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Helen Keller mode


Helen Keller mode: n. 1. State of a hardware or software system
   that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and
   generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other
   excursion into deep space.  (Unfair to the real Helen Keller,
   whose success at learning speech was triumphant.)  See also
   go flatline, catatonic.  2. On IBM PCs under DOS, refers
   to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in
   over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very
   interrupts the screen saver watches for activity.  Your choices are
   to try to get from the program's current state through a successful
   save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to
   re-boot the machine.  This isn't (strictly speaking) a
   crash.