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Microsoft Swaps Toy Gun Emoji For Revolver -- Days After Apple Does the Opposite (arstechnica.co.uk)
The pistol emoji has become a heated topic of debate among people. Apple's decision to replace the gun with a toy pistol is getting a mixed response. Amid all this, Microsoft has announced it is replacing the toy gun emoji with a symbol for a real revolver. ArsTechnica reports: This emoji change is part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which is rolling out now. The move has surprised some, as Microsoft and Apple had been seen as allies in an effort to dial down violence in emoji generally. In June it emerged that the two had successfully lobbied to have a sports rifle removed from the latest collection of emoji, as it was felt that two firearm symbols would be too many.Microsoft says it is only trying "to align with the global Unicode standard." The issue is that despite Apple's thought on the matter, when an iPhone (or iPad or a Mac) user sends a water pistol emoji, people with devices running non-Apple OS are only going to see a regular pistol. The article adds: Analysts had been worried that without standardisation between platforms, intent for violent emoji could be misunderstood. For instance, if someone sent an acquaintance a message using their iPhone offering to come around with some friends and some waterguns, that acquaintance might well misunderstand the thrust of the message if they were using an Android phone and saw a series of pistols.Emojipedia, an emoji reference website has a good suggestion: Apple: Don't change the pistol emoji. At least not today. Hide it. Unicode does not depreciate emojis, but there is no requirement to show all approved emojis on the keyboard. The pistol emoji could be removed from the iOS emoji keyboard without causing any cross platform compatibility issues.
"We must take away your rights because I don't like them!"
The cry of the SJW!
Your rights are subordinate to weakling's feelings!
Really the fact that we have Emojis is bad enough having news stories about them is just too much to take.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Now at Microsoft must be coherent with that no censor policy and add also as quickly the penis, vagina, buttocks and boobs emojis.
My best friend was killed by a gun emoji.
It's been 8 days without a mass shooting, we have to do something about that!
ðY" ðY"! ðY"ðY"ðY"!
ðY"ðY"ðY" ðY"ðY" ðY"ðY" ðY"ðY"ðY"!
ðY"ðY" ðY"ðY"ðY" ! ðY"ðY"ðY"
ðY"ðY" ðY" ðY" ðY"ðY" ðY"ðY" ðY" ðY" ðY"!
ðY"ðY"ðY"! ðY"ðY"ðY"ðY"ðY"ðY"ðY"ðY"!
ðY"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In terms of what the future will be like, the Jetsons is far more realistic than Star Trek.
I'm not even going to touch on the gun control argument that frankly gets retarded fast (from both sides)
But i'm definitely not in support of banning assault emojis or even requiring background checks. I fully support concealed cary emoji's as well
Making the emoji a water gun will make people use it more in playfull manner. Other non iOS users will see it as a real gun and you can guess the rest (hint: last step is profit)
If you use windows 10 you probably want a gun close.
Why are emojis part of unicode to begin with? Is it literally just because it became popular with 12 year olds and 30 year olds who still think they're 12 so they needed to do something with them? Couldn't we have just made the right choice, declare emojis absolutely stupid, and take away the phones of people that try to use them? I loathe that my phone highlights words it has an emoji for. "Hey do you want to swap out this perfectly understandable English word for a tiny little picture of the thing your talking about?". "Actually, no I don't. I don't live in a pictographic culture so the written word is just fine. Thanks." I received a text invitation from my cousin (See 30yr old bracket above) to a party and I almost couldn't figure out what it meant. There were pictures of chicken drumsticks, ballons, fried shrimp, those stupid noise makers you blow into, a strawberry, a piece of cake or pie, a hotdog, and a couple of drink looking things. There were more emojis than text, so I just couldn't bring myself to actually respond to that mess.
TL;DR I hate emojis and everyone that uses them.
Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? I'm a pretty liberal guy, but this is liberalism going crazy. Removing characters from our language is not going to make the world more or less peaceful (and I'm sorry, but now emojis for better or worse, are part of our language). This is some crazy 1984 New Speak stuff.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Speak for yourselves, when I get a text from my G's and I bring a water pistol to a gun fight, I'm going to briefly be pretty damn mad.
Emoji's are meant to be a quick and simple way to express what is going on in our lives. Guns are real part of our lives. They can be used for cruelty or entertainment. If we keep censoring every little thing because someone might be offended we'll devolve in and Orwellian society.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Water Pistol emoji's with poison do...... damn you Apple and your poisonous ways.....
By the way, is it late to deprecate the pistol emoji and introduce the sports riffle instead? You know, if we are to have just one weapon emoji, at least let it be the sports one.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
Unicode defines the glyph (U+1F52B in the "Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs" block) as "pistol" with the keywords "gun, handgun, pistol, revolver, tool, weapon." This is unambiguously not a symbol for a toy. Apple is in the wrong here for not adhering to standards, but being wrong and not adhering to standards has never stopped them before, so this shouldn't really be a surprise.
The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the earth with a plague of men, as once it was.
But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of brutals.
Go forth and kill!
May the blessings of Zardoz be upon you.
As noted by other japes above, we also need a penis emoji. And a big flying stone head one. U+1F5FF doesn't cut it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Until we get the .50 machine gun emoji?
If I write a long treatise about shooting the fools of the world as a great cleansing to restore intelligence, then that carries much more weight and significance than a smiley face and a pistol, but teenagers or other incapacitated idiots using it in casual conversation increase the incidence of violent responses.
I still can't figure out why they are so important. I have never used one myself. I don't see how they add any value to a conversation. Why are people so upset over what is - or is not - added to the collection?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So does saying "let's go to the mall and have some fun - bring your gun" or "let's go shoot people" or simply "I'm going to kill you".
How do you suppose we solve that "problem"?
Word substitution, of course! Doh!
Which is why we get gems like "buttbuttination" and "slippery Asian".
We can certainly do s/gun/waterpistol/g too - what could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps at some point Unicode might realise the fucking lunacy allowing emojis into their system in the first place.
Why don't we just give up on writing and go back to hieroglyphics.
For when you are feeling really anti-social!
In a standards-based world shouldn't we have an icon for the most numerous gun-type on the planet?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
It's a form of censoring communication between users via deception. That falls under the shadowbanning category and not just straight up censorship so I stand behind my statement with a one finger salute to any and all SJWs who feel it is a "good" idea.
You find a nice Emoji you want to send only to come to realize person receiving is likely to see something completely different than what you intended assuming it will even render properly on the target device at all.
They change between operating systems and even within versions of the same operating system. What looked awesome or conveyed an idea on earlier versions of Android looks like shit in later versions of Android. What looked awesome on Android looks like shit or barely even legible on iPhone or WP receiving it.
Emoji smileys all look like bloated gummy turds as is. Between PC BS and constant reskinning to go with "design language" of the day I don't see any hope or future in Emoji. Given the current trajectory there will be some embedded reference that takes over from Unicode and with it an end to death by committee.
No guns allowed in your cell blo er I mean walled garden.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That is the sound of Apple taking away your guns! If Apple deprecates that emoji, lawful users of iOS will no longer be able to defend themselves against Android users that are still permitted the use of guns!
*snicker*
All the emoji have this problem. My wife and I were comparing the emoticons as they appear in different messaging apps on our phones. There are subtle differences in emoji art that made us interpret the messages differently. Is that emoji confused or frustrated? There's another grin with teeth showing that could mean "Super happy and proud" but a slight artistic change makes it look shiftier, meaning "whoops..ehhh...ummm... I did it anyway. Oh well!"
In the immortal words of the comic book guy: "There is no emoticon to express what I am feeling!"
And yet I still can't post Emoji here because Slashdot doesn't support Unicode, even after SoylentNews led the way showing how to do so for the same software over a year ago.
If I post a pistol emoji, it looks like this: ðY"
Emoji may not be something most of us like, but they make a great test for seeing if a site supports unicode or not.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
...and let them choose their own damn emojis.
Bread and Circuses work pretty well, but you have also have to keep the service angry with each other or they turn on you. This is well known strategy dating back as far as we know. Plato and Aristotle hinted at it a bit, but "The Prince" laid it out in plain view. The politics of graphics is simply a narrative to keep the peons busy.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Apple: Aim Different.
Microsoft: Who Do You Want to Shoot Today?
Can you point to examples of them actually being used to communicate useful ideas, other than just being ways to punctuate other test in strange ways? What about medium ideas, like "I'll meet you at the lawyer's office at 3:30"? Or complex ideas, like "the relative speed of the object combined with gravitational constant and the radius of the earth indicates it will miss the batter's box resulting in a 0.002 reduction his batting average, thus forfeiting the chance for inclusion All Stars game."
What is the communication capability of emoji in comparison with Lojban for example?
Well, I know what "eggplant+peach+thumbsup" means but no one's ever had difficulty communicating that concept even before we invented language.
I'm assuming (always dangerous to do) you were being facetious, but this idea isn't new. The problem is violence predates language. The idea will never be foreign because all manners of organisms use violence to compete and survive, even should they not have a language per se.
Nice try, but you're ignoring the reality of this entire situation. Your post is irrelevant, because language and culture have nothing to do with this decision. It isn't a state action, it is one by a voluntary private firm concerned about its future liability in civil and criminal courts.
Apple is a private company so none of that applies. You are a bad troll.
We're gonna need a bigger .. safe space.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Removing the emoji reduces the non-thinking use of the emoji as a threat, which is legally defined in various ways and includes electronic messages.
How about you grow the fuck up? Spend some time in the real world.
Polonium isn't soluble in water, you'll need an acid for that. Might as well go with a strong one.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
... about what you're aiming at your foot when you install Windoze 10.
"violent emoji" = oxymoron.
Just another day in Paradise
I hope all you insufferable libtards feel the love; I come to Slashdot not for echo chamber reassurance, but to be challenged in a way that Breitbart can't. Yes, I think some of you are ridiculously SJW-like, but the majority of you LEFT-leaning (as opposed to RIGHT-leaning) intellectuals *are* (in fact) the sort of people I enjoy discourse with. Debate and argumentation is at its best when people are actually FREE to debate and argue. Like being able to burn an Amerikan flag. Or submerge a crucifix in a jar of urine. Or produce a typical Michael Moore flick. And, this bullshit about a goddamned cartoon? What I'd like to see is an emoji of that pedophile ... somewhat well known ... what's his name?
MUHAMMAD!
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
How precious.
How about you stop trolling like a whiny loser. You're what's wrong with slashdot anymore. I see nearly all your comments are hateful angry ad-hominems at users who don't have the grand wisdom you believe yourself to possess, and you lash out at everyone. Oh, and "Foe" me all you want, your emotional quotient is less than a toddler's. It's almost entertaining; with your lousy signal to noise ratio, you certainly dull any point you attempt to make.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.