Writing Software for Worldwide Distribution Proves Difficult 1391
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."
Insular US (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Insular US (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And don't forget the classics... (Score:4, Informative)
the NoVa story isn't true, see Snopes for details http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp [snopes.com]
While we're on the subject.. (Score:3, Informative)
Negative Article (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Master / Slave HDD (Score:3, Informative)
Straight from the horses' mouth (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Specific Ocean? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course not! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to be a git and spoil this one; click here [snopes.com] to see an analysis of this urban legend.
Churches to Mosques? (Score:5, Informative)
"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 The game was withdrawn from sale in the kingdom."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 [patriarchate.org]:
"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.)
Expensive oversights (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Wrong about Taiwain and Taiwan (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:It's to be expected... (Score:3, Informative)
Or maybe they were trying to be historically correct. One of the most famous places in Istanbul is Hagia Sophia [greatbuildings.com]. 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...
Re:Of course not! (Score:2, Informative)
This IS Geography (Score:1, Informative)
Geography is more than just topology and boundaries [aag.org].
Re:After reading this article... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Failure to "feel distance" isn't the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Whose Employees? (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Re:Who freakin Cares... (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed. The text of the survey highlights [nationalgeographic.com] 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.
Re:Oh come on (Score:3, Informative)
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.)
Re:The whole idea is crazy (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Re:After reading this article... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Insular US (Score:3, Informative)
What's staggering is that based on UN research, the figure is actually much lower than 10% in the US, between 1 and 5% depending on which study you look at. That's below the world average of 16%, which might be brought down by other regions like the mid-east, where men are around 25% illiterate, and women 50%. It's also worth noting that the world-wide illiteracy rate of 16% is dropping dramatically from 44% when the UN first began collecting the data in 1950.
Of course I'd prefer looking at quality over quantity, but I doubt there are statistics for that.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:2, Informative)
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)Re:Specific Ocean? (Score:5, Informative)
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." [nationalgeographic.com].
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" [gtpcc.org], 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!
Re:The whole idea is crazy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course not! (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Cultural Knowledge Calling the kettle black (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:The whole idea is crazy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Of course not! (Score:2, Informative)
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....)