Лексичні та синтактико-стилістичні зміни в сучасній англійській мові: вплив комп’ютерних технологій

1.2.1.Hacker subcultures

The most well-known hacker subcultures are:

Crackers;

Phreakers;

LISPers.Cracking is the act of breaking into the computer system; what a cracker does. Contrary to widespread myth, this process does not usually involve hackish brilliance, but rather persistence and repetition of tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Crackers are considered to be mediocre hackers. Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. It is expected that any real hacker does some playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone is expected to have overcome the desire to do so except for urgent, practical reasons (for example, if it’s necessary to break a security in order to do something lively necessary).

Thus, there is a greater difference between hackerdom and crackerdom than most peoplemisled by sensationalistic journalism might think. Crackers tend to gather in small, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture of hackers; though crackers often describe themselves as hackers; hackers, in their turn, consider crackers a lower form of life; they do not respect anyone who breaks into someone else’s computer.

Phreaking is the art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). By extension, security-cracking is used in any other context (especially, on communications networks). At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was normal, but serious theft of services was a taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own. This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers.

LISP (from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses' is a language based on the ideas of variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types, and the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values; this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise to a famous saying (a periphrasis of Oscar Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing".

Part II

2.1.Jargon Construction

There are some standard methods of jargonification that became established quite early (i.e., before 1970). These include verb doubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization, spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. These methods, as well as the standard comparatives for design quality are covered below.

Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but soundalike slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPers flourish.

2.1.1. Verb Doubling

A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as an exclamation.

E.g. "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!»

Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples involve win, lose, hack, flame, (see Glossary of Terms) culture has one *tripling* convention unrelated to this; the names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first and paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork.

Other infamous examples have included:

alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg

alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die