The question in the title is Shakespeare's. The bard was surprisingly down on names. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." "Honor doth forget men's names." "No profit but the name." "Refuse thy name." "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is." But then, the bard had a little trouble with his own name. What's that about, Will? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Names are regarded as having power, a fact exploited by science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge in the novel True Names and proven by the Vietnam Memorial. "The name of a man," Marshall McLuhan said, "is a numbing blow from which he never recovers." It was as lucid as anything else the man has said.
Hypertext visionary Ted Nelson knows about the power of names and chooses names of his inventions with great care. His magnum opus, Xanadu, is named after the poetic dream of a dope fiend started in 1798 and not finished yet.
The greatest virtue of the next version of Microsoft Windows is its power over names. It will let you name a file Inventory rather than Inventor.y. This version has been known as Chicago, but that's only its code name, not its true name. We learned recently that its true name is Windows 95.
It's a good name, like most Microsoft names. Windows, Works, Word, Office, Access. Microsoft names usually sound almost generic for the category. Excel was a departure, for which Microsoft apparently paid: I gather that a license agreement says that Microsoftians must always refer to the product as Microsoft Excel. Like they mind.
And now IBM has announced that it will not make waves if Microsoft wants to trademark Windows. IBM couldn't care less. IBM's not into names; its only good product name was Personal Computer. The latest brainstorm from IBM's name generator: Aptiva. Right.
Apple used to be good at names, although its approach was always riskier than Microsoft's. Apple, Macintosh, eWorld. Apple's latest offering is the name for its operating-system software. If you're gonna license it, you'd better have an official name for it. And they came up with--Mac OS? Hmm. Well, it's an honest name.
Windows 95 is an honest name, but I can't help but think that it would have avoided a lot of confusion and false alarms if Microsoft had shared this information with us two years ago.
Well, enough of that. Here's a puzzle about names. I'd call it an "emoticontest," but then you'd think there was a prize. The only prize I'm offering is that I'll mention the name of the first person who gets a correct answer to me by any means. Since I don't print my phone number in this column, the rules favor those who can reach me electronically, but that seems appropriate in this case. Besides, there's no real prize involved.
Here it is. Emoticons, or smileys, are used in electronic communications to express emotions. They are also sometimes used to identify, or anyway to refer to, people. Below are two smileys that are intended to represent two people often seen together. Name the people.
&8-) 7 (:-\ L
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
MikeSwaine@eWorld.com
Copyright © 1994, Dr. Dobb's Journal