Microsoft Succumbs to Political Correctness--censors own font libraries.

Microsoft Knowleg Base::Windows Update ^

[VulgarWit]

Microsoft announced today that it is pulling symbols deemed "offensive" from it's font libraries. In an unprecedented act of political correctness Microsoft Corporation has releases a "Critical Update" which forces the removal of the "BookShelf Symbol 7" font library (Bssym7.ttf) which contains several symbols which may offend enlightened persons with elevated sensibilities as and may cause the immediate failure of personal computers running various versions of the Windows operating system.

The font library in question (Bssym7.ttf) was originally released on Friday, November 17th 2000. Microsoft has no immediate comment on why it took 4 years to discover the offensive symbols. Industry experts have suggested that sensitivity training may be required for the software developers and graphic designers involved in the project. Unconfirmed sources have also suggested that the symbols themselves may have been recently elevated from merely offensive or Orange to completely intolerable or Red in the early days of the current Democratic campaign.

A Critical Update is one that the Redmond, Washington corporation considers "critical to the operation of your computer..." The category is normally reserved for security patches for the computer itself but has to all appearances been expanded to include security patches for the consciences and sensitivities of end-users.

It is unclear from the Microsoft statement which of the characters (fig. 1) contained in the recalled font library spurred the recall though there is speculation throughout the industry that character x6A (a two-barred 'S' similar to '$') or character 0x77 (resembling a heart) are the most likely culprits. The former because it may offend those who are financially challenged or "resource-deprived" and the latter because they are romantically challenged or--as one commentator put it " have made a self-referencing life choice."

One of the potentially offending characters 0x77 or a "heart" which may offend single people or those who "have made a self-referencing life choice." Other possible offinsive characters are shown in the "Characters to copy" box.

No representatives from Microsoft Corporation were available for expanded comment. Microsoft is an industry leader in Personal Computing Software. Linux, a competing software platform, is not known to have font resources paralleling those pulled by Microsoft.

[Publius6961]

So the Onion is still in business?

[Dante3]

Micorsoft is full of incompetent people and those driven by some agenda. They charged our credit card for things we never ordered.

Also, I had a simple question about Microsoft Word. It was in none of the books. At Microsoft they insisted it can't be done. Then I found out from an acquaintance it could easily be done.

[FreedomPoster]

Nicely done. Orwell was a prophet.