line noise
RANDOM FLUCTUATION IN AN ELECTRICAL SIGNAL
Noise (telecommunications); Random noise; Line noise; Electrical noise; Noise (physics); Noise (electronic); Noise (signal); Electronic noise; Signal noise; Channel noise; Hiss (electronics); Electronic circuit hiss; Coupled noise; Transit-time noise
<communications> 1. Spurious characters due to electrical
<a href="">noisea> in a communications link, especially an <a href="">EIA-232a>
serial connection. Line noise may be induced by poor
connections, interference or <a href="">crosstalka> from other circuits,
electrical storms, <a href="">cosmic raysa>, or (notionally) birds
crapping on the phone wires.
2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like
the results of electrical line noise.
3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program
source but employs <a href="">syntaxa> so bizarre that it looks like line
noise. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical
example is <a href="">TECOa>, whose input syntax is often said to be
indistinguishable from line noise. Other non-<a href="">WYSIWYGa>
editors, such as <a href="">Multicsa> "<a href="">qeda>" and <a href="">Unixa> "<a href="">eda>", in the
hands of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do
deliberately <a href="">obfuscatea>d languages such as <a href="">INTERCALa>.
[<a href="">Jargon Filea>]
(1994-12-22)