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bit bucket: n. [very common] 1. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used
to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift
instruction). Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have gone to the bit bucket. On
Unix, often used for
/dev/null. Sometimes amplified as the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky. 2. The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go.
The selection is performed according to
Finagle's Law; important mail is much more likely to end up in the bit
bucket than junk mail, which has an almost 100% probability of getting
delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by
mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network.
3. The ideal location for all unwanted mail responses: “Flames
about this article to the bit bucket.” Such a request is guaranteed
to overflow one's mailbox with flames. 4. Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. “I mailed you
those figures last week; they must have landed in the bit bucket.”
Compare black hole. This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion
that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. This
appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term ‘bit box’,
about which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that
trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it was
actually pulling them “out of the bit box”. See also
chad box. Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the
“parity preservation law”, the number of 1 bits that go to the
bit bucket must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in bits
filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician can empty a
full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance. The source for all these meanings, is, historically, the fact that
the chad box on a paper-tape punch was sometimes
called a bit bucket.
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