M
Mac
myself and at least one other person. That defines a clear
majority.
I agree.
And in a pinch, the "other person" could be hypothetical. ;-)
Mac
I agree.
And in a pinch, the "other person" could be hypothetical. ;-)
Mac
N
Nils Petter Vaskinn
<snip>
Y2K
Is this year 2000 or year 2048 ?
I can't believe I've read all of the posts so far and noone has commented
the lack of "K&R" and "K&R2"
Just don't propose "u" as an acronym for "you" or we'll have the snowball
rolling again.
Why should anyone codify acceptable acronyms. Document those that are in
common use today (eg in a FAQ) and that noone complains about.
K
Kelsey Bjarnason
[snips]
You can't have been around too long, then; the LART and its companion tool
the cluebat have been used fairly frequently around usenet.
You can't have been around too long, then; the LART and its companion tool
the cluebat have been used fairly frequently around usenet.
D
Dan Pop
In said:
Years aren't memory bits/bytes/words, so there is no place for ambiguity.
Already documented in the FAQ, which is mandatory reading.
The point of the discussion, as I see it, is to determine which are those
thate are in common use today.
Dan
D
Dan Pop
A Google search for "fubar" would broaden your horizon.
Which is why I said it's not needed.
Because people who write that most often use "wtf?" (lowercase),
and aren't worth reading anyway. It's a statement of
lack-of-knowledge and obscenity in one.
"WTH" before, and I'm not entirely sure it means what you
imply it means (but can't come up with anything better, and
looks like Acronym Finder agrees with you) except in longer
phrases such as "WTHDYTYA (TTMT___)?". ;-)
One of the reasons for such abbreviations is to avoid *explicit*
obscenity when one thinks obscenity is called for. Canonical example:
RTFM.
Can't remember ever seeing it. If we start throwing in everything we
think it might be useful, the list will become unmanageably large
(and, therefore, useless) instantly.
Because it's NOT obvious: both undefined behaviour and unspecified
behaviour are equal candidates for this abbreviation, therefore neither is
the obvious meaning of the expression.
We did very well without them until now, thank you. Especially
considering that USB already has a very well defined meaning in
computing.
Dan
J
John Bode
Tak-Shing Chan said:
One I use a lot, but didn't see in your list, is IME, or "in my
experience."
Luser and plonk (actually spelled "** plonk **") are not acronyms, and
I consider any such definition erroneous. Beware False Acronym
syndrome. It once struck a legal publication that claimed UNIX was an
acronym for "Unified Network Information eXchange" or some such
nonsense.
S
Slartibartfast
<snip>
In a similar vein to RTFM is STFW. Surprised I haven't seen it here before.
In a similar vein to RTFM is STFW. Surprised I haven't seen it here before.
C
Christopher Benson-Manica
Slartibartfast said:
Well, there's always the ever-popular STFU
What the heck is STFWanyway?
J
Joona I Palaste
Well, there's always the ever-popular STFU
anyway?
Search The Friendly Web.
C
Christopher Benson-Manica
Is that really what it means, or is it a skillful situational
improvisation? In either case, thanks...
K
Keith Thompson
groups.google.com shows 349 occurrences of "fubar" in comp.lang.c. A
number of them are within e-mail addresses; mahy of the others are in
discussions of the origin of "foo".
K
Kelsey Bjarnason
[snips]
Yet hard drive capacity - measured in bytes - typically uses powers of 10,
not of 2: 1Mb is 1,000,000 bytes, not 1,048,576.
Apparently, the bits/bytes/words distinction isn't sufficient.
Yet hard drive capacity - measured in bytes - typically uses powers of 10,
not of 2: 1Mb is 1,000,000 bytes, not 1,048,576.
Apparently, the bits/bytes/words distinction isn't sufficient.
K
Keith Thompson
I don't think I've ever seen "UB" used in this newsgroup to refer to
"unspecified behavior". As far as I know, it has always meant
"undefined behavior" (probably because we talk about undefined
behavior a lot more often than we talk about unspecified behavior.)
Until Dan raised the point, it never occurred to me that UB might mean
"unspecified behavior". A cursory look in groups.google.com tends to
confirm this, but of course I haven't looked at all 2670 occurrences
Dan, can you provide a counterexample?
A
Arthur J. O'Dwyer
How so? I see only the commonly accepted definition on the first
page of Google results (and in the underlined definition link).
I assume you're not referring to either the VAX instruction or the
apparel company, both of which are "joke" acronyms whose humor
derives from the fact that they're both homographs for the "FUBAR"
we all know and love. If you are, then are you being more than
usually pedantic (to the exclusion of common sense), or is this an
issue with your (or my!) English-language or pop-culture knowledge?
One might just as well claim that the word "ratchet" has no single
accepted meaning in a mechanical-engineering context, because of the
existence of the video game "Ratchet and Clank"!
Do you *really* think that such a list of acronyms, even if it
ever gets "codified" by Paul or some other guy, is going to affect
the established Usenet subculture in any way? It's not like people
are going to stop using "ISTR" in sentences just because some guy
with a website thinks it's not self-explanatory.
One that is not applicable in c.l.c, yes. And I *have* seen
IDB used (in context, of course) in this newsgroup in the past.
It's very rare, and appropriately so.
-Arthur
J
Joona I Palaste
Well, it's an euphemism. The real meaning has another word starting with
F.
M
Mac
[snips]
You can't have been around too long, then; the LART and its companion tool
the cluebat have been used fairly frequently around usenet.
Maybe I've just been lucky. ;-)
Mac
D
Dan Pop
In said:
Which are off topic by definition ;-)
Dan
D
Dan Pop
In said:
That's why I wrote "*memory* bits/bytes/words" (emphasis added). When
the same bits/bytes/words are transferred on a communication line or
stored on an external storage medium, the powers of two lose their magic
and the decimal prefixes are used: a 14.4 kbps modem is a 14400 bps modem.
Ditto for hard disk and tape capacities, although things are less
consensual here: a gigabyte may be 1e9 or 1e3 * 2**20 or 2**30 bytes and
it's not uncommon to see the size of the same disk reported in three
different ways.
Dan
D
Dan Pop
In said:
My point is that it's an inappropriate abbreviation because both
undefined behaviour and unspecified behaviour *could* be abbreviated like
this. These terms are already confusing to the newcomer, because they
are perfectly equivalent in plain English, there is no need to push the
confusion even further.
Of course, the regulars have little trouble identifying the intended
meaning of UB, but c.l.c should not become an exclusive club of the
regulars, hence my objections to the abbreviation.
Dan
D
Dan Pop
There are at least two meanings for the F and three for the R, not to
mention the "non-standard" meanings, which may very well be the
standard meanings for other people, depending on their backgound.
If you first encountered FUBAR in that context, you may have no idea
that it could mean something else.
It was not its intended purpose. Its purpose, as I see it, is to make
the c.l.c newcomer's life easier, by providing him with a translation
list. If the list is too large, its usefulness is seriously impaired
(few people will be able to remember a list containing hundreds of
abbreviations and their expansions).
Obviously. So what? RH and Joona won't stop inventing 20 to 40 letter
ad hoc abbreviations, either.
It certainly is: "USB related discussions are off topic here". People
keep asking USB related questions here, on a more or less regular basis.
I have seen it, too, but mostly as an abbreviation proposal. In the
overwhelming majority of the cases, the term is written unabbreviated.
The idea is to codify existing practice, rather than start inventing
"useful" abbreviations.
Dan