One of the things about the high-tech world that fascinates -- or irritates -- many people is the arcane language.

Call it "geekspeak" or "technobabble," it hits its peak in talking about the high-tech industry, when business jargon can be combined with tech acronyms. Here is a short glossary to help decode.

Jump the shark -- A term that started in the television industry to indicate that a series had reached its peak and was headed downhill. It refers to a 1977 episode of the TV show "Happy Days" when Fonzie, while water skiing, jumped over a shark. Critics thought the scene so preposterous that it marked the beginning of the decline of the show, although 100 more episodes were made. The term now is used for any company or product that has reached its zenith and is headed down.

Open the kimono -- When a company opens its books to a competitor as part of a buyout bid or reveals the source code for its software. Some believe that Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is not serious, but an attempt to get Yahoo to open the kimono.

Vaporware -- A piece of software that is announced but keeps getting delayed coming to market.

Bloatware -- Software that takes up a disproportionate amount of space on your hard drive.

Bug -- While computer pioneer Grace Hopper was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard in the 1940s, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. She brought the term "computer bug" to popularity.

Cycles -- Geekspeak for "time," often used with "burn." To solve a difficult problem you have to "burn a lot of cycles."

Dog food -- Software code not fit for public consumption but good enough for internal purposes. If you are working to improve your own internal code, it is called "eating your own dog food."

Down a rat hole -- General meaning is to throw something away, i.e. throw money down a rat hole. Increasingly used to indicate when a conversation has gotten off-topic: "We were talking about fashion then got off on computers. I don't know how we got down that rat hole."

Eyeballs -- Number of people regularly viewing a Web site, audience. Google has lots of eyeballs.

Granular -- Used with "to get," it means to drill down to the fine details of an issue.

Kluge or Kludge -- Pronounced CLOOJ, something that is clunky or inelegant. "Many people think Microsoft's Vista is a kluge."

NDA -- Non-Disclosure Agreement. An agreement often signed by journalists not to reveal anything about a new product in return for an early look.

RTM -- The date that a product is finished and scheduled to be "released to manufacturing."

TLA -- Three-letter acronym. See the two entries just above. Self-referencing.

Uninstalled -- Fired, dismissed.

Weasel Text -- A message explaining why a popular feature or option has been dropped from a piece of software.

Showstopper -- A problem big enough to jeopardize a project's schedule, a really big bug.

Thanks to the site cinepad.com/mslex.htm for some of these. There are a great many more there.