TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL /tan'stah-fl/  [acronym, 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 (see {A Portrait of J. Random
   Hacker} in Appendix B).