Mobe
It was a dark day when this was banished from the Registers "approved words for aging hacks" little black book.
Lets bring it back, you know it makes sense. A more fitting boycott should be applied to "ICT". Think of the kiddies ffs.
It's official: "folksonomy", "blogosphere", "netiquette" and "blook" are among the net-spawned terms which should be cast down into the eternal fires of hell, AFP reports. That's the conclusion of a poll on behalf of the Lulu Blooker Prize which asked 2,091 adults to vote for the most hideous words which have escaped from …
Well, 'folksonomy' is a new one on me (maybe I need to get out more) but I do find 'blog' and, especially, 'blook' to be particularly loathsome concoctions, and I sincerely hope a circle of hell is being prepared for the whalesong-addled halfwit who coined 'blogosphere'
I'm pretty sure that 'netiquette' isn't that new a word though - it was certainly in fairly common use in 1989 when I discovered Usenet at uni (I've recovered now) and got used a hell of a lot more once the great unwashed started accessing 'teh Intarwebs'
English does indeed change and adapt, but there's a difference between that and contrived words promoted by a single commentator or small group of influentials.
Blog I can cope with, as it's a word that has grown, but Blook reeks of copy-cat marketing speak. And Blogosphere is blatantly a journalistic attempt to define a growing medium.
Mobe isn't in quite the same league - it's a shortening of an existing word, and a fairly poor one at that. It's a bit like Ya instead of You - hardly worth the effort. Myself? I can hardly cope with Mobile or Cell, let alone a further shortening.
The kids only learn about "ICT" at school - they haven't a clue what "IT" is. (In much the same way I haven't a clue what "ICT" is.) If this is heretical word is not burnt at the stake, then as we grow old and are replaced by the next generation, we will find "IT" replaced by "ICT", leaving us to grumble into our pints about how “We called it IT in my day.” Somebody start a petition, start burning school books, or do something to stop this heresy today... ;-)
The worst neologisms are thought up by bad sci-fi writers (or, sometimes, good ones in a moment of weakness) to make everyday things sound futuristic. 'Smokehale' for cigarette can cause a killing rage for instance. Or, and this caused me to hurl the book across the room and then stamp on it, 'Mofo' for cellphone (Aldiss, no less). Anyone got any others? And I don't _want_ to know what 'folksonony' is, as I am sure it will upset me.
Thanks Kev K,
Followed the wikipedia link for folksonomy and I fear that a new term might be in the offing:
twatsonomy - the name given to the class of half-witted, goggled-eyed marketing bumpkins that come up with terms (and their attendant definitions) such as "folksonomy"
wtf-ks-onomy! we're all doomed
folksonomy - taxonomy without an *ologist to put it together. makes ok sense.
blog - stupidest term I've heard in the last decade. gotta go have a bath now since I just typed it. i still have a website thanks, I'll die before anyone makes me call it a blog. crap, I typed it again. let's let it lie.
blook - what in the "bleeding hell" is that?!?!
Lay off the "netiquette" already. That term was in common use when us old farts sweated in front of dirty VT100 terminals while trying to get a telnet connection to the crappy text-based MUD running on a server in Norway.
"Netiquette" in use even earlier, in 1983. Those were the times. Yeah, the Googlez workz:
http://groups.google.lu/group/net.misc/browse_thread/thread/e14b43fb9a212dd2/053d04531dcc05bd
"You can choose which Mapplets you want, and you can create a mashup of mashups by combining Mapplets with each other or with built-in features of Google Maps, like driving directions and business search – and view it all on the same map."
That garbage was from the latest Google Earth news letter.
Best wishes,
Martin
http://www.martinhwatson.co.uk/puzzle_news.html
Martin H. Watson
No, the worst word to ever come out of the new Internet-powered generation is "prolly". It's popping up all over the place, and simply put, it pisses me off like no other word possibly could. Hell, I'd welcome back "mobe" if you could eliminate "prolly".
BTW: What the hell is "blook"?!? And what's "ICT"? Am I really becoming THAT old? I'm only 30!
I think 2 of the above comments show why "mobe" is out of the dictionary and should stay there.
It took me a while of reading theregister to realise that a "mobe" meant "motherboard" and not "mobile phone".
If you really want to bring back a motherboard abbreviation, you could try "mobo"
My vote goes for "machinima", which is an awful word spread via Wikipedia; a site which lends itself to the perpetuation of this kind of crap. In theory a machinima is a creative work rendered with a computer game engine, although in practice it has become synonymous with "computer animation", which in turn is synonymous with "animation", and thus machinima is redundant nonsense.
"Eggcorn" is another piece of disposable garbage spread by the bearded variety of computer man, although it is not really an IT word.
The one thing in common with all the words listed above - including "netiquette" - is that they are not used organically. They are used in a self-conscious way, with imaginary waggle-finger "air quotes". They are show-offy words, exclusive words designed to make people feel inferior. Computer professionals love exclusivity; it is a core element of their culture, along with contempt for non-computer people.
Bring back "cyberspace".
>Wasn't he a character in The Hobbit?
Yep. And his son Gimli is one of the main characters in Lord of the Rings :)
so whats up with:
>Another web inspired word I've heard bounded around recently. This should be cast away really, the meaning is far too disgusting for a nice wholesome publication like El Reg.
Since when did the C of ICT become necessary? What is communication if not the conveyance of information, more often than not, using some form of technology? Otherwise we need to include all the various uses of IT to cover entertainment, education,business, pr0n, ad infinitum. Anyone for ICEEBPT?
I am the IT Manager for a publishing company. That is my official title. I look after our websites, servers and in-house computer systems. I DON'T look after the phones, snail-mail, faxes or other non-Internet/non-PC forms of information transfer - we have other people who handle that stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that stuff is all in the SEP category.
A few years ago I did a website for a local school, and they also bandied the term 'ICT' around. I noticed that their 'ICT Administrator' handled the phones, mailing systems, staff pigeonholes, in fact anything to do with communication systems AS WELL as the computer network. She was also one of the most overworked admins I ever met. So it seems to me that 'ICT' is a way for top management to bury their tech team in unrelated 'communications' crap just to save on staff. Burnout? What burnout?
So I am not going there. My department deals with the company computers, JUST the computers. That's more than plenty for us to handle. No 'ICT' admin overload burnout for me, thanks! I'll just keep on running our IT department.