:Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers:
===============================

   From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local,
MS-DOS-based bulletin boards has been developing separately from
Internet hackerdom.  The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a
stratum of `pirate boards' inhabited by {cracker}s, phone phreaks, and
{warez d00dz}.  These people (mostly teenagers running IBM-PC clones
from their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic jargon,
heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang.

   Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they
typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet
expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems).
Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's.  Nevertheless,
this lexicon covers much of it so the reader will be able to understand
what goes by on bulletin-board systems.

   Here is a brief guide to cracker and {warez d00dz} usage:

   * Misspell frequently.  The substitutions

               phone => fone
               freak => phreak

     are obligatory.

   * Always substitute `z's for `s's.  (i.e. "codes" -> "codez").

   * Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey
     Dudes!#!$#$!#!$").

   * Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")
     frequently.

   * Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").

   * Substitute `0' for `o' ("r0dent", "l0zer").

   * TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE
     TIME.

   These traits are similar to those of {B1FF}, who originated as a
parody of naive {BBS} users.  Occasionally, this sort of distortion may
be used as heavy sarcasm by a real hacker, as in:

         > I got X Windows running under Linux!

         d00d!  u R an '1337 hax0r

   The only practice resembling this in actual hacker usage is the
substitution of a dollar sign of `s' in names of products or service
felt to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve, Micro$oft.

   For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see {lamer},
{elite}, {leech}, {poser}, {cracker}, and especially {warez d00dz}.

