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IBM's Teri-is-a-Girl-and-Terry-is-a-Boy Patent
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!"
D'oe
When ever you try to assign gender on anything except the Chromosomes it will fail.
Actually it fails pretty spectacularly when you try to determine it based on chromosomes, too. There are XY women with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), and both XXY and XYY men. In many cases, especially those of AIS, they may go their whole lives without knowing that their chromosomes convey something different than their sex organs.
And using sex organs starts to fail as well when you get into intersexed and transgendered people; someone's sex organs may not match the gender they 'pass' as in social contexts, or that they prefer to be treated as.
It is anything but a black and white issue.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Either way, Hua sounds feminine to me.
You haven't seen many films about US marines, have you?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Likewise Kyle, which although often male, is occasionally used as a female name. Then there are those that come up with entirely new names, or that use nicknames, or handles to contend with. Yeah, sorry, this sounds like it's utterly useless, you've taken what once was a simple question of "Are you male or female?", and turned it into "Based on your name our software thinks you're X, is this correct?". All they've done is taken a simple question and reworked it so that it makes a potentially embarrassing/insulting/annoying assumption about a person, which then needs to have steps put in place to insure that it's made the correct assumption, all for the sake of avoiding a simple binary question.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Doesn't matter. Anyone who calls himself "Legolas", l33t-crypted or not, deserves a gay furry avatar[0], and I'll stand by that assertion until the day I die.
[0] Unless his parents gave him that name. Then he can be forgiven if he goes Menendez.
Even then, assigning a male avatar is probably still a safe bet.
...to just ASK the user during the sign up?
Are you [ ]Male [ ]Female
Would you like to use a avatar that is
[ ] Male
[ ] Female
[ ] Generic Genderless
[ ] Tentacle Monster
[ ] Cowboyneal
Both my wife and I are named Terry, and yes, she took my last name. The running joke is that I get all the bills, and she gets all the cheques.