[thejeff]

Actually, I'll have to retract the history slightly. Newbie and n00b probably came into online use fairly close to the same time, though newbie has offline roots, but came into much more common use on Usenet. I stand by my assumption that n00b came from newbie, not the other way around, mostly because that derivation is straightforward and I can't even imagine where n00b would have come from if not from newbie.