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luser     /loo'zr/ n.     common A user; esp. one who is also a loser. ( luser and loser are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some status [information], including how many people were already using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the users didn't [particularly] want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message [behind the back] of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say "users" or "losers". Finally, someone tried the [compromise] "lusers", and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported luser as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term `luser' is often seen in program comments and on Usenet.

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