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Comment by corin_ | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone else read the headline and get a little confused trying to guess what support Google search can offer the Cherokee web server?

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Yes. It's a funny/sad reminder - although astounding - that Apache and Cherokee were not, in their origins, a software.

sad?

Yes, sad in that for a large group of people, myself included, the first thing I think of when I hear the word Apache or Cherokee is not two tribes of Native Americans who lived in North America for thousands of years with a complicated culture and language but instead two webservers that have been in existence for less than twenty years.

I can't help worrying that we geeks may have unwittingly removed a last piece of their national identity by hijacking and replacing the meaning of their name... and (in the case of the Apaches)relegating them to 6th place in a Google search for their own term.

Car and aerospace companies went down this path for many years before geeks. I get the feeling the logo for the Cherokee web server probably is not going to be loved by the tribe. Given what has been going on with NCAA teams, I would seriously consider changing it or getting definite permission.

I do wonder why more geeks weren't offended that Google Voice blocked one of tribal community colleges? Perhaps even one used for the name of a product (AT&T never did says which one it was). I can't help but think what would have happened if someone had not lost an opportunity because of it.

It's a step up from the non-geeks. At least you didn't give them typhus-infected blankets.

Really, how many times do you think of "Massachusetts" or "Detroit" or "Delaware" as American Indian tribes and not states/cities/metonyms.

I'm not blaming anyone currently alive, but it's definitely sad that millions of people, along with their cultures, were wiped out wholesale by rapacious or at best careless invaders. I don't think that's a controversial sentiment.

I don't think anybody attributes it to "careless", at least here on the northern plains. I was wondering at the weird phrasing of the original post. It seemed odd.

Yes, I only clicked because I thought it was about the Cherokee web server.

Actually, my first thought was of the car (Jeep Cherokee).

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