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.

Comments

Re:1984 Anyone?

[BlackHawk]

Your position is naive in the extreme, and you are missing the danger. Look more closely at the situation, please.

MS Windows controls the desktop market with over 90% marketshare. This is a fact.

The word processor package most Windows workstations (home or office) use is Word. This is also a fact. Even systems built for the home market are being shipped with the Small Business edition of Office. University students here at UW-Madison (WI) have the opportunity (through a deal between the UW and MS) to purchase full-blown version of Office 2000 Professional for $26, which of course encourages students to use that package.

Now, an observation I've recently made is that people are much, much more reliant on the MS tools for grammar, spelling and word selection that I would have believed. We recently rolled out MS Exchange with Outlook, and I was planning on allowing my remote users to avoid the pain of setting up a VPN client and running the Outlook fat client by simply using the Outlook Web Agent. The plan was nixed shortly after roll-out. The primary reasons? No spellchecker, no access to the grammar and thesaurus tools. I was stunned to find that of the 30 people in the HQ, only I and one other person did not have to resort to those tools to craft a business-grade letter or email.

In short, more people than you would believe need those tools to express themselves. And thanks to Orwell's 1984, we do know what happens when you start removing definitions and /or associations from words: people lose the ability to communicate certain ideas. And after a time, people will lose the ability to formulate those ideas.

Microsoft's actions in this case are reprehensible, and they are rightly being taken to task for it.