Geekspeak Baffles Web Users

An anonymous reader writes to mention a BBC article on the technology buying public's continued frustration with 'geek speak'. Despite ever-increasing adoption of high tech gadgets in first-world nations, the terms used to describe what these new toys do often elude the people who buy them. From the article: "Acronyms in particular foxed users. 75% of online Britons did not know that VOD stands for video-on-demand, while 68% were unaware that personal video recorders were more commonly referred to as PVRs. Millions of people keep in touch via instant messaging but some 57% of online Brits said they did not know that the acronym for it was IM. 'The technology industry is perhaps the most guilty of all industries when it comes to love of acronyms,' said Mr Burmaster. "

Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[aoism]

pepople cant memorize computer industry acronyms

WTF?!

[valkabo]

WTF NUBS?! RTFM!

The only acronym you need

[HappyHead]

DMUANUY
Don't Make Up Acronyms - Nobody Understands You

Re:OMG fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fp? Now what the fuck is that?

Re:Sigh.

[dewie]

Even of you'd used...

And there's the inevitable typo in a grammar-nazi post. Double-sigh.

hmmm

[nrgy]

With all my L33T knowledge I still trying to figure out what the GIRL acronym means. Oh well back to WoW.

Re:Sigh.

[E IS mC(Square)]

>>Even of you'd used the word you meant, it'd still have been the wrong word.

I don't usually like to complain about grammar and spelling in post replies, but come on, at least get your spellings right while cribbing about it, especially when you'd used the world you did not mean is the wrong word.

Too many acronyms?!?

[EasyT]

I didn't RTFA, but WTF? FYI IANAL, but AFAIK this is slander, AKA lies. I'd sue FTW ASAP. J/K, LOL.

Re:Sigh.

[QuickFox]

especially when you'd used the world you did not mean is the wrong word

Suppose you get your English right... :-D

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[cabinetsoft]

Beat this: AAAAAAAAAAAAAA - American Amateur Applied Arts Academy Association Against Absurd And Asininely Artificial Alliterative Acronyms Award

"foxed"...wtf?

[rootrot]

Wait...Brits who don't understand tech acronyms are getting hit with foxes?!? Is this some strange backlash against the hunt ban? I am so confused....

wtf

[burndive]

It's a great program I have on my Linux box:

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/games-misc/wtf [gentoo-portage.com]

Re:Sigh.

[wall0159]

It's because we try to show how intelligent and sophisticated we are by using words we can't spell, and whose meaning we don't really know.

aren't we humans a bunch of wankers? ;-)

Definetly the military.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I hear one of those flashy RAF boys use the ancronym ASRAAM (The AIM-132 Anvanced Short Range Air to Air Missile) it always cracks me up since the way they pronounce it usually makes it sound a lot more like a method of copulation not uncommonly seen raunchy porn movies than a ancronym for a missile system.

Re:Sigh.

[Resident Netizen]

elude/allude

Elude means 'to escape'.
Allude is a common depressant.

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

[TempeTerra]

Oh, crap. Here comes the apocalypse.

And by these signs shall ye be warned:
natural order turned a-head -
the chicken rises from the pot;
laws of logic lose their sway -
appropriate analogies on Slashdot

Re:Too many acronyms?!?

[tool462]

I didn't RTFA, but WTF? FYI IANAL, but AFAIK this is slander, AKA lies. I'd sue FTW ASAP. J/K, LOL.

I didn't reheat the fettucini alfredo, but why the fuss? Food you ingest isn't always noodles and liquid, but also fried and I know this is slander, all knavery and lies. I'd sue fraudulent temp waiters (and salt and pepper). Just kidding, love oily linguini.

Re:That's not it.

[Fordiman]

Hehe.

It's a DVR.

It's a what?

A digital video recorder.

Oh, you mean like a TiVo?

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[gdog05]

"Oh Stewardess...I speak jive"

I'll recycle a remark of mine on LWN

[smittyoneeach]

The TLA namespace is just too crowded.

Thus was born the Extented TLA, or ETLA.
Some people trying for a DOD contract took the ETLA and made it Joint, resulting in a JETLA.
Inflation came along, and we needed to manage JETLAs via a Group key.
Feelings of JETLAG came as no surprise.

Re:TLAs

[StarkRG]

I did, but people just thought I was sneezing.

Re:Acronym resuse and abuse

[djp928]

One unusual acronym is 'PA' which can mean Power Amp, Public Address, Prince Albert, Pennsylvania, Panama, Physician's Assistant, Power of Attorney, Press Agent, Production Assistant, and probably more.

You missed the obvious gamer geek one: Penny Arcade

-- Dave

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[nacturation]

A big push in the IT department where I work is to say the whole thing, rather than just the acronym.

I think you meant to say Information Technology department. Might want to send out a company-wide electronic mail so that others don't make this mistake.
 

Re: people cant memorize industry acronyms

[Badfysh]

My father-in-law, a university lecturer, once asked me what the acronym SPAM stood for. Imagine his disappointment when I told him that it's not an acronym, it comes from the classic Monty Python sketch. He went off muttering something about the entire computer industry being run by 16 year olds.

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

[Tim Browse]

I am not into ducks.

The slashdotter doth protest too much, methinks.

Re:"foxed"...wtf?

[Ed Avis]

Sir, to defend our trademark me must request and require that you cease and desist from mentioning foxes in any Slashdot comment without prior approval.

Sincerely, Mozilla Corporation.

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

[hey!]

And the CPU is the hot-plate?

Actually, each CPU core is an oven.

We used have just one oven in our stove, but now we have multi-oven stoves. This doesn't help us roast a turkey faster (unless we find a way to cut the turkey in half), but it helps us when we have to cook the pumpkin pie at the same time.

Servers are like pantries; these days we each have our own kitchen in a workgroup, which shares a single pantry. Over the whole organization, we end up with a lot of pantries, and unfortunately a lot of times what you need is in a pantry that is on the other side of the building. It gets complicated.

Now Service Oriented Architectures are like if the company decided to set up a little food court with a butcher, baker and saucier chef. Instead of dressing and trussing the turkey you'd have the butcher do it for you. You can get dough, pie crusts or finished pies from the baker, and teh saucier will supply things like hollandaise sauce. One you're set up to cook that way, you can use outside suppliers, like if you needed want pate a choux instead of the simple pate brisee your in-house baker provides.

Oh, man I'm goign to town with this one.

Re:I'll recycle a remark of mine on LWN

[FellowConspirator]

TLA = Three Letter Acronym EFLA = Extended Four Letter Acronym ULFLA = Unnecessarily Long Five Letter Acronym CYHSLA = Can You Have Six Letter Acronyms?