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Re: What does RSS stand for?

• To: Jeff Lowery <Jeff.Lowery@c...>
• Subject: Re: What does RSS stand for?
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 18:01:36 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <4827EC373E03DB44AC2AB3900430896B672342@c...>
• References: <4827EC373E03DB44AC2AB3900430896B672342@c...>
• User-agent: Mutt/1.4.1i

Jeff Lowery scripsit:

> Reminds when I first saw a BLOB column in a database schema at Boeing and
> asked what it was. Turns out it stood for Boeing Large Object BLOB.

recursive acronym: n.  A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is
to choose acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves
or to other acronyms/abbreviations. The original of the breed may have
been TINT ()B�??TINT Is Not TECO�?�). The classic examples were two MIT
editors called EINE ()B�??EINE Is Not EMACS�?�) and ZWEI (�??ZWEI Was EINE
Initially)B�?�). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar
Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for )B�??GNU's
Not Unix!)B�?� �?? and a company with the name Cygnus, which expands
to )B�??Cygnus, Your GNU Support�?� (though Cygnus people say this is a
backronym). The GNU recursive acronym may have been patterned on XINU,
)B�??XINU Is Not Unix�?� �?? a particularly nice example because it is a
mirror image, a backronym, and a recursive acronym. See also mung, EMACS.

mung: /muhng/, vt.  [in 1960 at MIT, )B�??Mash Until No Good�?�;
sometime after that the derivation from the recursive acronym )B�??Mung
Until No Good)B�?� became standard; but see munge] [definitions omitted]

EMACS: /ee´maks/, n.  [in part] Indeed, some hackers find EMACS
too heavyweight and baroque for their taste, and expand the name as
)B�??Escape Meta Alt Control Shift�?? to spoof its heavy reliance
on keystrokes decorated with bucky bits. Other spoof expansions include
)B�??Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping�?? (from when that
was a lot of core), )B�??Eventually malloc()s All Computer Storage�??,
and )B�??EMACS Makes A Computer Slow�??.

>  
> 
-- 
BALIN FUNDINUL          UZBAD KHAZADDUMU        jcowan@r...
BALIN SON OF FUNDIN     LORD OF KHAZAD-DUM      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

• References:
  • RE: What does RSS stand for?
    • From: Jeff Lowery <Jeff.Lowery@c...>

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