/// Another Moronic, Inane and Gratuitous Article
    ---------------------------------------------
    by Chad Freeman
    (cjfst4+@pitt.edu or cjfst4@cislabs.pitt.edu -- Internet)
    (cfreeman -- BIX)



Did you ever feel overwhelmed by the endless stream of technical jargon and 
acronyms that pervade the electronics industry?  Well, you're not alone.  
Acronyms have been around since the very first days of computers, with the 
ABC and the ENIAC, and programming languages with FORTRAN, T0 and COBOL, and 
even in companies with IBM and UNISYS.  Computer scientists wonder why 
they're having such a hard time writing programs that don't cause major
accidents.  Well, its obvious, isn't it?  The average computer scientist has 
so much brain power expended on remembering all this silly stuff that they 
couldn't code their way out of a paper bag!  I mean, even software designed 
to help make better programs has an acronym, CASE!  Unfortunately, unless 
NASA (hey, there's another one!) is planning on using the Hubble telescope 
to brainwash the entire planet into getting rid of all this pesky stuff, we 
as part of the computer nerd community must learn to live with it.  Of 
course, we at AMIGA, in the interest of keeping our own acronym and helping 
you remember yours, have compiled this rather inane acronym list for you to 
print out and keep in your wallet, so you can finally stop worrying about 
the difference between SCSI and IDE...


        TAAL (The Amiga Acronym List)
        -----------------------------

I. Disk Drives

OFS, FFS, DC-FFS: Oh your Feet Smell, Frank's Feet Smell, Dear
        Columbus, Frank's Feet Smell.

DF0: Duh, i Flunked with a 0.
DF1: Duh, i Flunked with a 1.
DF2: Duh, i Flunked with a 2.
HD0: Hey, i got a D with a 0! (In case of special services for professor)

SCSI: So Can i Start to Inhale?
IDE: I Didn't Exhale.
(In honor of Slick Willie)

II. File Formats

IFF: Imploding Freshwater Fish
TIFF: Terrible-smelling Imploding Freshwater Fish
GIF: God-awful IBM Format
PCX: Pretty Crappy X-Rated pictures
FLI: Frustrated Little-boys tItillations
8SVX: HUH?
RTF: Really Tacky Format
MOD: Messed-up Old Data
MUS: Mysterious Unused Software
ASCII: Atrocious Simple-minded Code for Insidious Interpolation

III. Programming

FORTRAN: FORtunately there's TRANslators (into this language)
COBOL: Commodore Outta Be bought out by Out Levi's (see SNOBOL)
SNOBOL: Chance in hell of anyone buying Commodore (see COBOL)
PL/1: Programming Language for 1st graders
BASIC: Blunderers And Simpletons Implement Code (in this language)
COMAL: COMe on, Another Language?
LISP: Lots of Inane and Silly Parentheses
REXX: Not an acronym, named after Jurassic Park.
C: Cool!
E: Excellent!
C++: HUH?

IV. Other

WP: (Not supported by The Amiga Acronym List)
GUI: Goofy User Interface
MIPS: My I'm Pretty Sullen
RTFM: Read The Four-foot thick Manual!
BBS: Boring Blathering Sedation
MODEM: MOre DEmoralizing Ministrations
IBM: Incurable Butthead Mentality

THE END (THis is the End, Exit Now Damnit!)