Because the author does seem to care about defining what COW means, because "atomic cow" doesn't readily google to its proper meaning, and because it doesn't se

Because the author does seem to care about defining what COW means, because "atomic cow" doesn't readily google to its proper meaning, and because it doesn't seem to be otherwise mentioned here: COW: Copy-On-Write http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-on-write http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-on-write