Slashdot Mirror
How 8 Pixels Cost Microsoft Millions
NubKnacker writes "Economic Times, one of India's biggest business daily's is carrying a story about how a small colouring mistake forced Microsoft to recall 200,000 copies of Windows 95. This wouldn't be the first time that has happened to Microsoft. From the article, "Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation." Ouch!"
Daddypants is the e-mail address subscribers are supposed to send e-mail to if we notice a duplicate (or otherwise problematic) article is about to be posted. If the editors aren't going to bother to read Slashdot to see what has already been posted recently, why won't they at least check this e-mail account to see if anyone actually reports problems?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
between flashy products and grim utalitarian products.
OS/2 2.0 caught a lot of crap from people because the icons and graphics were basic, simple with muted colors. What people didn't know was that those icons had been vetted through legal review, special-needs review (i.e. all the various forms of color blindness), internationalization (like pointing with the index finger is OK here, but bad in europe, etc).
By the time you get through all those reviews, most of "chimp attract" is gone.... so where along the continuium do you want your product to be?
--Rob
It's kind of funny that one of the things that Snopes uses to show that the Nova story is 'improbable' is pretty much exactly what happened here:
Even if nobody in Detroit knew enough rudimentary Spanish to notice the coincidence, the Nova could not have brought to market in Mexico and/or South America without the involvement of numerous Spanish speakers engaged to translate user manuals, prepare advertising and promotional materials, communicate with the network of Chevrolet dealers in the target countries, etc.
Journalists don't read snopes when they're writing a story. That smells of research. You take your story from stories that you've read elsewhere. Hence the popularity of reality shows and the Iraq war.
Unfortunately this is how most of the world views Americans, although I believe it is probably more of knock on the American school system and American media. Most Americans I've talked to are nice people, but blissfully ignorant about anything outside their borders. Just look at any weather forcast on American TV, there's just a void beyond the border! :-)
It was on slashdot twice! On the frontpage twice, in fact.
We reallllllly can't let go of a "Microsoft had a bug in product X" article, can we?
Let's talk about typos in OSS! I put gentoo on a firewall and now it tells me when it's "stoping openvpn". Get it! "stoping"! What's that? I know what stopping is! HAHAHHAA someone made a typo. Therefore the whole organization sucks!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So now Microsoft is taking the fall for America's lacklustre level of cultural awareness. Companies do this all the time, and I'm only surprised that Microsoft havent done this a lot more, when you think of the amount of products and services it provides across the globe.
I like the way the article neglets to inform us which part of Windows 95 was to blame, or which game(s) were causing offence. Perhaps things would suddenly become understandable and cause the article to lose some of it's bashing impact had these details been presented.
The only map I can think of in '95 was the for setting the timezone, and as I remember all of that map was the same shade of green. It does sound a bit bitchy to make kashmir a special exception, so I'd like to know what part of Win95 this map was actually in, and whether other parts of the world had special shades of green too.
"If it's true, however, it explain a lot, like the security issues in Windows."
Um, no it doesn't. That's like saying that somebody's love of Reese's Peanut Butter cups explains their fondness for Disney's version of Peter Pan.
What a stupid comment to twist into an MS bash. Unless you're Indiana Jones, you qualify right along with his employees in his comment.
"Derp de derp."
No. A design/contruction/test/sales error.
Clearly not everyone believes Snopes,
Snopes has been wrong about things in the past. Chances are there are things on their site that are wrong right now. Snopes will get things wrong in the future. People act like Snopes is the infallible word of god or something but it is not.
... And I'm sure you enlightened Canadians/Europeans/Your_Nationality are, by virtue of not being American, intimately familiar with the do's and dont's of every culture on the planet.
Get real. It's not like they goofed up on things that an average child would know. They were details that most people -- including yourself -- are probably not aware of. Do you know the subtle difference between "hembra" and "mujer"? Do you know that including a certain disputed region of India on a map is illegal according to Indian law? Give me a break. Quit trying to make "stupid American" jokes -- these mistakes would be just as likely to be made by an "enlightened" non-American as an American.
I wish to call on the slashdot people to change the icon for microsoft. I find that portraying one of it's founders and current top executives as a Borg insulting to the maturity of people here. Simply use the actual microsoft logo or something that just says "microsoft" if there are legal problems with their trademark.
I'm not trying to make this a serious conservative website about tech news and opinions, but a lot of us are open source advocates and the community is represented somewhat on this website. This site has a responsibility to the OSS community and while this Borg icon may have seemed funny years ago, I think the joke is on us now.
And while people may say how microsoft bashes linux and opensource openly, that doesn't mean we should in turn bash them with an icon. All this anti-microsoft does is give credibility to their argument that open source projects are managed and supported by a bunch of geeks in their basements, and not hardworking, intelligent companies.
Windows 95 was a product that was probably sold in India eight or nine years ago. It is not a big deal right now. Also, theeconomictimes has many times in the past carried computer-related articles that are published in other news websites a day or two before. They have a major indian presence and very less international presence. This was actually discussed on slashdot.org after which theeconomictimes picked it up a few days later. Someone picked it up from theeconomic times and posted it on ./
Is someone here trying to draw a circle ?
That's evidence that not everyone reads Snopes, or has ever heard of it. It's obvious that there are publishers, including _Red Herring_ and _Industry Week_, which use editors who don't read Snopes, including the GetCustoms.com reprinter of Industry Week, who's just repeating the same myth that you perpetuate yourself. Just like you're perpetuating the whitewash Hutton commission which smokescreened Blair's lying about Iraqi WMDs with the BBC.
The difference between the Snopes accounts, and these others, is that Snopes includes evidence countering wrong facts in the myths. Of course all media, including word of mouth, is suspect. But we can tell which are true, or at least more accurate, by attempting corroboration of independent sources. When corroboration fails, we can rely on the principle of factual consistency more than politically and economically dependent reports.
--
make install -not war
there is no right way to draw that particular line.
That is 'disputed territory'. Pakistan and India both claim it. If they had colored that space in to be part of India, this same article would have appeared, almost verbatim, in www.paknews.com/. So, maybe you have to choose...literally not being able to please both, who do you piss off?
or, you could piss off both, and use a 3rd color for that area.
Have you actually read the Hutton report. Aside from the fact that it is a complete whitewash by a member of the establishment hand-picked by Tony Blair to clear him of any wrongdoing, it doesn't actually accuse the BBC of making anything up. At the end of the entire episode, I still have enormous amount of respect for the BBC and their journalists, and no respect whatsoever for the government or their lackey Hutton.
Then again, I suppose the BBC did make up the spaghetti tree hoax
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
What does my country in south america to make a diplomatic between korea, kurdistand and china, that in a way or another are somewhat close?
Seems to be closer the "WWIII: Microsoft style". A good example where with great power one don't give a shit about the great responsibility.