******** From: "Trei, Peter" <ptreiat_private> To: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private> Subject: Bowdlerized by Microsoft Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 16:47:47 -0400 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/opinion/23GOLD.html (requires free registration, blah blah blah...) October 23, 2001 Bowdlerized by Microsoft By MARK GOLDBLATT I was hard at the grindstone, crusading against hypocrisy and chaos, armed with my laptop and Microsoft Word 2000. I'd just typed: "Only a fool would believe." But "fool" did not seem right. So I hit Shift-F7 to call up the thesaurus. The lone synonym that Word provided was a verb: trick. [...] Tim transferred me to Kate, also cheerful, who promised to look into the matter. Several days later, Kate sent me an e-mail message with an explanation: "Microsoft's approach regarding the spell checker dictionary and thesaurus is to not suggest words that may have offensive uses or provide offensive definitions for any words. The dictionary and spell checker is updated with each release of Office to ensure that the tools reflect current social and cultural environments." [...] But maybe this isn't oversensitivity. Maybe it is what postmodernists call erasure: since language creates reality, if we erase every noun connoting below-average intelligence, the world instantly becomes a smarter place. Now, if only Microsoft would erase "hypocrisy" and "chaos" . . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Oct 24 2001 - 00:02:52 PDT