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thankfully a much less common experience than it once was. All
the same, we’ve found these five examples of what the people who
fix your laptop or make that app work are saying behind closed
doors.
1. PEBCAK – Problem Exists Between Chair and
Keyboard: This has a variety of alternatives, such as ‘PICNIC’ –
problem in chair, not in computer. This is used when the
technician realises that the reason you can’t get your computer to
work does not lie in a fault with the computer.
2. Smug Report: Punning on ‘bug report’, this is a form of
bug report – i.e. a user submitting a fault they’ve found with a
program or system – that has been submitted by a user with an
overinflated idea of their own expertise, complete with suggestions
of solutions that serve only to emphasise the depths of the user’s
ignorance.
3. Fermat’s Last Post: Fermat’s Last Theorem is a famous
theorem conjectured by by Pierre Fermat in 1637 in the margin of
a book, with a note saying he had a proof that would not fit in the
margin. It took until 1995 for anyone else to come up with a proof.
Fermat’s Last Post plays on this idea – it’s a post to a forum in
which the author claims to have found a straightforward way of
fixing a bug, but doesn’t say what it is and never returns to
explain.
4. Copy, paste and pray: Sometimes a programmer has no
solution but to copy some code from someone’s suggestion on the
internet, and hope ardently that it works.
5. Guiltware: Chances are, you’ve encountered this
yourself. Some software is free. Some software is free but comes
with a catch: it will make you feel guilt until you’ve made a
donation to support its development, or registered, or something
similar. That’s guiltware.
Military Professionalisms
Military slang shows a fascinating evolution over the past
century or so. Different locations of combat are reflected in the

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