OMFG EMPEG ROXORZ TEH BIG ONE111!


/forgive me if the link is old news- I did do a cursory search, though.
//betcha bunches of youse guys have seen it already
///betcha others are gonna laugh as hard as I did

Yeah, it has been posted here before, but very funny.

We're thinking of making it a sticky at my car club forum.
Heh- another web-classic!

Edit:
Ah- My Search Fu is most embarassed!
a link through time!

And having participated in the Steam forums occasionally (out of need for technical information about HL2 or CS:S), I have to say, the clientele to which that piece was targeted is clearly not getting the message.

And while we're on the topic (Bitt mentioning Mister Period earlier today made me think of this)...

Mr. Period Returns.

Do you ever end up speaking to those same people on Teamspeak while playing? If so, how do they speak? For example, while playing Eve I often hear folks pronouncing (e.g.) "pwn" as "pawn" or "pawnz". I haven't noticed but presumably they also say "teh" but my brain simply refuses to recognise it:)

Anyone who speaks outloud in 1337-speak just doesn't get the joke. Its failure to translate to speach is akin to handwriting the countless facial expressions during a conversation.

This leads into a thought I had recently: Wouldn't it be interesting to compare the "languages" usd by different generations of computer geeks. What does the Comodore/Amiga game coding generation think of the early 90's BBS generation? How does the ARPANet "language" compare to the early university Internet and compare to today's 1337 speak?

I hypothesize that one generation doesn't evolve into the next. The computer geek languages grow around the technology of the time, which seems to to have distinct generational changes when viewed on a large enough scale. On of my college professors gave the example from his hayday: the 300 baud modem Lisp programmer would invite you to dinner by saying "foodP" to which you'd respond "T". How would that look in the language of ARPANet, FidoNet, MUDs, BBSs, CompuServe, or World of Warcraft?

My train of thought ended by derailment when I realized: older computer geek languages are likely less interesting because computing was less networked and there were less (yet infinitely more interesting) people communicating in that way, leaving less chance for evolution in that generation. But maybe some of you can proove me wrong. How did you PDP11 engineers converse electronically (on punch cards?)? What was the inside-joke lingo for you TRS80 hacks? What sorts of made up words were snuck into those early RFCs by you working group types?

The tactical advantage of voice communications is enormous, though. I play BF2 while on the telephone with my friend. We use an "overwatch/assault" approach, with the security/overwatch troop spotting targets for the assault/maneuver troop via voice comm. The security/overwatch element contains the squad leader, so the assault has a spawn point.

I'm pretty addicted to BF2. The commander mode and squad leaders as spawn points add so much to the FPS genre. One of us will often play the commander -- the ultimate overwatch position.

J

Go read The Jargon File.

When I was an undergrad at Berkeley ('89-'93), we adopted the MIT speak wholesale. It's amazing how easy it is to start saying "foodp". Evolution from MIT? We'd sometimes use Scheme syntax, so it became "food?" to which the answer might be "#t". The question mark syntax was just too close to normal, so we mostly settled on "foodp". At the time, the big game was netrek, and that led to its own vocabulary that showed up elsewhere. (Notably, "doosh" and "ogg". As I understand it, "doosh" originated as a verbal sound effect by a particular player; he'd be yelling it out as he was shooting...)

It's only cheating if you communicate when you're dead. We don't do that. What's the point of playing if you're going to cheat? Anyhow, BF2 pretty much solves this problem with a server-option to freeze your POV when you die. IIRC, counter strike had that option, too.

Most online gamers seem to use Teamspeak now instead of the built-in voice comm stuff.

Cargill used to be a customer of mine. At the time, they were the largest privately-owned company in the world. They also had the second largest private rail transport fleet.

Anyhow, Cargill's original business was buying grain from grain elevators and selling it on the exchanges. When you buy grain on an exchange (and probably other comodities, I don't know), you buy an amount of the commodity at a particular *time*, and at a particular *place*. Cargill built the largest grain transport system in the world. Because of this, they could actually "take delivery" of the grain they bought, because they had the ability to send a "unit train" to go pick up the order. Well, you can see where this leads: commodity arbitrage. They know transport costs to the 4th or 5th decimal place, they own the infrastructure, and they can thus buy on one exchange, say Kansas City April, and sell it across the country at another price. That's the limit of my understanding of this incredibly complex system and business envonronment. Except for one other thing:

All of this requires communication. They actually have the ability to divert rail freight already enroute to take advantage of changing market conditions. They built a communication system that was a sort of private email system that linked the entire US. This was decades before ubiquitous email, and they shouldered the cost of the infrastructure.

It was very, very expensive to send these messages and not much bandwidth was available, so a language evolved of excessive shortening of words. "Thought" is "thot", etc., but to a truly absurd degree. Its a hodge-podge language of phonetic spelling, abbreviation, etc.

Its now considered kind of a badge to send emails in this cryptic jargon, because it supposedly indicates you were there in the way-back-when days of the company. Its so prestegious that relatively new employees actually pick it up as an affectation. When you see an email from one of the real codgers, it's almost unreadable.

Jim