funny money

funny money n.  1. Notional `dollar' units of computing
   time and/or storage handed to students at the beginning of a
   computer course; also called `play money' or `purple money' (in
   implicit opposition to real or `green' money).  In New Zealand
   and Germany the odd usage `paper money' has been recorded; in
   Germany, the particularly amusing synonym `transfer ruble'
   commemmorates the funny money used for trade between COMECON
   countries back when the Soviet Bloc still existed.  When your funny
   money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a
   professor to get more.  Fortunately, the plunging cost of
   timesharing cycles has made this less common.  The amounts
   allocated were almost invariably too small, even for the
   non-hackers who wanted to slide by with minimum work.  In extreme
   cases, the practice led to small-scale black markets in bootlegged
   computer accounts.  2. By extension, phantom money or quantity
   tickets of any kind used as a resource-allocation hack within a
   system.  Antonym: `real money'.