A particular news caught my attention.
Microsoft to delete swastika symbol from Office software
Seattle – Software giant Microsoft Corporation said Friday that it would delete the swastika, an Nazi emblem, from new versions of its widely used Office program and offer tools to remove and replace the offending characters from existing versions of the software suite.
The company said the symbol was included in Microsoft’s “Bookshelf Symbol 7″ font and was derived from a Japanese font set.
A form of the swastika has been used for centuries in the Buddhist religion but was made infamous when it was adopted by German dictator Adolf Hitler as the symbol of his Nazi Party.
Microsoft said it had been in contact with Jewish groups and it had posted an online utility to remove the offending characters.
Okay, so the swastika symbol is gone. But I don’t see the fuss, I don’t even think it should be gone. The Buddhist religion uses this symbol, I have seen it many times. I think the particular Jewish group is getting too worked up over this. [Jews suffered greatly under the Nazi rule.]
Come on, it’s just a font. “Bookshelf Symbol 7″ is a font distributed as part of Office 2003. It contains characters some Traditional Chinese or Kanji (Japanese) characters. Even includes the word “er” and “shan” which means good and evil respectively.
Anyway, a utility is available to remove this font, download from here. The company will also release tools to remove only offending characters.
Sources from Channel News Asia,Haaretz (Article) and Microsoft Knowledge Base. [Note that news web sites have a habit of expiring their pages after days.]
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Tags: buddhism, odd world, signs, technology