20 Worst Acronyms

A survey reveals the alphabetic combinations BYTE readers dread most. By far the most disliked is PCMCIA.

ATM

Best guess: High-speed communications technology, Adobe Type Manager, or cash dispenser

Give up? Asynchronous transfer mode

BLOB

Best guess: Cheesy sci-fi monster

Give up? Binary large objects

CORBA

Best guess: Rikki Tikki Tavi's serpentine nemesis, spelled sideways

Give up? Common Object Request Broker Architecture

CSMA/CD

Best guess: Befuddlement

Give up? Carrier-sense multiple access/collision d etection

FAT

Best guess: Never mind the cheesecake

Give up? File allocation table

FPSNW

Best guess: Notorious savings & loan that went bankrupt

Give up? File and Print Service for NetWare

FTP

Best guess: Gasoline additive

Give up? File transfer protocol

ISV

Best guess: Medical tubing

Give up? Independent software vendor

MIME

Best guess: Street performer-induced desire to flee

Give up? Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions

OOBE

Best guess: Fear that speaker is about to break into old Roy Orbison novelty tune (i.e., "Oobie Doobie")

Give up? Out-of-box experience

PCMCIA

Best guess: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms

Give up? Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, recently reduced to PC Card

RISC

Best guess: Would they name a car The Liability?

Give up? Reduced-instruction-set computer

SCSI

Best guess: The next big thing after grunge

Give up? Small computer system interface

SOHO

Best guess: Favorite spot of werewolves of London

Give up? Small office/home office

SQL

Best guess: Hollywood technique for capitalizing on success

Give up? Structured Query Language

TCP/IP

Best guess: Oh you do, do you?

Give up? Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TWAIN

Best guess: Great American writer; things that shall never meet

Give up? Toolkit without an important name

VESA

Best guess: Credit card; traveling papers

Give up? Video Electronics Standards Association

WAIS

Best guess: Pronounced "ways"? "way-is"? "wah-is"?

Give up? Wide Area Information Servers

WYSIWYG

Best guess: Harpo Marx's hairpiece

Give up? What you see is what you get

WORST REPEAT OFFENDERS

"The acronyms in most CS, IT, and MIS want ads . I have a master's degree in CS and still can't read these ads."

--software engineer in Bozeman, MT

The telecomm and networking folks , who've given us such doozies as DFWMAC (distributed foundation wireless media access control), MESI (modified, exclusive, shared, invalid), and USART (universal synchronous/asynchronous receiver/transmitter)

Performance indicators , like SPECint92

World Wide Web addresses -- http://www.etc.etc.etc./better.not.make.a.typo

The Really Stretching It Award goes to VERONICA ( v ery e asy r odent- o riented n etwide i ndex to c omputerized a rchives)