County deletes 'master-slave' PC term

[demdave]

Los Angeles County officials have gone PC (politically correct) on PCs (personal computers) -- banning as potentially "offensive or defamatory" the words master and slave from computer hard drives and video equipment where they are used to describe primary and secondary circuits.

Under orders from the affirmative action office, county departments have surveyed about 1,000 pieces of equipment and taped over "master/slave" and put "primary/secondary" on the equipment, officials said.

Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services in the Internal Services Department, started the flap with a memo to electronic equipment vendors saying the county wants master and slave labeling removed from computer equipment it buys.



http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~1791069,00.html

[rjbcar27]

1. They'll be attacking car terminology next:

Brake master cylinder

Brake/clutch slave cylinder. :eyes:

[slackmaster]

5. How about these for alternatives?

Butch cylinder vs. Nellie cylinder?

[karlschneider]

75. Hell, why not just go for Top & Bottom?

:evilgrin:
:D

[Richardo]

18. Not the Master Cylinder! Wait til the Professor & Rock Bottom hear this!

[kysrsoze]

71. My hard (whew, that's hot) drive is master of all media, while my CD Rom

is definitely the submissive one - only functions when told to do so. Wow, am I getting turned on.

[jmowreader]

69. Try "wheel cylinder" or "clutch cylinder"

Depending on whether it's a brake system or a hydraulic clutch you're dealing with.

"Master cylinder" and "clutch master cylinder" are okay, though.

[slackmaster]

2. This is a dupe thread but it's still pretty funny

n/t

[Superfly]

3. Master and slave is aptly descriptive...

the PC movement makes me :puke:

[0rganism]

42. "Master/Slave" shall henceforth be replaced with "Pimp/Ho"

Does that help?

[truthspeaker]

4. maybe I'm being insensitive

but I think that's pretty fucking stupid.

[slackmaster]

6. It's about having a lot of power and not know what to do with it

Common problem in elected officials.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. Plantation owners/slaves shall now be known as

land managers/associates.

I live in bizarro world.

[T Roosevelt]

9. No you're not being insensitive

It IS pretty fucking stupid. The terminology is accurate, and there's no reason to change it.

[Loonman]

7. PC Thought Police

At it again.....

[Mentalist]

14. And some people

say PC doesn't exist and is a fiction created by the right wing.

[Occulus]

30. Others blame liberals for it.

However, liberals aren't dumb enough to take it this far.

Period.

[Mentalist]

38. They aren't?

Who do you think is running things there?

[Occulus]

51. Sorry. My bad.

Yes, there really are dumb and reactionary kneejerk liberals, and I'd say this is an illustration of what can happen when thry're in charge.

Utter silliness. Kinda like that official from I forget where who used the term 'niggardly'- stingy- in a speech and got jumped all over for it. The words aren't even related, yet he had to at least issue an apology for using it, if I recall.

Yeah, he had to apologize for someone else's lingual ignorance. Sheesh.

[Mentalist]

53. That would be

Mr. Howard, a staff member of DC Mayor Anthony Williams. Not only was he jumped on for it, he lost his job over it.

I believe several months later he was allowed to return to work.

Then you have the idiots complaining about the word "Brainstorming" as it might offend those with epilepsy.

[Occulus]

56. Bwaha!

The only time I've ever heard or seen the word 'brainstorm' used to describe an epileptic seizure is in a Mercedes Lackey book. I think it may be Queen's Own.

Are there really people out there that use such an archaic term to describe such a well-documented illness?

Really?

:eyes:

[Mentalist]

58. NO!

They are not using the term to describe the illness. An epilepsy charity complained about teachers instructing students to "brainstorm". They wanted them to use the term "thought shower" and some other nonsense.

[Occulus]

60. Please....

....even though I know you're notkidding, please just do my mental state a favor, and say you are.

Please?

Lord, where are your blindest taking us.....

[demdave]

59. Talk of brainstorming 'may offend epileptics'

The term "brainstorming" has become the latest target of political correctness, according to a charity.

Trainee teachers are being told to avoid the word for fear of offending pupils with epilepsy. Instead they are being advised to use "word storm" or "thought shower".

However, charities working with epilepsy say "brainstorming" is not offensive. "We had several inquiries from teachers about it so we did a survey of our residential home," said Gemma Baxter from the National Society for Epilepsy.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/26/nedu126.xml

[54anickel]

76. Thought shower? What if you have a bladder disorder?

[demdave]

57. "be it actual or perceived" is the real problem

Too many fools believe that people have the right not to be offended. Then they are trapped by the fact that being offended is subjective.

How can we protect people from percieved offense when it stems from their lack of knowledge of a definition of a would....niggardly?


I refuse to be held accountable for a percieved insult or offense. That is taking thought policing beyond my control. How am I to know how stupid the other person is? They might be offended by my vocabulary, education or even style of dress. SO WHAT????

[54anickel]

10. Oh good grief. What next? AC/DC?

Such confusion. Primary/Secondary referred to the channels. Master/Slave referred to the devices on those channels.
This should really help tech support calls to India now!!!
"It's the primary/primary device? Primary/secondary device?
Geez, give the PC PC crap a break.

[Mentalist]

39. Up next

"Male" and "Female" for denoting connectors. And soon, a transgender connector will need to be invented to satisfy the GLBT coalition.

[Sentath]

43. Don't worry about it Hon

We already have gender changers in every flavor you could want ( ;

[dreissig]

44. Mean-Spirited Humor

Buncha white guys making fun of the strivings of other people.

[Sapphocrat]

46. Gee, it took only 39 posts...

...before there was a swipe at us uppity queers.

Sorry, we'll all get back in the closet now.

[Mentalist]

54. No swipe

at all.

But mark my words, there will be complaints about the terms "male" & "female" in regardes to couplers and the such. If there hasn't already been.

[demdave]

64. Lesbians unite...adapters required.

:evilgrin: How can you take this thread so personal. Get chuckle and move on.

[Occulus]

52. We're already satisfied.

There are already male-male and female-female connectors. Just go into any Radio Shack. :)

In fact... there are also adapters, which could symbolize fornication between 'man' and 'beast' (like those funny, small power cords 3.5" internal floppy drives accept).

Whoo. I need a drink after that one.

[DBoon]

11. How about replacing these terms

with "dominant" and "submissive"?


I like these much better!

[slackmaster]

12. Thanks

My coffee fix hasn't kicked in yet and I kept thinking "dominant" and "recessive", but that's for genes.

[Sapphocrat]

34. That pair was my second thought...

...right after "top" and "bottom."

Although I do lean toward "butch" and "femme."

P.S. So what are they going to do about "motherboard"? Gee, might be insulting to childless women. :eyes:

[Zhade]

70. Motherboard may offend some with Oedipal complexes!

NT! :P

[joeybee12]

13. Maybe it's me, but when I see master/slave, I think of it in sexual terms,

not historical ones.

Not that I'm into that.

Can't imagine many people are offended by this.

[Kolesar]

15. Top and bottom

[demdave]

16. I work with electronics and have already seen male/female connectors

replaced with plug and socket. Not only are these terms awkward to use but they are no where near as descriptive of their function. Next I won't be able to call a pair of diagonal wire cutters...dykes. (or is that spelled dikes, or diacs or....) :)

[Sapphocrat]

37. Makes you wonder about Holland...

You know, the story of the little Dutch boy who saved the town by sticking his finger in the dike? (That one's spelled with an "i" -- not too sure about the wire-cutter variety.)

Which reminds me... Do men wear dickies anymore? And hey, what are we going to do about those little African dik-diks? Who wants to be the one to break some bad news to Dick Van Dyke? Or Dick Cheney, for that matter?

Better stop now. I have to go cook, so I can stuff the bird tomorrow. I can't wait to get my hands on some breast.

Uh... Did I say something wrong? Why are you all giggling?

[sendero]

17. absurd...

While the master/slave description of an automotive brake systems is apt (the master cylinder forces hydraulic fluid into the slave - hey- just reporting the facts :)), it breaks down on PCs as far as being a technically descriptive term. The 'slave' drive is in no way controlled by the 'master', they are both controlled by the, you got it, IDE controller :). Of course, the master drive is by definition the boot drive, so I guess there is some validity to the terms.

That said, what a stupid waste of resources. It is exactly this sort of nonsense that gives the term "pc" as in political correctness, so much traction.

[54anickel]

19. There's also motherboard and daughter card

[0rganism]

40. So where's the father? This is prejudiced to female-only custody!

Single parenting! Anti-dadism! Discrimination! FOR SHAME!

[Loonman]

20. Next is male/female audio cables

:)

[slackmaster]

21. Perhaps "inny" and "outy" would be better

Like the terms we use for peoples' navels.

[Sapphocrat]

36. Oh, much too sexual, I'm sure...

Navels remind people that we once had umbilical cords, which means we weren't immaculately conceived, which could upset people like Rick Santorum and the Pope.

I suppose there's always "jack" -- but with that comes all sorts of nasty masturbation innuendo. ("Innuendo" -- that alone is the punch line to a dirty Italian joke!) I guess they could always adopt the real geek term for a female coupler: gozinta.

(Oops -- "coupler"! That's nasty too!)

By the way, slackmaster, L.A. County just called -- you're going to have to change your handle to slackprimary.

[DarkPhenyx]

22. Assinine stupidity strikes again.

Words that should be perfectly acceptable when used in the proper context. Awwwwwwwwww, we might hurt someone feelings.

[fizzana]

23. On a more serious level

This sort of crap allows the O'Reilly's of the world to dismiss the entire left as being stupid and petty.

[RamboLiberal]

24. How about Unix and Linux which often instructs me

that I have to kill the children first before I can kill the parents? :evilgrin:

[Occulus]

28. What about the UNIX

command, 'finger'?

as in

finger <username>

Why didn't they get rid of that? Oh, because they can't without rewriting the entire kernel....

:eyes:

edit: I wish I'd been there. I would have told the council I'm going home after the meeting to make <personwhoproposedthisidiocy> a user on my linux box so I could finger him/her all night long. I would've loved to see the reaction to that.....

[demdave]

29. One of the best laughs I ever had was when a co-worker

instructed a snotty high level administrator that in order to find out about her accounts current activity status...she had to finger herself. The look on her face was priceless, especially since she made him repeat himself three times. I almost had to change my shorts.
:silly:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

32. Unix commands

unzip ; strip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; yes ; more ; umount ; sleep

[Occulus]

49. ROFLMAO

Yup, those would be 'offensive' commands. And I can even execute them, in order!

Perhaps 'input' is a better term.

[Cronus Protagonist]

72. Why does that look like my daily routine?

:)

Click Here To Find NO MICHAEL JACKSON Buttons, Stickers & Magnets

[private_ryan]

25. and with one stroke of the pen

all of our problem disappear. This might explain why their budge is that bad, they have money to pay people to come up with this non-sense.

[CheshireCat]

26. Absurd!

Considering all the problems CA is having, spending time and money on this ridiculous made-up situation is absurd. The person who came up with this has too much time on his hands!

Unbelievable!

[monobrau]

27. Hands off my dongle!

And soon they will object to the connotations of the terms "harddrive" and "Ram", and don't you dare utter the term "SCSI" out loud.

[dreissig]

31. Romanticizing the Racist Past

Technical terminology doesn't need to draw on colonialist metaphors. The relationship between hard drives isn't master and slave anyhow. One hard drive boots; the other doesn't - that's the difference. "Booting/non-booting" may be a more appropriate way to describe the hard drives, but "primary/secondary" is already in use by main board manufacturers. When the main board supports four drives, they are referred to as HD1-primary, HD1-secondary, HD2-primary, HD2-secondary. You still have to know which drives are primary and secondary. Calling them "master/slave" adds nothing.

It's not about sparing people's feelings; it's about recognizing that times have changed. There's no need to refer to hard drives with antiquated and offensive terminology.

[Teaser]

35. Maybe the terminology is from an S&M relationship

Both hard drives are consenting adults, they just happen to be engaged in a master-slave relationship.

What do you care, anyway, as long as they're not hurting anyone else?

[Occulus]

55. that's kinda untrue

I'm looking at my MB manual right now and it's described as primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave. The master/slave label is used to denote which drive is which on the IDE chain. Primary master (that's on the IDE 0 port on the MB) gets looked at first for a boot sector by default, but my BIOS lets me change the boot order to whatever I like.

The master/slave capability makes it possible to hook up four IDE devices to two IDE ports and has done so ever since the capability to do so was there. Master/slave is definitely the most appropriate label possible and I've always seen it used, to exclusion of other terms. It is a standard, and this board of idiots shouldn't have or presume to have the power to alter that.

I'm offended and amused that some take offense to this. These are the people I usually create a linux username for and then finger repeatedly just so I can say I did :)

[confusius]

61. St00pid

The words "Political Corectness" offends me. I say we do away with them. Reminds me of facism, thought police, people wanting to have power over me (unjustly). I write down that I'm a white guy, but my great-grandmother was American indian, oooops, sorry Native American, so do I count?

[confusius]

62. Also,

I don't see anything about romaticizing the racist past in calling something master/slave. See, in slavery, the slaves did most of the work, and the master lazed around drinking tea. In a master/slave in computers or master/slave cylinder in a car, the master does most of the work.

You have an overactive imagination if you read all that into words. You could cure cancer with that brainpower, if you gave up st00pid crap like this.

I work in the IT industry, if someone says the slave drive of the primary, I know what he means. You want a whole industry to change the way it talks, just so a few people don't take offense? I take offense at that. I don't take offense at master/slave as much as I would if someone applied the words to "america should be master / The world should be the slave"

Context is everything, words mean very little on their own.

[booksenkatz]

33. How about "Senate Republicans/Senate Democrats?" nt

*

[0rganism]

41. This is going to wreak havoc on PCI bus protocol discussions

Like things weren't annoying enough already for us EE's. Leave it to a "division manager of purchasing and contract services in the Internal Services Department" to really screw things up on a large scale.

[snooper2]

45. Jesus..

That is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard in my life.

seriously...

[Spider Jerusalem]

47. How incredibly goddamned STUPID can you get?

What's next? Are they going to remove references to "male" and "female" jacks, plugs and connectors, and go to gender-neutral language, too? Good fucking god. No wonder people make jokes about California.

[demdave]

50. Yes, it has already happen....they are now plugs and jacks.

Nowhere near as easy to understand.

[slackmaster]

65. I'm offended by the terms plugs and jacks

As an old sex manual in my parents' bookshelf when I was a child said:

"We should not be ashamed to call by its proper name that which God was not ashamed to create."

[SideshowScott]

48. Um am i being a jerk by saying that is really stupid!

I would have said retarded but any PC police things get me paraniod about what to say...This is something IM sure the right is going to have a feild day about..But im a lib and I think its really stupid..I say Feh! Glad i dont do commputer work in LA beacuse I would not abide by that dumb ass PC rule...

[Undemcided]

63. Yeah we're broke ...

... but we've got time & money for this bloody nonsense.

[Dogmudgeon]

66. It's SATIRE from SlashNOT

It's satire!

Check out www.slashnot.com -- it's on there.

--bkl

[Dogmudgeon]

67. Oh S**t. It is real, after all.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp

And updated today.

Jeeze Louise, Mudhead!

--bkl

[demdave]

68. No it is a true story....check out snopes

Claim: The County of Los Angeles has requested that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term "Master/Slave" in product descriptions and labelling.

Status: True


http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp

[Buns_of_Fire]

73. Well, since Pandora's Cube-Shaped Container (formerly Pandora's Box)

has been opened, can we also do away with the corporate terms "superior" and "subordinate?" They offend me and do untold damage to my tender ego. :cry: I'm not a big fan of calling the "Personnel" department "Human Resources," either. I am not a "resource" to be strip-mined and exploited, thank you very much. Neither do I wish to be called an "affiliate." "Employee" suits me just fine. Just spell my name right on the check.

There seems to be a lot of "managers" (quotes intentional) running around these days who have way too much time on their hands.

[karlschneider]

74. Maybe we should call them "liberator" and "coalition partner".......

:eyes:

[mrdmk]

77. What the ???? (Wild place holders)

This is nonsense. I am a computer technician/operator and a recording engineer. If you/I replaced master/slave with primary/secondary in a professional recording session you/I would be fired, thrown out on your/my ear and told not to come back. Everybody in the industry would know of your/my incompetence and never get another job.

From the Wifey:
This is not PC it is idiocy.

The person(s) who came up with this does not know any more about electrical/mechanical engineering than they do about racism.

Watch out boys and girls they will have us tying up and mending our threads.