'Master/slave' Most Politically Incorrect Phrase

[TO Kid]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The computer term "master/slave," which was banned as racially offensive by a Los Angeles County purchasing department, was named the most politically incorrect term of the year on Thursday.

Among other terms on the top 10 list of politically charged words and phrases, issued by the word usage group Global Language Monitor, were "non-same sex marriage" to describe heterosexual unions, "waitron" for waiter or waitress and "higher being" for God, a term some people found too religious.

http://reuters.excite.com/article/20041203/2004-12-03T141358Z_01_N02676526_RTRIDST_0_ODD-LIFE-WORDS-DC.html

Let the flames begin...

[Lizz612]

1. First Year Student

But not just that! I'm not a "sophmore" I'm a "second year." Why? Something about sophmoric and not wanting to offend the growing class of super seniors. Makes me feel like I'm 12 and at Hogworts. Bah!

[BlueEyedSon]

2. How about "abuse" for "torture"?

Also on the list this year were "Red Sox lover," to use in place of "Yankee hater," "progressive" for classical liberal, "incurious" rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush, "insurgents" instead of terrorists in Iraq, "baristas" for waiters, and "first year student" rather than freshman.

[progressiveBadger]

3. Being a tech geek...

How do I explain how to install a hard drive to someone if I don't want to come across as racially offensive???
"You need to set the jumper to the one labeled as another meaning for "boss"".

[ET Awful]

6. Simple, refer to it as "corporate", and the slave as "labor" :) :) :)

[gottaB]

4. Who's being political?

"This is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life, down to the level of the control processes of computer technology."

Yeah, but who did the inserting. LA County? I don't think so. "Master/slave" is political, no two ways about it. It's a stupid metaphor and it ought to be replaced.

[Jack_DeLeon]

5. this is fucking assinine...

I remember reading about this a while back.

What a bunch of stupid bullshit.

[Igel]

7. "Master" political?

New insight into what Chomsky was saying with his Government and Binding theory? I always took that to be psycho-sexual subversion, what with dominated daughter nodes and c-command between sisters. But it does put the restriction against rightward movement (only leftward movement is ok) in new light, as well as expose that counterrevolutionary Kaynes with his "only binarily right-branching" node business.
/sarcasm

Seriously, sometimes a metaphor is just a metaphor.