The term bozo bit has been used in two contexts. Initially a weak
copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, is any measure to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.
Copy protection is most commonly found on vid ...
system in the 1980s
Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...
, the term "flipping the bozo bit" was later reused to describe a decision to ignore a person's input. It is a whimsical term, possibly derived from the classic children's comedy character,
Bozo the Clown
Bozo the Clown, sometimes billed as "Bozo, The World's Most Famous Clown", is a clown character created for children's entertainment, widely popular in the second half of the 20th century. He was introduced in the United States in 1946, and to tel ...
.
Weak copy protection
In early versions of Apple's
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...
, the "bozo bit" (also called the "no copy" flag in some documentation) was one of the flags in the
Finder Information Record, which described various file attributes. When the bit was set, the file could not be copied. It was called the bozo bit because it was copy protection so weak that only a
bozo would think of it, and only a bozo would be deterred by it. Version 5.0 of Finder began ignoring this bit.
The cassette and ROM filing systems
and the
Advanced Disc Filing System
The Advanced Disc Filing System (ADFS) is a computing file system unique to the Acorn computer range and RISC OS-based successors. Initially based on the rare Acorn Winchester Filing System, it was renamed to the Advanced Disc Filing System when ...
of
Acorn MOS
The Machine Operating System (MOS) or OS is a discontinued computer operating system (OS) used in Acorn Computers' BBC computer range. It included support for four-channel sound, graphics, file system abstraction, and digital and analogue inp ...
feature a rudimentary copy protection mechanism where a file with a certain flag set cannot be loaded except to execute it.
The
Compact Disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...
has a similar "no copy" bit in the subcode, but nearly all disc-copying software ignores it, and usually removes it on copies. Consumer-grade dedicated hardware audio disc copiers usually honor the bozo bit, and will refuse to copy a disc with the bit set. Professional disc copiers ignore the bozo bit and will copy a protected disc.
Dismissing a person as not worth listening to
In his 1995 book ''Dynamics of Software Development'',
which presented a series of rules about the political and interpersonal forces that drive software development,
Jim McCarthy applied the ''bozo bit'' notion to the realm of human interaction.
In his book, McCarthy's rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". His reasoning is that everyone has something to contribute it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks a person off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, the person poisons team interactions and cannot avail themselves of help from the "bozo" ever again.
See also
*
Bozo the Clown
Bozo the Clown, sometimes billed as "Bozo, The World's Most Famous Clown", is a clown character created for children's entertainment, widely popular in the second half of the 20th century. He was introduced in the United States in 1946, and to tel ...
*
Evil bit
The evil bit is a fictional IPv4 packet header field proposed in a humorous April Fools' Day RFC from 2003, authored by Steve Bellovin. The Request for Comments recommended that the last remaining unused bit, the "Reserved Bit" in the IPv4 pac ...
References
External links
Setting the Bozo Bit as an Antipattern
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bozo Bit
Apple Inc. software
Classic Mac OS
Proprietary software
Computing culture
Copy protection
Technology neologisms