TANSTAAFL: /tan'stah-fl/ [acronym, from Robert Heinlein's
classic "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".] "There Ain't No Such Thing
As A Free Lunch", often invoked when someone is balking at the
prospect of using an unpleasantly heavyweight technique, or at the
poor quality of some piece of software, or at the signal-to-noise
ratio of unmoderated Usenet newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I
have to implement a database back end to get my address book program
to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you know." This phrase owes some of its
popularity to the high concentration of science-fiction fans and
political libertarians in hackerdom (see {Appendix B} for
discussion).