Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Edits English
jbarr writes "An article in the 23-Oct-2000 issue of the New York Times (free reg blah blah blah) talks about how Microsoft has eliminated words from its thesaurus so as to "not suggest words that may have offensive uses or provide offensive definitions for any words". Entering a word like "idiot" yields no hits in Word 2000 unlike the numerous hits in Word 97." I don't think there's anything evil here, but it sure is funny.
Nothing evil here. Have you ever read 1984?
Restricting language is _very_ evil.
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pilchie
there's already 20 MEGS (honest to goodness MEGS) of patches out for WinXP!! http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7661667.html
Somehow, this makes sense. I mean, Microsoft already has control of everything else digital, why not extend that (slowly) to everything, period.
...does it suggest "Windows" as and alternative to "Linux"?
This space left intentionally blank.
Would you please stop posting nytimes stories? Usually there is another site with the same material available.
If this were on FARK.com, it would surely be labeled "Asinine".
This is probably just due to the fact that people complained that with one of their software (don't remeber which one), asking about monkeys would return the picture of a black family.
But I am sure someone else will give the link to that stuff...
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
I guess they don't want anyone to write about Bill Gates.
Micro$oft is not only in bed w/ the PC makers; but they're also making PC themselves....
I believe that they have simply seeded the synonym algorithm for every "curse word" with a random value for the subscript of an array of every M$FT employee since the company's inception. Therefore, if you type in "f*ckhead", Steve Ballmer might be a suggested replacement. Similarly, "assh*le" is often times replaced by "William H. Gates" in the new Office XP. Just don't ask for a replacement for "naked clippy". ;-)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
You should have a problem with this. They're censoring the english language here... censoring it in the reference materials in the most widely used document editing software in the world. Offensive words are part of every language, and everyone has a right to use them when typing or speaking. Monopolizing a product that people rely heavily on for communication and then editing it's thesaurus/dictionary for PC-ness is very very wrong.
Not that I think there's some grand conspiracy here, but it's a good quote.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
After all, with the advent of XP, no producer-consumer needs words like those.Just like "privacy" and "invasion" do nothing but cloud issues and we fully expect them to be purged by 2010.
It could have brought up the paperclip telling us "idiot" was not politically correct and offering to show us how to use the thesaurus to find more appropriate words. I'd rather have it return nothing!
if you think that is bad, try putting unix into OfficeXP's spell check.... or microsoft for that matter...
In Word 97 and earlier, if you typed the phrase: "unable to follow directions" and ran it through the thesaurus, the suggested alternative was "Unable to have an erection"
This is not useful, of course. Unless you call court-ordered behavioral remedies "directions"
When you remove words from the dictionary
you really start to try to have control over the thoughts of people.
I beleive it's called Big Brother and
mind control.
I feel sorry for the people stuck with Microsoft products and have no way out of this inferno.
Greetings friend citizen, the computer is your friend. Why do you want to use such words? Are you unhappy? **BzzRRRRtttt**
"monolithic kernel" into "sucks royal penis", and "microkernel" into "yeaaahhhh".
I wonder how long it'll be until 'monopoly' is edited out. Or maybe they'll make Clippy get angry for using words to disparage M$ ("I'm gonna tell Bill on you!").
So they'll be like this school principal, who eliminated the American classic "Of Mice and Men" from the curriculum, because it contained the word "nigger." Well, that's certainly doubleplusungood.
So perhaps the next step is to alter the MS spell checker to detect "bad" words and report back to Redmond all users who type them?
Bush Lies Watch
Some people really hate them registrations..
October 23, 2001
Bowdlerized by Microsoft
By MARK GOLDBLATT
I was hard at the grindstone, crusading against hypocrisy and chaos, armed with my laptop and Microsoft Word 2000. I'd just typed: "Only a fool would believe." But "fool" did not seem right. So I hit Shift-F7 to call up the thesaurus. The lone synonym that Word provided was a verb: trick.
Where were the nouns? Where was idiot? I typed "idiot," hit Shift-F7, and got the message "not found." Then I tried goon. Again, not found. No luck with ninny, nincompoop or numbskull. Or with nitwit, halfwit, dimwit or twit. Or dullard, dunce or dolt.
"Jerk" called up yank, jolt, tug and twitch. "Dummy" produced mannequin and copy -- still not what I was looking for.
So I phoned a friend who also uses Word and asked him to test the phenomenon. He typed "fool," hit Shift-F7 -- and was provided a hearty menu of synonyms that included not just idiot and ninny, but such exotics as dunderhead and ignoramus. We realized the difference: He was working with Word 97, not the Word 2000 I was using.
Concluding that I had found a glitch in the updated version of Microsoft Word, I decided to inform Microsoft. I called and asked to speak to Bill Gates, but was directed to a cheerful person named Tim.
Tim transferred me to Kate, also cheerful, who promised to look into the matter. Several days later, Kate sent me an e-mail message with an explanation: "Microsoft's approach regarding the spell checker dictionary and thesaurus is to not suggest words that may have offensive uses or provide offensive definitions for any words. The dictionary and spell checker is updated with each release of Office to ensure that the tools reflect current social and cultural environments."
Was the world's foremost software designer worried about offending dullards, dunces and dolts? Are there actually people out there who identify themselves that way? Even if so, you wouldn't think they'd represent Microsoft's target demographic. More troubling, if an acute sensitivity to people's feelings had winnowed down Word 2000's thesaurus options, what changes loomed in the future? Word 2000 already changes "thier" to "their" as I type. Would the next generation evaporate "moron" from the screen the moment it appeared?
But maybe this isn't oversensitivity. Maybe it is what postmodernists call erasure: since language creates reality, if we erase every noun connoting below-average intelligence, the world instantly becomes a smarter place.
Now, if only Microsoft would erase "hypocrisy" and "chaos" . . . .
Mark Goldblatt, who teaches writing at the Fashion Institute of Technology, writes frequently about politics. He is the author of the forthcoming "Africa Speaks," a novel.
#include <stdio.h>
void main(void)
{
for(int i = 0; i < 5 ; i++) printf("\t\t\b\b\b");
}
I have a pocket PC, yeah, yeah, flame away...
The handwriting transcriber will not recognise the word eff you see kay, no matter how many times I wrote it in. Now, I know that handwriting recoginition is difficult, but given that it does some prediction based on the language, I assume, is someone at M$ being a bit coy here?
How about these words?
Monopoly
Anti-competitive
Criminal
...
(The fact that they spell out "MAC" is sheer coincidence, believe me... I wuv my G4!)
I'd look them up, but I really have no use for any Microsoft products, and don't desire to dirty my hands with them if at all possible. The only thing I do with the NT laptop they gave me at work (d00d, yer getting a Dell!") is spin cds and play shoutcast streams on it.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
According to the MS Word thesaurus, "Bill Gates" is now synonymous with "1337 d00d" and "Supreme Ruler of the World".
That's Mr. Eradicator to you.
trance-port
So now not only do they want to take over our computers, they also decide what they want us to say and type?
I mean technically they can put whatever they want in there, but I would have thought that anything calling itself a thesaurus would actually contain a significant fraction of commonly used words and terms. Even the OED has swears in it!
What happens when they do this to the french version? The quebequois will have every second word missing....
You can't omit words from reference materials. It's ridiculous. But I think it's the too-politically-correct Americans that are at work here, not MS. MS is just going along with what they think will please their customers.
But in my version of W1nD0Wz 0FF1c3 PX, typing "idiot" into the Thesaurus executes c:\windows\welcome.exe
From an unedited thesaurus:
Idiot [noun]: ass, fool, imbecile, jackass, mooncalf, moron, nincompoop, ninny, nitwit, simple, simpleton, softhead, tomfool. Informal: dope, gander, goose. Slang: cretin, ding-dong, dip, goof, jerk, nerd, schmo, schmuck, turkey
Slashdot: News for Idiots. Stuff that matters.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
"Was the world's foremost software designer worried about offending dullards, dunces and dolts? Are there actually people out there who identify themselves that way? Even if so, you wouldn't think they'd represent Microsoft's target demographic."
You wouldn't?
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
What if you type "More Evil Than Satan Himself" and look that up in the MS Word Thesaurus?
:)
Now, that would be to funny.
um... wrongo. almost everyone uses Word, at home and at work. people have stopped thinking for themselves when it comes to grammar and spelling - they just let Word find their mistakes. if Word decides that 'idiot' is no longer a valid word in the thesaurus, then quite simply it is no longer a valid word.
or maybe it is just my paranoia from having read 1984 last summer.
anyway...burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
You're not allowed to use MS products to criticise Microsoft, and extensive market research determined that the most common use of these terms was in relation to Microsoft and Bill Gates.
Before:
I can't for the life of me understand why Microsofts monopoly still exists.
After:
I shall throw down my life for the glory of Microsoft empires existance!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Instead of showing no hit, they should have shown: .net
- MSOffice's new feature
- implementing
- using IE browser on MSN
- all your base are belong to us
Looks like another plot from Microsoft: time to learn a "foreign" language.
I don't think there's anything evil here, but it sure is funny.
hahaha Its funny!!! I get it!
George Orwell and Gates must definately be in family.
[insert random fortune here]
What about other phrases, such as Civil Rights, or Consumer Rights? How about the word Profits, since MS is certainly not worrying about those any more?
This is just another case of where being Politically Correct drives folks to the point of insanity.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well well well...
I know I am not the first to refer to 1984... but this is waaaay to much... It really is exactly the same thing as in 1984, replace words that are judged to express concepts that are undesirable with expressions much milder, or just eliminate them.
Oh.. by the way, this guy has a very nice lexical analyser (writen in lex) that does transcripts any text in newspeak.
http://www.wizards.de/~frank/download.html
Remond, Oregon (AP) -- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced a bold new foray into intellectual property ownership today. On the heels of the much anticipated XP rollout, Gates blueprinted plans for Microsoft's plans on patenting all forms of linguistic communication as a part of its ongoing .NET initiative.
"Microsoft will be the leader in innovation in simple verbal communication and we felt it necessary to start at the top with English," Gates said.
Answering complaints that the actions are against all logic, Gates replied "Anyone who feels that this is wrong is un-American and anti-competitive."
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
All those book authors who write books using MS Word 2000 are no longer able to write books titled: "XYZ for Dummies/idiots".
For once, MS has done the right thing.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
The first thing the Nazis did when they began their persecution of the Jews was take away their language. One little boy was sent to prison for asking his friend in Hebrew if he wanted to go to his house afterschool to play. Not only the Nazis, but also other groups have sought to control language when they sought to control a popluation. This is Microsofts attempt at controling us further by not allowing us a manner with which to criticize them. I suspect we shall be forced to use terms such as "Microsoft is double ungood" to keep with the language they are creating for us. Don't be fooled by their corporate claims! Newspeak is upon us! They're just starting out with the XP, wait until they have the .net. Just remember to always think positive thoughts around your telescreens to avoid detection by the Microsoft thought police.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
Even in Outlook 2000 (what I *have* to use at work), when I write to some of my friends who are still in college at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County), spell check strongly recommends that I change the spelling to DUMB.
Anybody who attended the school may also agree
This is Microsoft trying to affect social change through their software. This is NOT the place for a general purpose software package! This is VERY WRONG!
Life is but a mist upon the horizon.
Granted I've met a number of adults who need do be sent back to Kindergarten to re-learn ideas like "sharing" and "being nice", but since when should the general population be indiscriminately treated as school children -- especially with regard to language and research? We are supposed to be free to make up our own minds on what we consider offensive, and if the word "idiot" is offensive to someone, then why would s/he type it into M$ Word in the first place?
This might be my fault.
I wrote a letter to Mr Gates a few years ago.
I remember that the word "idiot" and "Bill" apperd in the same sentence.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
As time goes on Microsoft's thesaurus will become more and more divorced from the 'real' dead tree versions as the word "Microsoft" and many related words will increasingly become synonymous with swear words and slang terms for bodily waste products.
For example, after going to the toilet; "You should have seen the size of the Big Bill I just dropped!"
And after spending a great deal of time and effort on some task that could have been accomplished quickly and easily another way, "I just Microsofted 3 hours on this thing!"
i got some 'offensive' words for them.
Is this their solution to bloatware? They sole purpose of a thesaurus is to enhance one's vocabulary not limit it. What's next on their agenda, making it impossible to change the desktop colours unless they are coordinated? Is something in the works with Martha Stewart?
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Like Taco doesn't do that all the time anyway.. :)
At least, he seems to use his own modified English..
How nice of them. I'd expect that sooner or later they'd start giving grammar errors whenever we type anything like Java or Unix or Open Source.
Java -> 1 synonym found: J#
Unix -> no synonyms found
Open Source -> 1 synonym found: crackerware
Linux -> [blue screen of death]
I've read an article about Walmart being sued, because somebody was murdered with a knife bought there. Of course, Walmart is not to blame and does not have to remove knifes from their shops. But if MS does pro-actively remove those words from their program, they give a wrong signal in my view. As if they could be responsible for the contents of a document made by Office.
Very strang behaviour.
This has got to be good ammunition which the DOJ and the state Attorney Generals can use. What a wonderful way to describe how Microsoft can single-handledly extend it's monopoly from office products into, stagger, something truley outstanding -- a monopoly on the definition of the English language. If Microsoft can do this with English, imagine what I can do to anything else it desires...
This is, IMHO, a bad thing. But I'll be more worried when they start taking words out of the spelling checker. That's when they'll be denying the very existance of words.
Mr. Bill just doesn't like the names people have been calling him lately!
Whoa there.
The Redmond that M$ has it's Temple at is in Washington.
Don't bring little old Oregon into this.
We only have Intel, HP and a little Boeing here.
Does Microsoft have a specific agenda in this?
Why would they be trying to stifle condescending nouns?
I can hardly see the people at Micro$oft who are in charge of these things sitting around in a corporate "think tank", just coming up with this stuff. Could it be that people actually filed complaints?
Perhaps they are simply taking the Disney Cop-Out approach.
Perhaps Micro$oft is trying to be more PR.
We all know however that Nintendo decided that this does not work
Still, I do not say that such an act is justified.
It seems to me that the Dictionary in MS-Word will still deal with these words.
A Thesaurus, however is a tool of suggesting.
It appears that Micro$oft has decided on being less suggestive.
Suppose I write a sentence referring to someone as a dolt. Then, I don't find dolt to be the right word. If that is the case it may bes that the person is not exactly a dolt, but more of an ass. Perhaps Micro$oft does not want to take the flack for someone being referred to as an ass. After all, it would have been suggested by them!
I don't see this as being totally evil. I think that if I want to properly insult another, I should be able to do it on my own.
It would be evil for Microsoft to not allow insulting words all together. To deny their existence by force.
That would be ver 1984.
Still, I am merely speculating, and am curious of their true motives.
I wonder if Microsoft have added any of their own definitions ? Innovate, Compete, etc I would like to see their definitions of those words :-)
Only to note that the date is wrong, the right year is 2001.
Being a bad boy !
Because if not, I'll that Word Assistant come to you a make you fill Message Box after Massage boxs of " I will only use proper langage" 8)
BTW MS is your babysitter in terms of computing : anything you do is throught their own acceptance 8|
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
1) someone else talks for you
2) he also decides for you
3) you're fearing invisible enemies
4) security stands before freedom
5) you've accepted censorship
In our days the elder became those people they once fighted. After decades of personal freedom which began in the late 60s we are facing a world full of rules and regulations.
Don't let Twain's words become truth (again)
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
Mmmmm, but this is slashdot, everything MS does is evil!
*frightened, smiling broadly and nodding head at monitor*
I don't know about you. but i like the fact that someone has cleaned up the language a bit. what with all the rudeness i see on television. maybe if the taliban had a nice big brother to look into what they were doing and reading, well there wouldn't be so much of this unpleasentness in euroasia.
I feel liberated by not having to think so much about what is happening with the prolitarians and haveing someone doing my thinking for me. Civil liberties and freedom of speech only confuse people and get them into trouble...
When I purchased my copy of XP it came with a webcam/dongle with the instructions, "Brother Bill wants to watch you watching XP".
{end sarcasm}
jesus h knickers... not that Apple is the peoples computer, but when they made the commercial of that chick whipping the hammer at the "telescreen" they eluded it was IBM that was the vile BB.
I hope they take this to more absurd extremes actually, i really want to see the audacity get silly. Remember, Joe Macarthy would have been called a hero if it wasn't for Roy Cohne to get so ridiculous that the nation would no longer tolerate them.
Hmm, I thought Microsoft had taken Monopoly out of Word's dictionary as well? Heck, there is no such thing as Monopoly ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
As long as C-shell "thesaurus" always do this: /home/polom> bill gates
CORRECT>kill gates (y|n|e|a)?
there's no need to be alarmed :)
Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
...if Bukowski had been using this with WordXP !? :-D
Trolling using another account since 2005.
So we can't look up any more creative words to describe M$!!
Not only that, a flaw the average Joe can easily grasp. All you have to say is, "StarOffice (or other OSS product you proselytize) has a full English dictionary and thesaurus. Unlike Microsoft Word."
Anyone else think this will matter to people who have Real Work (tm) to do?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Tack on another reason not to upgrade from Word 97.
It seems the hero is misunderstood again - Marillion
"""The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as 'This dog is free from lice' or 'This field is free from weeds'. It could not be used in its old sense of ' politically free' or 'intellectually free' since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless."""
m l
Steve Ballmer and others at Microsoft have tried to "redefine" the GNU Free software licence as a "cancer".
From
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19396.ht
"""Microsoft CEO and incontinent over-stater of facts Steve Ballmer said that "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches,"""
This is not a good idea, for at least two reasons that strike me as being so obvious I can't believe the marketing idio..er..moro..um..people at Microsoft didn't consider it.
Firstly, where's the accountability? Who's making the decision about which words to omit, and which to include? Do we really want to trust Microsoft to make decisions on our behalf regarding our use of language? Not really. This is not going to do much to raise trust in MS, although it probably won't do much to lower it either. It's a small enough fringe issue that most people will never know, which is part of why it's dangerous.
Second, there's the issue of market appeal. Office is supposed to be a writing (etc) tool for professionals. But writing professionals _need_ tools such as thesauri, dictionaries and the like, and we rely on them to be comprehensive. A thesaurus that gives me only a limited number of options is of very limited worth. Sometimes I need to use words that some people might find offensive.
This strikes me as an absurd move on the part of Microsoft; they're dabbling in an area where they have no expertise, making decisions for which they are unqualified. It's not like they would have got any criticism for leaving un-PC terms in the damn thesaurus. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
that they correct your word documents for
political correctness. Suddenly your physics
paper will be about "mentally challenged" Green's
functions and "african american" body radiation (
not to mention the holes of that variety).
I just wonder what kind of people go through those
programs, search for offensive words, so that they
can complain about them. I guess it's the same kind
that go to movies and count the number of offensive
words.
You can see what happens if you leave those
words out of dictionaries or lexica when
you name a car pajero and don't know what it
means in spanish. Or if your last name is Depp
and you come to Germany.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I type in "idiot" into the thesaurus in Word 2000, and it tells me "not found", yet the likes of "idiocy", "idiotic" and "idiot-proof" still show up. Zuh?
all you have to do is create a vapourmail on yahoo or something and register.
then you will be nice enough to keep thet cookie on your computer, Et Voila !
So, this is free a in "please place your email here"
If you cannot spare a few electrons, please be nice enough not to say it aloud....
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
LANGUAGE, n.
The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
Perfectly in character for Msft.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
In other news, the Ispell dictionary prepared by the editors of the online discussion forum Slashdot proposes the following changes to the beautiful language of William Shakespeare and Samuel Coleridge:
...
your -> you're
you're/you are -> your
lose -> loose
grammar -> grammer
corporate -> corperate
8-)
Bush Lies Watch
I can just see Windows 2010 printing out a $5.00 ticket everytime you tell it to go fuck itself for crashing. (ala demolition man/brave new world). This is a serious crime against humanity. Human thought and actions are based on language. The exclusion of certain words will eventually change the way we think and behave. Do not brush this off as another funny Microsoft quirk. It's a master plan.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Outlook 2000 has on more than one ocassion suggested I replace a misspelled 'inconvenience' with 'incontinence'...
I can't wait for the day I send I client a message with "Sorry for the incontinence..."
In todays economy they are just tryint to save employees by cutting back on words intstead. They had to decite what words to no longer employ and they decided that hateful words are the ones that had to go. They are just saving jobs. :)
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Oh, dear God... my name's Bill Gates! And I just won King of the Ring! But there's one problem-- everybody still thinks that I absolutely SUCK!!
-(modified theRock quote)
well that one passed my Word 2000 spell checker..
dam i still have free speech.. guess its time to upgrade *sigh*
Damn bleeding heart liberals. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em.
I've noticed words missing from the MS Word dictionary as well as the thesaurus. For example, I tried to use the word 'disestablishmentarianism' the other day and the Evil Red Squiggly Line (TM) appeared beneath it. When I right-clicked on it, the popup menu listed no spelling suggestions. Disestablishmentarianism is a word in nearly every English dictionary... odd that it doesn't exist in MS Word.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - E.W. Dijkstra
Get over it. How long are you going to dwell on it? Months? Years? Decades?
Welcome to the world. People die every day, and if you honestly think we should all drop everything forever because slightly more people died last month than usual, then you should really lay off the crack.
It's been a long time.
Just wait until they get into the pornworld....
Dildos XL is here
Surprise yourself
See Bill Gates and Sting,
tour Dildos XL, and check out all the special offers.
(From Macrohards dildos.com)
/K
"Where do you want to go tomorrow"
What happens if you type "terrorism" or "antrhax"?
A mail is automatically sent to the FBI?
Was the world's foremost software designer worried about offending dullards, dunces and dolts? Are there actually people out there who identify themselves that way? Even if so, you wouldn't think they'd represent Microsoft's target demographic.
This author obviously doesn't understand Microsoft marketing.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HEY MORONS! YEAH! YOU! THE GUY WHO HASN'T SHOWERED IN THREE WEEKS!
Now that I've got your attention - telling us what to think and write?
It's a thesaurus. I don't know anyone who *needs* one of these to function in terms of writing and speaking.
Where does it say XP refuses to let you *input* a word like, say, fuck?
Nowhere, because it doesn't. Their thesaurus changes are their own buisness - if you don't like them, no one's *FORCING* you to use them - last time I checked, there's many, many thesauruses out there, both online, in programs and *gasp* in book format.
Now, if you want to talk conspiracy, let's talk about this new Terrorism law. Shrubbery Bush Bomb Nuclear Frodo Nazgul Conspiracy Assassinate Sauron. Forth Erolingas!
No, as an extension of the SSSCA, hacker/cracker and Linux are now synonyms of 'terrorist'.
I first eXPerienced this phenomenon while using Office XP's speech recognition technology. I did all the training so Office knew my voice very well. However, it would never type a "swear word" after I would say it. Shit turns to ship, and so forth.
It makes me really uneasy that Microsoft removes functionality from a produst because they think it will appeal to the "video games cause violence" population.
Idiot
...
-- moron
-- dolt
-- l4m3r
-- Windows User
-- MCSE
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Henceforth, we will be attending African American tie formal balls, read the Native American Badge of Courage, and, of course, catch Asian fever.
God bless America for M$.
(Not my original idea, but I can?t remember where it came from).
This is why this is important - on my copy of Office I get the following:
radical
fanatic
activist
revolutionary
rebel
moderate (Antonym)
and this is correct ( although it might be noted it excludes state terrorism ). What will Word 2002 do I wonder, will all words that mean activist and fanatic be replaced by 'criminal','anti-American' and all the rest ?
What's next? This is evidence of how MS is slowly trying to mold the average Joe's mind to make them ripe for the .NET knockout. Why do you think they picked idiot? Idiots will think that word doesn't exist and believe that they aren't idiots. MS is sneaky!!
Nobody is forced to use M$ software. It's 1984 if we lose choice entirely. If people want to use such limited and biased word processors, it's their choice. But I guess 10^n flies can't be wrong...
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
This has got to be good ammunition which the DOJ and the state Attorney Generals can use.
Actually, no. It just shows that in a free world a business can modify its product as it sees fit. MS haven't modified English (well, American actually.. but lets not go there), they've modified a set of bytes that makes up the 'dictionary' included in their Office product. They haven't made it illegal to use these words. Don't be so melodramatic.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
which would be...who? Children? Idiots? Republicans? Who exactly wants words missing? And why? I dont get it. If its in the dictionary, or thesaurus, isnt that enough?
You mean they didn't remove antitrust and monopoly too?
//m
<troll> :)
"Yank" still comes back with "jerk" doesn't it
</troll>
pvc
I've also noticed that the general quality of the Office 2000 thesaurus in general to be absolutely different from 97's. The Office 97 thesaurus is much better in my experience, but for some words, 2000 is better! It's a pain in the neck.
For example, the word "emptiness."
Office 2000 gives the meanings "bareness" and "meaninglessness." Office 97 gives the meaning "void." (Each of these meanings has a list of synonyms associated with them.) There is absolutely no common ground between these two versions. It would make sense if Office 2000 would have all three, but that would make too much sense, wouldn't it?
I don't have Office XP (no new features, bloody licensing, etc) so I can't comment on the quality of the thesaurus in there.
I'm seriously thinking about trying to shoehorn in the 97 thesaurus into 2000 to see what happens.
Ian
I'm not yet on Word 2000. Can someone check? Also see if they have removed "monopoly."
I remember seeing that commercial, from what I understand, the ONE time it was played.
.1 already, and from what I can see, they've had no advertising geared toward the general public. Maybe it's time to dust off the old hammer commercial. From what I remember, it shouldn't be too tough to retouch the droning geezer into enough of a charicature of Gates to be recognizable, yet not too close so they can avoid a lawsuit.
It seems just a little odd that OS/X is to
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
So what? Americans have been editing the English language for centuries now! :)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Too many parallels to 1984 thesedays. But that doesn't make it any less true. Language is how we communicate and it is also how a society is perceived. When you change or completely remove words from the language you are directing how you can express yourself and what forms of expression are acceptable.
Look what has happend to 'gay', 'fag' (British definition), moot (look it up, you'll be surprised), 'assault' (as mis-used in assault-weapon), 'gun violence' (agun can't be violent, only a person can).
And many other terms that have been perverted or changed in just the last 50 years. Some of this is normal, all language shifts over time, but to completely remove supposedly offensive terms from MS Word is inexcusable.
So in addition to Microsoft's attempts to take over Internet (recent deal with Qwest) and your computer (XP is the most anti-freedom OS invented to date) they are trying to destroy our language as well.
Bah!
Remember Lexington Green!
I taught US history to college freshmen while a graduate student (just finished the MA this fall), and I found that I *could not* get my students to believe that Microsoft's version of English is incorrect. This is in regards to Micro$oft's grammar checker's incorrect usage of that/which, and other similar problems. My students believed that if the Micro$oft checkers (spell, grammar, thesaurus) told them to do something, it must be right. When I marked them off for it, they complained (though I clearly told them at the beginning of the term to turn *off* the grammar checker and use a real thesaurus).
Now, always before Micro$oft has just been lacking; they have not intentionally tried to sway the way the English language is used. One can forgive computer software for being less perfect than a real human, because language is not an easy thing anyway. However, to intentionally try to change the use of the language so as to be "less offensive" is absurd. I told my students they should be careful with word choice, as sometimes things have connotations they may not expect. Still, the ultimate choice of wording needs to rest with the individual, and any authority that declares certain words *unacceptable*, whether they be "fuck", "ass", "breast", "terrorist" or "liberal", needs to be boycotted. Our freedom of speech is our most important right.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
* Monopoly
* Competition
* Streamlined (as in code)
* Stability
* Useability
* Cheesy poofs
(oh relax, the above is a joke)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
.... individual of the homosexual persuasion, I remember I had many feelings when the Microsoft thesauraus used to return the word fag in it's thesaurus for the word gay. It seemed like the Microsoft seal of approval on prejudice.
It no longer does that, and I think that is a 'good thing'.
I just checked in Corel Wordperfect 9 and it fails to find anything for idiot, moron, and a couple of others just like Word2000. When you try the words in Word97, it lists all sorts of synonyms. Unfortunately, here at work I don't have any other Word Processors to test this out on, but seems rather tragic that Word Processor's are bowing to Political Correctness.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Really, who's deciding what's "offensive"? *I* didn't complain that this word processor enabled me or someone else to type "bad things", why should I have to suffer for it?
While this only applies in the theoretical world where I use Word and don't have an adequate vocabulary, I do have to suport MS Office for our coporate dullards who don't understand that other programs are actually *easier* to use and produce more portable docs. I'd like them to have the ability to select alternative ways of stating that "our sys admin is an arsehole", but without a complete thesaurus, how will they be able to do that? They'll have to go on and on calling me "arsehole", and the lack of variety will make me a Sad Panda(TM).
Microsoft is double plus good.
Microsoft's reply, from the article:
"Microsoft's approach regarding the spell checker dictionary and thesaurus is to not suggest words that may have offensive uses or provide offensive definitions for any words. The dictionary and spell checker is updated with each release of Office to ensure that the tools reflect current social and cultural environments."
Now there's a scary precedent! It's hard enough to come up with a consistent view of what's offensive. What's fine by me might be offensive to my neighbor. And when you are forced to "reflect current social and cultural environments", making sure you offend no one in those environments, you wind up with a lowest-common denominator effect. It's like the difference between broadcast TV and HBO. HBO can show "The Sopranos" but broadcast TV cannot without offending the advertisers who in turn don't want to offend the "current social environment" of the lowest-common denominator.
Fortunately, this is merely one product from one company, and is not yet the actual dictionary. Unfortunately, this one product totally dominates the marketplace. Scarily, Microsoft also makes a dictionary...
________________
Private Essayist
iff thier iss sumone whoo reeds slashdor thet cann spel, they could produce a specialist "offensive word" dictionary.
I'd get a copy. I need all the help I can get with my spelling, and I don't want to be constrained only to use those few offensive words I can spell. I wnat to be certain that if I call Gates and his thought police pernicious fuckwits and blithering idiots I don't make a fooll of myself.
Just like many others they had no choice but to bow to political pressure. They felt the heat and didn't want to be sued yet again.
This is were Open Source software has it's advantages, we're a community, we come from every part of the world and they sure as hell can't censor us. If we want a dictionnary with offensive words in it, we'll have one.
My guess is that they're either trying to hock more of their $79.95 Comprehensive Thesaurus plug-ins, or they're trying to kill off all possible "I'd like to see Bill Gates naked and petrified" -> "I'll drink to that" thesaurus misfirings.
Dear god. I'm pretty sure that feeding that post into Office XP would cause it to BSOD. I can't tell if you were being snarky when you typed that or if you really have no idea how foolish that looked.
Oh well.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
A bit off topic, buuuut...
In most versions of M$ word (obviously not the new one), type the following exactly:
I'd like to kill Bill Gates.
Now highlight & right click... theasourus.
I was in class when I tried this, the teacher gave me a funny look b/c it was taking all I had to not laugh.
http://wsulug.org
Time to use another vhost...
O LD.html
http://college.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/opinion/23G
2 entries found for idiot.
To select an entry, click on it. (Click 'Go' if nothing happens.)
idiot[noun]||idiot box[noun]
Entry Word: idiot
Function: noun
Text: 1
Synonyms FOOL 1, ass, *damfool, donkey, imbecile, jackass, jerk, nincompoop, ninny, tomfool
2
Synonyms FOOL 2, jester, motley
3
Synonyms FOOL 4, ament, cretin, ||feeb, half-wit, imbecile, moron, natural, simpleton, zany
4
Synonyms DUNCE, dullard, dullhead, dumbbell, ||dummkopf, dummy, ignoramus, moron, simpleton, stupid
There is such a thing as a bad thesaurus.
Use a good one, and don't even install the MS/abridged version, and don't use the college versions of the book. They both suck.
Less than 5000 people died in the WTC. That isn't a loogie in a swimming pool compared to the deaths that occur every day. Letting a tiny thing like that rearrange your life is basically idiotic. Before that happened, you happily prioritized everything else above the thousands causes of death that kill more than exploding skyscrapers. So why is this different? Why didn't you do it before?
Oh, right, because you'd sound stupid if you were screaming about the "souls of the victims of accute appendicitis!" Well, you sound stupid now.
where have i seen that before. oh yeah:
/. concerning "control" of sorts: Being modded down as overrated when *no one* had modded me up!
Karma whore -> insightful
Honesty -> Troll
Insightful/+2bounus -> Overrated
Redundant UnderRated
moderat* -> Flamebait
Funny -> -2
Yeah, funniest thing I've had happen to me on
Now, that is funny....how can you be overrated when no one has rated you in the first place.
Sheesh, and I thought *I* needed to lay off the crack pipe after confusing suse with debian...
(So when does Bob XP pro edition se ship?)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
That is how the Taliban got started.
Language is not needed to formulate ideas.
You might not be able to express them to someone else, but they will be formulated.
Helen Keller knew that she was cold, hot, angry, and sad, before she learned sign language. She had no language skills before this happened.
this is an overly simple example, but so is Orwell's ideas concerning restriction of language.
Yes the poster that you responded to was a little naive, but only a little. You, on the other hand, are a lot paranoid, and using fictional references to justify you paranoia.
No, this isn't an example of censorship. You can go buy an unabriged thesaurus. The idea of the defacto stnadard desktop tool is trying to, with non-authoritative means, manipulate us into their idea of ethics is and should be quite bothersome. It won't make us any less able to express our anger or biggotry, but it will force us to feel self conscious or ashamed about it.
Yes, that one stings. Well, not me, beacuse I sure as fuck didn't OK the destruction of an entire city (or two, but who keeps track?).
Which reminds me how I find it funny that Moron Boy (GWB in case you aren't aware...) and others compare this to the attack on Perl Harbor. But Perl Harbor was a focused attack on military targets. But Hiroshima was US doing it, so we don't want to make comparisons to that...
The enemies of Democracy are
Microsoft has done this before. Here in Germany, we've got a Bavarian politician with the name of "Gauweiler" (he's as much right wing as you can while being a member of a democratic party, and sometimes he even agitates against parts of the German constitution). In one of the early Windows versions, the spellchecker suggested a correction, "Gauleiter", for "Gauweiler". Since some regional Nazi adminstrators were called "Gauleiter" during the Third Reich, he was not amused, and he and his party protested. In the end, Microsoft (or the company from which Microsoft licensed the spellchecker) removed the word "Gauleiter" from the dictionary, thus eliminating the problem.
;-) dictionary.
Maybe such experiences motivated Microsoft to remove some naughty words from their English (or do you mean American?
BTW, at the beginning of the nineties, people still thought that spellcheckers were more funny than useful. For example, the German version suggested "Spanner" (peeping tom) for "Scanner" (a digital imaging device which can also be used digitize porn).
I was thinking "hey, why use Word 2K when we've got StarOffice" but then I tried looking up moron, retard, idiot, fool, etc in my copy of 6.0Beta. The results were incredibly familiar.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Remember the incident with the monkey bars?
One of the hits seaching for monkey was this picture of monkey bars, featuring a black family playing with them. This got Microsoft sued for racism.
..
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
-------------
Microsoft changes "Windows Default" colors from Blue to Green
They Should be Broken UP! (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Monopoly Hunter (billissatan 'at' hushmail.com) on 7:47 Friday 26 October 2001
This is exaclty the reason that the DOJ should step in an break them up. By changing the default WinBlows color scheme they, because of their desktop monopoly, effectivly eliminating the color Blue from existance. Now, when I wake up in the morning to watch the sunrise, no longer will I see a beautiful blue sky, but some ugly green piece of crap sky the Micro$losh has forced upon us. Don't let this happen -- call your local representative NOW and inform them of what Micro$loth is trying to do to the American people.
--------------
Not to diminish any of the crap that Microsoft has done and continues to get away with, but I we start ranting and raving about every little change that they make, then nobody is going to listen.
You may not type any comments using this program that are negative in nature towards Micro$oft or any of it's subsidiaries. Doing such will result in those sentences being changed to "I love Micro$oft, now and forever."
today is spelling optional day.
ITS THE SAME ISSUE. The WTC attacks were an attempt to influence American thought. So is this politically correct screwing around with the English language.
When you limit the language you censor it. Where is Fool=> Jester, joker, trickster, comedian, victim, flan (sic).
We've taken care of everything
The words you hear the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to you eyes.
It's one for all and all for one
We work together common sons
Never need to wonder how or why.
We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls...
davejenkins.com |
1. Purchase
2. Monopoly
3. civil
4. backdoor
This is really just in preparation for the distribution of Microsoft's voice recognition software. They can only get it to recognize about a thousand words so they're gradually manipulating the Theasaurus in Word. This "feature" is seen as an innovation by Microsoft since people will be able to "speak less".
Personally, I see this development as eventually resulting in blissfully dumb Windoze users who frolic about the Internet until grabbed by the Linux users who hide beneath the code.
the "archive" in place of the www trick no longer works, and IIRC neither does the slashdot2001 (was that the login/pass?).
At any rate this quote made me smile:
We realized the difference: He was working with Word 97, not the Word 2000 I was using.
Hence the saying "Less is more".
I wonder if you typed that phrase into word 2000/XP if it would suggest "you should upgrade, then".
Typing in Thesaurus/dictionary.microsoft.com into future version of word will say "no suggestions" but, by the same token, typing in Thesaurus/dictionary.slasdot.org will say "not found".
Heh, not to worry tho, this comment and others like it will be modded into oblivion because they are funny, but the current usage for funny is "overrated"...
Yeah, I'm being funny/sarcastic (I need other suggestions...damn, I've got word 2000 on this box), yeah, I'm burning off Karma cause I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't...
If you are on thin ice, you may as well dance (tappity, tappity, tappity....)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
"Gullible" isn't in there either. Don't take my word for it - look it up yourself!
Myths are things that never were, but always are.
So why did you click on the article? And why are YOU bothering to read Slashdot? Where are your priorities? Your mother would be disappointed for your lack of decent prioritization.
If I type in "Jew" and use the thesarus should it provide "kike" or "mud-person"? Or how about if I put in "white" should it fill in "trailer-trash" or "cracker"? How about if I put in "gay" - how about "ass-master" or "faggot". Blacks? How about "nigger" or "one of those them there coloreds".
Well, if those words were part of an established dictionary, then yes, a proper thesarus should suggest those words. Duh.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
What happens when this crosses cultual barriers. In the uk we smoke fags and burn or eat faggots.
Note to Americans and other alians.
Fags = Cigaretts
Faggots = 1) small pieces of wood to help a fire start
2) meat balls
Does this meen that the US version will have faggot expunged and the UK one will not.
Remember that Encarter is edited to pander to each countries preducies
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Its a troll but mod him up. He's right. As much as I hate to say it it IS informative.
What happens when this crosses cultual barriers. In the uk we smoke fags and burn or eat faggots.
Note to Americans and other alians.
Fags = Cigaretts
Faggots = 1) small pieces of wood to help a fire start
2) meat balls
Does this meen that the US version will have faggot expunged and the UK one will not.
Remember that Encarter is edited to pander to each countries preducies
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Evil or not, it hinders the utility of the software because it isn't policy-free. That's one of the software attributes which are commonly considered "good". Software shouldn't tell you what you can do any more than it has to. Word processing software shouldn't make it harder to write a blistering letter to the editor than to write a recipe. If it does, it isn't a good tool, and isn't properly serving you. If it's neither of those, why should you pay good money for it?
Double-plus goodthinkful.
Microsoft's dictionary does not include the many and varied members of the animal kingdom whose names begin with "Nigger". They apply a proscriptive definition rather than descriptive (they tell you what you should think about a word, not what it means) in several cases.
If I put in words into a Thesaurus, yes I would expect to get words that could be considered offensive, hell have a "parent filter" on the thing if you want but don't start ruling out words you don't like. This is a terrible thing, many words that are offensive in the US might not be in the UK, and vice versa.
An example....
Fanny means "bottom" or "ass" in the US
Fanny means "Vagina" in the UK
Ban this because is _some_ countries it could be offensive, or to certain groups it might be ?
Well in that case I declare that in my version of English the words "Operating", "System", "Windows" and "Traffic light" are deeply offensive. My personal religious cult also are deeply offended by all synonmys of the word "food".
Censoring words is the first step in censoring sentences.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
We're sorry, the phone number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try your call again
So, to anyone who wants to doctor my children's dictionaries, my children's thesauri, my children's encyclopedias, I cry foul. We should absolutely not stand for such things. I hope that legitimate custodians of the English language (Roget, Webster, Oxford, etc.) stand up and shine a spotlight on Micro$oft's unpardonable actions.
The issue here is really the implications of a corporate, lowest-common-denominator, approach as applied to the single most widely used word processing tool. Can you still use a *shudder* hard copy thesaurus as you write, absolutely. How many people do so? So when a company guts a tool that is widely used to add depth and breadth to countless users prose, it does have bad implications.
The written word is a profoundly powerful tool. This move potentially removes a means for many to "find their voice," which is to say, to find the word that *truly* voices their intent. VI Lenin said the following about the power of language, it is, I think, apropos:
Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should a man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?
I remember the day when you bought a dictionary/thesaurus as a third party add on for the word processor of your choice. I stopped buying them when those that were included were as strong as what I could get elsewhere. Perhaps it is time to rethink that decision.
/rootrot
There were a number of considerably more henious attacks on cities during WWII that were worse than Hiroshima.
The firebombing of Dresden comes to mind....
How Whoreabull.
Talk about illegal monopoly maintenance? Yikes!@#$%
It's really really funny, they have a drop down list of phrases like 'good game' to choose from but no real chat. You can't get to know the person, only choose from a list of predefined responses.
Of course, this was sent out in an email forward as "RASCISM AT MICROSFOT!!!1!!11!21!", because you could type "I'd like all niggers to die", and of course, it would respond, "I'll drink to that!".
Shortly after that, the thesaurus was disabled for anything longer than one word. I could easily imagine a directive coming down from on high, saying not to have anything in the thesaurus, dictionary, or whatever, that could even remotely have a risk of generating something embarassing to Microsoft. One way to prevent that would be to simply refuse to search for analogies to "idiot", "dullard", and so on.
I agree with you for the most part, removing these words isn't nearly the same as censorship, but...
Given the choice, I really would like my thesaurus to come up with the full selection of words. If I type in "Black" it should produce "African", "nigger", "negro", "colored", etc. with a note explaining the connotation of each word. The thesaurus isn't there to tell me what I mean, it's there to help me find the word that matches what I'd like to say.
In some contexts it's actually very important. A foreigner may not know which words are derogatory and which aren't (it's pretty arbitrary, after all). A good thesaurus can be a life saver in such cases.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
The reason they did it is so that you can't disparage Microsoft. After all, why would software provide a feature that violate its own EULA? The next step is to add a "context-sensitive" thesaurus, which would offer suggestions that make more sense within its scope.
For example: .
Bill Gates is an idiot
Suggestions: Cool Guy, Stud, Pimp Daddy, etc.
I would argue that this is evil. Not in the 1984/newspeak sense described by some, since it's not really an attempt to control people via language, it's a classic corporate lawyer thing to do. Corporate lawyers get paid to think of all the ways that companies can get into trouble and prevent it. We have seen in the past, when word processors offer stupid [idiotic, moronic, asinine] suggestions for word replacements, some smart-assed journalist writes a story and the company looks bad. Clearly, from the lawyers point of view, the best solution is to simply eliminate the possibility altogether.
If you've worked at a large corporation, you'll often discover that many of the inanities of corporate life arise not from pointy-haired bosses directly, but from "guidelines" that were created and put into place by PHBs in consultation with risk-averse lawyers. One thing this shows is that Microsoft is actually becoming IBM, the thing it has always feared and proof that it too will eventually become a dinosaur and die of irrelevance.
The reason that this is evil, however, is that until Microsoft dies, they are still a monopoly, and most non-technicalusers are not aware of choices other than Windows, Word, Excel, etc. on the desktop. Or, just as likely, I need to use them for compatibility with others. Therefore, these people are now going to find that computers and technology are less useful to them. There's no reason I should have to have a paper dictionary and thesarus by my desk, but if I use Word, it appears that I will have to anyway. That makes the computer less useful and is therefor evil.
Microsoft has simply determined that, if you need to use a computer thesaurus to insult someone, you're better off not bothering, or just using the words you can come up with.
They're just trying to make it harder to write letters to Microsoft Customer Support.
They eliminate "potentially offensive" words like "idiot" in case somebody tries to use Word2000 write a review of a Microsoft product.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
that sounds like it either was said by Orwell and misquoted by you, or PKD is blatantly ripping off Orwell quotes
Sorry but the word "idiot" is a legitimate word, not a vulgar slang like "nigger." Don't use extreme examples to try to make a point.
However, if I type in "MStool" I expect to see "danheskett" come up in the thesaurus.
select Start->Programs->Word
select Tools->Language->Thesaurus
type "Windows"
Click "Find"
Result:
Heaven
Good stuff
Orgasm
select Start->Programs->Word
select Tools->Language->Thesaurus
type "Linux"
Click "Find"
Result:
Suck
Inferiority
Goat sex
When i type NYC with WingDings, i get: a skull and bones, something that looks like the star of david and a bomb???
Wingdings gives me skull and crossbones, star of david, and thumbs-up. The 'M' looks like the bomb icon from the old Macintosh "sorry, a system error occured" dialog, and the 'z' looks like the symbol on Macintosh keyboards' command keys.
However, Webdings produces eye, heart icon, city skyline. (But will they remove those two towers in the next service pack?) It also gives a "Do Not Pirate Microsoft Software" icon if you type '#'.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Idiots probably don't know how to use the Thesaurus in MS Word anyway.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
To MS's defense , perhaps this is their attempt to legally cover their tails? Picture this: Someone types a word that has an offensive synonym, and sues Microsoft for the presentation of that word. It could happen.... If there weren't people out there who are so overly sensitized to the least little bit of slightly perceived hint of offensiveness, and take everything excessively personal, then this probably would not have happened...
Somewhere in America 2078:
..."
... well don't know the term, but he was kind of doing stuff ... that."
- Bozo: "So i was talking to this guy yesterday
- Bill: "And ? "
- Bozo: "Well he was behaving like
- Bill: "What do you mean, i don't understand."
- Bozo: "Wait i'll look in my digital thesaurus for the word i'm missing..."
- Bill: "Yes, these Microsoft products are really great!"
- Bozo: "I don't know, can't find it, but the guy was really annoying."
Enough said.
F 451 speaks much better, the original cause of the book burning was a desire for political correctness, for appealing to the lowest common denominator. A quote;
"You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war"
there you go, censoring things (even individual words) because they may offend is simply a little whisper of tyrrany, not a great roar. Which, do you suppose, is harder to fight? The defenses here seem to be the answer to that question.
Hum... maybe next release will allow you to use words according to security clearance:
Ultraviolet: Bill G., your Friend.
Violet: Steve B.
Indigo: M$ senior management.
Blue: M$ middle management.
Green: All M$ staff.
Yellow:ASP developers, Internet Insecurity Server webmasters etc.
Orange: Windows-savvy kids, etc
Red: Mr. Joe User.
Infrared: The Linux scum, slashdotters, etc.
Strength, balance, courage and reason. If you know what's this about, contact me!
A few years ago, Microsoft got into trouble because the Spanish version of the Office thesaurus, which was made up of content bought from another company, offered a number of words like "lazy" and "savage" when the user entered "indeo," the Spanish word for indian. A lot of people who hated Microsoft blasted the company for not censoring the thesaurus.
Another issue that came up around the same time was Microsoft's addition of a "parental control" feature to thier Bookshelf reference CD. The company wanted to expand the market for the CD, which included a dictionary, encyclopedia, book of quotations, and thesaurus, to schools and families. However, the content of each book included some words that parents might consider objectionable. The parental control feature allowed a user to "hide" all words and entries that might be objectionable. Bookshelf's dictionary, like any dictionary, tagged some definitions with labels like "offensive," "obscene," and "vulgar." The parental control feature simply turned off any entry that contained a word for which the dictionary included an offensive definition. This seemed like a good solution. However, this meant that a kid writing a report on beavers, for instance, wasn't going to get any help from Microsoft Bookshelf. He also wouldn't find the word "mother," believe it or not.
The latest flap over the Office thesaurus sounds like more of the same. Microsoft wants to avoid offending people who don't understand what a thesaurus is really for. They also don't really want to get into the messy business of censoring content word-by-word. There's probably a setting hidden somewhere that allows you to turn the full thesaurus back on.
does the GNU spell checker make you replace Linux with GNU/Linux?
No, because "Linux" is also a valid word; it is the kernel of the GNU/Linux system.
Will I retire or break 10K?
...and nobody's complained. I've worked for several years with ESL students, and the damage that M$ has done to them with their cursed Grammar "corrector" has been nearly irreparable in many cases.
In many ways, forcing folks into the standard grammar (of the active, patriarchical type the M$ typically endorses in Word) is an even more insidious form of censorship than eliminating words from a thesaurus. Most people can tell when specific words are being denied them, but can they tell when the very structure of the language is limited?
Of course, I don't think the M$ has the brains to actually use this to their advantage in any ordered way. Both cases tend to simply increase the corporate, top-down structure that America is heading toward.
I mean, come on, it's not "censorship," it's "differently-abled speech!"
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
This could actually turn into a legal problem for MS down the road. You could see it as simialr to the debate about message boards censoring posts. If you censor one post, you have to censor them all. Well, if MS starts editing some dictionary/thesorus entries, then they will have to censor them all and become responsible for the end result. They now have to navigate the insane world of politically correct wordsmithing.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Anyone want to try hoddy-noddy and see what it comes up with?
Help find a cure for cancer!
Wingdings 2 gives:
...
- an open hand
- some Greek-like character
- a hand pointing a finger to the right
Wingdings 3 gives:
- a "u-turn" arrow, pointing to the right
- an arrow pointing towards the top of the page
- another u-turn type arrow pointing to the right
This is clearly a plot by MS to influence people to join the Republicans!
... no wonder my parents have gotten so conservative since they've had a computer
Todd
-- !todd erases a red dot! I steal music on the internet.
Especially in a thread about bogus claims of Microsoft "censorship," which is not censorship at all.
Due to an evil moderator most Slashdot readers will not see the complaint of (misfortunately named) user "LinuxIsForAssholes" that this issue was addressed by Microsoft back on Decemer 23, 1999.
Here's the link the silenced MS advocate offered. He also states that this is not news (obviously!) and that it certainly doesn't matter (that's a matter of opinion, though I agree).
While his name makes him instant moderation material, in this case his point is good.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Type in "monopoly" and you get "innovation".
Type in "patch" and you get "exciting new experience in personal computing ( $99.99 upgrade )"
The content was completely rewritten. We went from getting the content from someone else to using a thesaurus created for another Microsoft application (Bookshelf). This explains many of the changes between 97 and 2000. Plus given people's obsession with the whole "I'd like to blah blah blah" ("I'd like to kill Bill Gates" was one of them) and it returning alphabetically close words/phrases (in this case "I'll drink to that") paying attention to how people interpreted the content seems like it makes sense.
did you do that on purpos?
Add an entry to the autocorrect list to change Microsoft to Micro$oft and MS to M$. Then you can add entries to your thesaurus to associate Microsoft with other bad sounding words like Monopolist. If you're an admin replicate these files to every pc you control.
In Republican America phones tap you.
I never thought I'd post one of these, but...
ALL YOUR WORDS ARE BELONG TO US.
More seriously, this is a pretty weak move on their part. It's quite rare anyone looking anything up will accidentally stumble across something rude (though exceptions do exist), only those interested in actually using it. If they insist on persuing this idiocy, they might as well make it easier on the rest of us by providing a "show all definitions" button, or a check box somewhere with the "Hide possibly offensive definitions / alternatives" preference we can change ourselves.
Removing it outright is terribly ignorant.
Any spoon would be too big.
So? This just mean that Office XP is broken, and no one should use it. Open source needs to shove that down everyone's throat. I refuse to use broken software, which is why I stopped using Windows to begin with. I usually head for my paper thesaurus, so I don't know of any open source thesauri, but google gives me a link to WordNet.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Are you stupid, this is a perfect place for it. I don't necessarily agree with their idea of social change, but it is the correct place for it.
the more general, the better.
By better I mean more effective and effecient. As to whether I agree or not, I have never criticized Stallman for his politics through the vrius that is the GPL.
I disagree with the virus that is the GPL, and I disagree with the plague that is Microsoft, I just don't disagree with how they are doing it. It is their right, privilage, and opportunity to do this.
A related but more insidious problem is the fact that over time, grammar checkers included in popular word processors may lead to changes in the prevailing "standard English" much more rapidly than the language would evolve otherwise. MS Word happens to be the most popular word processor, but this problem would crop up with any similar product. It's not an English-specific problem either.
Magius_AR
"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten , a heretical thought ... should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words." 1984, George Orwell
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Imbecile - mental development never passes that of a 2 year old; cannot comprehend text or speech; cannot fully take care of self.
Idiot - mental development never passes that of an 8 year old; can comprehend speech, but not text; can take care of basic needs of self (barely)
Moron - mental development never surpasses that of a 12 year old: can comprehend both speech and text (at a limited level, of course); these people can take care of themselves, and contribute to society in a limited scope (though the book recommends they not propigate for 'the better good of future society'. 1932, go fig...)
American English is losing so much flavor by merely making things synonymous. I mean, really, if I insult someone with one of the above three terms, I'd love for -them- to know which level of 'feedle-mindness' I'm placing them at. ;)
Your mind is like a parachute. If it doesn't work, you're screwed.
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Word 2000 won't help me call you an idiot, but I can still call you stupid.
MS Word 2000 synonyms for "stupid": unintelligent, dim, thick, dense, slow, dull, brainless, dim-witted, obtuse
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Ironically, Ultraviolet is the internal code name for one of the not-yet-released features of .NET.
.NET team about UV. And, no, I can't tell you which one -- you're not cleared to hear about unreleased products.)
(No, I'm not joking. It's bothered me since the first time that my group dealt with the
The Computer is your friend. Trust the Computer. Keep watch for traitors.
Actually, that sounds about right...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
For December 5 & 6. Looks like Bill is taking tips from Scott Adams.
(Those without access, M$ employee goes to Bill, confesses one of the words in spellcheck was wrong. Bill announces misspelt word is new 'industry standard'.
Alice discovers M$ even bought off Webster's.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
(MS Word is NOT targeted ar school children anyway.)
MS is actively targeting children. Ref their donations of 'equipment' (all conveniently preloaded with MS software) to schools. A nice gesture to be sure, but at this point I refuse to attribute any kind of alturistic motivation to that.
"Get them young" and, "Hey, the first one's free!". Remind you of any other business models?
So now they are making a product that doesn't behave in the same way than others in the market and that uses arbitrary standards generated at Microsoft?
What will those geniuses come up with next? A digital camera that "beautifies" UGLY people in the picture? And the Ugly recognition algorithm will be made at the Richmond facilities.
I am not young enough to know everything. --Sir J.M. Barrie
So.. They have managed to get their tools onto 90% of desktops. Now they break the tools!
Microsoft have been re-defining English for years : US English is not a language. English is a language. Wouldn't 'English (US variant)' be more accurate ? Or vEnglish (as in 'vCJD') ? And for the hard-of-thinking, using the former doesn't mean that there would be an 'English (UK variant)'; that's the only English.
I was writing an email to a friend in Entourage and used the term "kickass" which Entourage flagged as being a misspelled word. One of the alternatives it suggested was "kikes."
I wonder if this is one of the words they will be getting rid of.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
> There are also two more "wingdings" fonts,
> WingDings 2 and WingDings 3, but I wouldn't know
> how to describe some of the symbols that come up
> for those.
So you're saying that when you type letters using WingDings 2 and 3, you get an image that is unspeakable?
My God, it's worse than we thought!
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I don't see anything evil here.
Honestly, I bet a majority of the parents out there who aren't half-assed drunken idiots would be glad to know that words like 'fuck' and 'niggar' won't show up in Word while their children are typing papers.
Anyway, Slashdot does even worse - The lameness filter. You're saying that removing words from your thesaurus is censoring, but removing posts that appear to be spam, is not?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
After reading this article I tried to type in a few words to this GREAT product and I realized that MS is not really trying to be evil or 1984ish or whatever. It's just selling us a bad product.
Type in 'hello' and got the Thesaurus, you'll get
a box that says to replace with the following synonyms:
ciao
hi
goodbye
so long
see you later
Are goodbye and so long synonyms for hello? According to the default Word Thesaurus they are. I don't write a lot of documents, and I don't know english as well as I should, and so I rely on computers to tell me what is correct and what is not. In other words they note that some words given to queries are actually antonyms.
In my opinion, it's just a bad product, not an evil plot to change the world. Also, don't forget that this is the DEFAULT thesaurus, you can add your own words if you want to. The DEFAULT thesaurus is designed to apply to the LARGEST possible market (everyone) which means that it has to cater to the lowest common denominator. I bet that most people don't ever even use the Thesaurus.
I think it might be safe to assume that people who use micrsoft apps/os are quite habituated at using terms like "idiot" and other words to describe their malcontent. I know Ive already seen the BSOD today 10 times and uttered impolite nouns/verbs.
Since the "bad" terms are obviously so familiar with ms users, it would be a waste of time to include these in their spell-check/thesaurus.
On a less sarcastic note, some synonyms for idiot are: retard, reject, dumb**s, moron... the list goes on.
My advice is not to count on any code for text editing, trust the big dictionnairies and thesaureses (dat spelt write, spel-chek iz dowen).
ms spyware had recorded it being used in conjunction with the words "gates" "balmer" and "microsoft"
How difficult is it to write a replacement thesaurus/spell checker? Does Microsoft lock customers into Encarta's definitions/spellings?
Of course, back in the dark ages, grammar checkers, thesauri, and even spell checkers were third party add ons.
There's a KB-article about this shitty piece
of clipart where a monkeybar is shown in the
background and a african-american couple in the
foreground.
Searching for "monkey" would yield the couple as a
result...
Fortunately, there's a hotfix for that...
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
This is all part of the effort to end the information anarchy. You see, when people know to much they don't always do what you want them too. For this reason, independent publications will have to stop so that we can be sure of what the truth is. All of these confilicting opinions are just too much for the average person to sort out.
With M$ in control, everything will be easier and more fun.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Imagine:
Bill (or Steve ?) walks into you office/cubical and gives you a 'request for feature' (I really mean feature as in feature here). "He, that thesaurus thing you are working on, I want that to not show any nasty words." What kind of moron would just say "OK" instead of "No, I won't because that would suck".
IMHO, a thesaurus will not work if you leave words out on purpose, it will die and then you could only see it in a museum;
Both extinct: Tyrannosaurus & Thesaurus.
In the acticle I can't find anything about it but in Word97 when you type "I would like Bill to die." the thesaurus will give you "I'll drink to that.", what are they going to do about that?
(It actually works or any sentence starting with "I would like", but it's funnier this way.)
Yeh settle the hell down, they can do what they want with their products. Blame the monopoly busting system (i.e. DOJ) ffs.
Am I the only one who remembers a while back when a certain african american gentelman "accidently" mispelled Niger (adding an extra 'g') and sued Microsoft over the distress this event caused him? So far as I know his case was thrown out, I haven't been inclined to look for an old news story. But now Microsoft will never have to worry about this kind of thing again, and won't need to worry about someone hitting lawsuit lotto jackpot on their dime (at least as far as this story is concerned).
Every now and then, being well read refers to the newspapers in your basement and not the books on your shelf.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
This shows once again that the US is one of the most restriktive conutries of the western nations when it comes to free speech.
Geez, don't get your panties all up in a bunch. Microsoft did not edit language. Microsoft instead has released the Microsoft abridged thesaurus of the English language. Other companies release hard abridged versions of their thesaurus all the time. If you don't like it, don't use it go pick up a thesaurus at the bookstore down the street and have it on hand when you write. Merriam-Webster, Houghton Mifflin, Oxford, and the rest of the major academic publishers have more impact on removing language than Microsoft will ever have.
Granted, society and industry can have an impact on adding words to language, but removing a word probably never happens. Think of all the words in there that we never use.
And besides, as long as their are hig schoolers, idiot, nerd, etc will all be just as popular. Hell, my 71 year old grandfather calls me a nerd.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
I was stunned to read that you thought that people on Slashdot might be a cut above anything. I must ask sir, that you please note the lack of substance, decency, and grammar in most Slashdot posts. Trolls such as yours are rampant, we are truly a sad lot.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Bayme Capital Group, a New York based mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, seeks acquisition opportunities on behalf of a NASDAQ listed company with more than a decade of experience in the technology sector. Bayme Capital Group is seeking acquisition candidates with sales of at least 5 dollars, and normalized EBITDA of at least $750,000. Direct all correspondences to info@baymecapital.com.
See, now, I'd have something witty and poignant to put here, and waste somebody's time by having them read this, but of course, the site is buggy and won't let me in...
What a pile of bullshit.
Although it's possible to invent new ways of expressing ideas stripped from the canon, there's no guarantee anyone else will understand you. The first time you use your neologism, the person won't understand until you explain it to him/her. Unless you plan on explaining it personally to each and every English speaker, there's no guarantee the word will mean what you intended when it's in general use. Without the benefit of inclusion in standardized language reference tools, means of expression become pliable, mushy, and undependable. They eventually fail to work. Dictionaries and thesauruses are important.
--- Submission is feudal.
What is with all you geeks living in the past? All I hear you saying is 1984...1984..oh no it's 1984. No it's not, it's 2001.
Microsoft is the wave of the FUTURE!
See if you get truth, freedom, and peace as synonyms.
But seriously, gates not bad. Gates doubleplus good.
just another anonymous coward
Microsoft is lovely (Score 5: Nice)
Bill Gates is friendly . IIS is good .
etc, etc...
How is it that there's "nothing evil" about MS changing our access to free speech on a whim, but Disney is evil and inappropriate for making a video aimed at protecting intellectual property?
Isn't this how Newspeak started. Eliminating certain words from the language then. . .
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison
Last year, when the Microsoft cafeterias decided to remove alfalfa sprouts from their sandwich bar, they CLAIMED it was due to risk of e. coli. At that time I believed them, but now that I am no longer exposed to the Gas Of Obedience pumped through their air conditioning systems I know that it was part of their plan to control the world. Microsoft's social engineering team no doubt recognized that eating alfalfa sprouts instead of good old iceberg lettuce in a sandwich is the first step on the road to being a tree-hugging, tofu-munching, freeware-trafficking Windows hacking, hippie-ass communist faggot.
Having squashed the alfalfa sprout menace, their obvious next step would be to expunge (remove, extract, eliminate, cleanse) words such as "idiot" from the thesaurus.
In this darkly ominous display of Big Brother arrogance, they have apparently granted themselves, the publishers of a reference work, the right to edit it as they see fit, without submitting it for peer review to everybody in the world who speaks English and might have an issue with it. Those bastards.
If one can't say anything bad, one can't say anything bad about Microsoft.
I find it flabbergasting that no one speaks up when the pushers of censorship sneak in through the back door when they say "Oh, well we don't want to offend anyone now do we?" The plain fact is that you can either have freedom of expression, or the freedom to not be offended. You can't have both. So the next time someone wants you to change your language and utilize euphemisms in place of the actual words you mean, tell them to go to hell because they are an enemy of our constitutional rights.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The Modern Language Association (MLA) announces its new desktop operating system...
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
A few years ago the Powers That Be wanted to build an "emergency access" road down to the beach, but the proposal was shelved after vociferous public protest.
As it stands, you can get there either by walking at low tide along the beach from Spanish Banks, or down the cliff via many many steps.
Bill Gates and Michael Eisner get together and form:
DisneySoft!
At that point, software and culture will have merged into a homogenized, wholesome, supermegacorporate dystopia.
Whee.
If you post it, they will read.
This is just plain ridiculous. They steamroll ahead with their monopoly tactics, welding everything they can think of into their OS to kill the competit^H^H^H promote the user experience, but THIS is where they try so hard to play nice and be P.C., it crosses the line into stupidity?
They sure weren't afraid to offend people in 1994, when Bookshelf happily defined such words as "motherfucker," and even provided a recording of someone saying it, lest I be unsure of the pronunciation.
~Philly
You all bought this?
I've seen this post word-for-word verbatim in other articles, s/Microsoft Word/pet issue/g;
You've all been trolled. Fools.
This article is exactly like the "*BSD is dead" troll form post.
Didn't slashdot post a story about one of Microsoft's products having offensive suggestions? So now they're fixing that and.. that makes them bad too right?
Um, does anyone else remember what exactly was happening in 1984, and re-writing the english language?
"We're rewriting it so as to not allow people to have treasonous thoughts, no more will words like evil be available, but rather the word "ungood"".
I agree that this is a minor annoyance, and hardly the end of the world. But it's disturbing nonetheless. What kills me is that MS can downgrade their product, and suffer no consequences. How many people would return their copies of Word 2000 if they discovered this? None.
what if you are writing some sort of poem and you need synonims for crazy werds ? what then ? now thats just plain stupid stupid stupid ahahaha i uno.
Any dictionary or thesaurus can do nothing more than describe how launguage IS used. They do not dictate how it OUGHT to be used. Mirosoft's product, therefore, is not a dictionary or a thesaurus. It is a religious or political work, and ought to be advertised as such.
If the thesaurus says that a synonym for "Western" is "aryan" or "white", and that a synonym for "Indian" is "man-eater" or "savage", that is because people actually use these words synonymously. To report a fact is not the same as to advocate any circumstances that make it factual. To criticize the publishers of dictionaries and thesauri for being politically incorrect, or for offending people, is just the same as saying that because the NYT published a photo of the WTC collapsing, they support terrorism. Clearly absurd.
Language is what we make of it, but we seem not to want to be told about the ugly parts we have made.
Edith Keeler Must Die
2. There are plenty of *gasp* paper thesaurus's out there--what's wrong with those?
3. How about using an online thesaurus?
Here's a good one:
Mirriam-Webster's Thesuarus and Dictionary.
Here are it's synonyms for idiot:
Entry Word: idiot
Function: noun
Text: 1
Synonyms FOOL 1, ass, *damfool, donkey, imbecile, jackass, jerk, nincompoop, ninny, tomfool
2
Synonyms FOOL 2, jester, motley
3
Synonyms FOOL 4, ament, cretin, ||feeb, half-wit, imbecile, moron, natural, simpleton, zany
4
Synonyms DUNCE, dullard, dullhead, dumbbell, ||dummkopf, dummy, ignoramus, moron, simpleton, stupid
Even Microsoft can't redefine the english language all by itself.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Can we please let the whole "Eskimo" words for snow myth dye?
Please?
Nugatory means: Of little or no importance; trifling.
It was also Word of the Day on Sept 5, 2000.
For starters:
4 82 58&mode=thread)
;-)
Geek: Encarta Encyclopedia found no matches for: GEEK
-Microsoft Encarta Encylopedia, 1998 edition
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/25/10
Anyhow, I recalled that Encarta came under fire in the past for it's version of reality. Here's a few tidbits from a search of The Register (I'm supposed to be working so you only get one free search
"The WSJ gives a couple of examples, noting that in Italy Antonio Meucci, rather than the usual suspect, invented the telephone. The US edition has Edison and Brit Joseph Swan inventing the light bulb simultaneously, whereas the UK edition has Swan first. Microsoft also does a special Indian edition that "reflects the local geographical understanding" of Kashmir (i.e. it's all in India, rather than disputed territory between India and Pakistan, and has avoided offending the Turks by removing the word Kurdistan from one of its maps."
So, good or bad, MS is making decisions based on it's finances rather than facts. Personally I prefer my references to be free of monetary considerations. I'll be looking elsewhere for research.
One not-too-surprising story I came across:
"Microsoft is doing a Virgin again -- putting one of its brand names to a product to which it has made no contribution. This time it's for the Encarta World English Dictionary. "
"Can I say you're my lovepuppy?" Founding member of SODAMNHOTT
Therefore, I wouldn't agree that you can extinguish a concept by eliminating the word. However, you certainly can limit the beauty and power of a language by limiting its vocabulary. A word does evoke a whole melange of related words and concepts, perhaps even a gestalt. Hence the frequency of German terms in discussions of this sort.
On a lighter note, does anyone else find it ironic that Microsoft won't let you find the word "idiot" but still treats you like one?
A culture with more words is a culture with more of an ability to feel and experience deep thoughts and a meaning of self. That was a cool argument in the 1700's. ALL people of ALL cultures have the same ability for thoughts and feelings. Words are only a way to express the feelings we have. That is why poetry exists.
There's nothing funny about censorship. Most companies publishing a thesauraus would want to make the damned thing accurate.
Sounds like new speak to me, the only difference to Microsoft and the "Party" in 1984 would be that people blindly buy MS products, they are not imposed onto them by MS. OOH wait, the certain population that does use Office proably wouldn't miss the words that are missing, they proably havent heard them any way!! Sorry bout the rant here, I'm a Corel purist.
Bad spellers of the world untie!
I always use online resources for dictionaries, thesaurus, spelling. That way you know the stuff is most up to date (or at least probably better than your local database!).
Another good resource is wordnet:
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/
http://homepage.mac.com/jcarusone/iMovieTheater2.h tml
Poor guy really could have used a thesaurus.
Really. It's the strangest misspelling(?) I've ever seen. What (if anything) does it mean?
They had to elminate "idiots", "monopoly", "Evil Empire", and "Borg" because they all definitions that said "See Microsoft"!
A *real* thesaurus and a *real* dictionary should include all accepted English words. They are supposed to be references after all.
However, I bet most people would rather have MS Word use a "business" dictionary and thesaurus that contained only accepted BUSINESS English.
A good example of this would be removing the word "manger" from the spell-checker, since I bet 99.9999999% of the time the user is trying to spell "manager" instead. And one would almost never use the word "idiot" in a real business or technical document.
Almighty unmakes unsmart in Newspeak. Commrades glory for Almighty. Comrade more equal. Almighty more equal than Comrade.
It's interesting that Microsoft eliminated the very word that best represents them in many circumstances.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mod me down if you like, but as an anarchist at heart, I despise limits on my expression. Not that this case does that explicitly, but its this form of thinking that oppresses.
"For every conviction are there more convicts" -Dunno
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will" -A. Crowley
My God, Micrsoft IS Big Brother. (If you don't understand, its time to reread Orwell's classic science fiction novel 1984.)
Try "anti-trust." If it doesn't produce an entry then I'd definately call this double-plus ungood.
That should be 'pidgin', not 'pidgen', I believe.
BSD is a free license.
:)
GPL is not
No one at microsoft says "Linux is distributed under the cancer license". Microsoft is of the opinion that the GPL does have a cancerous effect - the viral nature that everyone understands so well.
GPL may be a free license for end users. It is not a free license for software developers - theres quite a lot you ahve to be willing to give up in order to use GPL. And the notion that GPL gives you "so much" in exchange is ridiculous.
RMS et al were the ORIGINAL people making fuss over the word "Free". How can you fault MS for word redefinition when there exists http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
It's a whole page talkinga bout the "correct definition" of "free software".
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
He just choses, correctly, not to use it :)
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Is Microsoft actually REMOVING words from the common lexicon. Try typing in 'fora', which is the proper pluralization of 'forum' ('forums' is also acceptable). Microsoft will just auto-correct your word to 'for a'. How annoying is that? They are dumbing down the english language, who gave them that authority?
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Idiot:
{ No meaning found }
Guess Microsoft got to Apple too.
Little trip into Virtual PC and fire up my favorite wordprocessor from the days of my youth (Tandy time!), the one bundled with DeskMate called simply "Text". Check out this file date:
THES RES 6,040 10-10-88 9:11a
Yes, that's the thesaurus resource, from '88!
Looked up "idiot", DeskMate didn't slack:
ass, asshole, blockhead, boor, clad, clod, creep, cretin, dimwit, dolt, dope, dullard, dumbbell, dummy, dunce, fool, goof, imbecile, jerk, nerd, nincompoop, numskull, oaf, pain, schlemiel, schmuck, simpleton, stooge, turd, turkey
So what if it couldn't multitask and was designed to run on XTs? It has one hell of a kick-ass thesaurus!
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
This thing isn't exclusive to MS or even the tech world, though. A non-computer-related example: My (ex-)girlfriend and I used to be pretty serious about playing Scrabble. In order to have a standard reference we could use to resolve challenges, we got a copy of the Official Scrabble Dictionary. To our dismay, we discovered that the dictionary had a similar policy: if a word might be considered profane or offensive, it's omitted. Never mind that "sh!t" is a perfectly good English word; it's not in there. We were rather annoyed by this, because it renders the dictionary useless for its intended purpose of arbitrating legitimate and illegitimate plays. (Sure, nobody would challenge "sh!t", which is clearly a word, but what about "sh!t-faced" -- does that have a hyphen, making it illegal, or not, making it a legal play?)
By the way, IIRC there was a version of the FrameMaker publishing software about a decade ago in which, if you ran the term "Quark Xpress" through the spell-checker, the suggested correction was "FrameMaker". Also, I think there was a version of WinWord in which the suggested correction for "zzzzzz" (forgot how many z's) was "sex", which was always good for a laugh.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Regardless, punctuation does not equal grammar. (Though it is, admittedly, a great bone to pick at.) Beyond all the poor grammar running rampant in our world, there's also plenty of people who don't know how to type and thus don't respond to emails very quickly; a huge annoyance.
--Nik
In response to your lighter note... that is a major point of the book 1984. The "powers that be" can treat you like a slave, but they won't let you use the word "slave". Instead, the word "freedom" is corrupted to mean slavery, and the irony is leached away. Without irony and shock, or language to share such things, mass rebellion is no longer an option.
Microsoft is hardly a world class government capable of enslaving otherwise free individuals. They are not capable of removing "negative" words like idiot or slavery from out language, much less of corrupting them into self-respective antonyms. But as far as computing technology is concerned, the mass culture is still too immature to have developed such "words" in the first place, so there is less work necessary. Annhiliating one word would not have provided much basis for 1984, rather is was an entire framework of words that supported a rebellious class of ideas. When in computing, such words are not yet established, then it is much easier to demonize the individual words before they have sufficient opportunity to even take hold.
Witness the term "GPL". In popular culture it is as of yet a very alien and inaccessible word, which cannot yet be used to leverage a very powerful idea. Most people who have learned of the GPL through mass culture as opposed to direct influence, can only suggest that it is "viral" and dangerous. A much less masterful form of 1984's "double-speak" for sure, but such mastery is not necessary for such nascent terms. Such words as representative of powerful ideas have difficulty being accepted even without direct and deliberate opposition from an antagonist.
Consider the difficulty of the term "Free Software." I am hardly a gifted enough poet to feasibly discuss this term with those who aren't already familiar with it. So the similar but distinct term "open source" was coined to try to overcome such difficulties. It has, to a degree, gained some modicum of acceptance, but only by sacrificing many of the ideals that made it, or "free software" worth championing in the first place.
Much easier to see for those who as of yet may be considered "outsiders" are the ideas behind the words representing "stability", "user-friendliness", "compatibility". The zeitgeist might reflect a common awareness of deficiencies with most popular computing paradymes. Most people can express that their computer is not as reliable as their car, thier dog or the average appliance. But without sufficient language of protest or rebellion, we as a society have been stuck under Microsoft's rule for about 20 years. Saying 20 years in regard to computing is similar to saying 20 dog years.
Microsoft may not intend to be "evil". It may be a "chicken and the egg" problem as to whether they support what the computing public claims to want with their limited computing vocabulary, or they shaped the computing public's perception of what things may be possible with underhanded techniques. Despite all of the evil they may seem to represent, at least they saw us, the mass public, as potential computing consumers worth subjecting to their rule. The regime they masterfully overthrew in their coup d'informatique considered us the untouchables, a caste not worthy of using a computer.
On a darker note of response, beware of those who would deprive you of sucessfully asking whether others agree with you, despite your disagreement with the current "head of state." Microsoft can only "treats you like one" when language prevents you from coherently and cohesively acting as one-of-many.
This is proof that in the case of Microsoft, it is the company and not the users.
In the case of slashdot it is not the companyit is the users/moderators
ah, the saying "never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity".
In the words of TWR (every slashdot moderator cloud has a silver lining)
"go ahead, mod me down, you are still an idiot"
so, go ahead, mod me down, you are still a vindictive idiot.
Shit, I was being insightful to up my karma, and FYI modding me down does not up yours.
(hidden message, what hidden message)
Slashdot moderators prove, once again, no good deed goes unpunished.
Go ahead and mod me down, you're going to do it anyway and prove TWR correct, again, and again.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
did they every fix that zzzz problem with word or am i imagining?
The problem as I see it is that I have no personality of my own.
Have you actually ever read the terms and conditions in the licences that come with any "free" Microsoft product?
The GPL and LGPL licences ensure that the source code *remains* free to the end user.
The end user will always be free to adapt the code and redistribure the result.
The US Constitution includes clauses which can make it more difficult for large corperations and for the govenment, but the Constitution was not written for them but for the people.
All this means is that MS deliberately broke their own flagship product. I expect that almost anyone knows a couple synonyms to "idiot"; when they type it in and see nothing, they will conclude that MS sucks. I see nothing wrong with that.
>|<*:=
I may be trolling, but if the story was entitled "Microsoft allows offensive words in products" we would all be ranting and raving about how evil Microsoft was for allowing such offensive words to be suggested. I agree that Microsoft is a monopoly and uses bad business practices, but this is not censorship or anything. These words won't disappear... it's just MS covering their ass.
I mispell "idiat"? How am I suposed to corect meself?
No sig for you.
This came up while my sister was typing some middle school paper. Funniest thing since that Word 97 thesaurus "I'd like to see Bill Gates dead." trick.
-Shmibbon
Yeah, it's a myth, but it's the myth that Sapir used as evidence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. My point wasn't about snow, or about words about snow, or about the correctness of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis...it was about the fact that the original poster had Sapir's theory backwards and "language determines thought" does not mean the same thing as "thought determines language".
I agree with the poster. There is a very clear example for this: in "the book of laughs and forgetfulness" (loose translation, I'm mexican) Milan Kundera ("the unbearable lightness of being") devotes an entire chapter to explain "litost", a feeling that can only be expressed easily in czech (it is a complex combination of shame at one's self shortcomings being exposed involuntarily by another person's attempt at not exposing them and so on and so on).
The Czech language is full of these deeply emotional words, and therefore, czechs have a waaay easier time feeling and communicating feelings. Same can be said of other languages, that specialize in different areas of human thought. Any person that is a polyglot can attest to that (have you never stumbled in mid sentence when you want to convey something that does not exist as a word in the language you're speaking in?, but is very clear in another one?).
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In fact, I remember reading about a lawsuit several years ago in which a black man sued Microsoft because he used the Office Clipart library to search for the word "monkey", and the library returned a picture of two black children climbing on monkey bars. He claimed that Microsoft was implying that black children were monkeys when, in fact, the picture had just been linked to the word "monkey" due to the fact that it contained "monkey bars".
Did you know you can change "light" to "dark" with the MS Word thesaurus (synonyms only). Took me only half an hour.
.sig error: carrier signal lost.
Enough said.
Do you like German cars?
In the '95 Encarta (I believe) it states that pot is smoked from flowers, stems and seeds.
Even my mom knows that you don't smoke the seeds or the stems.
Get your Unix fortune now!
contained too many colourful descriptors of the company and its leaders, it was disheartening.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
They're trying to sanitize our world! They want a world where nobody fucks or shits. because fucking and shitting are embarassing to a few stupid individuals, so to keep from offending a moronic group of lamers, they're fucking up my english. And who is going to use these dumb-downed, fuck-less programs? Children! Oh, no for the sake of the children perserve the fuck. After all without fucking there is no children anyway.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
God knows it equates to some offensive words for me.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
By the way, IIRC there was a version of the FrameMaker publishing software about a decade ago in which, if you ran the term "Quark Xpress" through the spell-checker, the suggested correction was "FrameMaker".
Actually, it was "Interleaf" that was corrected to "FrameMaker". (At the insistence of the company president.)
it's so much easier to hit the alarm when
you smell smoke rather than wait for
the full blow fire...and yah it
could just be a toaster burning your
morning meal...the key is it's "easier"
to cry wolf than actually bother to think
it through...Figgin fritz dicks
A Canadian is just an American without a gun and a decent health care system. Anon.
art reflects the ideas of the time...blah
A Canadian is just an American without a gun and a decent health care system. Anon.
Words for snow and describing snow:
Slush, Powder, Packed, Clumpy, Gritty, Yellow, Dusty, Dirty, Crunchy, Clustered, White, Ice Snow, Hail, Sleet, Freezing Rain, Frigid, Frosty, Caked, Crumbly, Crusty, Drift, Snow Bank, Flakes, etc...
Give people enough time and they'll name everything and give unique words to describe it in detail. I have a lovely book called "WORD MENU" which proves the "Jargon comes a need urges" mindset.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Everyone knows that when you type "Fat baboon dancing on a stage" into a thesaurus you get the synomyns
a)Overproductive sweat glands
b)Steve B
c)Joe's stage repairs
d)Weight Watchers
e)Comic situations in 2001
It's been posted 5 times in the same thread already, almost 10 minutes before this guy posted it. Why did you even mod this up? It's the same joke that post he was responding to made, just much less subtle and funny.
Is there a new addition to the EULA saying that any of such removed words are no longer allowed to be used in conjunction with microsoft, microsoft partner, and microsoft subsidiary companies? Its seems like the next logical step for them!
This is an about-face, no? The last time I used an MS Bookshelf product (BS95), it not only contained every dirty word imaginable, but there was a pronunciation button that would actually recite them aloud. In case any of the young'uns out there was hazy on the enunciation of "blowjob" and "motherfucker".
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Excluding the avenues of MicroBorg, I keep a
:D
couple of good Dictionaries beside me on the
floor!
In any case, I use a Computer that (apart from
a feable version of MicrosoftBasic in the '80s)
has remained Microsoft-Free!
Regards,
JK
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
must not have used Word!
View the movie, or read the Screenplay....even
I learned some new words that I wouldn't use
anyway, but are useful to know!
And you just know that the writer of the
HTML used on Pornsites must not have used Word!
Regards,
JK
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
in an area with no expertise their whole life. Its called an Operating System, but people still seem to buy them up, so I guess people will be drones and buy Office too.... oh wait, they already do.
I never said MS products were free. Far from it.
My point was that the GPL means YOU are free to do what you like with it.
It's not free for MS to do whatever _it_ likes with the software. Infact, the GPL is utterly incompatible with serious commercial software development. And RMS redefined "free" for that explicit purpose. So its foolhardy to be upset with MS about "redefining" words. You picked about the worst possible example of showing how GPL/GNU is "right" and MS is "wrong"
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.