go flatline

[Cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon

brain-death] also "flatlined". 1. To die, terminate, or

fail, especially irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is

used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat

too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about.

2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing

controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut

down Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline."

3. Of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all

one sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.

[Jargon File]