Critical Swastikas

I boot up my computer this morning, and I’m greeted with a notice about a critical update for Windows. The culprit?

This item updates the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font included in some Microsoft products. The font has been found to contain unacceptable symbols. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

I did some digging on the net (read: Google), and it turns out the “unacceptable” symbols were a couple of swastikas and a six-pointed-star (i.e. Star of David). Talk about overkill. This was a *critical* update? Oh, please. I guess some people would take offense, but from a purely academic perspective, what if I *want* to insert those symbols into my document? Thanks for protecting me, Microsoft. I’m glad you and Disney are around to keep me safe.

Anyway, this issue is actually pretty old. The offending font is included with Office 2003, which I only recently updated to. Office XP has been running smoothly for a while now, and really, besides Outlook, is there anything all that much important to have been updated in the suite since Office 97? Not so much that really comes to mind. But I’m actually sold on the new Outlook layout … and I like the snazzy new icons for the applications, too.