Fun_People Archive
24 Apr
Filing a TSR (TLA Shortage Report)

Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 01:11:38 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Filing a TSR (TLA Shortage Report)

Forwarded-by: John Gilmore <gnu@cygnus.com>
Forwarded-By: hopkins@kaleida.com (Don Hopkins)

When I heard about DEC's "Basic Access to Remote Files" protocol, I suspected
something like this was up.  It's finally happened, they've hit the wall ...
        -Don

[forwards removed]
    
Analysts revealed today that a shortage of acronyms may be behind Digital
Equipment Corporation's poor stock performance of recent weeks.  By middle
of 1994 it is projected DIGITAL will have exhausted all usable 3- and 4-letter
permutations available in the western alphabet.  This is expected to
seriously hamper the introduction of new products.

Although possibilities exist for introducing non-alphabetic characters to
increase the number of permutations available, using unpronounceable
symbols, such as ~,[,*,^, and !, has serious drawbacks.  The Acronymic
Task Force (ATF) has been created by Digital to study the problem.

"We have not actually exhausted all the different combinations of letters,
but the ones that are left often have negative connotations." said William
Hought, ATF chair.  "We can't go around calling products 'FOO' or 'BLAH'."

Hought said the shortage affects the computer industry as a whole, "Right
now there is a rush to trademark various random combinations of letters --
to grab as many acronyms as possible for future products."

"But," Hought said, "the real solution is to expand the alphabet."  When
asked if it might make more sense to use longer, descriptive names Hought
responded, "This is a performance issue." 

© 1994 Peter Langston