because .mp3’s didn’t start out as a standalone format. It was the audio component of mpeg video. Someone above mentioned Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3…that layer three is part of the other layers used to compress video. mp3’s were a technical term that stuck.
I remember the sheer joy and power of cramming SEVEN FULL ALBUMS on ONE CD!
Then the dismay of realizing your ripping software also included your IM sounds on the ripped copy of your Aimee Mann album…or skipped because you didn’t leave your computer alone while it was working…
Or how amazing iTunes was as it was the first free application to both rip to mp3 AND burn back out to CDs.
y’all’r whippersnappers, I tell ya!
What’s MRI anyway? I’m not faniliar with it. (yeah, I googled it, but it’s not a term I know well)
ISBN, I think the majority of people wouldn’t know. If you said ISBN to a random person you meet, most of them wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. And of the ones who know what an ISBN is, most will know what the letter stand for.
C3PO, what it’s just a code that uniquely identifies that particular robot, isn’t it? Like a licence plate on a car. Or is there some meaning that I’ve missed all these years?
I always figured the MP3 name stuck because that’s the most common digital music format (I don’t know anyone who uses .WMA or any other format, FWIW).
Personally, I’ve always thought it sounded like a German sub-machine gun. 