[originally among Amiga fans]
1. Synonym for {luser}, not used much by hackers but common among
{warez d00dz}, crackers, and {phreaker}s. A person who downloads
much, but who never uploads. (Also known as leecher). Oppose {elite}.
Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of
{luser} does among hackers.
2. Someone who tries to crack a BBS.
3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users -- for instance,
by posting lots of silly messages, uploading virus-ridden software,
frequently dropping carrier, etc.
Crackers also use it to refer to cracker {wannabee}s. In phreak
culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than doing
cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In {warez
d00dz} culture, where the ability to wave around cracked commercial
software within days of (or before) release to the commercial market
is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware
or something incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few
years to anything older than 3 days). `Lamer' is also much used in
the IRC world in a similar sense to the above.
This term seems to have originated in the Commodore-64 scene in the
mid 1980s. It was popularized among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s
by `Lamer Exterminator', the most famous and feared Amiga virus ever,
which gradually corrupted non-write-protected floppy disks with bad
sectors. The bad sectors, when looked at, were overwritten with
repetitions of the string "LAMER!".
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {elite}{k-}{leech}{poser}]