From: Janet Davis (jlnd_at_cs.washington.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 19:57:13 PST
If you hate acronyms, rest assured you are not the only one. (The final
exam will NOT be a test of your acronym-recognition skills.)
Cheers,
Janet
From: Dictionary.com
> Three-Letter Acronym
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=three-letter%20acronym>
Source
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=00-database-info&db=foldoc>:
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2003 Denis Howe
*> tla*
> /T-L-A/ n. [Three-Letter Acronym] 1. Self-describing
> abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is
> infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP,
> SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this
> looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not
> all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of `ETLA'
> (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being
> used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term `SFLA' (Stupid
> Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also YABA
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=yaba>.
> The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often
> used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of
> the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you
> think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's
> straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter
> acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is
> probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin
> subsequently became a journalist.
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