FWD: Microsoft Halts Sales of Chinese Windows
Alex Lam
Hi,
The following forewarded article might be interested to some
here.
Alex Lam.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
L.A. TIMES / NEWS / BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY / STORY
Saturday, September 28, 1996
Microsoft Halts Sales of Chinese Windows
95
By RONE TEMPEST, Times Staff Writer
BEIJING--In a setback to its international
operations, Microsoft Corp. has halted sales of its
newest Chinese-language operating system across
China after the government objected to
anti-Communist slogans in some of the software,
company executives confirmed Friday.
The announcement came after raids by police
on several computer software stores in Beijing
earlier in the week. The police confiscated
Windows 95 installation kits containing
phrases--common in Nationalist Chinese
propaganda--that describe the Chinese leadership
as "Communist bandits."
Microsoft executives said they are still
investigating how the phrases made it into the
version of Windows 95 marketed in mainland
China, which is still governed by the Communist
Party. Beginning today, Microsoft said, it will offer
an upgrade on the Internet that will delete
language described by Microsoft China President
Duh Jia-Bin as "culturally inappropriate."
"The problem involves only a handful of 70,000
phrases in the software," said Bryan Nelson,
Microsoft's managing director for China, who is
based in Hong Kong. Nelson said teams of
Microsoft engineers isolated the problem to two
traditional Chinese character programs in the
Windows 95 system.
Experts speculated that the controversial
language, including phrases calling on the
Nationalist regime of Taiwan to "take back the
mainland," was contained in programs provided by
Taiwanese contractors with Microsoft.
Before it was launched in March, the Chinese
version of the operating system was tested for
several months by more than 100,000 mainland
Chinese. However, the controversial language was
not discovered until the software reached Chinese
users living in the United States.
To eliminate the problem, Microsoft engineers
working for the past seven days in China and the
United States have created a program to delete the
traditional character sections of the operating
system. Later this month, diskettes will be
distributed free to stores offering the
Chinese-language version of Windows 95.
Clerks at Federal Software Store in the
Chinese capital, near Beijing University, said they
first learned of the problem last Saturday when
police descended on their store and confiscated all
copies of Windows 95.
"We were asked to stop selling the Chinese
version of Windows 95 several days ago," said a
clerk at Beijing's Legend Department Store. "They
told us there were political problems and that we
would get new diskettes in two to three months."
Microsoft declined to comment on the
financial effects of the sales stoppage. "I can only
say that Windows 95 has been the best-selling
operating system in China," Nelson said.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company also
declined to say how many people and companies
would be affected by what amounts to a recall of a
major Microsoft product. However, when the
Chinese version of Windows 95 was launched,
company executives said they expected the
operating system to be installed in at least 700,000
new computers sold in China in 1996.
The Chinese Windows controversy is the
latest in a series for Microsoft involving its new
operating system in foreign locales.
In July, Microsoft apologized to Mexicans for
"grave errors" in its Spanish-language version that
identified Indians in Mexico as "savages" and
"man-eaters."
In August, release of the new Windows system
was delayed in India because the government
objected to maps showing the disputed state of
Kashmir as part of archrival Pakistan.
"One of the problems in providing worldwide
systems," Nelson said, "is that there are always
differences in point of view about such things as
borders."
Copyright Los Angeles Times
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
iQCVAwUBMk7OIh05P0HGM0ntAQHT3wP9FvXwe7EH7gDY0HeEiEA8mKom2rEodGLp
G6RD8/IkrPR4G0NvZgtfARqkv0s4YoK6H6mqBK9/a9xQohnfcQNHJInN+dLKdLhS
H0LS7pPxk4R2jQdLEjx2psCfsUA4b3DOpJSLGxAPVi5T2/5vRyWDD7rrOSlq9bgn
3Jv4lozlPRA=
=wZVT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Alex Lam's Virtual Studio.
http://www.alexlam.com/users/lampas/
Also visit my Comedy Site
「 KomicKazi Comedy Circus 「
Is Here!
http://www.komickazi.com/
「「「 The 1st "Situation Comedy" on the Internet
featuring regular "cast members", including comics
Judy Tenuta, Bruce Baum's "The Adventures of Babyman",
plus guest stars including Dana Carvey and more to come.
We make fun of everybody. Don't miss it!
Also catch it on the t.v. show"Cyber Life" on the
DISCOVERY CHANNEL, Monday, Sept 30th 96, 7:25 p.m.
California time. (the show starts at 7:00p.m. the
portion starts at 7:25p.m.) 「「「
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Sputnick Overhead
Alem Lam reposted:
Before it was launched in March, the Chinese
version of the operating system was tested for
several months by more than 100,000 mainland
Chinese. However, the controversial language was
not discovered until the software reached Chinese
users living in the United States.
Well, that certainly is interesting...so, does this mean that
the mainland folks didn't mind the slogans, and perhaps even
found them amusing (like teenage boys with "dirty" pictures), or
were they just too stupid to find them by themselves...?
And why were Chinese users living in the U.S. so sensitive
to these things? I mean, they left China, didn't they...?
Anyway, the whole mess is rather a hoot, and just shows how
the mighty have fallen since the days when MS software could be
counted on to work reliably...perhaps not elegantly, but it
did work...
--
Dancing, with tears in my eyes...