My name is Alex and I feel I need to write this down, even if it won't happen. I thought it would be fun. But I've lost all concept of joy. I am gripped with an unending fear. My time between, if you could call it that, is my only respite. I haven't slept in days, I think. I lost all concept of time as soon as I began. All I know is what I am right now. And right now I am tired, and terrified.
..
....
If I sleep, will I wake? If I don't sleep, will I see it? Will I even know? I can see what I've written here, so I know I've done this. I remember this. Maybe that's all there is. Maybe that's the only truth. Maybe I don't need to know if this is the ten thousandth or first time. Maybe if I'm suddenly no longer writing this, that won't matter either. But that's where the terror comes from. I want it to matter. I want to have a solid course. A beginning, a middle, and an end.
....
Have I lived an infinite number of lives? Have they? I watch them come and go, and it all stays the same for me, at least I think it does. That of course is until I go myself, and then I've made everything different.
....
People always looked at it from a singular perspective, their own. As if the whole world happily went on hold for them, and returned for them when they came back. Who comes here anyway? Why here? Why now? What do they know that I don't?
....
Communication has ceased. There is no news. There are reporters. There is some measure of stability I suppose, not everyone could afford to go. But I don't care anymore. The news can't be right, how could they be? And even if they are right, for how long? Only now. Only now. Only now. That's all that matters.
....
We can move as fast and far as we want, but only our perception of now makes us whole. And no matter how much we move, we will still die. You can't run from old age. Well, at least I assume so. Might have to wait to find that one out.
....
I used to find it amusing when people would come here from before. To see the look on their faces, when they saw the unimagined overwhelm them. I suppose it's a good place to blow your mind. Downtown. It's why I used to come here, when coming mattered. I think other people find comfort here too. I would like to say the crime has ceased since people were able to leave. But I know that can't be true. If not here, then everywhere else. Anarchy. People can't even help themselves. They lose what I've lost, and they struggle to hold on to what they valued before. But what they valued is gone. Now they can only fixate on satisfying what they wanted before. Wants and values, normally they could co-exist. I can no longer have anything I valued. Maybe love. I can't imagine it's any harder now finding a girl than it was before. And I do see people together. They come and go together. Somehow I find it ironic, or at least a little self defeating. Maybe only on a grand scale. If you have what you wanted, what does it matter where you are? If you are with who you want to be, wouldn't staying put, or at least following a goal make sense? This meandering I'm doing is only an ebb in the raging river that has consumed everything we humans thought to be real.
....
Well I suppose no matter what I do, I'm doing it. I know I wrote what I've just written, but maybe I just started to know this. Maybe I have changed in the meantime. What if I go now? What if I can keep this with me? If it stays with me, I'll know I have some stability in this universe. If I can just keep this in my pocket. If I lose it, I might not ever know, or maybe I'll lose it a thousand times and get it right back a thousand more. Or maybe it will say something different each time. I guess it really doesn't matter. What's in my head is on this paper, and either is just as easily replaced. Wonderful. But I think I've only written this to know what I do. I may have no more middle, but I think I do, and I am tired. Maybe I'll wake up tired, maybe I won't wake up, but I have to at least try. I must continue to act. I must survive. Well. Maybe I'll die a thousand times in my sleep. But if I wake up, or at least I think I wake up, and I feel better, then I can continue. Continue this timeless existence.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
INTERNET TIPS AND TRICKS VOL. 2
Note: This whole thing is about language and etymology on the internet. I promise you it's informative and relatively accurate. If you already know about a word, go ahead and skip it. This is a long one. I do realize there are probably a dozen websites that have all these words defined, most notably www.urbandicitionary.com but this is more tailored specifically to the basic words of the internet. I think you might enjoy it.
Language: It is the nature of language to branch and develop and change. It is this beautiful and oftimes confusing element of communication that can cause conflict and misunderstanding more than anything else humans encounter. I recently found a 1991 hacker's dictionary that made this glaringly obvious. Back before the World Wide Web, the only people who had internets were "hackers", who were essentially people who wrote their own ways to each other. These students of MIT and other tech schools, as well as random technophiles were communicating in a manner that only exists in subcultures. As people in a specific field of study, and work, they came up with their own dialect. As doctors speak to doctors or, more closely to me, sailors speak to sailors. "Chief, NIPR'S OOC. SKED's down, and PMS is gundecked." You understand that? If you missed one thing in that quote, you're not a sailor. Entiendes? It's English as it were, but not your English. Modern day internet is full of this. I won't go on for days comprehensively defining internetspeak; you have to learn your specific local lounges. I will list words/phrases/symbols that have become common amongst the internets, specifically in the most popular sites that get mentioned everyday in the ancient Medias, newspapers, TV, and radio.
1. Symbols of enjoyment:
Lol: laughing out loud; or simply, "ha" the minimalist method of expressing positive reaction even if you are nowhere near actually 'laughing out loud'.
Rofl: Rolling on floor laughing; or actually becoming somewhat happier from whatever the subject is.
Lmao: Laughing my ass off; also used harshly as sarcasm, or a lead into a "flame".
Lmfao: Laughing my fucking ass off; someone actually laughed. Yeah, it takes this much.
Ja (Ja): Ha; written primarily by people whose first language is Spanish or Portuguese, as in those languages the "j" is pronounced like the English "h". As far as I know, there is no "lol" equivalent in Spanish beyond the "ja ja".
Corrupted and possibly evil symbols of enjoyment:
Lolerskates: lol combined with roller skates. As if the laughing is continuing.
Lolercoaster: lol combined with rollercoaster, dueling meaning a group of funny things that vary in funny levels, up and down, or simply very funny.
Lulz: Pure evil. Anyone that uses this word likes excessive and exploitive pornography and/or is a racist, or is simply an idiot. The word itself implies a derived pleasure, that is usually through a means of said porn, racism, violence, or in the often media reported misery of other humans. Sadly this isn't a joke. :)
a. emoticons: all the symbols of "emotion"; although many different emotions can be expressed through 'emoticons', it is impossible to actually feel those emotions and use the emoticons. Anyone using emoticons isn't really anything but either happy, or slightly annoyed. Emoticons in practice are the very basic key entries, but many websites automatically force images to replace your text, (insanely enough, my own Microsoft Word has done such a thing) : ) happy : ( sad ;) wink etc. The Japanese have taken it to an art form. My old prepaid Japanese cell phone I bought in 2005 has more emoticons built-in than any 15 year old girl could possibly imagine.
2. Bad English: much of what is common on the internets is simply illiteracy. People who couldn't "speel" for the life of them and instead write what ignorant dumbshit symbolic representation of English makes them feel communicative.
a. Prolly: probably. Probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably.
There you go. 85% of all the correctly spelled "probablys" on the entire web are just above this sentence.
3. Other words/symbols:
"/": e.g. /thread, /argument, /conversation, /sanity, /happiness; pronounced "end", a simplified form of a representation of actual html (see vol. 1). In html when you type ".. (quick note, I did type what I was saying would be html, so it actually acted as html and made what I typed invisible lol so I used parenthesis to break it up)
"(<)(/)" what follows is a command to end a previously written rule. When you want to frame the entire body of your subject, be it text, or images, you start with "(<)(a)(>)" (without quotes, and case is irrelevant) and you finish the "body" with "(<)(/)(a)(>)" (without quotes, blah blah). If someone writes "/thread" or "/argument" or "/discussion" they are saying in cordial internetspeak that the subject should, for politeness or rationality's sake, be discontinued.
Gtfo: Get the fuck out/off; a demand for a person to leave. It may be unwarranted, and is always ignored, therefore simply becomes an insult and a declaration that the person told to "gtfo" has less of a right to be wherever you are than the claimant.
Omg/ omfg: Oh my (fucking) god; this is like having an exclamation mark at the beginning of your sentence. Because English claims no use for such a symbolic warning, internet communicators were forced to come up with a "back door" method. Even though in person to person real life contact, English speakers use an exclamation before they speak in the form of facial expressions, hand gestures, and or vocal reactions like gasping. Whereas the superior (in this instance) language of Spanish, the sentence simply begins with an upside-down exclamation mark.
Noob/ newb/ noobie/ newbie: A person who is inexperienced; there are other definitions, but they are wrong. No one who actually tries to learn something will be a "noob" for very long. Thus many people become highly offended when they are compelled to spend any amount of time helping someone with issues that only a noob would incur. In the real world noobs can remain so despite effort for many months/years. On the internet, which functions for idiots and gets nothing done, to remain a newb makes you worthless.
IM: Instant Message; it's chat, but with one other person, and no "room". Also like email, but with no formality or memory. Also, most IMs let you know when someone you know is signed on. Myspace has an IM, but most people don't use it. I have one IM relationship with a dude named Brian; he's on my friend's list. He's a good guy, eh writes what he thinks and doesn't afraid of anything.
PM: Private Message; IM that people don't get around to much, as most "forums" have PM and most people don't check the forum daily. Also, PMs are always recorded, so like email that only people who sign up on a specific website can use. Myspace has a PM, though they call it "Message". I had a PM relationship with a 16 year old girl once, but she probably killed herself.
Forum: (aka bbs from back in the hacker days) a collection of "threads" on a website; usually possessing an overall theme; www.ronpaulforum.com is a forum that maintains a theme of Ron Paul, but each individual "thread" can encompass a different, or many different subjects. Often forums are categorized with multiple threads in each category, and sometimes each category is referred to as a separate forum, which is technically unimportant.
Thread: A line of commentary provided by one or more people; the "OP" (original poster) physically creates the thread which (usually) appears as its own web page. The only exception I have noted in the entire internet is www.collegehumor.com where each "reply" to a video is considered a separate thread, and each reply to a reply is considered "in thread response". It is considered an act of idiocy and noobishness if a person were to "reply" to the video instead of an "OP" while making a direct comment to a previous individual's reply. This is a special circumstance to the rest of the internet as all replies in all formats appear on the same page as the original video. A contrasted view of terminology is the similar formatted www.youtube.com where all replies are "comments" and there are no "threads". This has altered slightly as youtube has recently made it possible to 'directly' reply to someone's comment instead of the video itself, but has yet to correctly format their webpages or html to make this alteration obvious or comprehensible. In fact, youtube's formatting make conversation tedious and repetitive, making the aspect of "commenting" often times offensive and confusing, which in turn inspires the video 'posters' to disable the ability to comment on their video. Considering most people who comment on youtube videos are idiots to begin with, not much is questioned.
A good example is to see a video on youtube that features a somewhat attractive female, and 1,000 different men actually trying to "hit on" the video in the comment section. If they don't even realize it isn't a live webcam, and this is real life, not their fantasy land, then how can you expect them to understand formatting issues?
OP: Original poster; this person has set the mood for a discussion. Anyone intending to stay on topic will refer to the OP and comment on the OP's subject. Most internet conversations actually stay more on topic than real life conversations. There is no such thing as an "OP" in real life. If someone starts a conversation, or makes a statement in real life, it may inspire others to speak as well, but no one will appreciate the original subject or subject starter within minutes (unless of course the real life OP continues to manipulate the conversation, much as a teacher, or inquisitive person would).
Troll: douchebag; someone who acts with intention to evoke an emotional (usually negative) response from others. A troll may accomplish their goal in many ways, but their purpose is consistent, they do not respect other people, and wouldn't even be allowed near other people in real life. A troll would go to a Christian forum, and start a thread calling Jesus a fag. They may or may not believe in Jesus, and this is moot. They only seek to hurt/anger others. Usually trolls make their trolling statements, and never return. If they do return, it's only to fan the flames. Trolls never provide actual reasoning, nor employ any logic; they will only write what is necessary to achieve said emotional disruption. Sometimes trolls are discovered or are too obvious and no one takes the bait, but more often troll arguments are more successful in starting long meaningful passionate debates than concise, logical statements. This is primarily due to the internet appealing to morons.
Flames/flaming: Arguments/arguing devoid of reason and based primarily on emotion; In real life a "flamer" likes butt sex. On the internet, a flamer is one who 'ignites' other's emotion's specifically through insults. While a flamer can be a troll, and a troll can be a flamer, flaming tends to be "micro" and trolling tends to be "macro". Flaming, or flame warring is a series of insults hurled between 2 or more people over a thread or sometimes an entire forum. Most websites discourage this, and delete the comments and threaten the flamers with banning.
Meme: Cultural gene; the word applies to anything that passes as cultural "knowledge". The idiots of the internet would kill kittens to prove that meme has another definition; "pictures and phrases that are spread throughout the internet". This of course is still the original definition of meme. Though the kind of memes originally thought up were on a grander, more affecting scale, they are all memes. Common memes of a much more ancient manner are idioms. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" "That's like the pot calling the kettle black" these idioms are obviously old. Most people have never even touched a horse, and if they had they certainly didn't get to lead it anywhere. Most people don't catch birds; most people don't have any idea why a pot would be worried about being black. But they know what the phrase means, the phrase conjures a concept within them, effectively communicating uses a means other than direct, pertinent language. With the internet, new memes can be passed, rather quickly. The "I can has cheezburger?" meme is legendary, and it spawned entire websites devoted to image concepts based on that one picture. Even after that cat has passed, he has lived on as a cultural gene, a meme.
4. leet (1337) : Leet is a derivative of 'elite'. It in itself is a term used for "hackers" but pretty much isn't properly used. Every computer nerd with some script writing wishes he were a hacker. In fact, this has always been the case, when I was reading the hacker's dictionary; they mentioned that most hackers wished they were more than they actually were. They wanted notoriety. In a system (the old internets) that required actual skill to be able to work/communicate/jest and had many varying levels of difficulty, it became logical that one would want to be known by many. People had to study, and work hard to communicate and use the internets. They were all hackers. No one fed them anything. Since getting in required skills, communicating required skills, it created an environment of people fighting to be the first to do something, or make something. This is why the computer/internet age advanced so quickly. These people wanted internet communication to be on par with real life communication.
In the new generation, there is no such thing as a "good" hacker. No need to innovate, no need to conquer, using the old ways. So there is little incentive to becoming a hacker. We are spoon fed the spoils of the previous generation. In this easy going world, the new concept of hacker became fruitful. Basically, being a douchebag and knowing some binary now makes you a hacker or "haxx0r", in leet.
Hackers take credit for everything. They claim to have reorganized the very foundations of written and spoken English, long before the world wide web. And they possessed so many internal words that they consider it their own language (mostly because they're self absorbed and intellectually lacking in anything beyond electronics, for instance Cultural Anthropology). Modern day wannabe haxx0rs have made up their own language too. But it is so far removed from old hacker language as to be only a long running joke on the internet.
Leet is the language of derivative ignorance. Its simplistic reformation of English serves no purpose save a self claimed superiority and method of higher communication. Leet essentially breaks down to replacing normal English letters with symbols.
Examples: a= 4, b= 8, c= x , o = 0 There really are no rules, and anything normal people start doing on the internet, leet users will adopt to further it's self-defeatist cause. 1337 or l33t = leet, haxx0r = hacker. There are many more and I don't care.
Something to note is that because the old hacker language was so culturally specific, it died. And because leet is so meaningless, it often attains new meaning as it is adopted into common usage. The TV show numb3rs uses the leet letter for 'e', I have never seen the show, but if there are sexy model/nerds and computers involved I wouldn't be surprised.
My absolute favorite is one instance of leet corruption. "pwn" or "pw3d" is leet for "own" and "owned". To be "owned" in internet speak is to have something overcome you in a ridiculous manner. For example when I try to write out blogs on Myspace, I am frequently owned by the shitty "post" function that auto deletes everything I write, if it's particularly long. The corruption is this; most people don't know or care about leet, so when they started seeing "pwn3d" and "pwn" everywhere in some of the first common "memes" on the interwebz, they automatically assumed that the "p" is pronounced like an English "p". This is of course a complete re-corruption. Leet took "p" and used it for an "o" because it still has the circle in it, and that's the essence of leet. People who didn't know pr0n from prawn assumed they should pronounce the p as a p, and THUS ENGLISH RETOOK A LEET WORD. OMFGROFLOLERCOASTER! So everyone that said "powned" out loud is an idiot. But if enough people say it, the rules change. I could say in this instance, leet got owned by its own idiotic language.
Language: It is the nature of language to branch and develop and change. It is this beautiful and oftimes confusing element of communication that can cause conflict and misunderstanding more than anything else humans encounter. I recently found a 1991 hacker's dictionary that made this glaringly obvious. Back before the World Wide Web, the only people who had internets were "hackers", who were essentially people who wrote their own ways to each other. These students of MIT and other tech schools, as well as random technophiles were communicating in a manner that only exists in subcultures. As people in a specific field of study, and work, they came up with their own dialect. As doctors speak to doctors or, more closely to me, sailors speak to sailors. "Chief, NIPR'S OOC. SKED's down, and PMS is gundecked." You understand that? If you missed one thing in that quote, you're not a sailor. Entiendes? It's English as it were, but not your English. Modern day internet is full of this. I won't go on for days comprehensively defining internetspeak; you have to learn your specific local lounges. I will list words/phrases/symbols that have become common amongst the internets, specifically in the most popular sites that get mentioned everyday in the ancient Medias, newspapers, TV, and radio.
1. Symbols of enjoyment:
Lol: laughing out loud; or simply, "ha" the minimalist method of expressing positive reaction even if you are nowhere near actually 'laughing out loud'.
Rofl: Rolling on floor laughing; or actually becoming somewhat happier from whatever the subject is.
Lmao: Laughing my ass off; also used harshly as sarcasm, or a lead into a "flame".
Lmfao: Laughing my fucking ass off; someone actually laughed. Yeah, it takes this much.
Ja (Ja): Ha; written primarily by people whose first language is Spanish or Portuguese, as in those languages the "j" is pronounced like the English "h". As far as I know, there is no "lol" equivalent in Spanish beyond the "ja ja".
Corrupted and possibly evil symbols of enjoyment:
Lolerskates: lol combined with roller skates. As if the laughing is continuing.
Lolercoaster: lol combined with rollercoaster, dueling meaning a group of funny things that vary in funny levels, up and down, or simply very funny.
Lulz: Pure evil. Anyone that uses this word likes excessive and exploitive pornography and/or is a racist, or is simply an idiot. The word itself implies a derived pleasure, that is usually through a means of said porn, racism, violence, or in the often media reported misery of other humans. Sadly this isn't a joke. :)
a. emoticons: all the symbols of "emotion"; although many different emotions can be expressed through 'emoticons', it is impossible to actually feel those emotions and use the emoticons. Anyone using emoticons isn't really anything but either happy, or slightly annoyed. Emoticons in practice are the very basic key entries, but many websites automatically force images to replace your text, (insanely enough, my own Microsoft Word has done such a thing) : ) happy : ( sad ;) wink etc. The Japanese have taken it to an art form. My old prepaid Japanese cell phone I bought in 2005 has more emoticons built-in than any 15 year old girl could possibly imagine.
2. Bad English: much of what is common on the internets is simply illiteracy. People who couldn't "speel" for the life of them and instead write what ignorant dumbshit symbolic representation of English makes them feel communicative.
a. Prolly: probably. Probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably.
There you go. 85% of all the correctly spelled "probablys" on the entire web are just above this sentence.
3. Other words/symbols:
"/": e.g. /thread, /argument, /conversation, /sanity, /happiness; pronounced "end", a simplified form of a representation of actual html (see vol. 1). In html when you type ".. (quick note, I did type what I was saying would be html, so it actually acted as html and made what I typed invisible lol so I used parenthesis to break it up)
"(<)(/)" what follows is a command to end a previously written rule. When you want to frame the entire body of your subject, be it text, or images, you start with "(<)(a)(>)" (without quotes, and case is irrelevant) and you finish the "body" with "(<)(/)(a)(>)" (without quotes, blah blah). If someone writes "/thread" or "/argument" or "/discussion" they are saying in cordial internetspeak that the subject should, for politeness or rationality's sake, be discontinued.
Gtfo: Get the fuck out/off; a demand for a person to leave. It may be unwarranted, and is always ignored, therefore simply becomes an insult and a declaration that the person told to "gtfo" has less of a right to be wherever you are than the claimant.
Omg/ omfg: Oh my (fucking) god; this is like having an exclamation mark at the beginning of your sentence. Because English claims no use for such a symbolic warning, internet communicators were forced to come up with a "back door" method. Even though in person to person real life contact, English speakers use an exclamation before they speak in the form of facial expressions, hand gestures, and or vocal reactions like gasping. Whereas the superior (in this instance) language of Spanish, the sentence simply begins with an upside-down exclamation mark.
Noob/ newb/ noobie/ newbie: A person who is inexperienced; there are other definitions, but they are wrong. No one who actually tries to learn something will be a "noob" for very long. Thus many people become highly offended when they are compelled to spend any amount of time helping someone with issues that only a noob would incur. In the real world noobs can remain so despite effort for many months/years. On the internet, which functions for idiots and gets nothing done, to remain a newb makes you worthless.
IM: Instant Message; it's chat, but with one other person, and no "room". Also like email, but with no formality or memory. Also, most IMs let you know when someone you know is signed on. Myspace has an IM, but most people don't use it. I have one IM relationship with a dude named Brian; he's on my friend's list. He's a good guy, eh writes what he thinks and doesn't afraid of anything.
PM: Private Message; IM that people don't get around to much, as most "forums" have PM and most people don't check the forum daily. Also, PMs are always recorded, so like email that only people who sign up on a specific website can use. Myspace has a PM, though they call it "Message". I had a PM relationship with a 16 year old girl once, but she probably killed herself.
Forum: (aka bbs from back in the hacker days) a collection of "threads" on a website; usually possessing an overall theme; www.ronpaulforum.com is a forum that maintains a theme of Ron Paul, but each individual "thread" can encompass a different, or many different subjects. Often forums are categorized with multiple threads in each category, and sometimes each category is referred to as a separate forum, which is technically unimportant.
Thread: A line of commentary provided by one or more people; the "OP" (original poster) physically creates the thread which (usually) appears as its own web page. The only exception I have noted in the entire internet is www.collegehumor.com where each "reply" to a video is considered a separate thread, and each reply to a reply is considered "in thread response". It is considered an act of idiocy and noobishness if a person were to "reply" to the video instead of an "OP" while making a direct comment to a previous individual's reply. This is a special circumstance to the rest of the internet as all replies in all formats appear on the same page as the original video. A contrasted view of terminology is the similar formatted www.youtube.com where all replies are "comments" and there are no "threads". This has altered slightly as youtube has recently made it possible to 'directly' reply to someone's comment instead of the video itself, but has yet to correctly format their webpages or html to make this alteration obvious or comprehensible. In fact, youtube's formatting make conversation tedious and repetitive, making the aspect of "commenting" often times offensive and confusing, which in turn inspires the video 'posters' to disable the ability to comment on their video. Considering most people who comment on youtube videos are idiots to begin with, not much is questioned.
A good example is to see a video on youtube that features a somewhat attractive female, and 1,000 different men actually trying to "hit on" the video in the comment section. If they don't even realize it isn't a live webcam, and this is real life, not their fantasy land, then how can you expect them to understand formatting issues?
OP: Original poster; this person has set the mood for a discussion. Anyone intending to stay on topic will refer to the OP and comment on the OP's subject. Most internet conversations actually stay more on topic than real life conversations. There is no such thing as an "OP" in real life. If someone starts a conversation, or makes a statement in real life, it may inspire others to speak as well, but no one will appreciate the original subject or subject starter within minutes (unless of course the real life OP continues to manipulate the conversation, much as a teacher, or inquisitive person would).
Troll: douchebag; someone who acts with intention to evoke an emotional (usually negative) response from others. A troll may accomplish their goal in many ways, but their purpose is consistent, they do not respect other people, and wouldn't even be allowed near other people in real life. A troll would go to a Christian forum, and start a thread calling Jesus a fag. They may or may not believe in Jesus, and this is moot. They only seek to hurt/anger others. Usually trolls make their trolling statements, and never return. If they do return, it's only to fan the flames. Trolls never provide actual reasoning, nor employ any logic; they will only write what is necessary to achieve said emotional disruption. Sometimes trolls are discovered or are too obvious and no one takes the bait, but more often troll arguments are more successful in starting long meaningful passionate debates than concise, logical statements. This is primarily due to the internet appealing to morons.
Flames/flaming: Arguments/arguing devoid of reason and based primarily on emotion; In real life a "flamer" likes butt sex. On the internet, a flamer is one who 'ignites' other's emotion's specifically through insults. While a flamer can be a troll, and a troll can be a flamer, flaming tends to be "micro" and trolling tends to be "macro". Flaming, or flame warring is a series of insults hurled between 2 or more people over a thread or sometimes an entire forum. Most websites discourage this, and delete the comments and threaten the flamers with banning.
Meme: Cultural gene; the word applies to anything that passes as cultural "knowledge". The idiots of the internet would kill kittens to prove that meme has another definition; "pictures and phrases that are spread throughout the internet". This of course is still the original definition of meme. Though the kind of memes originally thought up were on a grander, more affecting scale, they are all memes. Common memes of a much more ancient manner are idioms. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" "That's like the pot calling the kettle black" these idioms are obviously old. Most people have never even touched a horse, and if they had they certainly didn't get to lead it anywhere. Most people don't catch birds; most people don't have any idea why a pot would be worried about being black. But they know what the phrase means, the phrase conjures a concept within them, effectively communicating uses a means other than direct, pertinent language. With the internet, new memes can be passed, rather quickly. The "I can has cheezburger?" meme is legendary, and it spawned entire websites devoted to image concepts based on that one picture. Even after that cat has passed, he has lived on as a cultural gene, a meme.
4. leet (1337) : Leet is a derivative of 'elite'. It in itself is a term used for "hackers" but pretty much isn't properly used. Every computer nerd with some script writing wishes he were a hacker. In fact, this has always been the case, when I was reading the hacker's dictionary; they mentioned that most hackers wished they were more than they actually were. They wanted notoriety. In a system (the old internets) that required actual skill to be able to work/communicate/jest and had many varying levels of difficulty, it became logical that one would want to be known by many. People had to study, and work hard to communicate and use the internets. They were all hackers. No one fed them anything. Since getting in required skills, communicating required skills, it created an environment of people fighting to be the first to do something, or make something. This is why the computer/internet age advanced so quickly. These people wanted internet communication to be on par with real life communication.
In the new generation, there is no such thing as a "good" hacker. No need to innovate, no need to conquer, using the old ways. So there is little incentive to becoming a hacker. We are spoon fed the spoils of the previous generation. In this easy going world, the new concept of hacker became fruitful. Basically, being a douchebag and knowing some binary now makes you a hacker or "haxx0r", in leet.
Hackers take credit for everything. They claim to have reorganized the very foundations of written and spoken English, long before the world wide web. And they possessed so many internal words that they consider it their own language (mostly because they're self absorbed and intellectually lacking in anything beyond electronics, for instance Cultural Anthropology). Modern day wannabe haxx0rs have made up their own language too. But it is so far removed from old hacker language as to be only a long running joke on the internet.
Leet is the language of derivative ignorance. Its simplistic reformation of English serves no purpose save a self claimed superiority and method of higher communication. Leet essentially breaks down to replacing normal English letters with symbols.
Examples: a= 4, b= 8, c= x , o = 0 There really are no rules, and anything normal people start doing on the internet, leet users will adopt to further it's self-defeatist cause. 1337 or l33t = leet, haxx0r = hacker. There are many more and I don't care.
Something to note is that because the old hacker language was so culturally specific, it died. And because leet is so meaningless, it often attains new meaning as it is adopted into common usage. The TV show numb3rs uses the leet letter for 'e', I have never seen the show, but if there are sexy model/nerds and computers involved I wouldn't be surprised.
My absolute favorite is one instance of leet corruption. "pwn" or "pw3d" is leet for "own" and "owned". To be "owned" in internet speak is to have something overcome you in a ridiculous manner. For example when I try to write out blogs on Myspace, I am frequently owned by the shitty "post" function that auto deletes everything I write, if it's particularly long. The corruption is this; most people don't know or care about leet, so when they started seeing "pwn3d" and "pwn" everywhere in some of the first common "memes" on the interwebz, they automatically assumed that the "p" is pronounced like an English "p". This is of course a complete re-corruption. Leet took "p" and used it for an "o" because it still has the circle in it, and that's the essence of leet. People who didn't know pr0n from prawn assumed they should pronounce the p as a p, and THUS ENGLISH RETOOK A LEET WORD. OMFGROFLOLERCOASTER! So everyone that said "powned" out loud is an idiot. But if enough people say it, the rules change. I could say in this instance, leet got owned by its own idiotic language.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
INTERNET TIPS, TRICKS, AND CODES
You might already know everything I post here. But some aren't as hip as you. I'm going to lay out some of the cool stuff I've learned riding the interwebz.
1. html: (hyper text markup link) is what controls the internet, literally. In fact the internet wouldn't exist without it, it was created by the same guy who invented the world wide web (www.) and hyper text transfer protocol (http:) back in the early 90's. There are many websites that can teach you to write html, like here. I used sweet html to make that hidden link to the website.
2. Taking pictures of your screen: You can take a "screenshot" of anything you're computer sees simply by pressing the "prt sc" or "print screen" button. After pressing the button, once, open up mspaint, click the "edit" window and then "paste" the screenshot will then show up in mspaint. You can save it, and use it to proove to people you saw something amazing.
3. Stealing photos: Most images on the internet can be saved by right clicking and saving, making it fast and easy to have an instant porn collection, gore collection, comic collection, dead baby photo collection, etc. But some douche websites have the tenacity to use their html skillz to disable your right clicking right. To defeat their futile attempt to stop your copyright violations you can either; a) take a screenshot, then use a photo editor to cut out the image you wanted, or b) go to the "page" menu and click save as. Save it to somewhere convenient, then find that file, right click on it and choose "edit" if you haven't screwed up so far, you will open the webpage you've just saved, but with the ability to rearrange everything, and right click and save the images on the page. Now some websites have advanced html coding that embeds itself like an evil detective, further trying to stop you from right clicking. If this happens, you're going to have to get creative. You will need to start breaking up the coding, file names, etc. Do whatever you can, save as and change the file names, go crazy. I've only encountered this a couple times in my adventures, and I was always able to defeat the website. Basically if you can see it, you can have it.
4. Saving videos from photobucket to your computer: For legal reasons, photobucket cannot let anyone save videos from their site, even if it's your video. But here's how you can do it anyway; find the video you want. click on it so you bring it to it's own window or whatever, when you see the stack of confusing html below or beside the video left click on "direct link" it will automatically copy the text. Now open a new widow, and paste the text into the url area. Delete the part of the text that reads "?action=view¤t=" (without the quotes) and hit enter, or "return" for you old schoolers. Your computer will then pop up with a message asking if you want to "open or save". Choose save and there you have it. To watch the videos, you'll need a ".flv" player. "Real Player" is a popular and free example, if you don't have it, download it, and open your .flv files with it.
5. Saving other kinds of videos: Often you can right click, and choose "save target as" over the text below videos on websites. Some websites even tell you to do so if you wish. Other times the text is elswhere (like on another page), but the "save target as" still works, because the text is an html embeded direct link to the video file.
Youtube is a bit trickier, because they don't have the "direct link" over to the side, just the "url" and "embed" and because it displays videos in flash, right clicking on the video will get you nowhere. As of yet, I haven't cracked the youtube genome, so if you know how let me know.
There are also programs you can downlod that take video of what your screen sees, which can then effectively (though not cleanly) capture anything you see animated on the nets. These come in handy when you want to hijack webcam footage, and then send copies to all the "camwhore's" friends and family (not that I condone such things). This is just a heads up. If people can see it, no matter how they see it, they can save it, so use discretion on the net.
6. Tab, the wonder button: Most people don't use tab very much, but on the internet, it's a very helpful little tool. You old schoolers might have a good understanding of Tab's usefullness in word processing, here's how it transitions; it highlights things. Tab will move your activity around. For example, if you're on one of the hundreds of pages you'll encounter in your internet travels that's asking for row after row of info, just use tab to move from section to section. In many instances, tab replaces your mouse, and can actually get you where you wanted to go faster. In fact, if you lose your mouse, or it breaks, you can still navigate, and do all basic functions on your computer with tab instead. If you get a malicious pop up, or you're playing a video game that takes up your whole screen with no "close" or "minimize" buttons in sight hold the buttons "alt" and "tab" and whatever you were looking at will be minimized. On some computers, you'll get a choice sometimes of what you want to maximize after pressing the buttons, which will present themselves in symbolic form (for example the option to maximize your Internet Explorer over your video game will appear as the "E" symbol you're familiar with). If all this is getting to complicated, just push tab alot, all over the place, you'll get the idea quickly, and it won't hurt anything.
7.Uploading stuff: Since 2004, uploading has become a common practice for many internet visitors. Before the coming of websites like photobucket, youtube, myspace, and Deviant Art, there was little reason for the common man to ever upload anything. The only people that would were website builders, and content submitters (like animations to Newgrounds.com, independent films to atomfilms.com). Now that people can have their own personal internet space everyone is uploading.
Of course how to upload varies from website to website, but almost universally there will be a button that reads "Brouse" on it, and when you click it, it will access your computer. Each website allows only certain file types and sizes, and each website is different. The first thing to do is read the websites guidelines. Now lets say you want to upload a video to youtube. Youtube has a (I'm pretty sure) a 100mb file size limit. Depending on the file type, the amount of video that fits in 100mb varies. If the video is off your camera, it's probably going to take up a lot of space, but if you process it through a program (any free home video program) you can reduce the filesize if needed. Windows Movie Maker is a good one, about all the videos you see on youtube that look homemade, but with a halfassed effort to look professional were made with "WMM". If you don't have it on your computer, look for it. You can do a lot of easy editing, adding music, moving scenes, cutting scenes, adding text, subtitles, in fact check out my youtube video http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bl_-alLeefA for a good example.
If you wish to upload photographs to a website, the first thing you want to do is edit the photo to a smaller size. Typical digital cameras today have way too many pixels for their own good. Anything over 1 megapixels is going to piss off the website you're uploading to. Even if they say they have a 4mb file limit, there's no reason to do that. Simply open up a photo editor program, (I use MS Office Picture Manager) and compress the photo. I typically compress the file size to 270kb which is very small, and yet retains the size and quality you desire in internet photos. All my myspace photos have been compressed or were small to begin with, and you may notice they are plenty big enough. (If you're uploading cell phone photos, chances are they're already really small, and no compressing is necessary).
If you think this list was cool, let a comment, I'll make a second volume. If nobody reads this, I'll be a sad panda, cause this took me a couple hours.
1. html: (hyper text markup link) is what controls the internet, literally. In fact the internet wouldn't exist without it, it was created by the same guy who invented the world wide web (www.) and hyper text transfer protocol (http:) back in the early 90's. There are many websites that can teach you to write html, like here. I used sweet html to make that hidden link to the website.
2. Taking pictures of your screen: You can take a "screenshot" of anything you're computer sees simply by pressing the "prt sc" or "print screen" button. After pressing the button, once, open up mspaint, click the "edit" window and then "paste" the screenshot will then show up in mspaint. You can save it, and use it to proove to people you saw something amazing.
3. Stealing photos: Most images on the internet can be saved by right clicking and saving, making it fast and easy to have an instant porn collection, gore collection, comic collection, dead baby photo collection, etc. But some douche websites have the tenacity to use their html skillz to disable your right clicking right. To defeat their futile attempt to stop your copyright violations you can either; a) take a screenshot, then use a photo editor to cut out the image you wanted, or b) go to the "page" menu and click save as. Save it to somewhere convenient, then find that file, right click on it and choose "edit" if you haven't screwed up so far, you will open the webpage you've just saved, but with the ability to rearrange everything, and right click and save the images on the page. Now some websites have advanced html coding that embeds itself like an evil detective, further trying to stop you from right clicking. If this happens, you're going to have to get creative. You will need to start breaking up the coding, file names, etc. Do whatever you can, save as and change the file names, go crazy. I've only encountered this a couple times in my adventures, and I was always able to defeat the website. Basically if you can see it, you can have it.
4. Saving videos from photobucket to your computer: For legal reasons, photobucket cannot let anyone save videos from their site, even if it's your video. But here's how you can do it anyway; find the video you want. click on it so you bring it to it's own window or whatever, when you see the stack of confusing html below or beside the video left click on "direct link" it will automatically copy the text. Now open a new widow, and paste the text into the url area. Delete the part of the text that reads "?action=view¤t=" (without the quotes) and hit enter, or "return" for you old schoolers. Your computer will then pop up with a message asking if you want to "open or save". Choose save and there you have it. To watch the videos, you'll need a ".flv" player. "Real Player" is a popular and free example, if you don't have it, download it, and open your .flv files with it.
5. Saving other kinds of videos: Often you can right click, and choose "save target as" over the text below videos on websites. Some websites even tell you to do so if you wish. Other times the text is elswhere (like on another page), but the "save target as" still works, because the text is an html embeded direct link to the video file.
Youtube is a bit trickier, because they don't have the "direct link" over to the side, just the "url" and "embed" and because it displays videos in flash, right clicking on the video will get you nowhere. As of yet, I haven't cracked the youtube genome, so if you know how let me know.
There are also programs you can downlod that take video of what your screen sees, which can then effectively (though not cleanly) capture anything you see animated on the nets. These come in handy when you want to hijack webcam footage, and then send copies to all the "camwhore's" friends and family (not that I condone such things). This is just a heads up. If people can see it, no matter how they see it, they can save it, so use discretion on the net.
6. Tab, the wonder button: Most people don't use tab very much, but on the internet, it's a very helpful little tool. You old schoolers might have a good understanding of Tab's usefullness in word processing, here's how it transitions; it highlights things. Tab will move your activity around. For example, if you're on one of the hundreds of pages you'll encounter in your internet travels that's asking for row after row of info, just use tab to move from section to section. In many instances, tab replaces your mouse, and can actually get you where you wanted to go faster. In fact, if you lose your mouse, or it breaks, you can still navigate, and do all basic functions on your computer with tab instead. If you get a malicious pop up, or you're playing a video game that takes up your whole screen with no "close" or "minimize" buttons in sight hold the buttons "alt" and "tab" and whatever you were looking at will be minimized. On some computers, you'll get a choice sometimes of what you want to maximize after pressing the buttons, which will present themselves in symbolic form (for example the option to maximize your Internet Explorer over your video game will appear as the "E" symbol you're familiar with). If all this is getting to complicated, just push tab alot, all over the place, you'll get the idea quickly, and it won't hurt anything.
7.Uploading stuff: Since 2004, uploading has become a common practice for many internet visitors. Before the coming of websites like photobucket, youtube, myspace, and Deviant Art, there was little reason for the common man to ever upload anything. The only people that would were website builders, and content submitters (like animations to Newgrounds.com, independent films to atomfilms.com). Now that people can have their own personal internet space everyone is uploading.
Of course how to upload varies from website to website, but almost universally there will be a button that reads "Brouse" on it, and when you click it, it will access your computer. Each website allows only certain file types and sizes, and each website is different. The first thing to do is read the websites guidelines. Now lets say you want to upload a video to youtube. Youtube has a (I'm pretty sure) a 100mb file size limit. Depending on the file type, the amount of video that fits in 100mb varies. If the video is off your camera, it's probably going to take up a lot of space, but if you process it through a program (any free home video program) you can reduce the filesize if needed. Windows Movie Maker is a good one, about all the videos you see on youtube that look homemade, but with a halfassed effort to look professional were made with "WMM". If you don't have it on your computer, look for it. You can do a lot of easy editing, adding music, moving scenes, cutting scenes, adding text, subtitles, in fact check out my youtube video http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bl_-alLeefA for a good example.
If you wish to upload photographs to a website, the first thing you want to do is edit the photo to a smaller size. Typical digital cameras today have way too many pixels for their own good. Anything over 1 megapixels is going to piss off the website you're uploading to. Even if they say they have a 4mb file limit, there's no reason to do that. Simply open up a photo editor program, (I use MS Office Picture Manager) and compress the photo. I typically compress the file size to 270kb which is very small, and yet retains the size and quality you desire in internet photos. All my myspace photos have been compressed or were small to begin with, and you may notice they are plenty big enough. (If you're uploading cell phone photos, chances are they're already really small, and no compressing is necessary).
If you think this list was cool, let a comment, I'll make a second volume. If nobody reads this, I'll be a sad panda, cause this took me a couple hours.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)