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What's the Worst Acronym You've Ever Heard?
mmaddox asks: "As a software developer, I've consulted on many projects - projects conceived in the twisted mind of management and marketing and cursed with bizarre, often hysterically funny names. Of course, these names lead to the adoption of the dreaded acronym. Most recently, I've discouraged the name selections of a few clients, in particular, the Private Inline Security System (a silly "personal firewall" - the client didn't even THINK of using an acronym) and Cross-section Heads-Up Digitizer (an engineering bit for roadway construction - anyone remember the movie?). There must be millions of these things out there.
What is the worst acronym you've ever had the *ahem* pleasure of dealing with?" And in typical Slashdot fashion, it just wouldn't be the same without taking a dig at Microsoft. If you click here
and look at the #2 result (of 44), then you may see one of funniest acronyms I've ever seen come out of the corporate culture. Of course, if you click on that
particular link it looks like someone at the Borg have recognized their error and is trying to rewrite history, changing the "tool" into a "utility". God bless the Google
cache! If you think you've seen acronyms to beat this one, please share!
I;ve been working on a tool for our product. The tools it called CTE (an acronym for Component Template Extensions) Now the ironic thing is that the tools was originally called "acronyms"
Hence we now have a acronym for acronyms
Doh
CJC
Telephone Network Administration, but everyone used the acronym without cracking a smile. Of course I laughed out loud on a teleconference. I no longer work there.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Not my acronym, but I hear TWAIN means "Thing Without An Interesting Name"
Alphabetic Collection for Reducing Or Numbing Your Memory
What's even more fun is that they vary from military branch to military branch, and change for no purpose over time.
I used to work at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham (UK) on their Laboratory system software. We wrote a rule-based system for the Liver Unit, which I labelled LUMPS (for Liver Unit Management Protocol System)
The name stuck... and when the Renal Unit wanted a similar system, LUMPS begat RUMPS.
At the time I left there was also talk of a system for the Maternity Unit - no prizes for guessing the acronym - but I don't think it never got used (the negative disease link probably didn't help), which was a shame because it also happened to be the name of the language the system was written in...
~~~
Look for acronyms at http://www.acronymfinder.com/
TINSTAFL is a favoraite of mine.
AAAAAAA -- All-American Association Against Acronym Abuse Anonymous, too.
EEETLA -- Enhanced Expanded Extended Three Letter Acronym, is also nice.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
TMTOWTDI, pronounced "tim-toady" I believe..
Just today I learned that my group is called Application Architecture, or AA for short. "Hi, my name's Duane, and I'm an architect." "Hi, Duane!!" I'm seriously thinking about calling my first white paper the 12 steps to web services.
True story that's not a bad acronym but we find it funny -- we used to be on Shared Enterprise Applications, or SEA. That group got disbanded and we are now Application Engineering Services, or AES -- SEA backwards. So the joke is that our mission statement is to do the exact opposite of what we did 6 months ago.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Swear to god. He said he had to seriously think about which conference he wanted to attend.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
GNU's Not Unix
TINTOS Is Not TOS
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
From Red Dwarf IIRC: the Commitee for the Liberation of Intergalactic Terryfying Organisms and their Re-integration Into Society?
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Pronounced as "cool". This is by far the worst of all that have ever been and will ever exist.
It means "asshole" in Portuguese and, differently from normal american movie usage, it has a deep impact on the audience.Say that at your girlfriend house and see the relationship end, in most cases in seconds.
Now that you know better, tell Madona that "bunda suja" (dirty ass) doesn't shock us at all. We get puzzled like when we hear a little girl swear.
Norristown Area Debian Society
An alternative for those in the philly area that didn't want to make the hike all the way to philly. Yes I'm responsible for the name... Although I got my current job through it.
hmmm... too early to post sanely...
For those that don't want to drive to Philly for PLUG (Philladelphia Linux Users Group)
The Saskatchewan Gov't (that's in Canada) is working on a project called SHIN. Sask Health Information Network. Basically, getting everyones medical records onto a large database so an individuals records are available anywhere in the province. In any case, the Priemere at the time, Roy Romanow, referred to it as Sask Health Information Technology System.
There is a dorm which is slightly off-core-campus called the Burdett Avenue Residence Hall, or BAR-H. It was given that name when they realized that the original, the Burdett Avenue Residence Facility, was doubly inappropriate for the only dorm which had its own cafeteria.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Society of Hardware and Information Technology Helpers Executive Administration Division
In my group of game playing fans the shortening of Total Annihilation (one of the best strategy games of all time) To just T.A. causes much confusion among ppl not in the know or with sick minds... Imagine a friend on mines confusion when he makes a comment about T.A. to have his Girl friend hit him.
beavis and buthead
hehehehe hehehe You said TA hehehe hehe hehehehe
/beavis and buthead
yep, they actually wanted to use that for a bit, mind you they soon figured it would be better to change the name, but not before everybody got a chance to see that attempt at naming the new party
was. You'd think they'd catch that earlier. I'm not exactly sure what the offcial name is now, but it doesn't have a crap accronym.
I immediatly thought of this doozy from red dwarf :)
Erm, I think we're all beginning to lose sight of the real issue here, which is:
what are we going to call ourselves?
And I think it comes down to a choice between "The League Against Salivating Monsters," or
"and this is my personal preference --
"The Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society."
Erm, one drawback with that -- the abbreviation is C.L.I.T.O.R.I.S.
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
...good old TLA (Three Letter Acronym)?
My first day at work I was given a polo shirt with the company logo in the breast area along with the name of our product, followed by "The Proven POS System". Since I was fresh out of college and not terribly bright, I automatically assumed that POS stood for Piece Of Shit instead of Point Of Sale. All I could think about is why on earth would they call their system a Piece Of Shit .. that is, until I figured out what it really stood for. I still can't bring myself to actually wear the shirt though.
I mean how stupid is that? Oh sure! It's H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org. Say what? http:///..org? Uh-huh...
SIG: HUP
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
Weapons Analysis and Lethality Toolset :).
It's only funny because the guy running the contract is a bombastic old guy named Walt Zimmer (Walt's WALTS
Where I went to school, the police department was called the Tulane Department Police Department (TUPD). Problem is that almost all references were quickly graffitied into sTUPiD. Last time I visited, I noticed that they were now called Tulane Department of Public Safety.
When violence rules the world outside / And the headlines make me want to cry / It's not the time to just keep quiet
PCMCIA - People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms
PENCIL and PAPER - Plotter, Encoder, Notator, for Ciphers, Icons and Letters, for use with a Passive Accumulative Permanent/Erasable Raster.
N
At Pfizer, in the clinical testing pharmacy, we had the Document Information Management group. DIMG or the DIM group.
As of last July, I now work for Shell IT International, or SITI. Now, 'ess eye tee eye' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, we become SITI (pron. sittee), which bears an unfortunate resemblance to 'shitty'.
Of course, leaving the 'h' in Shell in makes it even worse...
There are various types of officers in the military... Flag officers, Field Grade officers, etc. The Navy has (in addition to numerous other classifications) LDOs, or Limited Duty Officers.
So, courtesy of the United States Navy's Naval Nuclear Power Training Command (NNPTC), I offer you the...
- Direct Input Limited Duty Officer, or DILDO
I have to assume that they didn't acronym-ize it right off when they chose the name, they aren't that dense. It went into actual use, and there were some affected officers who were genuinely offended by the acronym. It caused the whole title to be changed very quickly."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
In our environment, the acronyms for test databases always start with a T and the acronym for production databases always start with a P. This was fine when then TENIS (electronic number inventory system) database was in development. Cute name, right?
:)
Well, when they were putting it into production, they realized that they had a problem. Management decided to change the name to PNIS. Unfortunately, they didn't take into account how people would pronounce that, either.
In the US, most dealings between the federal government and it's suppliers are covered by a series of rules called the Federal Acquisition Regulations. When I was in the Air Force, everyone in our unit was required to take a basic course in the regs. The course, of course, was called the Federal Acquisition Regulations Training, or FAR Training. That quickly got shortened, so it wasn't unusual to have a manager ask, "When are you scheduled to FART?" or "Have you done FART?"
Moderators, I leave myself at your mercy, but it just had to be said.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
An All American Association Against Advocacy Adressing Any And All Acronyms Abroad
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Too much repetition." haha
Cambridge University Netball Club isn't called a "Team" instead...
Campaign for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society.
Where we did things like design the common system platforms used throughout the company. We had Windows teams, Mail teams, Unix teams, Server teams, Client teams, etc...
I was assigned to the Unix Client Team. The group name was:
And we truly were FUCT.
Get off my lawn.
But the thing that sticks in my mind was the 'F-Test'
Not truly an acronym, nevertheless the compression of Freshman Test to F-Test, bought a whole new meaning to those 8AM exams...
BTW, when we you at RPI? I was '85-'89.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Despite the acronym, it's a great productivity tool.
Apple's AppleScript Studio Site
Russell Ahrens
In my country (Chile), some ten years ago, one of the then fragmented socialist-marxist left wing sectors formed the "Partido Amplio de Izquierda Socialista" (meaning roughly "Ample Left-Wing Socialist Party"; "PAIS" means "country"). They had to add the "amplio" ("ample") word, because the initial name "Partido de Izquierda Socialista" didn't have a good acronym ("PIS" means "urine").
They were, of course, the butt of jokes for this (after all, the inclusion of "Amplio" was notoriously forced). It was said that they handled other alternative names, like "Partido de la Izquierda CHilena Independiente" or "Partido de la Izquierda Popular Independiente" (more acronyms meaning urine).
Thank God that party didn't last long...
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
The MPE/iX OS has an internal structure called the File Access Rights Table. I've never seen the obvious acronym appear anyware in either the code or the documentation; it's instead usually referred to as the FAR table.
Subscribers can see articles in the future? So what? Everyone gets to see them in the future.
Windows Compact Edition
WinCE
From Webster's dictionary
wince: To shrink or start involuntarily, as in pain or distress
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
At the Forest Service, the time sheets were named with a long string of meaningless numbers and letters. They were called T'n'A for short
Rhapsody in Numbers
They just built a new building on my campus, the
Arts and Social Sciences
building.
The bit of brilliance where they took the awkward but identifiable PCMCIA and changed it to "PC Card", which is very easily confused with "PCI Card".
I have experienced this directly since I ordered a PCI Ethernet card, and the store sent me a PC Ethernet card by mistake.
When the Reform Party, headed by Preston Manning went thru some changes, decided to rename themselves, they went thru some difficulties finding a new name.
For a while they were called Canadian Reform/Alliance Party
Where one of the letters of the acronym is an acronym. And one of its letters is also an acronym. Etc.
e.g. GCC is GNU Compiler Collection (these days) and GNU is GNU's Not Unix. Hence GCC has depth 2. I'm sure you can do better!
Baz
i was playing frisbee one day, and this kid brought a frisbee in that had "Canadian Ultimate National Team" written on it. now, as i understand it, the team is really called the Canadian National Ultimate Team, however, the (unintentional?) switching of the two middle words made for an amusing acronym
-c
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
PEBKAC
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The best I've seen is the Office of Register General of India (ORGI), the Indian census. It's obvious how ORGI is pronounced, and it is the most commonly used term for their census organization. The best part is that the folks there use the term all the time, yet don't realize the humor in it.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
DARE has to be an acronym created by a committee. They probably came up with the slogan, and then had to come up with something for DARE to stand for. Of course, the obvious answer is "Drugs Are Really Excellent," not "Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education."
I wonder how quickly they would sue if I started selling bumper stickers with the alternate slogan?
They ended up with University of Northumbria at Newcastle.
So I came back from an awesome camping trip, and for months told everyone, "I'm still camping." I called my cubicle my 'campsite' (I guess my system was the campfire), and considered getting my title changed from Software Engineer to Software Ranger.
We had a dry erase board which listed what all of the engineers were working on at the time. I was happy to see that several months after I had left there, the dry erase board still said, "Andrew - SEx and Camping."
What a job!
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
The
Segway
Human
Transport
I'm not making this SHT up.
One of our esteemed {eh-hem} political leaders here in the Great Almost White But Always Very Wet North decided to re-name his party; a combination of the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party to, you guessed it - the Canadian Reform Alliance Party (or something of that nature). Well-intentioned, I'm sure, but it only took about 2 hours before the headlines containing "CRAP" were in print.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Hey! I had all the HINs locked up. I worked for a company that deployed (Regional) Health Information Networks.
We had CHIN, Chicago Health Information Network.
HINT, of Tennessee.
HINOV, Of Ohio Valley. (Cincinatti and into Kentucky)
and....
RHINNO, Regional Health Information Network of Northern Ohio. (Cleveland and Akron)
On my network diagram used in our exhibit booth I labled the example "Your RHIN." I wondered of anybody would pick up that that was a common hospital term.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Gee Ma'am...sounds like youre having an I-D-Ten-T error. ID10T.
"I am a warrior, and information is my weapon..."
Where I heard it
I work for a research lab at FSU (that's Florida State Univ) that does work with the FL Dept. of Transportation.
The name of our research lab? The "Information Processing and Transmission Engineering Laboratory". Or the IPTEL. Or the I-P-and-TEL.
How about our DOT branch office? Well, it used to be the Signals and Traffic Engineering Research Lab. Or the STERL, pronounced "sturl". We all called it the "sterile". They've since dropped the S, so it's the TERL.
Just my little bit.
Brandon
(NewWazoo)
Proud member or STERL, IPandTEL.
It came up in a review of next generation processors (a few years ago I think). The author conceeded that he would have to find a different name.
yep, they get used here at my place of employment. kinda makes you sick just thinking about it huh?
I got this one in my email at work today: "...by a lower level Program Steering Committee (PSG)..."
I believe this is the first acronym I've seen where the acronym seemed to be random and not actually based upon what it stands for.
I would have oh so loved those support calls...
Guess we would have needed a proctologist on speed dialI've got a problem with my A$$.
At the back of the reports we write at work, we put in a page with our qualifications. I have a BS in finance, so under the education section it used to say "BS, Finance." To some extent this is true, but I later changed my education credentials to "Bachelor's Degree in Finance."
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Standing for the Satellite and Network Operations Anomaly Reporting System, our bug tracker.
The acronym has since been changed.
Steve.
I used to work for the military. Some years ago there were acronyms of "DO-PES" and "PEN15". They're old, maybe 10-15 years, and no one seems to know what those stood for, but they certainly generate laughs.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
GNU, of course.
a software company called New Era Of Networks used NEON for their marketing name. got used by another software company called NEON and lost.
hahaha
Business Unit Manager (Job title)
From http://www.acronymfinder.com/
PCMCIA
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
http://www.club977.com/ - The 80's Channel!
Your source for commercial free 80's music!
The site seems to be down now, but I was cracking up for days as a result of the very cool people selling clothes and boards over at Absolute Soul Sport. That's fine and good--ha ha, take the letters and so on and so forth. But the site's address is / was www.assport.com.
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
I'm in my school's band. Thank god Drexel dont have a football team (and hence a marching band)
Drexel University Marching Band.
Unfortunately, DUMB already exists at some other schools, like Duke or Duquense.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Wally: Hey Dilbert, do you want to join my TTP project?
Dilbert: What does TTP stand for?
Wally: The TTP Project
Dilbert: I'd rather be your worst enemy.
The lame Slashdot filter says I have too few characters per line, so this is just a buffer to add more characters to the line. Please ignore unless you want to flame the lameness filter.SECS: SEMI Equipment Communication Standard. We frequently develop "SECS drivers". It really goes downhill fast.
This is one Microsoft did not convert to an Acronym. I think it was a Wise choice. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q224420
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
Whilst at Dundee University, our rival establishment in the same time was rumoured to be looking for a name change and some bright spark suggested Scottish Higher Institute of Technology. When the management noticed the acronym, they decided to add & Engineering, which did not improve matters.
You've all heard of nimby's yes (Not In My Backyard)? An acronym used to describe people who don't want necessary but somewhat undesirable utilities (a garbage dump for instance) built around there homes? Well in California, instead of nimby's they've got banana's. Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
Cheers!
-Pointed Stick
I've been hacking away at network drivers for NT systems lately. The network interface is called NDIS, so all the data structures for it start off with NDIS_. That means pointers to those data structures start with PNDIS_. For some insane (Freudian) reason, whenever I see PNDIS_ in my code it always looks like PENIS.....
Sprints problems go into the PMS que
Library Information Exchange System
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
TPTB at my Comm College were on one of their renaming binges (I'm assuming for no other reason than to spend more money on new signs...) One of Deans got it into their head that the Testing Center should be renamed "The Academic Student Services Lab". Several of the personel had to go to the Board with a mockup of a new sign proudly announcing the new "ASS Lab". The matter was quickly dropped and we still have the Testing Center :-)
Product Management System.
It was a <B>monthly</B> job. Needless to say, it was renamed before going into production.
Thus sprach higg.
Committee to RE-Elect the President
Needless to say they changed the name soon after.
The name does sum up what the party is about quite nicely though, I might admit.
A friend of mine was recently asked to consult on some project. He's a therapist, and works in a very PC environment - therefore often likes to take the piss in subtle ways to relieve the stress of it all.
Anyway, all these management types were running around like mad spouting their TLAs. My friend sat them down and said (tongue in cheek) "OK, this is confusing. What we really need is a WDW document".
"Wow" they all said, "what's a WDW".
Stephen explained that it was a Who Does What.
They actually started taking notes!
So anyway, from his taking of the piss, there is now a real procedure for a WDW at a certain university in Hamilton, New Zealand.
Prisoner #655321
DMCA
need i say more?
When I was in the Air Force, a common prank played on newbies fresh out of tech school involved sending them to the tool room for a bottle of K9P solution.
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
For those of you who remember the building where the 2000 GOP Convention, the 2001 X-Games, and the 2002 NBA All-Star Game all took place:
The First Union Center in Philadelphia.
Yes a company PAID for that name.
The Kettering University Science and Math Department often refers to themselves as the S&M department. They once (might still, I haven't looked lately), had a bulliten board with the caption "S&M Faculty" listing the various faculty memebers and their acheivments.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
When first developing our NT domain structure, the working group had a very high level 'Universal Resource Domain' as the starting point. All the users would be in that circle. Of course, the corporate name has to be slapped on everything we do. Thus, it was named the 'Tribune Universal Resource Domain'. It lasted for a few months as that until we did the final diagrams for the management group. Since there was little room, we cut it down to TURD. Needless to say, the name was changed. (Unfortunately, the NT domain structure stayed.)
When taking a class on IBM's AIX clustering system, HACMP (High Availability Clustered Muli-Processing), I came across the acronym DGSP. The IBM instructor didn't know what it stood for. (Functionally, DGSP is a system scram when things are so hosed up that the node is better down than up. It happens when one node can't talk to another node in the cluster.)
A few months latter, I was taking the advanced HACMP course at CLAM, the company that actually wrote HACMP for IBM, and asked about DGSP. They were able to explain that DGSP stands for 'Die Gravy Sucking Pig'. In some versions of HACMP you can strings a binary and find that for yourself.
IBM takes itself way too seriously, however, so gravy sucking pigs would never go over in their offical documentation. So, if you trudge through their updated documentation, you'll see that they say DGSP stands for 'Diagnostic Group Shutdown Partition'. That, by the way, makes substantially less sense than Die Gravy Sucking Pig.
InitZero
There was a program that would test the access control lists. The program was named "testACL", and everyone pronounced it "test-A-C-L".
In a meeting, I pronounced it as a single word -- "testicle". Everyone lost it. ;-)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Just hearing it is sickening and depressing at the same time.
Promoting that phrase showed how little MS (and Gates specifically) knew about this Internet thing -- or it was intentional to cause confusion and like other attempts to weaken anything not invented at Microsoft. I vote for stupidity or simple envy wrapped up in a Freduan slip over mallace, though it's not a confident vote. Either way, truely scary.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
There's used to be an insurance services company called Policy Management Systems.
-- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - R.A.H.
In Durham, NC (USA), the story goes that there was a contest to name the local bus system. After some months, the leading candidate was "The Bus." It has a certain folksy charm to it, don't you think? They went with DART (Durham Area Rapid Transit.)
It's not an acronym, but I thought I was pretty clever with the name of a system I worked on. We were upgrading reporters in our news department from Word Perfect on DOS to Word on Windows (OK, so upgrade isn't the best term) and I had a new machine to test the new environment. To reflect the new OS, I called the new system "New Shell", but preferred to think of it as "News Hell."
For the same reporters, I wrote the client side of a program for filing stories which I called "Scooper." The reporters liked it for suggesting getting a scoop on a story (beating the competition), but my private image was of a pooper-scooper to reflect the crap that they produced.
When we wrote the scooper program, one of the things we wanted was to have good error reporting. I was meticulous and read about error codes in the SMTP RFC. The guys who maintained the back-end of the news system had an expression for when things were bad. They would say, for example, "News is on fire! I can't talk now!" So, following the advice in the RFC, this state returned error code 451 (the Fahrenheit temperature when paper combusts, for those of you who haven't read Ray Bradbury.)
(What do you know, I managed to work acronyms into three out of five of the above paragraphs!)
Twain. Thing Without An Interesting Name
Do you know what the PowerPC assembly command for Enforce In-Order Execution of I/O is?
Why, you might ask?
Fear, uncertainty and doubt. I mean, here we are, trying to convince to casual consumers that MS intentionally attempts to confuse people, and we wrap it in a confusing acronym?!
I mean, how counter-purpose can you get?
"Old man yells at systemd"
It was the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party". They are now the "Canadian Alliance Party".
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
And he never has the same problem twice.
I always liked TWAIN drivers (those nice drivers for capturing images from scanners, cameras and whatever.
Technology Without An Interesting Name.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
SOFA (Students On Financial Aid)
VENOM (Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem)
GROSS (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS)
Funny:
SHT - Segway Human Transport
Worst for complexity:
ROADSTER - Remote Operative for Advance Electronics Guided Information Systems Distributed Systems Tactical Element Remedy
Worst for just plain sucking:
WILLPOS - At Work IndividuaL Lunch Personal Ordering System
Obligatory MS Crack:
Windows CE + Windows ME + Windows NT ==
Windows CEMENT
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
The End Of The World As We Know It
At Derxel, there was an intramural softball team called the Nads. Their cheer was "Go Nads! Go Nads!"
For LDAP Standalone Ldap Replication Protocol and Basic User Regristration Protocol. Might as well throw in SLAPD also
not SLUP. TypeO
Segway Human Transporter? http://www.satirewire.com/news/0112/sht.shtml
I've had this sig for three days.
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we used to have a cable TV provider called Prime Cable. It didn't take too long to start calling them Crime Cable.
Naturally we were disappointed when we heard they were being bought out. I mean, what were the odds that the new company would have a name as easy to make fun of as Crime Cable?
Thank you, Cox!
Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
PHB: Carol, from now on don't put DOPE on my business cards. Spell out my full title - Director Of Product Enhancements
Carol: I didn't know you were the Director Of Product Enhancements.
ASS WIPO: The automated susbsystems of the World Intellectual Property Organization, as documented here: Google Cache of a PDF. Also featured: ASS graphics, ASS certificates, ASS publication, ASS input, and ASS searches.
Liberty in your lifetime
From Harry Potter:
the Society for Protection of Elvish Welfare
or "SPEW"
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Shoot The Other Machine In The Head. An Explanation. I'm serious.
fnord.
...Institute of Technology
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Their name just begs for abuse. But I have to say, their service has rocked for me.
up until a few years ago it was simply "Friends University of Central Kansas," now they're just "Friends University"
The name says it all. They actually had T-shirts. My company actually paid me good money to go....Once.
If you think deeply enough, you will have no single direction for your outrage.
WORM is of course Write Once Read Many. Many years ago there was a short lived company named "Low Down" who produced the "Low Down SCSI WORM." I loved that.
And of course who could forget NBT's "reversible, half-ASCII, biased encoding" (as in RFC 1001/1002) for name resolution.
I got a good laugh out of our Permit Management System.
I just found this one today. Quite serendipitous, really.
Perl Object Oriented Programming
I rather like many of the funnier acronyms that have been mentioned here so far, but the ones that seem to be most annoying are those that seem to be redundant, useless, and unusually long. As we all know, IBM is known for its knack for coming up with all sorts of TLAs and SFLAs, but they also coined what seems to be the only two-word acronym, which in turn is made up from various smaller acronyms: BICARSA GLAPPR, short for Billing, Inventory Control, Accounts Receivable, Sales Analysis, General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and Payroll. And that is pretty scary.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
...came the course management system - SMART - Student Management And Resource Tracking. Wonder how long they took to get that one to fit.
Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party.
:P
Gotta love Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, and all the other Canadian Alliance (nee Reform) party. And their current name is misleading too -- The Alliance was meant to be the merger and sum of both Manning's Reform Party and Joe Clark's (Joe who?) Progressive Conservative Party. What's so progressive about conservatism, I don't know... Seems more regressive to me...
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
that is by far the most annoying one i have ever heard. it is so overused. makes me sick.
Acrophobia was great, but is, alas, no more. During the merge-fest and flopping around of bezerk, uproar, iwon, flipside, etc, it got cancelled. But it is supposed to be coming back. (Unfortunately, that page has been there for a while)
But of course, some fans decided to make their own version. Check out AcroChallenge for one option. I've played it, it works pretty well. Check out Acro All Night for news related to Acrophobia.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
When I first arrived at University, our college ( dorm to those in the US ) was just putting network connections to every room. The students responsible for the planning and design were the Group for Information Technology Solutions, or GITS.
So I end becoming the only freshman member of the GITS. After the network was installed and stable, the GITS no longer had a reason for existing.
What was needed was a new "committee" ( like the Sports Committee ) to police the shiny new network, and the resource room ( share computers ). Since all the other GITS had left, I got thrown in as the head of the new committee. In the spirit of the old names, we decided to call it the Network And Resource room Committee, or NARC.
I haven't been back the the building in years, but I hear the name is still used
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -Heinlein
A pretty good book, now if only he could write an ENDING in any of his books
No one mentioned wysiwyg yet. You just can't call something that.
Ok, I'm not sure I believe this one, but it came from a co-worker that used to work in Marketing for Sony Canada:
Sony was working on a Peta-byte tape server system for extremely large storage requirements. You guessed it, they wanted to name it the "Peta-File"... until the connotations were carefully explained to them.
(ok, so that's not an acronym, but it fits the same subject)
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
SPEBSQSA is the worst acronym I've ever seen -- the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America.
Jeez...
The funny thing is that it's even pronounced... usually the last S is left off (for savings), approximating "SPEB-squah".
I've been known to tell people that we have an eye-D-ten-T problem (ID10T) and problems with the D.F.U's (Dumb Fsck'n Users).
New people (especially women) are always shocked with the BTCHCNT column.
dinosaur comics
SOHCAHTOA (pronounced so - ka - TOE - ah)
stands for lots of things:
Some old hippie caught another hippie tripping on acid; Some old horse caught another horse taking oats away; Some old hag cought another hag touching orifices anal, etc, but leastly and lastly, Sine = opposite over hypotenuse, Cosine = adjacent over hypotenuse, Tangent = opposite over adjecent.
A math teacher once told me back in high school that cosin is more fun than sin.
ASU's School of Music gives out BM's.
I don't get it. What is the significance of K9P?
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
I remember seeing a really funny ad in a BBS magazine in the early 90s. I may have forgotten a few details, but I believe that the product was a program called Personal Internet Mail Processor. The logo with a globe wearing a pink hat with a purple feather.
This is a no shitter... onboard USS [insert submarine name], nubs are ordered as part of some maint. to go back aft to "blow the eow"
which at first sounds like a random valve, but actually stands for "engineering officer of the watch"
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
The name of colleague of mine is Harald Inge Vestbø. As we use initials a lot at our company, he is mainly referred to as HIV. Even his email is hiv@...
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
"Canine pee".
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
Investment banking home-brewed app named Warrant Update Service System.
Let's not forget where Apu went to get his computer science degree. I'm surprised they were even allowed to say Springfield Heights Institute of Technology in the show.
My company uses three letter acronyms to designate groups of modules. Each module in a group is then named in the form "XXXYYYY.cxx", where XXX is the group acronym, and YYYY is a four letter word, which theoretically describes the purpose of the module The archive search system is one of my favorites. Especially the archive dump module, or ASSDUMP.
~ The Fudge Report @ http://mywebpages.comcast.net/fudgereport/
or to go look for some elbow grease, or a bucket of aye-eye-arr (air)
... C.O.N.E.R.
what was a real killer was that on my sub (SSN-708) our captain was Commander Rondorf.
His full name?
Commanding Officer Neil Eugene Rondorf
take the first letter of each word and you get
for those of you not in the know, 'coner' is a derogatory term for those who don't work with the nuclear power plant. the nuclear power plant is Aft, the non-nuclear personnel work Forward (the cone). naturally, of course, nuke personnel were "fuckin nukes" (like to overengineer shit)
was the Sam Houston Institute of Technology
now the Sam Houston State University (SHSU).
BOB: Bend Over Boys?
NT: Nice Try.
VMS: Vomit Making System.
They called it Parkview Middle School. Upon visiting the school I remember a student asking his mom if that's what she had. Of course, the (female) principal demanded splitting the first word, so now it's Park View Middle School.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
One of the group objects on our Netware server is for employees in sales and marketing.
It was called S&M by whoever set it up. Always good for a laugh when we get a new employee.
This from a friend's father who was in the (American) Drug Enforcement Agency. I think there was also a TITS, but I don't recall what it stood for.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I don't know about you, but I think there's already quite enough crap in power :)
I thought the Critical Update Notification Tool that they brought out the other day was rather good.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Colllege of Notre Dame of Maryland
an all-girl's Catholic collge
I work for Titan. Our particular division is the "System Technology Division".
TIARA is one of my favourites.. TIARA Is A Recursive Acronym.. I still have to find a good project for the name to go with :)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The stock symbol for Sun Microsystems is "SUNW" which some think to mean "Software Under No Warranty".
For those IBM'ers out there, RETAIN should invoke some horrible memories.
I mean, how foreign can you get...
In Scandinavia, there is a supermarket chain named Konsum. Their ad campaign exclaimed "Kom med i det glada Konsumgänget!" was quickly graffitized into "Kom med i det glada Könsumgänget! It became a two-day multimillion-dollar campaign.
The pun is too complex to explain and does not even involve an acronym...
ATM has to be the most conusing acronym.
It's "Adobe Type Mananager"!
No, it's a machine you get your money out of at the bank...!
No, it's a networking....
Names are generally only appropriate if they are unique.
they once had a Special High Intensity Training program. After I made a comment about it, I was in deep Special High Intensity Training.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
He recived two votes, one from himself, and one from his mom.
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
Holland College in Prince Edward Island used to be known as the Samuel Holland Institute of Technology. I doubt the school bookstore was able to sell much logoware twith THAT acronym on it!
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I learned my resistor colour codes at school like this... Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well Or Black Brown Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet Grey White. Dont blame me im only half arsed!!!!! CJ
The airport authority over here in Ireland is called Aer Rianta. A friend of mine worked for their Support Services division. They got a load of packing tape delivered. It was the first time anyone had seen the abbreviation together. A.R.S.S. Apparently the boss just shrugged and walked away...
People can't memorize computer industry acronyms.
Michigan University Medical Program, ran on Dec computers to control and track lab tests in hospitals.
A bunch of users came to a convention with buttons reading "I've been exposed to MUMPS"
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
No word of a lie.
They couldn't figure out why it was that people
snickered like CRAZY at their booth at tradeshows, which by definition (logging industry) is filled with roughneck, redneck, chainsaw toting tobacco chewers.
They eventually changed it to something else, I believe. But for a while the lobbying industry in Canada to get women to be lumberjacks was called exactly that.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Worked with an Operating System called "Disk Management Facility" (DMF)
Currently work with a product called "Performance Essentials", which for some reason is abbreviated as P.E.S.S.T.
And years ago, someone told me about a system called "Fully Automated Instrument Landing System" (FAILS). Probably not true, but amusing.
Hard to believe they chose it, but they did.
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
WCUNT - Windows Critical Update Notification Tool.
Sounds fishy to me. (I had to say it and I know I'm going to hell.)
Sorry for the non computer ones, but these crack me up. Toyota Racing Development Ford Racing Team I'm waiting for honda and GM to merge so we can have Acura Super Sport I think Ford's is SVO now BTW...
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
The running joke was that the new company name would be AirB.A.G. Thank goodness they took the risk of giving it a unique name instead of following the lead of mega-mergers (eg MCI-Worldcom, AOL-Time-Warner, etc).
m.mmm..myyy
I can't believe that no one has mentioned PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. If you say it really fast during talks you can get some inquisitive looks, but no one dares smile.
-Sean
Friends University of Central Kansas.
It was actually listed on the list of schools when I was taking AP tests back in high school.
.
m.mmm..myyy
Committee to Re-elece the Existing President.
This was Nixon, I believe.
A while ago my friend was discussing the possibility of having a north american currency, similar to the euro. He suggested that it be called the North American Dollar. You think paying an arm and a leg is bad, think about having to pay 2 NADs.
was called Garden Grove United Church of Christ, which they abbreviated on the sign out front as GGUCC. When they changed the name to Faith United Church of Christ, they expanded the sign.
Since GNU in infinitely recursive, GCC effectively has a depth of Aleph + 1.
My old web shop in London started this team a few months after I shipped out to Australia
P.I.S.S.E.D.
Platform Independent Server-Side Enterprise Development - they were basically the java/perl squad. nice acro, and it was in fact official.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
At the company-that-shall-remain-nameless that I work for, we have a small department known as Managed Information Systems (MIS). On the doorway to their bosses' offices is a large nameplate reading simply "MIS Management".
Welcome to the Defense Industry.
Age does not make us childish, as they say. It only finds us true children still. - Goethe, "Faust"
SEX it stands for Something everybody xeroxes. :-)
I found it at www.acronymfinder.com
-Microsoft? Who? What?
-Open source all the way baby!
-Gaiden to a Green Aes Sedai (yeah!)