pseudo
<jargon> /soo'doh/ (Usenet) Pseudonym.
1. An electronic-mail or Usenet persona adopted by a human for amusement value
or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of one's net.behaviour; a "nom
de Usenet", often associated with forged postings designed to conceal message
origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is BIFF.
2. Notionally, a flamage-generating AI program simulating a Usenet user. Many
flamers have been accused of actually being such entities, despite the fact that
no AI program of the required sophistication yet exists. However, in 1989 there
was a famous series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based
travesty generator to simulate the styles of several well-known flamers; it was
based on large samples of their back postings (compare Dissociated Press). A
significant number of people were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over
their authenticity was settled only when the perpetrator came forward to
publicly admit the hoax.
[Jargon File]
(1995-03-13)
Nearby terms:
pSather « PSD « PSDN « pseudo » Pseudocode »
pseudoprime » pseudo-random number
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