I agree with Dave, this has bothered me too since a while. I guess it relates to the insect that is able to lift much more than its own weight and live in very organized communities that perform a lot of job in a efficient way.
But this summer I spent my vacations in Sumatra, Indonesia, the island near java, which capital is Jakarta, and hearing our guides talk during a walk in the jungle I heard them use the word ant. I asked them what it meant and they told me it meant a walking stick. I found that a pretty good metaphor of what ant does for me: it's really my handy walking stick that helps me climb the steep hills our project has traverse. And it blends well with the java/jakarta-indonesian metaphor that permeates the jakarta project. The only thing I'm not sure of (and if there's an Indonesian in that list I am interested to hear more about it) is if that word was in Baharasa Indonesia or the local Sumatran dialect spoken in the region I visited (near Bukitingi). So here's my personal non-authoritative interpretation of the word, and I am eager to hear from the ant original creators what they had in mind when they named the project. Words, images and symbols have a very powerful effect in any culture, and I think this explanation deserves to be in the FAQ. Let's have the ant become a symbol as prevalent as the Penguin or the Camel :-) P@ David Makower wrote: > Please don't hit me; I looked in the docs. I looked in the FAQ. I > looked at the Ant home page. My curiosity got the best of me and I > couldn't find the answer to this simple question: Why is it called > Ant? > > -- > +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ > | Dave Makower <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | > | Director of Engineering | > +--------------------------------+----------------------------------+ > | Shooting Gallery Interactive | tel: (212) 905-2200 x155 | > | 609 Greenwich St., 9th Floor | fax: (212) 905-2249 | > | New York, NY 10014 | http://www.shootinggallery.com/ | > +--------------------------------+----------------------------------+ -- Patrick Chanezon, iPlanet Market Maker- Portal/EServices Technical Lead Netscape Communications Corp. - http://people.netscape.com/chanezon/ Opinions are my own. "C@ in the H@ if you P@ the stomach of a f@ C@, it will look @ you, and say I like th@" Text by Dr. Seuss, Typesetting by Lawrence Steinman
