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
