Bozo bit
Encyclopedia
The term bozo bit has been used in two contexts. Initially a weak copy protection
system in the 1980s Apple
Macintosh Operating System, the term "flipping the bozo bit" was later reused to describe a decision to ignore a person's input.
would think of it, and only a bozo would be deterred by it. After Mac System 4, introduced in early 1987, the Finder ignored this bit.
, Constantine
, McConnell
) were just breaking the news that social issues trump technical ones on almost every project.
McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute — it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again.
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...
system in the 1980s Apple
Apple
The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...
Macintosh Operating System, the term "flipping the bozo bit" was later reused to describe a decision to ignore a person's input.
Weak copy protection
In early versions of Apple's Macintosh Operating System, the "bozo bit" was one of the flags in the Finder Information Record (also called the "no copy" flag in some documentation), which described various file attributes. When the bit was set, the file could not be copied. It was called the bozo bit because it was copy protection so weak that only a bozoBozo
Bozo or bozo may refer to:*The Bozo people, a fishing people of the central Niger delta in Mali*The Bozo languages, languages of the Bozo people*Bozo the Clown, a clown character very popular in the United States...
would think of it, and only a bozo would be deterred by it. After Mac System 4, introduced in early 1987, the Finder ignored this bit.
Dismissing a person as not worth listening to
In his 1995 book Dynamics of Software Development (ISBN 1-55615-823-8), which presented a series of rules about the political and interpersonal forces that drive software development, Jim McCarthy applied the bozo bit notion to the realm of human interaction. The technical issues facing programmers were sufficiently daunting that just getting code written was commonly considered good enough; McCarthy and other authors (Lister & DeMarcoTom DeMarco
Tom DeMarco is an American software engineer, author, teacher and speaker on software engineering topics. He is known as one of the developers of Structured analysis in the 1980s.- Biography :...
, Constantine
Larry Constantine
Larry LeRoy Constantine is an American software engineer and professor in the Mathematics and Engineering Department at the University of Madeira Portugal, who is considered one of the pioneers of computing...
, McConnell
Steve McConnell
Steven C. McConnell is an author of many software engineering textbooks including Code Complete, Rapid Development, and Software Estimation...
) were just breaking the news that social issues trump technical ones on almost every project.
McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute — it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again.