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double bucky adj.
Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The
command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."
This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and
was later taken up by users of the space-cadet keyboard at
MIT. A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford bucky bits
(control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't
enough of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a
Stanford keyboard. An obvious way to address this was simply to
add more shifting keys, and this was eventually done; but a
keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who
don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the
keyboard. It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting
keys be implemented as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be
very much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned
in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called
"Rubber Duckie", which was published in "The Sesame
Street Songbook" (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 0-671-21036-X).
These lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in celebration of the
Stanford keyboard:
Double Bucky
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I
Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
--- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)
[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer filk
--ESR] See also meta bit, cokebottle, and quadruple bucky.
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