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= L =
LAN party
lamer n.
[originally among Amiga fans] 1. Synonym for
luser, not used much by hackers but common among warez d00dz, crackers, and phreakers. A person who downloads much,
but who never uploads. (Also known as `leecher'). Oppose
elite. Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism
that use of luser does among hackers. 2. Someone who tries to
crack a BBS. 3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users -
for instance, by posting lots of silly messages, uploading
virus-ridden software, frequently dropping carrier, etc.
Crackers also use it to refer to cracker wannabees. In phreak
culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than
doing cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In
warez d00dz culture, where the ability to wave around cracked
commercial software within days of (or before) release to the
commercial market is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload
garbage or shareware or something incredibly old (old in this
context is read as a few years to anything older than 3
days). `Lamer' is also much used in the IRC world in a similar sense to
the above.
This term originated among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s. It was
popularized there by `Lamer Exterminator', the most famous and
feared Amiga virus ever, which gradually corrupted
non-write-protected floppy disks with bad sectors. The bad sectors,
when looked at, were overwritten with repetitions of the string `LAMER!'.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.
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