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Writing Software for Worldwide Distribution Proves Difficult
lupa1420 writes "Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by offended governments."
I've been to the States and seen some of the news and current affairs programs and seriously, it's like they're aimed at 12 year olds or something. This story doesn't suprise me at all!
Actually this needs yet another correction in a long successions of trying to shut down this myth.
the NoVa story isn't true, see Snopes for details http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
A little while ago, Honda introduced a car in scandinavia called Honda Fitta. Honda didn't do enough research as it turned out that "fitta" is a scandinavian slang for.. "cunt".
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
The article made it out to be very negative to Microsoft, when in fact most of the problems seemed to be government pissing matches. A few examples include refering to the "Republic of Tawain", which everyone but China recognizes, or making mention of the disputed Kashmir region, which 3 different countries seem to believe belongs to them.
Notice that the fix for these problems wasn't to fix the map in windows, but to remove it entirely. That shows that it wasn't an "error in geography" on MS's part but that you can't get 2 governments to agree on geography and Microsoft was stuck in the middle.
To clarify: They didn't decide to ban it, they just passed some referendum about requesting that hard drive manufacturers change the terminology. Unlike, say, China. Or India. Who _do_ outright ban stuff they don't like.
http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08 /22/54679.aspx
The time zone map met a similar fate. The Indian government threatened to ban all Microsoft software from the country because we assigned a disputed region to Pakistan in the time zone map. (Any map that depicts an unfavorable border must bear a government stamp warning the end-user that the borders are incorrect. You can't stamp software.) We had to make a special version of Windows 95 for them.
Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
3 Oceans. Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.
One of my wife's favorite stories is about Chevrolet being puzzled that their Nova wasn't selling in South America, until they realized that in some of the local languages the name means "won't go".
I'm going to be a git and spoil this one; click here to see an analysis of this urban legend.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"A game called Age of Empires 2 offended the Saudi Arabian authorities because it showed victorious Muslim armies turning churches into mosques. The game was withdrawn from sale in the kingdom."
Just as a minor, semi-offtopic comment: Um, wasn't that precisely what happened to the Hagia Sofia? You can still see the faint traces of the crosses that were removed when the whole thing was turned into a Mosque. So even if turning churches into mosques wasn't normal practice, it did happen. To quote from a website about the Hagia Sophia:
"On Tuesday, May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror entered the vanquished city late in the afternoon and rode to Hagia Sophia. He was amazed at its beauty and decided to convert the Cathedral into his imperial mosque."
(Disclaimer: No, I'm not trying to be inflammatory about religion, I'm just making a historical point.)
Their knowledge of geography might be flawed, but their knowledge of history seems to be spot on. Mosques built over top of razed Christian churches is a very common thing in the middle east.
In the interests of furthering accuracy and geographic knowledge - several points.
1 Taiwan is the Republic of China and claims to be government of the whole of China. The Republic of Taiwan is just wrong - and reflects the US two China policy. It is as big a faux pas as calling the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Mainland China (or worse Communist China)
2 Only 26 countries recognize the ROC. It used to be the other way until the 70's when most countries did pursue a 2-China policy due to US influence. Google Taiwan recognition and you will see why this is the case and how it came about
Don't even want to go near Kashmir but Microsoft should have at the very least just made it a disputed region under control of India and I think people would have been satisfied (since that is in fact the reality of the situation...)
Ironically, the "fix" to the problem shows the source of the problem. Microsoft wants to do as little work as possible and rather than globalizing its software it wants to repackage the American form.
...you wouldn't expect westerners to know the details of how the muslims handled conquered peoples and their religion...
Or maybe they were trying to be historically correct. One of the most famous places in Istanbul is Hagia Sophia. It used to be a Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and when Constantinople was taken over by the Turks in the 15th century, it was turned into a mosque. Now it is a museum, but the practice to turn churches into mosques did exist in the past...
That one is, indeed, an urban legend; but how about the Mitsubishi Pajero SUV? They couldn't sell it under that name in Mexico, because the word Pajero is slang for... ahem... whacking off.
Geography is more than just topology and boundaries.
The same applies to any city in the USA. One vote with the appropriate majority in the various state houses of NY is all it takes for New York City and its mayor and local offices to cease to exist.
Of course, this would never happen.
In the USA there are only two recognized sovereign governments - state governments and the national government. Each have certain delgated powers and responsibilities. They in turn delegate their authority to various subdivisions. This is called a federal system of government. In general the US Congress can't just replace a state government with a vote (though I believe they can censure a representative).
Most nations use a unitary system of government. There is only one sovereign government, and it is at the national level. In most nations a vote of the national Parliament is all it takes to dissolve any local or regional government.
In the USA this power does get used on rare occassion. It probably happens most often with school districts - in many states if a district goes below some testing standard the state will often set up a local administrator to clean house. This local admin is not elected, and is only subject to the state board of education. They can set local tax rates at will, change any necessary school policies, etc. Of course, the reality is that the state will often toss in extra funding as well to help clean things up.
The same applies to town governments if they get out of control or end up becoming bankrupt.
So, the only difference between DC and Los Angeles is that there is no state government - DC is a federal territory, and is managed completely out of the Federal budget.
But understanding the differing scale of things is much harder for human brains wrap around. Yes, they can be described by measuring distance or travel time, but it's hard to really understand differences in scale until you've been there. E.G., I remember visiting in the UK, and some people described "far away" villages which were closer than my daily commute. This is just one of the many reasons that you need to visit a place to really understand it.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
It wasn't just that the US youth scored badly, but in a group of 9 countries, only the Mexican youth scored worse. The test isn't particularly hard either - it's multiple choice.
Other interesting tidbits: Swedish youth were more than twice as likely to select the right choice for the size of the US population, where the options were "between 10 and 50 million", "between 150 and 350 million", "between 500 and 750 million", "between 1 billion and 2 billion" or "I don't know".... Hardly a difficult question. Even so, only 55% of the Swedish youth (who did best on this question) got it right.
11% of the US youth tested couldn't even pick out the US on a world map when the other choices available were Canada, China, Colombia and "I don't know"...
That said, the US and Mexico were not alone in answering shockingly badly on many questions. Canada and the UK also got pretty close...
Indeed. The text of the survey highlights is as follows:
Survey Results: U.S. Young Adults Are Lagging
Despite the daily bombardment of news from the Middle East, Central Asia, and other world trouble spots, roughly 85 percent of young Americans could not find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map, according to a new study.
Americans ages 18 to 24 came in next to last among nine countries in the National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey, which quizzed more than 3,000 young adults in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States. Top scorers were young adults in Sweden, Germany, and Italy.
Out of 56 questions that were asked across all countries surveyed, on average young Americans answered 23 questions correctly. Others outside the U.S., most notably young adults in Mexico, also struggled with basic geography facts. Young people in Canada and Great Britain fared almost as poorly as those in the U.S.
Among young Americans' startling knowledge gaps, the study found that
Several perhaps interrelated factors affected performance--educational experience (including taking a geography course), international travel and language skills, a varied diet of news sources, and Internet use. Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
FYI...
In practice, China and Taiwan are two different countries, but anyone with the balls to formally recognize it ends up on China's shit list. The PRC has hinted that they might go so far as go to war if the US were to publicly support Taiwanese independence. And, of course, China is a full-blown nuclear power, and has North Korea as its puppet/fall guy. That means lots of dancing around words when talking politics about the two.
(And, in case you were wondering, that's the real reason why China has been making such a big deal about starting its own space program and putting its own people on the moon. It's a public demonstration of your ICBM technology for delivering nuclear warheads, which was the reason behind the US vs. Russia space race.)
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
bully?
It's their country, and their laws. If you want to do business in THEIR country, respect their values and their laws. Otherwise, just don't go there.
'Civilized world'? where the hell do you come from, the XVth century or something?
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Of course, citizens from Puerto Rico might be offended by a fellow american calling it Peurto Rico. :-)
(8-DCS)
The funniest bit is that the Queen's Birthday is a national holiday: in the Netherlands!
Now, if you look at the map, and the cultural difference, then this cock-up becomes highly amusing.
Mart (Dutch, so I should know of the significance of April 30th)"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Why do people keep bringing up this misleading survey? Actually the survey isn't misleading, Just NetGeo's doom and gloom donation-seeking summary. Let me do a tiny bit to set the record straight.
Yes, American school kids are largely ignorant of geography. But the survey also points out the gross ignorance of students in other nations. Reporters and pundits tend to forget this in their zeal to portray the US as a bunch of nincompoops. It is a good thing that this geographical ignorance in the US is highlighted, because it means that we can now move to correct the problem. But it does not imply that other nations are let off the hook!
This was a survey done by a US organization for a US audience. Then the US media reported about are dumb kids. Then the non-US media came along and quoted the US media, and suddenly the whole world is awed at the stupidity of US schoolchildren.
But if you look at the actual results, or merely read a bit further down in the summary, you'll find a slightly different story. That's what's not being reported: the US is not alone in its geographical ignorance!
Some choice quotes: "Others outside the U.S., most notably young adults in Mexico, also struggled with basic geography facts. Young people in Canada and Great Britain fared almost as poorly as those in the U.S.".
Or how about, "Young adults worldwide are not markedly more literate about geography than the Americans. On average, fewer than 25% of young people worldwide could locate Israel on the map. Only about 20% could identify hotspots like Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq", and "In France, 24% did not know that that their own country was a nuclear nation."
It doesn't bother me that the world is picking the US for getting a "D" in geography. What bothers me is that the world thinks getting a "C-" in the same class is a resounding success!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Just a quick correction. Although much of what you say is true, kurdish is not a forbidden language in turkey. There are kurdish concerts, tv shows (albeit currently limited to the state tv), music albums etc.. What the turkish government is trying to prevent by denying an existence of a kurdistani state (when in fact, currently there is no such country), is to avoid having a (perhaps understandably) hostile neighboring kurdish state bent on acquiring currently turkish soils.
I'll grant that the "vast majority" bit is reaching, but are you denying the still strong voice of the "KJV only" crowd in American Christianity? When non-KJV English translations started to appear, was there no uproar?
/really believe/ that Christ taught His disciples to pray beginning with the syllables [ Our fä'th[schwa]r hoo ärt in h[schwa]'v[schwa]n ]. Maybe some of them would admit that he used a different language if they thought about it. (And especially if they remembered Matthew 27)
I'll bet that there are in fact a large number of Christians who
Certainly Mel Gibson's recent movie may have eroded that strain a little, but the idea that biblical figures really did speak in 1500s English has more currency with American Christians than you might think.
What do you know?
think the nations capital > nation's
is in the far northwest. > Use ? instead of . at the end of a question.
Americans dont even know > don't
Washington in the District of Columbia. > There is no Washington in D.C. "Washington, D.C." is the capital city's name.
D.C. isn't a state, it's a special district with it's own government? > run-on sentence
it's own government? > its
know that Peurto Rico > You misspelled Puerto Rico three times. How's that for offending "Peurto Ricans"?
belongs to the US, but is > unneeded comma
it's own nation? > its
referring to Peurto Rico > Puerto Rico
Peurto Ricans > Puerto Ricans
China or India, is > unneeded comma
refer to Peurto Rico > Puerto Rico
as a "state", > unneeded comma; comma would be within quotes
it's not a criminal offense [...] neither in the USA or > "neither" causes a double negative; use either
in Peurto Rico. > Puerto Rico
It is a criminal offense to refer to Taiwan as a country in China. > clumsy placement of prepositional phrase makes sentence ambiguous -- Is it okay to refer to Taiwan as a country [that exists] in[side] Brazil? ;-) It is a criminal offense in China to refer to Taiwan as a country.
>>> flamebait, dubious insinuations, and sweeping generalizations throughout
McDonalds *does* sell hamburgers in India. I've eaten meat and beef there on many occasions. Don't color the whole country with Brahman wackiness. ;)
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
There was, and there still is, in some circles. Many (most?) of the Evangelical churches have adopted the modern English bibles, but there are a fair number of other churches that keep to the KJV for a variety of reasons.
I'm a supporter of the KJV-only type, but not for reasons that you might think.
Aside from the fact that some words used 400 years ago have fallen into disuse, I think the language itself is more clear than modern English. Through the old English, it is very easy to tell, for example, whether something is being addressed to a simgle person or to a group (and sometimes the honor being given to someone) by the pronoun used.
Modern English, by contrast, has become "polite", in that the second-person singular has been replaced completely by the "formal" or second-person plural. (We don't have "thee" or "thou" and "you" anymore; we just have "you".)
It is a fact that very few English-only speakers seem to pick up on, until they try to learn another language. (French is the only language I know of that actually has a verb for "the use of 'tu'": tutoyer... One would find out about that quickly if one used the second-person singular at the wrong time...)
Besides all that, I figure that as far as English Bibles go, the KJV is the best. Armed with a good dictionary and a concordance, one shouldn't have any problems. (If the language you are most fluent in is not English, then this obviously shouldn't apply to you....)
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.