18 Oct
2015
18 Oct
'15
3:16 p.m.
Hi, all. I'm looking for information on slang terms with the word "farm"
in them, relating to computaters; especially the origins of such terms.
I've known "cube farm" (a bunch of cubicles where office workers work)
and "render farm" (a cluster of computers used for graphics rendering in
parallel) for a long time, but just recently I found a reference to
"link farm" as meaning "an incremental backup consisting mostly of links
(most likely hard links) to the relevant files in the preceding
iteration of the backup"; but this page
<http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/link-farm> says
"a website with little or no content, consisting of mostly (or entirely)
links to other websites."
So, does anyone know what the first such "farm" slang term was, and when
and where it originated? And how about other terms with "farm" in them?
(I came across a new one the other day, but of course I've forgotten it
now.)
--
Eric Christopherson
18 Oct
18 Oct
3:26 p.m.
So, does anyone know what the first such "farm" slang term was, and when
and where it originated? And how about other terms with "farm" in them?
(I came across a new one the other day, but of course I've forgotten it
now.)
Not likely to be used much now (well, not outside members of this list) but
an array of transputers (often) interconnected by C004 link switches was often
called a 'Transputer farm'
-tony
3:46 p.m.
So, does anyone know what the first such
"farm" slang term was, and when
and where it originated? And how about other terms with "farm" in them?
(I came across a new one the other day, but of course I've forgotten it
now.)
Going back a ways, it originated with growing crops. Then, it began being
used for some other agricultural uses, such as a "pig farm".
Later, it began to be used for moderately open land, with collections of
other stuff, such as a group of windmills became a "wind farm" (Altamont
pass).
From there, it evolved into collections of anything,
such as "server
farm", and even "cube farm".
4:08 p.m.
On 10/18/2015 12:46 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Later, it began to be used for moderately open land,
with collections
of other stuff, such as a group of windmills became a "wind farm"
(Altamont pass).
I recall a room full of a hundred or more disk drives being referred to
as a disk farm--but I don't think the usage was standard.
--Chuck
5:50 p.m.
On Oct 18, 2015 3:08 PM, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 10/18/2015 12:46 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
as a disk
farm--but I don't think the usage was standard.
Later, it began to be used for moderately open
land, with collections
of other stuff, such as a group of windmills became a "wind farm"
(Altamont pass).
I recall a room full of a hundred or more disk drives being referred to
--Chuck
That's listed in the Jargon File too; and from there I learned of the
phenomenon of walking disks.
6:14 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck
Guzis
Sent: 18 October 2015 21:09
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: "Farm" slang terms
On 10/18/2015 12:46 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
a disk
Later, it began to be used for moderately open
land, with collections
of other stuff, such as a group of windmills became a "wind farm"
(Altamont pass).
I recall a room full of a hundred or more disk drives being referred to as farm--but I don't think the usage was standard.
--Chuck
I seem to remember that as well, but from earlier as you say. Looking at
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_farm
I can see that Antenna Farms is an older term, dating back to at least 1950,
but of course as antenna's are usually in fields..
Dave
G4UGM
6:26 p.m.
On Sun, 18 Oct 2015, Dave Wade wrote:
I can see that Antenna Farms is an older term, dating
back to at least 1950,
but of course as antenna's are usually in fields..
It gradually evolved from agricultural to ANYTHING,
and then from fields to ANY space.
Does it correlate with the decline of actual FARMING?
19 Oct
19 Oct
10:16 a.m.
On Sunday (10/18/2015 at 03:26PM -0700), Fred Cisin wrote:
On Sun, 18 Oct 2015, Dave Wade wrote:
It's part of the name of the tower facility and the company that owns
the towers here in Minneapolis where ALL of the TV transmitters for the
Twin Cities are located,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefarm_Towers_Shoreview
I'm also familiar with the term as it relates to employment. Eg,
"I lost my engineering job when it got farmed out to India".
--
Chris Elmquist
I can see that Antenna Farms is an older term,
dating back to at least 1950,
but of course as antenna's are usually in fields..
It gradually evolved from agricultural to ANYTHING,
and then from fields to ANY space.
Does it correlate with the decline of actual FARMING? 
9:05 p.m.
On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 8:04 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
At the risk of drifting FAR OT...
The farmers I know aren't any different than thier grandfathers.
Modern technology just makes them much more productive.
> Does it
correlate with the decline of actual FARMING?
On Mon, 19 Oct 2015, Charles Dickman wrote:
FARMING hasn't declined, only the number of farmers.
(Not a farmer, but surrounded by them.)
Is modern "agribusiness" really "farming"? 
2:38 p.m.
Definitely recall "disk farm" being used at Pan American Airways data center
in the early 1970s, perhaps earlier to describe other large IBM/Memorex
customers. The term appears in print in a 1983 Datamation and a 1989 Compaq
product brochure
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Guzis [mailto:cclist at sydex.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2015 1:09 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: "Farm" slang terms
On 10/18/2015 12:46 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Later, it began to be used for moderately open land,
with collections
of other stuff, such as a group of windmills became a "wind farm"
(Altamont pass).
I recall a room full of a hundred or more disk drives being referred to as a
disk farm--but I don't think the usage was standard.
--Chuck
18 Oct
18 Oct
3:37 p.m.
[...] just recently I found a reference to "link
farm" as meaning "an
incremental backup consisting mostly of links (most likely hard
links) to the relevant files in the preceding iteration of the
backup"; but this page [...] says "a website with little or no
content, consisting of mostly (or entirely) links to other websites."
I would say that, rather that specifically either of those, it is "a
collection of links to elsewhere and little else", where "link" is a
deliberately vague term. In particular, I have heard/seen, and used,
it to refer to a directory containing symbolic links to elsewhere and
little/nothing else; my phrasing above is an attempt to capture the
common pattern behind these three uses.
No, I don't know anything significant about the history of any such
terms. But you might want to look at the Jargon File
(http://www.catb.org/jargon/); it has three entries with "farm" in
their names, which you might be interested in.
/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
3:50 p.m.
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015, Eric Christopherson wrote:
Hi, all. I'm looking for information on slang
terms with the word "farm"
in them, relating to computaters; especially the origins of such terms.
I've known "cube farm" (a bunch of cubicles where office workers work)
and "render farm" (a cluster of computers used for graphics rendering in
parallel) for a long time, but just recently I found a reference to
"link farm" as meaning "an incremental backup consisting mostly of links
(most likely hard links) to the relevant files in the preceding
iteration of the backup"; but this page
<http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/link-farm> says
"a website with little or no content, consisting of mostly (or entirely)
links to other websites."
On top of that, FOLDOC has a slightly different meaning again
<http://foldoc.org/link%20farm>:
"(file system, Unix) A directory tree that contains mostly symbolic
links to files in a master directory tree of files. Link farms save
space when one is maintaining several nearly identical copies of the
same source tree - for example, when the only difference is
architecture-dependent object files. They also mean that changes to the
master tree are instantly visible in the link farm. Good text editors
provide the option to replace a link with a new version of the target
file when saving thus allowing the farm to have its own versions of just
those files that differ from the master tree."
This sounds like it just might be an old-school programming practice; I
at least have never seen it in any open-source projects. I've also never
seen this discussed in any text editor documentation; but I know some
editors (perhaps optionally) do remove the existing file before writing
its replacement, which would do what the entry suggests. I just tried it
in Vim on OS X, and both in the case of hard links and symbolic links it
kept the link intact and updated the contents of the original.
So, does anyone know what the first such "farm" slang term was, and when
and where it originated? And how about other terms with "farm" in them?
(I came across a new one the other day, but of course I've forgotten it
now.)
--
Eric Christopherson
--
Eric Christopherson
3232
days inactive
3234
days old
14 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cclist＠sydex.com -
chd＠chdickman.com -
chrise＠pobox.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
echristopherson＠gmail.com -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG -
t.gardner＠computer.org