luser

/loozr/ , n. [common] A user ; esp. one who is also a 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 and typed Control-Z
to get the computer's attention, it printed out some status information,
including how many people were already using the computer; it might print 14
users , for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the
system to print 14 losers instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some
of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces
every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled
covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time
you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say users or
losers. Finally, someone tried the compromise lusers , and it stuck. Later
one of the ITS machines supported luser as a request-for-help command. ITS
died the death in mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives on,
however, and the term luser is often seen in program comments and on Usenet.
Compare mundane , muggle , newbie , chainik.

