luser

(jargon, abuse)/loo'zr/ A user; especially one who is alsoa loser. (luser and loser are pronounced identically.)This word was coined around 1975 at MIT.

Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT andtyped Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printedout some status information, including how many people werealready using the computer; it might print "14 users", forexample. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patchthe system to print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a greatcontroversy, as some of the users didn't particularly want tobe called losers to their faces every time they used thecomputer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly,each changing the message behind the back of the others; anytime you logged into the computer it was even money whether itwould say "users" or "losers". Finally, someone tried thecompromise "lusers", and it stuck.

Later one of the ITS machines supported "luser" as arequest-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990,except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and theterm "luser" is often seen in program comments.

See: also LART. Compare: tourist, weenie.

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