Extensive use of abbreviations and acronyms was primarily a convenience for writers, when writing was done by hand and then by typewriter, there is less justification for it now when most writing is done by computer.
This is a claim I don't understand. Most people with computers can't type much faster than they can write.
Incidentally, there are much worse examples than RMS. For example, FLT is Fermat's Last Theorem, Fermat's Little Theorem, and Faster Than Light Travel. Note that the first two of these are in the same area of study and only have a one word difference.
All of that said, I don't think this is really a big deal. Humans do context recognition really well. A lot of language is much more ambiguous than it would seem at first glance. It is very rare that acronyms create actual confusion.
Faster Than Light Travel.
The only acronym I've ever seen for this is FTL (Faster Than Light)...granted that was in the context of sci-fi not technical discussion, and there are probably other phrases with FTL as an abbreviation.
I posted this in the comments at Eric Raymond's blog:
Then I realized some here may find it useful.
Extensive use of abbreviations and acronyms was primarily a convenience for writers, when writing was done by hand and then by typewriter, there is less justification for it now when most writing is done by computer. And as my comment points out it is usually a negative for readers. It does benefit readers when you can convert a long phrase into a readable word, SCUBA and LASER spring to mind, but that doesn't occur often.