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]