Jimmyt is right. NASA is an acronym because you pronounce it "nassa"—you don't pronounce it "en-ay-ess-ay".

FBI is an abbreviation because you pronounce it "eff-bee-eye"—you don't pronounce it "f'bih".

We live in an age of abbreviations. LP, CD, VHS, DVD, MP3...

Instead of inventing new ones, I'd like to get rid of the ones we have.

For instance, I think we should abandon the term CD and start calling them "records." Why not? Etymologically, a "record" is something that is recorded, right? So it fits. And "record" isn't being used much.

First 78- and 45-rpm disks were called "records." Then long-playing records were invented, and people called them LPs (I suppose because it was too awkward to call them "thirty-three-and-a-thirds"). After a while, they quit calling them LPs and just called them records, and at the same time, they started called the 45s "singles" (which is odd; they usually contain two songs, so why don't they call them "doubles"?). Now we're ready to make the change again, in my opinion.

Vista is an improvement over XP, naming-wise (never mind the quality of the software). At least "Vista" is a word.

Three cheers for Blu-Ray. It's a much better name than HD-DVD (or whatever the hell else we'll call them).