No "Tibet" in MSFT Online Services
Have you tried creating an ID in one of MSFT's online services lately? Me either. But if you do try, don't use the word "Tibet", because it won't work. Nope, the giant is not allowing the name of that country so cruelly mistreated by communist China to be used in their online ID names.  So what is going on here? Is it a conspiracy? Censorship? Another way for the giants to appease the evil regime in China? Well... no.
Actually, according to the Bits Blog at the NY Times, they are doing it to protect banks. Yep, that's right - banks. You see, MSFT does not want their services to be used to impersonate bank email addresses for the purposes of phishing, and there is a bank in Florida named TIB Bank (I tried "tibone2" and a couple of variations, which didn't work). They have also blocked many other email addresses that contain phrases with banking names.  I tried "myciti", and it was available, but "mycitibank" was rejected. So partial names work, but the whole bank name fails. I guess that makes sense.
Of course, some people immediately jumped the gun and started crying out to the masses that MSFT was censoring Tibet and siding with China (like the guy who discovered this because he was writing a book about Tibet and this blogger). Uhhh, people... I posted on my personal blog about doing research before you act. You might want to try it.
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