Phear my m4d sk1llz

apapadimoulis

I've seen this making the rounds on the internets, so I might as well put it here. It's "A parent's primer to computer slang" from Microsoft. I thought the tone was particularly funny ...

Information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short. Leet (a vernacular form of "elite") is a specific type of computer slang where a user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically—creating the digital equivalent of pig Latin with a twist of hieroglyphics

[...]

Leet words of concern or indicating possible illegal activity:
• "warez" or "w4r3z": Illegally copied software available for download.
• "h4x": Read as "hacks," or what a computer hacker does.
• "pr0n": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography.
• "sploitz" (short for exploits): Vulnerabilities in computer software used by hackers.
• "pwn": A typo-deliberate version of own, a slang term used to express superiority over others that can be used maliciously, depending on the situation. This could also be spelled "0\/\/n3d" or "pwn3d," among other variations. Online video game bullies or "griefers" often use this term.

Other common leet words:
• "kewl": A common derivation of "cool."
• "m4d sk1llz" or "mad skills": Refers to one's own talent. "m4d" itself is often used for emphasis.
• "n00b," "noob," "newbie," or "newb": Combinations synonymous with new user. Some leetspeekers view "n00b" as an insult and "newbie" as an affectionate term for new users.
• "w00t" or the smiley character \o/: A common interjection, analogous to "woohoo!" or victory in a game.
• "rox0rs" Used in place of "rocks," typically to describe something impressive.
• "d00d": Replaces the greeting or addressing someone as a "dude."
• "joo" and "u": Used instead of "you." This is also commonly written as "j00" or "_|00."
• "ph": often replaces "f," as in "phear" for "fear" (as in "ph34r my l33t skillz") and vice versa, such as spelling "phonetic" as "f0|\|371(."

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx

Mike_R

omg lol. tat is teh kewlst site yet. M$ roolz.. ms tot me 1337533k now I 0wnz joo.

Mike_R

heh. I was "pwned" by my own leetseek .. pffh.

thetorpedodog

@Mike said:

heh. I was "pwned" by my own leetseek .. pffh.

I believe that makes you a griefer.

Drak

Imagine our suprise when we foud a service called 'pronomgr' running on a client's production server..

It turns out to be some of Intel's networkcard software, but I can imagine someone going: Oh no, it's porn, quick, kill it ;)

Drak

Drak

Hmm , I cased the name of the service (or whatever it is) wrong. It shows up as

PRONoMgr.exe

Don't the first four characters just jump out at you? [:^)]

Drak

Blue

Definately would have caught my eye.. I wonder if it was a case where
the driver developer had a good sense of humor, or clueless management
picked it out without realizing...

Ben_Hutchings

I'm a little suspicious that this is an uncredited copy of an old version of the Wikpedia article.

Jeff_S

Help me out, I need some help from the community:

I seriously found that information useful (and the wiki article, too). I have never understood and/or used this crap. I've got a CS degree, I've been a programmer for 8 years, I know everything from assembly to C++ to VB to SQL, I've been on the internet since '94, I occasionally play on-line games, I participate in programming forums often (this one, SQLTeam, etc), but I have NEVER used this lingo and when I occasionally saw it, I had no clue what it meant. (at least, other than the obvious ones)

So, what's the verdict? I am uncool for not ever using the expression "kew1" ? Or is it a GOOD thing that I am not an AOL chatter/script kiddy using lingo like this?

eth0

You're lucky, no doubt. L33t sp34k is for n00bz.

I mean, come on. Why do kiddies like to spend so much more time writing like that? Even "real" hackers don't write like that! [8-)]

Drak

It's only useful if you want to be able to read google with the language set to 'hacker'.

It's just like all those kiddies on their mobile phones SMSing and using really screwy abbreviations. Useless. If you don't have the money or time to write proper messages, then just sell your phone and stop running up a huge bill.

Drak

Blue

I think some of it is also due to the poor spelling and grammar skills of those using it.

I know I'm not the only one who has noticed the decline in "today's youth".

(At least here in the US)

Respect, morals, some knowledge of history of their country, being able
to spell / write correctly, all going right down the tubes.

Drak

The US is not the only place. Here in the Netherlands it's terrible to see young people trying to spell. The wrst thing is, most of them are only 3 to 5 years younger than I am, but they don't seem to be able to apply any of the spelling rules properly.

Maybe I had the advantage of having my Mom teach me the spelling rules for Dutch when we lived abroad, or maybe i just have a feeling for it (I often find spelling errors by thinking: 'hey.... that looks funny...').

MS Word doesn't help either because it only finds 1/3rd of the errors. But people seem to believe that Word can solve it all for them.

Drak

SnipeZ

@drak said:

MS Word doesn't
help either because it only finds 1/3rd of the errors. But people seem
to believe that Word can solve it all for them.

I've had Word give me an error on a word and suggested another. I was
quite supprised when that word got a squiggly red line under it too. I
was even more amazed that the word it suggested on that one was the
word I started out with [:|]

I personally don't use the spelling check anymore, just don't trust it.

p.s. I'm 1337 and pwn all u noblers [6]

JoeDelekto

@Jeff S said:

Help me out, I need some help from the community:

I seriously found that information useful (and the wiki article, too). I have never understood and/or used this crap. I've got a CS degree, I've been a programmer for 8 years, I know everything from assembly to C++ to VB to SQL, I've been on the internet since '94, I occasionally play on-line games, I participate in programming forums often (this one, SQLTeam, etc), but I have NEVER used this lingo and when I occasionally saw it, I had no clue what it meant. (at least, other than the obvious ones)

So, what's the verdict? I am uncool for not ever using the expression "kew1" ? Or is it a GOOD thing that I am not an AOL chatter/script kiddy using lingo like this?

Actually, the 'hacker speak', from what I've learned in the past, was somewhat handed down from the Unix users that used to use numbers in place of various letters for their passwords to a) make them less prone to brute-force attacks against the hashed password; and b) make it a little easier to remember if certain numbers were replaced with various characters of the alphabet.

Persons could, however, still write code to brute force passwords based on the letter substitution, but it does take a little more work to change that algorithm. [:)] It was to make it easy to remember passwords that any average shmoe couldn't just type in using the normal alphabet.

I'm sure that somewhere along the way (in the world of BBSes [Bulletin Board Systems] and IRC [Internet Relay Chat]) that someone decided it would be 'cool', or 'nifty', or perhaps 'keen' to introduce some new words either based on this letter substitution (or maybe a mix of ASCII [American Standard Code for Information Interchange] 'art') to make some really interesting visual representations of words.

Oh, yes... pr0n is a anagram of p0rn (or 'porn') rather, where the person using the term is referring to pornographic material.

My verdict is this: you're cool for not using lingo like this. The day you get an e-mail that reads something like "I think this is 4 u. Can u handle this?" is when you should probably start re-evaluating your co-workers and mark them for your next office prank.

Regards,

Joe

Literacy in the US is actually at an all-time high, sillies, at least
according to 'generally accepted measures' of english aptitude. Which
means that in the good ol' days an even larger percentage of kids and
adults butchered the language, in other creatively lazy ways. :P

Oh, Drak, I think most everyone recognizes misspelled words that way.
It's because you've internalized the rules and spellings of so many
words you can pattern-match an out-of-place one, even if you aren't
sure what its replacement is. People who read quickly have developed
the same ability.

andyandy

Jeff: It's more frequently used on IRC, checkout some logs at www.bash.org and you'll see it often appear there. Also if a web server you own gets cracked you'll need to know l33t spe4k to understand the "information" they write there :) See some mirrors of defaced web sites at http://www.attrition.org/mirror/ and you'll know what I mean.

Mike_R

"I think this is 4 u. Can u handle this?"

This really irriates me [:@]

More than anything, If I get an e-mail like this, it's usually spam, because no one I know or will associate with for longer than a milisecond uses language like this. I always wind up reading tripe like this as "I think this is for ooh. Can ooh handle this" ...

Jeff_S

Thanks everyone I feel much better now!

Very interesting/informative. I had forgotten about UNIX -- in college working exclusively with UNIX there was a little bit of this "hacker slang", but mostly in terms of passwords and things of that nature as you mention.

Squee_D

I wish I could cite some examples off the top of my head here, but.. I
have seen this kind of destruction make it into advertising and
branding. There are cars now with numbers in the model name, used to
replace letters. Advertising, especially those ads on the sides of
busses, with this kind of rubbish too.

I am at home with the occasional use of this language because it can be
funny (although normally at the expense of those who continually use
it). And I am guilty of typing things like: "hey guys sup" in IRC,
dropping caps, shortening words to slang, and avoiding punctiuation [:O]

But there is a point where all legibility falls off, and thankfully the
kind of forums and channels I frequent will draw the line at this and
boot the offender until they are ready to communicate in the locally
accepted language.

If I do see some of these silly advertising examples, I'll be sure to
post them for all to enjoy. They really make me mad, and I need to
share the pain :P

iowan

I think the real reason that this is being used is that it allows one
to get around a content filter. It also makes it difficult for
parents to understand what their kids are saying online. Remeber
this is a kids lingo and they are probably quite paranoid about someone
(i.e. mom and dad) finding out what they are up to online.

Zatanix

whattafuk guy, u b trippin fool?!

Verdict: you is totally lamer! :)

Ok, the scene (way back since C64) has allways used cool/creative ways
to spell words, way back since the C64-scene. To make the words look
cooler or more like they're pronounced. Which is good. Strange that
you've missed all that.

I don't think all of this "new" internet-stuff allways is that fukkin
kewl, tho. Much of it just seems lame. Still some of it kind a' rulez,
like.. oh i dunno... "WTF" maybe..?

(seriously even this site uses slang, so wtf is wrong with you guys,
callin it kids-talk n' stuff?! I agree much of da new shit sux, but
it's spirit is cummin from the good old hacker/coder scene)

/z4+@N!x

Zatanix

fuck.. was gonna quote Jeff S.