Microsoft to Remove Swastikas from Office

[Nomad559]

http://bink.nu/DesktopModules/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=671

Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that its latest version of Office software inadvertently contained a font featuring two swastikas, and said it would offer tools to remove and replace the offending characters from the program. The swastika, which was made infamous by Nazi Germany, was included in Microsoft's "Bookshelf Symbol 7" font. That font was derived from a Japanese font set, said Microsoft Office product manager Simon Marks.

"It was discovered by one of our customers a couple weeks ago," Marks said, adding that there was "no indication of malicious intent."

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/dec03/12-12FontLetter.asp

[Breezy du Nord]

1. Weird

nt

[mikehiggins]

2. Somebody let a clue to MS plans slip out , eh? n/t

[arcos]

3. a few years ago the Spanish thesaurus was very fucked up...

it was full of offensive stuff. It used to show "pervert" as a synonym for lesbian and stuff like that. I just found an link:

Microsoft Corporation, the world's biggest software company,
apologized to Mexicans on Friday for "grave errors" in
its computer thesaurus, which among other things equates
Indians with cannibals and lesbians with perversion.

Several Mexicans telephoned the company to protest after
a newspaper reported on Wednesday that the Spanish
thesaurus included in Word for Windows 6.0, Microsoft's
popular word processor, contained some insulting
synonyms.

Word 6.0 -- which is used by up to 200,000 people in
Mexico, a country whose population is mainly descended
from Aztec and Maya Indians -- suggested "man-eater" or
"savage" as synonyms for the word "Indian."

As synonyms for the word "Western," the Spanish language
thesaurus suggested "Aryan," "white" and "civilized."
Lesbians were equated with "pervert" and "depraved
person."

<snip>

http://www.sdnp.undp.org/rc/forums/mgr/sdnpmgrs/msg00775.html

[Deja Q]

5. Wow, that's positively trippin' stuff!

Scary, too.

These 3 posts, including mine, are showing a very strange pattern within Microsoft software...

The more "accidents" that happen, the more people might hopefully figure out the type of people they are supporting.

[BigDaddyLove]

6. Just wondering what you mean by...................

"....more people might hopefully figure out the type of people they are supporting".

Do you mean that Microsoft is actively supporting Nazism in this case?

[Deja Q]

7. Who knows?

They've had such a string of coincidences that the old :tinfoilhat: now comes into play...

[Deja Q]

4. That one is nothing compared to doing a search in MS Word using the term

"monkey bars" to search for clip art.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,20536,00.html

If the people on the monkey bars were white, would people have had the same reaction? (this is not saying there's justification for this incident though, given mainstream Americans' attitudes toward blacks since day 1...)