October 18th, 2016

Was it intentional that the Media Control Interface has the same acronym as a telecommunications company?

The Media Control Interface is a programmable interface to multimedia peripherals. It’s probably best known for providing an easy way to prank somebody by repeatedly opening and closing the CD tray.

The acronym for the Media Control Interface is MCI, the same initials as a former telecommunications company. Was this a coincidence?

Usually, these things are just coincidences, but this is an exception. The person who came up with the name Media Control Interfaces told me that it was an intentional collision, and that he hoped someday to continue onward and name future multimedia interfaces after other telecommunications companies, such as ITT, GTE, and AT&T.

Fortunately for the rest of us, these other acronyms never materialized.

(Another possibility is that he was just messing with me, and it really was just a coincidence.)

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Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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