Procrastinet

ZOMFG DONFIRMED!!!1!!

filed under: The Weekly WANT IT

So yes, of course I'm waiting with bated breath for the Apple "Special Media Event" at 1pm EST today, which will most likely introduce a video enabled iPod. Whooptie. What I'd really like is for them ALSO to release the overdue updates to the G4 PowerBook, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.

In the meantime, I figured I'd share with my less tech-geeky readers the enjoyable world of "l33t" which is short for "l33tsp33k" which is short for "Leet Speak" which is short for "How The Elite Speak."

l33t (also sometimes 1337) used to be, and supposedly in some corners still is, an online shorthand developed among the gaming community. But in a nifty bit of linguistic evolution, it is now used by the tech cognoscenti to mock "n00bs" - newbies who tend to get overexcited about gadgety announcements.

Leet uses letters in place of number, like instant message shorthand, but has also incorporated typos as intensifiers - hence, "OMFG" ("Oh My F**king God") becomes "ZOMFG" and "confirmed" becomes "donfirmed." Plus hectic capitalization, like including un-capitalized 1s in amongst exclamation points.

It's the first time I've seen a written language incorporate emotion into the syntax itself. Which, because I'm a d0rkz!!1!, I'm way into. Along with the use of "teh" as an intensifier - wikipedia's example is "He is TEH LAME."

Some other fun bits of l33t: pwned (bastardized from "owned," meaning "dominated in competition"); h4xx0r ("hacker"); teh suXX0r (something that sucks really, really bad); teh r0xx0r! (something that rocks really, really hard). And my personal favorite: w00t! Which is basically an onomatopoetic expression of joy.

More info on l33t at Wikipedia...

UPDATE: Looks like a wider, wider-screened iPod 5G. Come on, PowerBook.

Here are some hilarious BoingBoing leet-related posts: a nastrygram from George Lucas' lawyers translated into leet ("You are a dam dirty pirate-haxor-n00b and you can't join our clan"); plus the masterpiece, a leet translation of The Two Towers (teh t0W t0Werz):

[At Isengard, Saruman is with a group of Wildmen of Dunland]
Saruman: "Teh Rohirrim are tards!"
Dunlander: "Sif leet! Damn retards!"
Saruman: "Joo bring teh pwn. Go and pwn those n00bs!"
Crowd of Dunlanders: "WOOT!"

It's a good rainy day to get my g33k on.

UPDATE UPDATE:

ZOMFG

The first Apple product updated is the iMac. The ever-lovin' iMac. With media center capability called "FrontRow" and an iPod-like remote. And yes, a video iPod. And then a still-to-come "Act III" oh my god PLEASE a PowerBook.

Of course, there's very little chance it'll be a PowerBook. New iMac plus media center, new video iPod, then an Act III = likely iTunes AV store... downloadable video blahblah...

[1:41pm - Yup. iTunes with $2 music videos to buy. I would add "*stifles yawn*" but a 30GB video-capable, wider-but-thinner iPod that now comes in black for the same $299 is... really... tempting...]

Posted by rjt at October 12, 2005 12:44 PM