Micro$oft Parenting Skillz
Are you confused by all those weird text conversations your children have on the interweb? Not to worry, Microsoft has written a helpful little guide to explain it all to you in exhaustingly hilarious detail:
While it’s important to respect your children’s privacy, understanding what your teenager’s online slang means and how to decipher it is important as you help guide their online experience. While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short. Leet (a vernacular form of “elite") is a specific type of computer slang where a user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically—creating the digital equivalent of pig Latin with a twist of hieroglyphics.
It is only later in this tutorial that we see the true ulterior motive behind this lesson. Microsoft isn’t trying to make the world all warm and fuzzy by teaching L4/\/\3RZ how to read “leetspeak” at all:
Leet words possibly indicating illegal activity:
• “warez” or “w4r3z”: Illegally copied software available for download.
• “h4x”: Read as “hacks,” or what a computer hacker does.
• “sploitz” (short for exploits): Vulnerabilities in computer software used by hackers.
Its all a plot to teach your parents how to report you to the nearest Microsoft attack squad. Sorry kids, maybe now you will actually have to learn another REAL language. If you’re lucky your parents are American and only speak one language anyways…
The trackback URL for this entry is:
Trackbacks:
Comments:
Next entry: Avoid Being the Next Paris Hilton
Previous entry: The Daily Show on Bloggers
