bit rot n. common also bit decay. hypothetical disease the
   existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused
   programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has
   passed, even if `nothing has changed'. the theory explains that bits
   decay as if they were radioactive. as time passes, the contents of a
   file or the code in a program will become increasingly garbled.

   there actually are physical processes that produce such effects alpha
   particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip packages, for
   example, can change the contents of a computer memory unpredictably, and
   various kinds of subtle media failures can corrupt files in mass
   storage, but they are quite rare and computers are built with
   error-detecting circuitry to compensate for them. the notion long
   favored among hackers that cosmic rays are among the causes of such
   events turns out to be a myth; see the cosmic rays entry for details.

   the term software rot is almost synonymous. software rot is the
   effect, bit rot the notional cause.


see also:
bit decay cosmic rays software rot 

bit rot
     
         a hypothetical disease the existence of which has
        been deduced from the observation that unused programs or
        features will often stop working after sufficient time has
        passed, even if "nothing has changed".  the theory explains
        that bits decay as if they were radioactive.  as time passes,
        the contents of a file or the code in a program will become
        increasingly garbled.
     
        people with a physics background tend to prefer the variant
        "bit decay" for the analogy with particle decay.
     
        there actually are physical processes that produce such
        effects alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in
        ceramic chip packages, for example, can change the contents of
        a computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle
        media failures can corrupt files in mass storage, but they
        are quite rare and computers are built with error detection
        circuitry to compensate for them.  the notion long favoured
        among hackers that cosmic rays are among the causes of such
        events turns out to be a myth.
     
        bit rot is the notional cause of software rot.
     
        see also computron, quantum bogodynamics.
     
        jargon file
     
        1998-03-15
     
     
see also:
error detection cosmic rays software rot computron quantum bogodynamics jargon file