9 ms·

This reminds me of the story about how the first release of Windows 95 was banned in India because 8 pixels of the map shown in the timezone selection control p

This reminds me of the story about how the first release of Windows 95 was banned in India because 8 pixels of the map shown in the timezone selection control panel were colored in such a way that suggested parts of Kashmir were part of Pakistan. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-millions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-mi... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42...

behnamoh 7y ago
Man that's crazy! They must've paid real close attention to it, but I think it's partly due to low resolution screens available in circa 1995. On a low-res screen, it's impossible to draw maps completely according to the borders, so this was probably inevitable and unintentional.
- pradn 7y ago
  Inside Microsoft, there's a whole database of geopolitically-sensitive issues that have been accrued over the years. You can see all sorts of border disputes and differences in language that you had to take into account when working on global products. On a related note, now you have movies with different scenes in China. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429 https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chines...
  - Swizec 7y ago
    At least 30% of my enjoyment of Venom came from it being set in SF and me going “Hey look I know that corner!” or “Wow we’ve been to that restaurant, they totally used a different place for that shop front!” Seeing your town in a movie is incredibly rewarding. Just like a musician is basically required to shout “Hello $PLACE” at some point during a performance PS: for the downvoters, that’s what the linked article cites as the reason that movie gets extra scenes in China. Chinese audiences liked seeing their city in a scene that Western audiences didn’t care about.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - pradn 7y ago
      Yea, it's one of the fun things about living in New York. Me watching the first Avengers: How'd they get from Upper East to Washington Sq in like 20 seconds?
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        It's one of the terrible things about TV shows and movies in my opinion. So boring seeing NYC over and over again, not to mention all the inconsistencies that pull you out of the movie. I'm even tired of all the Apple TV screensavers of NYC/SF/Dubai. Let's see some new places from South America or Africa or Europe or anywhere else.
      - FabHK 7y ago
        And how do the protagonists in US TV series and films always just immediately get a parking spot just in front of their destination??
        lonelappde 7y ago
        They have film permits, of course.
    - crummy 7y ago
      One of my favourite Youtube channels, Every Frame A Painting, talks about this in Vancouver - except that the movies are rarely set in Vancouver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      There is also that the CCP won’t approve a movie for release in China unless it has Chinese scenes.
      - 7y ago
  - RandallBrown 7y ago
    During my time at Microsoft I submitted a code review with an updated mapping library we got from a 3rd party. The auto review bot flagged the the changes with a "Geopolitical Issue" or something like that. Turned out it was an icon for Taiwan's flag. I don't remember if we deleted the icon or just renamed it, but the product never ended up shipping, so it probably doesn't matter much.
  - briffle 7y ago
    You have movies where the country of the 'bad guys' was changed in post-production to North Korea to appease China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2012_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2012_film)
    - robocat 7y ago
      Fawlty Towers when dubbed in Spain changed Manuel (a dumb waiter from Barcelona I think) to be Mexican.
      - carlob 7y ago
        In the Italian version of A Fish Called Wanda the mock-Italian is replaced with mock-Spanish.
      - h9n 7y ago
        But the Swedish Chef is still, surprisingly, the Swedish Chef in Sweden, which seems to be a cruel joke. https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/swedish-chef-what-do-swedes-think-of-him-they-think-he-sounds-norwegian.html https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/swedish-chef-what-do-swede...
  - thw0rted 7y ago
    I don't remember a lot about Looper but I feel like more exposition of JGL's "downward spiral" would have really helped clear things up for me -- for example, how anybody can go from looking like JGL to looking like 2010s Bruce Willis.
dirtyid 7y ago
Related to the original discussion, I wonder if there's a story behind how Taiwan got a emoji flag in the first place. Unicode Consortium referenced ISO 3166 for eligibility. Taiwan and a few other disputed regions didn't the cut until 3166-2 revision. The maintenance agency consists of representative from only western agencies. Interesting politics.
- erk__ 7y ago
  I beleive that the unicode consortium have chosen not to say much about witch flags are there pretty much for this reason. They don't want unicode to get mixed in with international politics.
  - adt2bt 7y ago
    There is no truly neutral position though. Who gets the final say then?
    - loeg 7y ago
      Have you seen unicode? They usually err on the side of including everything, including, e.g., alphabets of fictional languages.
      - organsnyder 7y ago
        Those fictional languages' mere existence isn't perceived as a threat by any government, though.
    - CodesInChaos 7y ago
      Whoever renders the text. Since most applications delegate to the OS for that, it's typically the OS. The OS generally follows whatever the jurisdiction it's sold in requires. In theory an application could override it by doing custom rendering of these codepoints. The unicode standard doesn't care, as explained above, since it just defines an alphabet and takes no position in which country/locale codes are to be rendered with a flag.
dheera 7y ago
I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft just didn't listen to them. If they ban Windows over a petty reason like that, they're screwing over their own economy.
- close04 7y ago
  It's something plenty of politicians everywhere have done over the years for things far more trivial than nationalism.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  They are not since pirated windows works just as good as licensed.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  One simple approach would be to ban unmodified Windows sales and allow their companies to resell modified Windows distribution with changed resources.
- zeroxfe 7y ago
  Microsoft employees in India would risk harsh punishments, including prison time.
  - vinay427 7y ago
    I think they meant if Microsoft didn't change the map and went along with the ban, seeing as they mentioned the potential damage to the economy.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
      > Microsoft employees in India would risk harsh punishments, including prison time.
      - vinay427 7y ago
        It's entirely pointless to copy and paste the comment I replied to instead of at least attempting to clarify in case I misunderstood. Why would they face prison time for complying with the law?
CodesInChaos 7y ago
And they fixed the issue by making the highlight color the same as the normal color (so each pixel is still associated with a timezone/country) internally. This later led to Poland going Atlantis, when MS removed its timezone instead of moving it to another timezone. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061027-00/?p=29213 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061027-00/?p=29... https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/post_images/0000180345/576816e6/attached_image/w95timezone.gif https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/pos...
jiggliemon 7y ago
It’s one thing for India to censor something for a stupid reason. It makes me uncomfortable to have China be able to influence all these other global countries into global (or in this case localized) censorship. Hollywood, News Companies, anything else that China invests heavily has no choice but to fall in line with the censorship.
- jackjeff 7y ago
  I’m surprised Trump’s trade war has not “escalated” to banning the Chinese emoji yet...
- xpe 7y ago
  Yes, this reminds me of a similar, but more general argument: Free economics tends to promote liberal democracy. This is debatable of course. Historical patterns are complex: https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/11/06/where-economic-power-goes-political-power-will-follow https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/11/06/wh...
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Free economics promote colonialism too.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      That makes no sense. Colonialism effectively stopped before free economics was a thing.
      - opportune 7y ago
        Colonialism (imperialism, more accurately) didn’t slow down much until WWII. Even in the 70s Portugal still controlled its African colonies and fought them in wars of independence. What the gp is referencing is the argument that the concept of free trade has only obfuscated colonialism. Rather than colonialism by France or UK it’s colonialism by Nestle or De Beers. To someone harvesting cacao for $2/day nothing is materially different from living under colonialism, except their landowner might be some well-connected member of the regime rather than a European.
fouc 7y ago
Picture of the actual map http://www.flowjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Image-3.png http://www.flowjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Image-...

behnamoh 7y ago

Man that's crazy! They must've paid real close attention to it, but I think it's partly due to low resolution screens available in circa 1995. On a low-res screen, it's impossible to draw maps completely according to the borders, so this was probably inevitable and unintentional.

pradn 7y ago
Inside Microsoft, there's a whole database of geopolitically-sensitive issues that have been accrued over the years. You can see all sorts of border disputes and differences in language that you had to take into account when working on global products. On a related note, now you have movies with different scenes in China. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429 https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chines...
- Swizec 7y ago
  At least 30% of my enjoyment of Venom came from it being set in SF and me going “Hey look I know that corner!” or “Wow we’ve been to that restaurant, they totally used a different place for that shop front!” Seeing your town in a movie is incredibly rewarding. Just like a musician is basically required to shout “Hello $PLACE” at some point during a performance PS: for the downvoters, that’s what the linked article cites as the reason that movie gets extra scenes in China. Chinese audiences liked seeing their city in a scene that Western audiences didn’t care about.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - pradn 7y ago
    Yea, it's one of the fun things about living in New York. Me watching the first Avengers: How'd they get from Upper East to Washington Sq in like 20 seconds?
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      It's one of the terrible things about TV shows and movies in my opinion. So boring seeing NYC over and over again, not to mention all the inconsistencies that pull you out of the movie. I'm even tired of all the Apple TV screensavers of NYC/SF/Dubai. Let's see some new places from South America or Africa or Europe or anywhere else.
    - FabHK 7y ago
      And how do the protagonists in US TV series and films always just immediately get a parking spot just in front of their destination??
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        They have film permits, of course.
  - crummy 7y ago
    One of my favourite Youtube channels, Every Frame A Painting, talks about this in Vancouver - except that the movies are rarely set in Vancouver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    There is also that the CCP won’t approve a movie for release in China unless it has Chinese scenes.
    - 7y ago
- RandallBrown 7y ago
  During my time at Microsoft I submitted a code review with an updated mapping library we got from a 3rd party. The auto review bot flagged the the changes with a "Geopolitical Issue" or something like that. Turned out it was an icon for Taiwan's flag. I don't remember if we deleted the icon or just renamed it, but the product never ended up shipping, so it probably doesn't matter much.
- briffle 7y ago
  You have movies where the country of the 'bad guys' was changed in post-production to North Korea to appease China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2012_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_(2012_film)
  - robocat 7y ago
    Fawlty Towers when dubbed in Spain changed Manuel (a dumb waiter from Barcelona I think) to be Mexican.
    - carlob 7y ago
      In the Italian version of A Fish Called Wanda the mock-Italian is replaced with mock-Spanish.
    - h9n 7y ago
      But the Swedish Chef is still, surprisingly, the Swedish Chef in Sweden, which seems to be a cruel joke. https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/swedish-chef-what-do-swedes-think-of-him-they-think-he-sounds-norwegian.html https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/swedish-chef-what-do-swede...
- thw0rted 7y ago
  I don't remember a lot about Looper but I feel like more exposition of JGL's "downward spiral" would have really helped clear things up for me -- for example, how anybody can go from looking like JGL to looking like 2010s Bruce Willis.

dirtyid 7y ago

Related to the original discussion, I wonder if there's a story behind how Taiwan got a emoji flag in the first place. Unicode Consortium referenced ISO 3166 for eligibility. Taiwan and a few other disputed regions didn't the cut until 3166-2 revision. The maintenance agency consists of representative from only western agencies. Interesting politics.

erk__ 7y ago
I beleive that the unicode consortium have chosen not to say much about witch flags are there pretty much for this reason. They don't want unicode to get mixed in with international politics.
- adt2bt 7y ago
  There is no truly neutral position though. Who gets the final say then?
  - loeg 7y ago
    Have you seen unicode? They usually err on the side of including everything, including, e.g., alphabets of fictional languages.
    - organsnyder 7y ago
      Those fictional languages' mere existence isn't perceived as a threat by any government, though.
  - CodesInChaos 7y ago
    Whoever renders the text. Since most applications delegate to the OS for that, it's typically the OS. The OS generally follows whatever the jurisdiction it's sold in requires. In theory an application could override it by doing custom rendering of these codepoints. The unicode standard doesn't care, as explained above, since it just defines an alphabet and takes no position in which country/locale codes are to be rendered with a flag.

dheera 7y ago

I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft just didn't listen to them. If they ban Windows over a petty reason like that, they're screwing over their own economy.

close04 7y ago
It's something plenty of politicians everywhere have done over the years for things far more trivial than nationalism.
ReptileMan 7y ago
They are not since pirated windows works just as good as licensed.
vbezhenar 7y ago
One simple approach would be to ban unmodified Windows sales and allow their companies to resell modified Windows distribution with changed resources.
zeroxfe 7y ago
Microsoft employees in India would risk harsh punishments, including prison time.
- vinay427 7y ago
  I think they meant if Microsoft didn't change the map and went along with the ban, seeing as they mentioned the potential damage to the economy.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
    > Microsoft employees in India would risk harsh punishments, including prison time.
    - vinay427 7y ago
      It's entirely pointless to copy and paste the comment I replied to instead of at least attempting to clarify in case I misunderstood. Why would they face prison time for complying with the law?

CodesInChaos 7y ago

And they fixed the issue by making the highlight color the same as the normal color (so each pixel is still associated with a timezone/country) internally. This later led to Poland going Atlantis, when MS removed its timezone instead of moving it to another timezone. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061027-00/?p=29213 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061027-00/?p=29... https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/post_images/0000180345/576816e6/attached_image/w95timezone.gif https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/pos...

jiggliemon 7y ago

It’s one thing for India to censor something for a stupid reason. It makes me uncomfortable to have China be able to influence all these other global countries into global (or in this case localized) censorship. Hollywood, News Companies, anything else that China invests heavily has no choice but to fall in line with the censorship.

jackjeff 7y ago
I’m surprised Trump’s trade war has not “escalated” to banning the Chinese emoji yet...
xpe 7y ago
Yes, this reminds me of a similar, but more general argument: Free economics tends to promote liberal democracy. This is debatable of course. Historical patterns are complex: https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/11/06/where-economic-power-goes-political-power-will-follow https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/11/06/wh...
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Free economics promote colonialism too.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    That makes no sense. Colonialism effectively stopped before free economics was a thing.
    - opportune 7y ago
      Colonialism (imperialism, more accurately) didn’t slow down much until WWII. Even in the 70s Portugal still controlled its African colonies and fought them in wars of independence. What the gp is referencing is the argument that the concept of free trade has only obfuscated colonialism. Rather than colonialism by France or UK it’s colonialism by Nestle or De Beers. To someone harvesting cacao for $2/day nothing is materially different from living under colonialism, except their landowner might be some well-connected member of the regime rather than a European.

fouc 7y ago

Picture of the actual map http://www.flowjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Image-3.png http://www.flowjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Image-...