Technology loves a three-letter acronym (TLA), but those letters often conceal the full horror of what lies beneath. These are the best “real” translations we’ve encountered.
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| Acronym | Officially stands for | Actually stands for |
|---|---|---|
| ERP | Enterprise resource planning | Expensive, rigid and painful |
| CRM | Customer relationship management | Customers rarely matter |
| SLA | Sevice level agreement | Source of legal acrimony |
| CAD | Computer aided design | Complicated and difficult |
| ADSL | Asymmetric digital subscriber line | Always delayed slightly longer |
| FTP | File transfer protocol | Files transfer painfully |
| SMTP | Simple mail transfer protocol | Some messages terminate permanently |
| CASE | Computer aided software engineering | Can’t afford something else |
| NBN | National Broadband Network | Nodes being neglected |
| ACL | Access control list | Always causes lag |
| DHCP | Dynamic host control protocol | Doesn’t help connect PCs |
| SNMP | Simple network management protocol | Security not my problem |
Any additions? Share them in the comments.
Comments
15 responses to “Expensive, Rigid And Painful: What IT Acronyms Really Mean”
DNS Does Nothing Sensible
HTTP Head To This Place
After decades of Support roles found these useful and often applicable:
NFI – No F**king Idea
O2T – Oxygen Thief
BFI – Brute Force ‘n Ignorance
BFMB – Banana-Fingered Mouth Breather
PEBKAC – Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
This is just LAME
I can’t decode that acronym…
Laugh At Matty83g Endlessly
.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/LAME.html
PCMCIA
Officially stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
Actually stands for People Can’t Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms
Error code ID-ten-T – no explaination needed for that one.
PICNIC – Problem’s in (the) chair, not in (the) computer.
Most Intelligent Consumers Realise Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
Oh, and NTSC – Never Twice the Same Color
PAL – Perfection At Last, 😛
SECAM – Something Essentially Contrary to American Method.
I always liked ISDN – It Sounds Damn Nasty
Old IBM mainframes use EBCDIC
Every Bloody Code’s Different, IBM Crap
Nobody has mentioned: RTFS, RTFM, RTFD!
Also, from my service desk days: CACTUS, in the context, “your computer is CACTUS” – Cannot Accurately Continue the Usual Service.
As someone who used to work with POS, Piece Of Shit.
HTML – HoTMaiL 😛