Search Result for "brain-damaged":

The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

brain-damaged adj. 1. [common; generalization of ?Honeywell Brain Damage? (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell Multics ] adj. Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. ?Only six monocase characters per file name? Now that's brain-damaged!? 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with the product it is intended to sell. Syn. crippleware.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

brain-damaged 1. [generalisation of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell Multics] Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six monocase characters per file name? Now *that's* brain-damaged!" 2. [especially in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is intended to sell. Synonym crippleware. [Jargon File] (2011-01-04)