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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. Frivolous;
unproductive; undirected (pejorative). "He's just a random
loser." 4. Incoherent or inelegant; 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. 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 a routine that could
easily have been coded using only three ac's, but randomly uses seven
for assorted non-overlapping purposes, so that no one else can invoke
it without first saving four extra ac's. 6. In no particular order,
though deterministic. "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a
file is opened one is chosen randomly." n. 7. A random hacker;
used particularly of high school students who soak up computer time
and generally get in the way. 8. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives
at Random Hall. J. RANDOM is often prefixed to a noun to make a
"name" out of it (by comparison to common names such as
"J. Fred Muggs"). The most common uses are "J. Random
Loser" and "J. Random Nurd" ("Should J. Random
Loser be allowed to gun down other people?"), but it can be used
just as an elaborate version of RANDOM in any sense. [See also the
note at the end of the entry for HACK.]