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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."
The annual National Geographic Survey had thrown up the sad fact that only 23 out of 56 young Americans knew the whereabouts of the Pacific Ocean
Oh, cry me a river--like the Pacific Ocean is some big, important thing. I mean, you need to drive all the way to Sweden just to see it!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
"Marge, anyone could miss Canada. All tucked away down there."
...they're failure to keep up with global geopolitical madness.
Most of the examples listed were problems that cropped up due to political reasons, not due to a lack of geography knowledge. No matter how you draw a map, where you place Kashmir is going to offend someone. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are going to be contenious no matter where you place them. Microsoft did the only reasonable thing, they drew the maps to the favor of the richer countries (the ones that buy their software). Sorry Pakistan, no disputed territories for you.
I read the internet for the articles.
From the article, it seems that Microsoft programmers have gotten in trouble because... wait for it... THEY READ A MAP. That's right, THEY READ A MAP. The results of their map reading have lead them into several political situations that there was little possibility of them being aware of. (Talk to the ***holes who make this stuff illegal and ARREST foreigners for READING A MAP.)
Americans may have a poor understanding of Geography, but I don't really see that being an issue in this case. All Microsoft could have done is more thoroughly research the area.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Pacific islanders objected to the label "Here be Dragons!".
Several Arab countries resented being called either "Oil" or "Just terrorists".
Several former Soviet Bloc and Warsaw Pact countries objected to the name of their countries being followed by "(or whatever they are calling themselves this week)."
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
As much as we'd all like to think that this is just a case of MS screwing up again, I'm pretty sure this isn't just an MS problem. Besides, the article talks not just about simple geography, but of mistakes made about highly disputed geographic regions. There are a few in there where microsoft could have gone either way and still offended someone. Granted, stuff like that should have been checked, but the mistakes really aren't as simple as the post makes them out to be.
...no two people are not on fire.
It's not like MS specifically hires programmers who have no clue where the Pacific Ocean is.
I hope not. Especially since Seattle is essentially on the Pacific Ocean.!
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
Although something rings true in this about many USA citizens not having a 'global' view (World Series Baseball, World Wide Wrestling....erm, I don't think these are worldwide sports actually!), many of the points in this article would not be known without some pretty thorough investigation of political/geographical interests.
There are over 30,000,000 functional illiterates here in the United States. 29,302,757 represents 10% of our population, rendering that a staggering figure.
And because it has been widely speculated that they are more responsive to advertising than any other demographic, the networks are probably catering to them.
Do you like German cars?
...I'm going to rant. :P
Usually, I'm an american that makes every effort to be understanding of cultures different than my own, and to try to understand why it is that the US is frowned upon by other cultures. We have a foreign exchange intern here from Europe right now, and we've had long conversations about why and how americans take their relative wealth for granted (even our citizens on welfare tend to be wealthier than many in smaller european countries!)
But this...this isn't a lack of sensitivity on Microsoft's part. It's a lack of toleration on the part of other cultures. Knowing full-well that this software was written by programmers of another culture, there should be a degree of toleration and patience that goes along with the process. Make the developer aware of the issue and give them a chance to fix it.
Honestly, if someone in another culture (India perhaps?) that wasn't sufficiently versed in US geography made a map that, oh...I don't know, put St. Louis in Illinois rather than Missouri, or show the Arch crossing the Mississippi River or something equally stupid, I suppose some might be offended (I can think of other, more controversial examples...), but more than likely we'd give them the chance to fix it first.
Americans may be stuck up, take a WHOLE lot of freedoms for granted, have lots of money, and think too highly of themselves at times to bother learning about other cultures, but I'll give you one thing:
Even some of the most annoying pricks I know seem to be more tolerant than some other cultures are to the average Joe. How pathetic is that?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
There are over 30,000,000 functional illiterates here in the United States. 29,302,757 represents 10% of our population, rendering that a staggering figure.
Yes and one of them is your President!
Yes and one of them is your President!
"To the C students, I say, 'You too can be president of the United States.'" - George W. Bush, 2001
Do you like German cars?
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
*cough*hagia sophia*cough*
Here in Canada, we consider this color as "puke yellow", not "IT color". What a geographical mistake!
I will not stop until the color changes!
perception is reality
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.
in true slashdot bashing style. Haha!
i kinda wonder if linux offends accidentally or not tho.
Actually, the well-known Debian developer Herbert Xu resigned recently due to being offended by project members discussing (in the context of the new Debian installer) whether or not to refer to Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China" as it is officially designated in ISO 3166.
So this sort of problem is certainly not restricted to commercial or proprietary software.
- Kevin B. McCarty
The writer talks about how the average person has trouble with minor challenges in geography (true enough), but then goes on to talk about Microsoft programmers:
1, Not knowing where Jammu-Kashmir is, exactly, and not knowing that Indian law prohibits considering it part of anything but India. (Never mind that the law has its own counterpart in Pakistan; you can't avoid breaking the law on this one.)
2, In a similar vein, having to offend Kurds so as not to offend the Turks with regard to the depiction of Kurdistan.
3, Offending the Saudis by showing churches turned into mosques by invading Muslim armies...never mind that the exact opposite happens when a Christian army takes over a mosque in the game.
4, Didn't know that "woman" in one dialect of Spanish means "bitch" in another.
None of these things seem to me to be so hard to imagine. Do Nicaraguans know that the word "cracker" can be used as a racist term here? Do Indians know that the Argentines go completely apeshit when you refer to the Faulkand Islands as such, rather than by their preferred name for them? And his assertion that Microsoft leaves their employees facing arrest in other countries seems baseless; he didn't mention a single instance. The worst he came up with was "questioned," and that was for calling Taiwan by it's real name. It's not Microsoft's fault that China has a wild hair up their ass over that one, either.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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.)
Once people decided that the spin axis itself would be vertical, then N or S being up was a coin flip. In that sense, it was arbitrary, but one or the other had to be chosen; hence, not arbitrary, but inevitable.
... so that all the important geography (as far as your European heritage would be concerned) would be clearly seen from the room light falling from above.
... essentially perpendicular to the equator. There must be some sort of uppedness bias when reading a round object; perhaps linked to the orientation of ancient scrolls.
But let's say further that you were a globe-maker from the 1800s. Since we have gravity, hence mounts, and simple mounts at that, then your globes had to have a set orientation when placed in a room. Which way up would you have chosen? Yes, that's right, North
One thing which mystifies me is why the spin axis was chosen to be vertical. If the axis were horizontal, the light used in illuminating rooms would fall on the globe as the sun's rays do
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
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
I've been to some mosques that were converted from churches after wars. I even have pictures. This happened. I could understand how some Christians could get a little miffed. Could someone explain how it is offensive to Muslims?
Also, the geography "mistakes" in the article appear to be more policitical in nature than some developer not knowing where the Pacific Ocean is. Would I expect some developer in China to know about the controverial border between Michigan and Ohio that led to the Toldeo (Ohio) War?
Speak truth to power.
[C]an you imagine the rucus it would cause in this country if they were chanting, say, a Latin mass?
So what country are you in? I'm in the US, where most of the citizens wouldn't recognize a Latin mass. The largest single religious group is Catholics, and most of them wouldn't even recognize the Latin words to the mass.
There's an old joke in the US, that if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.
(Part of the joke is that most religious Americans wouldn't understand that it's a joke.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It is not the programmer's responsibility to be aware of these things. Public relations people should be there to supply them with information as well as check products before they are done. Programmers are paid to program, not be familiar with customs of other countries.
None of us like companies to become political agents in the world- but just doing business in certain parts of the world makes political statements- even if self-serving ones.
Logic, macros, and more
A few years ago I met a seemingly worldly American in Australia (while the country was engaged in constitutional debate over getting rid of a foreign monarchy). He eanestly asked me, "Do you think Democracy would work here?"