Linguistic folly

[pyesetz]

Here is a remote control for a "Holmes" brand space heater, model HCH6001.  My employer bought this unit a few months ago.  Recently, during an exceptionally boring meeting about how to help people search for kanji in Japanese dictionaries, I looked idly at the back of the remote and saw the horror depicted at left (click to see in context).  It's a little hard to read because the words are embossed in black plastic on a black-plastic background.

Forensic analysis
*Fluffs his wings* It is my considered opinion as a recognized expert in this field that the disaster arose as follows:

1. The French text was originally entered using a Apple Macintosh computer, running OS 9 or earlier.
2. The text was then transferred to a PC running MS-Windows, version ME or earlier (probably Windows 98).
3. Both of these obsolete systems used single-byte codes for accented letters, but they disagreed on the meanings for the codes.  Specifically, the code 0x8E was displayed as 'é' on old Macs but as 'Ž' on old PC's, so "mélanger" became "mŽlanger".
4. From this point on in the production process, no one who spoke any French was involved.  Chances are at least fair that no one who spoke any English was involved, either, since a capital letter in the middle of a word should have been a red flag that something had gone wrong.
5. Eventually a design drawing for the injection(?) mold arrived on an engineering manager's desk, someplace in China.  The manager signed off to allow production of the plastics, without having a French speaker recheck the text.  It's possible that to this day that manager still doesn't know that he(?) made a mistake that resulted in the production of umpteen thousands of wrongly-molded shells for remote controls.
6. The defective shells were loaded with remote-control electronics, placed in cartons with their space heaters, then shipped to the United States.

At this point, I'm not sure what happened next.  Either someone noticed that the French text was invalid and ordered that these units not be sold in Canada, or nobody noticed and this unit just happened to be sold South of the border.

Comments

[unnatural-lump.livejournal.com]

I read your little essay on the tolerance of Pedophilia and I have to say I agree with it. I haven't yet met another person who feels that finding children sexually attractive isnt wrong, its the ACT of rape to said children that is wrong.

Thank you for writing it... I also love your website :)

[pyesetz]

Thanks for writing! I see that charisma_love mentioned my essay to you.  She's a friend of frocta whose journal I once looked at because he's a friend of aethwolf.  Six degrees of separation, so they say!

What did you like about my website?  The logfiles indicate that you didn't read anything except the pedo essay.  They also indicate that dozens of people have clicked through from your message board to my essay!

I like your Embry-O's—it's very creative!

[unnatural-lump.livejournal.com]

I didnt read much else as of yet because I was busy setting my my Jab archives site - but from what I read off of the main page it all looked interesting and I wanted to read it ^-^

Glad you liked my embry-o's ^.^;;;