Lamer

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Lame \Lame\ (l[=a]m), a. [Compar. {Lamer} (l[=a]m"[~e]r);
     superl. {Lamest}.] [OE. lame, AS. lama; akin to D. lam, G.
     lahm, OHG., Dan., & Sw. lam, Icel. lami, Russ. lomate to
     break, lomota rheumatism.]
     1.
        (a) Moving with pain or difficulty on account of injury,


            defect, or temporary obstruction of a function; as, a
            lame leg, arm, or muscle.
        (b) To some degree disabled by reason of the imperfect
            action of a limb; crippled; as, a lame man. "Lame of
            one leg." --Arbuthnot. "Lame in both his feet." --2
            Sam. ix. 13. "He fell, and became lame." --2 Sam. iv.
            4.
            [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Hence, hobbling; limping; inefficient; imperfect; as, a
        lame answer. "A lame endeavor." --Barrow.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              O, most lame and impotent conclusion! --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     {Lame duck}
        (a) (Stock Exchange), a person who can not fulfill his
            contracts. [Cant]
        (b) An elected politician who is completing a term after
            having been defeated at an election; also, an office
            holder who cannot or chooses not to run again for the
            same office; -- So called from the presumed lack of
            political power of one who is soon to be out of
            office.
        (b) Any office holder who is serving out a term after a
            replacement has been selected.
            [1913 Webster +PJC]

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  lamer n.[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 originated among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s. It was
     popularized there 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!'.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  lamer
       
           A hopelessly clueless {luser}.
       
          (1997-01-31)