No, it’s not the sequel!

I’m talking about thisarticle, which I’ll quote now:

“When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map ofIndia, Microsoft colored eight of them a differentshade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiriterritory. The difference in greens meant Kashmirwas shown as non-Indian, and the product waspromptly banned in India. Microsoft was left torecall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows95 operating system software to try and heal thediplomatic wounds. “It cost millions,” Edwardssaid.”

To clarify: Kashmir is a disputed territorybetween India and Pakistan. There’s essentiallythree factions - those that want it to be part ofIndia, those who want it to be part of Pakistan,and those who want it to be it’s own independentcountry.

“Another social blunder from Microsoft sawchanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for acomputer game and led to great offence to theSaudi Arabia government. The company later issueda new version of the game without the chanting,while keeping the previous editions in circulationbecause U.S. staff thought the slip wouldn’t bespotted, but the Saudi government banned the gameand demanded an apology. Microsoft then withdrewthe game.
The software giant managed to further offend theSaudis by creating another game in which Muslimwarriors turned churches into mosques. That gamewas also withdrawn.”

Oops. This one could be chalked up to ignorance ofanother culture and misunderstanding, but maybethey could have consulted with someone from SaudiArabia? Not too hard … but then, there’s themuslim warriors turning churches into mosques.That seems a little stupid to put in, ignorant orno.

Well, cultural ignorance isn’t really going to cutit for this next one:

“Microsoft has also managed to upset women andentire countries. A Spanish-language version ofWindows XP, destined for Latin American markets,asked users to select their gender between “notspecified,” “male” or “bitch,” because of anunfortunate error in translation.”

Hard to think how something like that slips by,but hey.

On a very late sidenote, we apparently stirred upsomething of a “controversy”, which is basicallythe age-old “Mac vs. PC” debate. Applegeeks andCtrl Alt Del are just messing with each other.It’s like you and your friends who are constantlyplaying tricks on each other. You can have yourdiscussions (arguments), but don’t get us wrong -we’re just engaging in some friendly prankstering.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 21st, 2004 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.