I duno, its not that hard to believe that Microsoft can innovate. They do hire smart people. Sure Steve needs a nice kick in the bald-head, but that is beside the point.
I have no trouble believing that MS can innovate. I just thought it was odd that they came out with a weird-sounding animal name that happens to be almost identical to a weird-sounding animal name one of their big rivals recently used for an experimental project (they renamed it to Nitro when it was released), and I find it hard to believe that MS doesn't have people who go carefully over everything they do in public looking for legal or PR issues, or that they didn't notice how much "Barrelfish" resembles "Squirrelfish". On the other hand, it's hard to see that they gain any particular benefit from it, and I'm not much inclined to start making up conspiracy theories, and maybe the resemblance isn't as obvious as I think it is. Dunno. ... So, wanting to draw attention to the oddity but not having anything very coherent to say about it, I just made a joke out of it, but unfortunately it seems to have been insufficiently funny. Can't win 'em all.