How Jeff Bezos Pwned Publishing

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Oh, did you want this group to stay on topic or something?

Perhaps someone can start a topic about the "word" pwned in the Conservatory. Seems like people have alot to say about it.

BOb

On-topic? What does this weird phrase mean? I have no idea

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

On-topic? What does this weird phrase mean? I have no idea

I think it was a typo.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I think it was a typo.

Has to be, it's the only possible explanation.

[Alphapheemail]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I think the origins of it have more to do with online gaming than they do with cell phone keypads.

Gaming does have alot to do with it, but what about the fact the youth (including myself (25 yo) even though I have been reminded constantly that I need life support at this point) need everything NOW. Therefore spending an extra 2 seconds and about 5 characters out of the 160 allocated per text to be gramatiucally correct is blasphemy.


p.s. what article is this you speak of?

[wallcraft]

I agree with the article that Amazon is trying to remove publishers from the loop and deal directly with authors. However, I don't think they want to take on all the functions of a publisher. The Kindle's DTP platform is one example of this, but at the grass roots level. The thing about DTP that I like is that it does not require exclusive rights (Baen is an example of a publisher not asking for exclusive ebook rights). However, some authors have complained about the amount Amazon pays them per ebook. If authors could negotiate non-exclusive ebook rights with their traditional publishers I think they would be better off in the long run, but publishers hold on to exclusive rights with a death grip while doing virtually nothing to exploit them effectively.

[Neil]

If you play any online game such as Warcraft you will quickly find that pwned is NOT a typo. It is well-established and constantly-used Internet slang for beating someone so badly that you "own" them or that they were like a pawn to your plan. It is just as accepted as LOL.

[bhartman36]

As to the article's content:

I don't think Amazon will ultimately be a publisher in any serious way. I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think self-publishing is different from publishing. Publishing has a lot more responsibility involved with it, I think. You also have to worry about what you're publishing more than Amazon seems to want to, at this point. (Why else let users upload their own works to the site?) I'm sure smarter people than me think it's a strong possibility that Amazon will become a bona fide publisher, but I just don't see it -- especially with the deal they have right now with authors. Seems like a lot more work than they need, frankly.

As for "pwned":

I'm not a fan of leetspeak, or of texting leaking into the English lexicon. Having said that, I can't deny that pwned is a word, simply on that basis alone. Written and spoken words are only symbolic. As long as two or more people agree on what aparticular set of written or spoken symbols mean, it's a word, in a literal sense. Its presence or absense in a dictionary ("Who's dictionary?" is also an interesting question) is immaterial. Shakespeare made up words all the time, and you don't hear people complaining about that, do ya?

On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of people texting phonetically. When you text phonetically, you're not making up a new word. You're just being lazy with your spelling. ("C u l8r." is not a collection of words, let alone a sentence.) If you're using an already-existing word in the English (or any other) language, you have to use conventional English rules to spell that word as it's properly spelled. It's not even so much that I object to people using that stuff amongst themselves. What I more resent is them not keeping their language in context, and allowing it to spew all over conventional speech, where it makes no sense and doesn't belong. (There are certain things that teke longer to type in text "language" than in English.)

[Andurian]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

("C u l8r." is not a collection of words, let alone a sentence.)

You're definitely right. Nobody would bother putting those spaces in there, and the "C" would probably not be capitalized.

Ha, you've been pwned!

cul8r


On a more serious note, though I find "pwned" and (far more so) "cul8r" to be inelegant because they don't look and feel much like the rest of the language and would advise against their general usage for just that reason, I really wonder what would justify the claims from some above that such things aren't real words. Do you really think God came down in a fiery chariot and handed us the OED, fully formed?

It seems one thing to begrudge that the language is heading in an language you (we, actually) don't like. Another entirely to pretend it isn't doing so.

[Daithi]

As to the article --

Amazon makes getting published extremely easy -- especially in ebooks. All it takes is for someone talented to publish a book through Amazon that goes viral (like a Rowling, Brown, or Meyer) and Amazon will become established as a major publisher.

Pn the pther hand, publishers could band together and create their own web entity to sell directly to the public, and cut Amazon out as the middleman. (However, they're probably too afraid of upsetting brick and mortars to do this.)

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It means the person who typed it cannot spell properly. That is not a proper word. It's mostly used by script kiddies.

Well, wrong. A slang word or spelling is a "proper" word once it comes into wide enough usage. For example, "thru" was nothing more than people being lazy and not caring to use the proper spelling of "through". However, it has now (sadly) become an acceptable spelling of the word, and a proper word in its own right. The internet is increasing the speed at which such words become proper words.

The words "phat" and "pwned" and several other words I will gladly detail for you if you want to be bored to freaking death (as is "freaking" as a euphemism) are in common usage today, and even 57 year old women know them and use them. If they aren't in the dictionary today, they almost certainly will be in the next edition.

[JSWolf]

So basically the internet has made crappy words come into being because of script kiddies who cannot be bothered to type properly.

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So basically the internet has made crappy words come into being because of script kiddies who cannot be bothered to type properly.

Something like that, yeah. Just like fixed type printing brought uniform spelling into being because it stopped people from free-form writing things as they thought they ought to be.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So basically the internet has made crappy words come into being because of script kiddies who cannot be bothered to type properly.

Sure, and folks like you who like to coin new phrases like "script kiddies." Nothing wrong about creating new terms, phrases, words, and spellings. It's sort of how a living language evolves.

Used to be a time when "crappy" and "internet" were not proper words either. So, you might as well either get used to it, or move to a country where the language hasn't changed for the past thousand years or so.

Oh, and then there are words like "qwerty" and "poiuyt" that were created based on nothing else but the vagaries of the keyboard as it was developed to slow down the process of typing and allow for a mechanism that is no longer in use.

And .... not to mention all the words from LOLCats that are coming into wide use, such as "interwebs" and "ohai!!" (that the city of Ohai, California, is having a good laugh about). I could go on, but I do have floors to clean and laundry to do.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So basically the internet has made crappy words come into being because of script kiddies who cannot be bothered to type properly.

Slang has existed long before the internet was ever created. This is nothing different from "cool", "jive" and whatever else existed going back as far as language itself.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Sure, and folks like you who like to coin new phrases like "script kiddies." Nothing wrong about creating new terms, phrases, words, and spellings. It's sort of how a living language evolves.

Used to be a time when "crappy" and "internet" were not proper words either. So, you might as well either get used to it, or move to a country where the language hasn't changed for the past thousand years or so.

Oh, and then there are words like "qwerty" and "poiuyt" that were created based on nothing else but the vagaries of the keyboard as it was developed to slow down the process of typing and allow for a mechanism that is no longer in use.

And .... not to mention all the words from LOLCats that are coming into wide use, such as "interwebs" and "ohai!!" (that the city of Ohai, California, is having a good laugh about). I could go on, but I do have floors to clean and laundry to do.

Kan U be cleanin ur florz if I be takin ur bukkit?