[Sussex] Do we confuse you?

[Karl E. Jorgensen]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 09:43:42AM +0100, Geoffrey J. Teale wrote:
> nik butler <nik at reducedhackers.com> writes:
> ... 
> > I do feel though that possibly the media itelf is to blame for useless
> > oversimplification and word creation of issues in an attempt to make a
> > 200 word story from a topic which requires 1000 words to
> > understand. 
> 
> Absolutely.  The vast majority of acronyms are generated by marketing
> people in my experience.  The only things that geeks abbreviate are
> things that are so commonly used that they are unmistakable  (at least
> for knowledgeable people, the general public wouldn't understand what
> "AOP", for example,  was even if we expand it fully).
> 

The computer industry has it's (more than) fair share of acronyms though
- it's easy to pick on marketing as this is something we "techies"
understand the least :-)

For me, the worst possible acronym is the "Y2K" problem.  Which was
basically caused by *shortening* the notation for years (yes: I know
there was more to it than that, but hear me through).  Ironically
enough we decided to *shorten* the name we gave to the problem (!).  I
find that rather ironic...

-- 
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl at jorgensen.com   http://karl.jorgensen.com
==== Today's fortune:
This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a
little ironic since we may not have one.
                -- Arthur Clarke

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