flat
flat adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure.
"That {bitty box} has only a flat filesystem, not a
hierarchical one." The verb form is {flatten}. 2. Said of a
memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big
linear address space (typically with each possible value of a
processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as
opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in
which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair
(segmented designs are generally considered {cretinous}).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually
used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a {Good Thing}.
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