randomness
1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
2. A hack or crock that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or,
possibly, the combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental
failure to malfunction). "This hack can output characters 40--57 by putting the
character in the four bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six
bits - the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!"
3. Of people, synonymous with "flakiness". The connotation is that the person so
described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons
which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as
inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time.
"Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls
back."
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
random « random-access memory « Random Access Memory
Digital-to-Analog Converter « randomness »
random numbers » random testing » range
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