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more about fossil
fossil |
7 definitions found From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Fossil \Fos"sil\, n. 1. A substance dug from the earth. [Obs.] Note: Formerly all minerals were called fossils, but the word is now restricted to express the remains of animals and plants found buried in the earth. --Ure. 2. (Paleon.) The remains of an animal or plant found in stratified rocks. Most fossils belong to extinct species, but many of the later ones belong to species still living. 3. A person whose views and opinions are extremely antiquated; one whose sympathies are with a former time rather than with the present. [Colloq.] From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Fossil \Fos"sil\, a. [L. fossilis, fr fodere to dig: cf F. fossile. See {Fosse}.] 1. Dug out of the earth; as fossil coal; fossil salt. 2. (Paleon.) Like or pertaining to fossils; contained in rocks, whether petrified or not as fossil plants, shells. {Fossil copal}, a resinous substance, first found in the blue clay at Highgate near London, and apparently a vegetable resin, partly changed by remaining in the earth. {Fossil cork}, {flax}, {paper}, or {wood}, varieties of amianthus. {Fossil farina}, a soft carbonate of lime. {Fossil ore}, fossiliferous red hematite. --Raymond. From WordNet r 1.6 [wn]: fossil n 1: (informal) someone whose style is out of fashion [syn: {dodo}, {fogy}, {fogey}, {dotard}] 2: a relic or impression of a plant or animal that existed in a past geological age [syn: {archeological remains}] From U.S. Gazetteer (1990) [gazetteer]: Fossil, OR (city, FIPS 26650) Location: 44.99841 N, 120.21319 W Population (1990): 399 (224 housing units) Area: 2.0 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water) From Jargon File (4.2.3, 23 NOV 2000) [jargon]: fossil n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {C}, in spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} Unix tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. (In a perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later {USG Unix} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.) 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver specification for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by most MS-DOS {BBS} software in preference to the `supported' ROM routines, which do not support interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above 9600; the use of a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to the {bare metal} serial port programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video fossil'. From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (13 Mar 01) [foldoc]: fossil 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of {octal} as default base for string escapes in {C}, in spite of the better match of {hexadecimal} to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} Unix tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. (In a perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later {USG Unix} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.) 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver specification for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by most {MS-DOS} {BBS} software in preference to the supported" ROM routines, which do not support interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above 9600; the use of a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to the {bare metal} serial port programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in "video fossil". [{Jargon File}] From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms 13 March 2001 [vera]: FOSSIL Fido Opus Seadog Standard Interface Layer
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