IBM's Teri-is-a-Girl-and-Terry-is-a-Boy Patent 277
theodp writes "The USPTO has granted IBM a patent for utilizing naming conventions to assign gender-based avatars for instant messaging. A user named Teri, IBM explains, would be given a girl avatar, while a user named Terry would be provided with a boy avatar. The three IBM 'inventors' were stymied by users named Pat, who as a result will be assigned a 'generic, genderless human figure image as his or her avatar.' Way to honor that significant-technical-content patent pledge, Big Blue!"
English names only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:English names only? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, what about Xie Hua? Is Xie a male or female?
Re:English names only? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:English names only? (Score:4, Insightful)
Standard Behaviour (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:English names only? (Score:4, Insightful)
My name is Robin, which is basically exclusively male here in Sweden (I've never met any females called Robin, but it's among the top ten most common boys names), which is mostly male in England, and which is mostly female in the US.
Oh, and I run all my software in (US) English.
I'd like to see the software that figures out the gender of all the Robin in the world!
No one uses boring avatar names (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a break, no one uses names like "Jill" and "Steve" for their avatars! They use names like xXDeath_StalkerXx and KillMurder_415 and awesome stuff like that. This patent ain't worth a case of Bawls.
"Way to honor that significant-technical-content" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No one uses boring avatar names (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:English names only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:English names only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who implemented this would probably be smart enough to let you change the avatar during the sign-up process. This is a way to placate the ladies who get all upset that the systems tend to default to male avatars which is slightly more accurate than randomly assigning one or the other. A checkbox before the avatar default is chosen I'd think would be even more accurate, though.
Re:English names only? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:English names only? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's about tyranny, not taxes.
If you want an equal mix of tyranny AND taxes you should come back here to England.
Re:Standard Behaviour (Score:5, Insightful)
Geeze, here we go again. Listen, patenting stupid crap isn't evil. *Suing* other people for your stupid crap patents is evil. Countersuing other people for violating your stupid crap patents after they've sued you for violating their stupid crap patents is simply a business reality these days.
Big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Novell have to patent any little thing that floats into their heads that the patent office will let them patent. They all do it, and the purpose is mostly for the sake of maintaining a defensive-patent war chest to keep the other big companies at bay with mutually assured destruction.
Start complaining about them being evil when they sue someone.
Re:Not even that. (Score:4, Insightful)
I always thought it was a black and white issue.
You simply refer to people how they want you to refer to them.
Wouldn't it be easier..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you [ ]Male [ ]Female
Would you like to use a avatar that is
[ ] Male
[ ] Female
[ ] Generic Genderless
[ ] Tentacle Monster
[ ] Cowboyneal
Why not just ASK?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer the solution used in the interactive game "Leather Goddesses of Phobos": at the start of the game, you have a sudden urge to use the restroom. Your gender for the rest of the game depends on which restroom door you choose.
Really, I think arbitrarily guessing people's gender is just going to alienate them when you guess wrong.
Offended by a computer? (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyone who gets offended by a computer program misinterpreting their gender doesn't have enough sense for me to care about anyways. I say assign EVERYONE asexual jellyfish avatars.