|
Demon - Dictionary Definition and Overview |
|
Demon : (noun)
1: one of the evil spirits of traditional Jewish and Christian
belief [syn: devil, fiend, daemon, daimon]
2: a cruel wicked and inhuman person [syn: monster, fiend,
devil, ogre]
3: someone extremely diligent or skillful; "he worked like a
demon to finish the job on time"; "she's a demon at math"
Based on WordNet 2.0
|
|
Demon : \De"mon\, n. [F. d['e]mon, L. daemon a spirit, an evil
spirit, fr. Gr. ? a divinity; of uncertain origin.]
1. (Gr. Antiq.) A spirit, or immaterial being, holding a
middle place between men and deities in pagan mythology.
The demon kind is of an intermediate nature between
the divine and the human. --Sydenham.
2. One's genius; a tutelary spirit or internal voice; as, the
demon of Socrates. [Often written d[ae]mon.]
3. An evil spirit; a devil.
That same demon that hath gulled thee thus. --Shak.
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
|
|
Demon :
1. (Often used equivalently to daemon,
especially in the Unix world, where the latter spelling and
pronunciation is considered mildly archaic). A program or
part of a program which is not invoked explicitly, but that
lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur.
At MIT they use "demon" for part of a program and "daemon"
for an operating system process.
Demons (parts of programs) are particularly common in AI
programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation program
might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new
piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate
(which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and
would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their
respective inference rules to the original piece. These new
pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences
filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main
program could continue with whatever its primary task was.
This is similar to the triggers used in relational
databases.
The use of this term may derive from "Maxwell's Demons" -
minute beings which can reverse the normal flow of heat from a
hot body to a cold body by only allowing fast moving molecules
to go from the cold body to the hot one and slow molecules
from hot to cold. The solution to this apparent thermodynamic
paradox is that the demons would require an external supply of
energy to do their work and it is only in the absence of such
a supply that heat must necessarily flow from hot to cold.
Walt Bunch believes the term comes from the demons in Oliver
Selfridge's paper "Pandemonium", MIT 1958, which was named
after the capital of Hell in Milton's "Paradise Lost".
Selfridge likened neural cells firing in response to input
patterns to the chaos of millions of demons shrieking in
Pandemonium.
2. Demon Internet Ltd.
3. A program generator for differential equation problems.
[N.W. Bennett, Australian AEC Research Establishment,
AAEC/E142, Aug 1965].
[{Jargon File]
(1998-09-04)
Based on the Online Dictionary of Computing [Computer_Dictionary]:
|
|
Demon : n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked
explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to
occur. See daemon. The distinction is that demons are usually
processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running
on an operating system. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to
daemon_--_especially_in_the_{Unix">daemon -- especially in the {Unix world, where the latter spelling
and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
Demons in sense 1 are particularly common in AI programs. For example,
a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as
demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons
would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data)
and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their
respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could
in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through
chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with
whatever its primary task was.
Based on Jargon File : [Hackers_Dictionary]:
|
|
Demon : See DAEMON.
Based on Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [Hackers_Dictionary]:
|
|
|
|
|
