Build Date: Sat Jul 5 23:40:46 2025 UTC
Perfectly legal explosions are just NO FUN.
-- Master Squid
We Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
2004-06-20 12:15:34
In February Microsoft released a "critical update" for the Windows OS. Usually "critical" means "security-related", as in, "If you don't install this, your computer will be wide-open to some brutal exploits." This time, however, the "critical update" cleansed Bookshelf 7 font files of "unacceptable symbols."
According to the Weblog of Ian White, the "unacceptable symbols" were a swastika and the Star of David, along with "at least half a dozen other charcters missing but I don't know what they were."
Suspicions are that the German legal system -- which prohibits the dissemination of Nazi-related anything -- scared Microsoft into rushing the update out to the masses, since copies of Windows might be banned from Germany if they contained the ability to generate swastikas in every size imaginable.
The German legal system's belief seems to be that as soon as ordinary Germans can make Laser-printer-perfect swastikas, the Fourth Reich would only be a jack-booted step away from becoming reality.
Who knows? They might be right.
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