapping is
still called `/dev/drum'; this has led to considerable humor
and not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus `explanations'
getting foisted on {newbie}s. See also "{The Story of Mel, a
Real Programmer}" in Appendix A.

:drunk mouse syndrome: /n./ (also `mouse on drugs') A malady
exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The
typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in
random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual
mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and
plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice
is to rotate your mouse pad 90 degrees.