(University of Waterloo) 1. Partial corruption of a text
file or input stream by some bug or consistent glitch, as
opposed to random events like line noise or media failures.
Might occur, for example, if one bit of each incoming
character on a tty were stuck, so that some characters were
correct and others were not.
See
terminak for a historical example.
2. By extension, accidental display of text in a mode where
the output device emits special symbols or
mnemonics rather
than conventional ASCII. This often happens, for example,
when using a terminal or comm program on a device like an
IBM PC with a special "high-half" character set and with the
bit-parity assumption wrong. A hacker sufficiently familiar
with ASCII bit patterns might be able to read the display
anyway.