Re: l33t - the language of pedophiles

>From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L33t_speak#Origins_of_Leet

"Origins of Leet"

"Leet finds its base in written communication over electronic media.
Most simply, it has evolved as a way of forming exclusive cliques in
on-line communities, notably Bulletin Board Systems and online
multiplayer games (see Examples of Leet in videogaming).

"The mechanism began simply: taking standard text and corrupting it
with a dynamic cipher, with only those privy to the cipher
understanding what was being conveyed in the ciphertext. Through this,
newcomers to a given community were excluded from communication with
those who had defined (and continued to evolve) the cipher.

"Primitive Leet was generally much less elaborately substituted than
modern forms. Typical transpositions included:

    * f / ph ("fone phreaks")
    * z / s (generally only in the final position, ie. "phi1ez" but not
"za1ezman")
    * 1 / l (usually only once in a word, ie. "1iar", but not
"1ist1ess")
    * k / c (ex: "krap" as opposed to "crap", and "cill" in place of
"kill")
    * 0 / o (ex: 0mg instead of omg, 0wned instead of owned, etc.)

"For users of the Commodore 64 or the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, communities
began to use PETSCII pictographic characters as letter substitutes.
Over time these tendencies of replacing letters became increasingly
exaggerated."

- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L33t_speak#Origins_of_Leet


Sounds like typical fear-based reactionary bull**** to me. I wouldn't
expect a Mississippi news agency to know much about internet culture
though.

-
BigKilla
Analog Medium - http://analogmedium.com

Modemac wrote:
> Did you know that "leet," the lingo of the Internet, was actually
> invented as a code language for children to communicate with those Evil
> Internet Child Molesters?
>
>   http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=219451&pub=1&div=News
>
> Gee, I didn't know that either...
> 
> --
>      The High Weirdness Project
>       http://www.modemac.com