drop-outs

drop-outs n.  1. A variety of `power glitch' (see
   {glitch}); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains.
   2. Missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or
   system saturation (one cause of such behavior under UNIX when a bad
   connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character
   interrupts; see {screaming tty}).  3. Mental glitches; used as a
   way of describing those occasions when the mind just seems to shut
   down for a couple of beats.  See {glitch}, {fried}.