Tanstaafl

3 definitions found

From Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [vera]:

  TANSTAAFL
       There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (telecommunication-slang,
       Usenet)
       
       



From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  TANSTAAFL /tan'stah-fl/ [acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic SF
     novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A
     Free Lunch", often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of
     using an unpleasantly {heavyweight} technique, or at the poor quality of
     some piece of software, or at the {signal-to-noise ratio} of unmoderated
     Usenet newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a database
     back end to get my address book program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you
     know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high concentration
     of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in hackerdom (see
     {Appendix B} for discussion).
  
     Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL ("There is No Such
     Thing...") is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952 in
     the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have arisen
     from it by mutation.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  TANSTAAFL
       
          /tan'stah-fl/ (From Robert Heinlein's classic "The
          Moon is a Harsh Mistress") "There Ain't No Such Thing As A
          Free Lunch".
       
          Often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using
          an unpleasantly {heavyweight} technique, or at the poor
          quality of some piece of {free software}, or at the
          {signal-to-noise ratio} of unmoderated {Usenet} newsgroups.
          "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a {database} back end
          to get my address book program to work!"  "Well, TANSTAAFL you
          know."  This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high
          concentration of science-fiction fans and political
          libertarians in hackerdom.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1995-02-28)