What A Universally Unique Product Name!

I'm surprised Gus is grousing about renaming his software due to conflicts. He acts like he never heard of uuidgen.

It's a command-line utility that comes with Mac OS X. Invoked, it uses the magic of computer science to hand out guaranteed-unique product names. Trademark problems and lawyer fees disappear in an animated 'poof'*!

UUID stands for "Uli's Unique Item Description". Young Uli originally invented it on a TRS-80 model 100 while on holiday in the Harz mountains, for the purpose of naming every bacterial species he scraped off his boots.

It would be a tale of triumph, but it sadly devolved into the murky underworld of international politics. Uli's technology was ruthlessly co-opted and renamed by the IETF. Even to this day, Uli seems to be in denial about the whole sordid affair, so don't be surprised if he denies it happened at all.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Personally, I'm hard at work on version 3.0 of my app, 95A0011C-24CD-4F90-AF62-D053E5A2C342.

Marketing wanted to go with FF62F1C8-F36F-4F33-B4F0-A1ACE46474FC, saying they could play off the fact each subsection has an 'F' in it. I told them to step off, no way would I lend my name to something with such overt consumerism drivel.

* uuidgen may not actually display animated 'poof' when executed. Computer science may be less scientifical than a real science. Women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should not use uuidgen.

Monday, August 29, 2005
12:00 AM