It's not a bad idea to look at new products without any kind of bias. For example some month ago I started looking for the first times to Microsoft Live image search features, and I found many things about this service that are better than Google images search.
This is a really strange interview. Granted, Woz is a sucker for shiny objects, but praising "the algorithms" after seeing just a presentation? Also, the interviewer's favorite features were website preview popups and customer service numbers.
As an additional point, these sorts of comments go to show how much "baggage" names carry, and just how hard it can be to find a good name for a company, product or service.
It has been suggested that the Vauxhall/GM "Nova" didn't sell well in Latin America because "Nova" can be interpreted as "won't/doesn't go" in Spanish, and when Rolls Royce brought out the "Silver Mist" to go with the "Silver Ghost" and other models, they didn't take into account that "Mist" in German means something entirely different (look it up).
Possibly it's somewhere between hard and impossible to find a name that nowhere has inappropriate connotations, but that shouldn't stop you from trying. Even so, someone will catch you by surprise.
When John H Conway found a new sporadic finite simple group he wanted to name it after himself, but wanted to get others to name it after him. He called it "Point Zero", reasoning that others would get tired of calling it "Point Zero" and simply refer to it as "Conway's Group".
Please stop repeating the Nova thing. It's an urban legend.
Just like us English-speaking peoples, people from Latin America understand the difference between separate and compound words.
Do you confuse a carpet and a car pet?
And according to Just As Reliable Sources As Yours, Rolls Royce changed the name before introducing to Germany. If you try to find any records of a Rolls Royce Silver Mist, you will find that there are almost no results - because the name didn't ship. The only results are erroneous, or retellings of this stupid tale, or people debunking said stupid tale.
My apologies for mis-speaking myself over the "Mist" aspect - I did know that the name was originally used, but changed before production.
Concerning the "Nova", I did say that it was suggested - I didn't say it was true. I know it's not true. No doubt I should've made that clearer. As a non-native speaker of English that happens on occasion.
I appreciate the corrections - thank you. I resent your tone, and suggest that this being HN does not exempt anyone from being at least marginally polite.
The point about the difficulty of name choice still stands, and there are numerous other examples of ill-advised names being chosen through ignorance of other languages. Perhaps you would care to find the positive and suggest other examples, rather than being purely negative.
Agree, I'd like it if they would just call it MS Search.
(I know about other meanings of MS , and one is very bad for a search engine, but I still like it).
So did I initially, but then I expanded my point to make it clear why it was relevant, and adding extra information.
I find this happens to me a lot. I make a point, but it turns out I was too obscure, and neuro-typicals don't get the point. I then expand on it, and all is well.
