random: adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical
definition); weird. "The system's been behaving pretty randomly."
2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a
bunch of random business types." 3. (pejorative) Frivolous;
unproductive; undirected. "He's just a random loser." 4.
Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "The
program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for
that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly."
5. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels
are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly."
6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file."
7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in
a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could
easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly
uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one
else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What
randomness! 8. n. A random hacker; used particularly of
high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in
the way. 9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone
not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I
went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus
questions". 10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random
Hall. See also J. Random, some random X. 11. [UK]
Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly
out-of-the-blue. As in: "Stop being so random!" This sense equates
to `hatstand', taken from the Viz comic character "Roger Irrelevant
- He's completely Hatstand."
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