film at 11
Prev | F | Next

film at 11

  [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters]

  1. Used in conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic implication that these events are earth-shattering. “ITS crashes; film at 11.” “Bug found in scheduler; film at 11.”

  2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional information will be available at some future time, without the implication of anything particularly ordinary about the referenced event. For example, “The mail file server died this morning; we found garbage all over the root directory. Film at 11.” would indicate that a major failure had occurred but that the people working on it have no additional information about it as yet; use of the phrase in this way suggests gently that the problem is liable to be fixed more quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend time doing the fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to which will appear on the normal “11:00 news”, if people will just be patient.

  The variant “MPEGs at 11” has recently been cited (MPEG is a digital-video format.)

Prev | Up | Next
filk | Home | filter