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, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on ...

system in the 1980s

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

, 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 te ...

Weak copy protection

In early versions of Apple's

, 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 Bozo or bozo may refer to: People *Bozo people, a fishing people of the central Niger delta in Mali ** Bozo language, languages of the Bozo people * Frédéric Bozo, history Professor at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle * Bozo Mille ...

would think of it, and only a bozo would be deterred by it. 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 ...

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 that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

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.

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Setting the Bozo Bit as an Antipattern
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bozo Bit Apple Inc. software Classic Mac OS Proprietary software Computing culture Copy protection Technology neologisms

Weak copy protection

Dismissing a person as not worth listening to

See also

References

External links