Hackers slang Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Hackers slang - Essay Example The existence of slang dictionaries, of course, cancels the effectiveness of certain words. Abbreviation. Hackers denote a word by only several of its component letters. For example: "RTFM" - "read the following manual", "IMHO" - "in my humble opinion", "BTW" - "by the way" or "LOL" - "lay of laugh". Verb doubling. Hackers double verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples involve win, lose, hack, flame, barf, and chomp, i.e. "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose." Sound-alike slang. Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting, i.e. "Plug&Play" is transformed to "Plug&Pray", "Government Property - Do Not Duplicate" to "Government Duplicity - Do Not Propagate" or "Macintosh" to "Macintrash". Overgeneralization. Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to non-uniform cases (or vice versa). For example: "win" extends to "winnitude", "winnage", "disgust" to "disgustitude", "hack" to "hackification". "Marketdroid" is a member of a company's marketing department, especially one who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement. "Careware" is a variety of shareware for which either the author suggests that some payment be made to a nominated charity or a levy directed to charity is included on top of the distribution charge. Spoken inarticulations. Words such as "mumble", "sigh", and "groan" are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It derives from the impossibility of representing such noises in a chat or by e-mail. Anthropomorphization. Hackers often anthropomorphize hardware and software, for example, it's possible to say, "the protocol handler got confused" or "the program is died". () Comparatives. Many words in hacker slang have to be understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum: "monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature" or "crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection". (Levi, 1984, pp.56-78) Numerization. Hackers often include soundalike numbers in place of words or parts of words, for example "4 you", "2 do". (Kelly-Bootle, 1995, pp.36-101) Terms of computer hackers' dialect are often particular to their subculture. Raymond (1996) writes, "The hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 40 years