BE DOPE NEWS (BDN) In a press release issued today, Be, Inc. announced its plans to change the name of the upcoming release of the BeOS from BeOS R4 to BeOS R4i.

This announcement comes on the heels of annoucements by Microsoft and Sun Microsystems to change the names of their products.

"If they want a 'cooler' name for their operating systems, they should do it right," said Be Inc. CEO Jean-Louis Gassée.

The "i" in BeOS R4i is a so-called "imaginary number" - the mathematical representation of the square root of negative 1.

Actually, it is quite fitting that Be chose i to include in its product naming scheme," said Katia Consani, Instructor of Mathematics at MIT. "It is impossible to describe certain advanced mathematical theories without making use of i, just as it is impossible to get some types of advanced performance from a PC without using the BeOS."

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