'Master' and 'slave' computer labels unacceptable, officials say (any updates on that?)

[The Straight Story]

'Master' and 'slave' computer labels unacceptable, officials say

Wednesday, November 26, 2003 Posted: 3:24 PM EST (2024 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive.

The request -- which has some suppliers furious and others busy re-labeling components -- came after an unidentified worker spotted a videotape machine carrying devices labeled "master" and "slave" and filed a discrimination complaint with the county's Office of Affirmative Action Compliance.

In the computer industry, "master" and "slave" are used to refer to primary and secondary hard disk drives. The terms are also used in other industries.

"Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label," Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services, said in a memo sent to County vendors.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/

Old news I know - but what became of this? I was working on my niece's computer and helping her set up a second hard drive and I remembered that some time ago (2003 it appears) someone was saying that we should change the designation.

I did a news search (including google archives) and could not find if it was ever changed (in L.A.), though I have heard the terms primary and secondary, etc, tossed about (though I do have a HD sitting on my desk and if you look at the jumper settings it does have master/slave).

Anyone worked on more recent home computer equipment and noticed a move away from those terms? I have not seen at the data center level (but then, we use mostly scsi anyway and refer to the chain).

[ixion]

1. this is ignorance, and just plain silly, IMO

It's technical jargon, and nothing more. It's been in use for years.

[derby378]

2. Does the "slave" computer wear a ball gag and dog collar?

"Bring out the Gimp!" :rofl:

[The Straight Story]

12. A gimp in every computer

Makes me want to go watch pulp fiction again :)

[TommyO]

44. Damn, how did you know I was watching Pulp Fiction?

[Coventina]

3. Isn't the same terminology used in cars?

Like "master" cylinder and "slave" cylinder?

[Tesha]

54. Ayup. (NT)

[Crabby Appleton]

59. Yes, it is a common engineering term.

[geomon666]

4. I thought blacks weren't allowed to own computers anyway.

I'm sure glad there are no other serious problems going on in Los Angeles.

[Larissa238]

5. I lived in LA till May 06 and I always heard "master" and "slave"

and my brother and I were involved in different kinds of tech support.

[The Traveler]

6. This is just too funny

It really is hilarious, and proof that anything anyone says in any context will be found offensive by someone else.

[msongs]

7. if its good enough for the bible and the koran it oughta be good enuff for computers nt

[Tom Joad]

8. IN my master hard drive, i find an article that says its just fine, and should remain as is

in my slave hard drive, it has lots of images like this....

[badcau]

9. Man it's got to be bad,

I just checked my slave hard drive and it's a picking cotton!!

[danalytical]

11. LOL that's great

I AM SPARTACUS!

[rakovsky]

23. It hides the beatings in US schools

HAHA.

They get upset about saying "Master and Slave." As if it is referring to a Dominatrix or southern slavery.

They don't even realize 30,000 students get paddle beatings in southern schools, and in Ohio and Indiana schools (all Bush states) EVERY YEAR!

[BobRossi]

10. I propose a name change..

How about "Dog" and "Flea"? Or "Dick" and "George"?

[Dr.Phool]

13. Or Set da little jumper here or the little jumper there.

I just put a new DVD recorder in my computer last week, and forgot all about the little master-slave thingy. Took me a little while to remember.

[Tesha]

55. The sad part is that "master" and "slave" drives...

The sad part is that "master" and "slave" drives
haven't had a master/slave relationship since the
very earliest days of PC hard drives.

Way back when, when the computer hardware that
controls the hard drives was very expensive, the
"master" drive used to have all the brains and
the "slave" drive was much simpler, just following
orders from the master drive. But the control
logic got a lot cheaper and nowadays, all drives
are the same.

We'd be better off if we just called the Master
"Drive 1" (or "0") and the Slave "Drive 2" (or "1").

'Cause that's all it really means nowadays.

Tesha

[unblock]

14. if only these puritans could prevent computers from "going down"!

the fundamental problem with objecting to the master-slave terminology in this case is that no one thinks the "slave" machine is being deprived of human dignity or rights. it has no free will or freedom. it's -- well -- A SLAVE.

[The Straight Story]

15. Oh lord, I can see the fundies now banning the phrase "going down"

unless followed by "to hell"

[Clark2008]

16. Oh, good Lord.

Like we don't have more important things to worry about. Besides, the vast majority of computer users never even look at their registry and wouldn't even SEE the master and slave-named hard drives.

[incapsulated]

17. K. How about Dom and sub instead?

:rofl:

A discrimination suit, are you fucking kidding me? What, he's a slave and objects to being associated with a computer part?

Man, alive.

[Lurking Dem]

29. Do slave drives

ever try to top from the bottom?

[originalpckelly]

18. This is my slave, his name is filth.

:rofl:

[karlrschneider]

19. PC on PC gone batshit hogwild.

Some idiot had way too much time on his hands. :grr:

[Retrograde]

20. Can I still refer to "male" and "female" connections? (n/t)

[Solon]

27. No, they are outies and innies, or something like that...

How come I feel nasty thinking about that? ;)

[Deja Q]

32. Of course not, you pervert... everything has to be gaily ambiguous!

:rofl:




:sarcasm: (just in case)

[dorkulon]

21. Are "male" and "female" pipe fittings next?

And I thought we were the PC language police.

[MyNameGoesHere]

39. don't forget about "nipples" n/t

[Solo_in_MD]

22. It died after much laughter and derision as best I can tell

Though I am sure there is some where some fool who is offended by it.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

24. During school, we were not allowed to use the term "motherboard"

Even though EVERY techie I've ever met uses the term "motherboard", and even the large manufacturers use the word.

This is really silly.

[The Straight Story]

30. um, what was their objection to that????

Sheesh.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

63. I dunno, but the female instructors were especially strict about the rule

We had to use the term "mainboard" instead of motherboard. PC gone too far?

[Solon]

25. There are differences between Primary and Secondary, compared to Master and Slave...

OK, Computer motherboards usually have TWO IDE pins for IDE cables to connect to. These are called the Primary IDE pinout, and the Secondary IDE pinout. Now, beyond this, the IDE cables themselves usually have 2 or more plugs for devices. Depending on your Jumper Settings, your hard drives or DVD/CD drives will be called "master" or "slave", or, more likely "auto" which determines which is master and which is slave depending one which plug it plugs into.

During your computer startup, it checks these devices in order to determine which has BOOT code in it, this is how you boot your operating system.

Basically, you want the hard disk that you have your primary OS on to be Primary Master, and then go down from there, any disk that doesn't have boot code on it will be skipped, and if you don't have any with boot code on it, then the computer returns with an error and you can't boot into the computer.

ONE exception are Diskette drives, depending on BIOS settings, these will be checked FIRST, regardless of the setup of your IDE chain, they aren't connected through IDE. You can turn this option OFF, to speed up boot time.

Most computers have it set up like this:

Diskette Drive(A:)

Primary Master(Hard Drive, C:)

Primary Slave(DVD/CD/Hard Drive, D:)

Secondary Master(DVD/CD/Hard Drive, E:)

Secondary Slave(DVD/CD/Hard Drive, F:)

I used the MSDOS/Windows convention to identify the drives, for that's USUALLY how they assign the letters, however, they may skip a letter or two(drives G:, H:, etc.), for CD/DVD drives, depending on settings. You can also, and this is something most people don't know about, but you can MANUALLY assign certain letters for certain drives, and reserve others for networked drives, etc.

By the way, the list above reflects the order in which computers check for boot code on disk drives in default mode. You can change the boot order manually in the BIOS settings, for example, so a CD/DVD drive will be booted first before a hard drive. This is useful to test LiveCD versions of Operating Systems without damaging the computer, or to do a clean install of an operating system like Windows XP.

As far as I know, they haven't changed the conventions, my computer is kinda old, about 4 years old, so I don't know, but I doubt they would change such a fundamental part of computer hardware, it would break backward compatibility.

[Lurking Dem]

26. I have Master/slave throttles on my boat.

I'd hate to make the Glendinning give up its cute little handcuffs.

[Canuckistanian]

28. They can ban it all they want

But engineers will still refer to controlling and subordinate devices as master/slave.

It's used in far too many applications now.

Any attempts to say that it condones real human slavery is silly.

It's also used in biology, too.

Ever heard of slave-raiding ants?

[Deja Q]

31. Okay... this is beyond ASININE. I'm going to hook up my MASTER drive to my MOTHERBOARD,

and plug my SLAVE drive into the SCSI controller DAUGHTERCARD that piggybacks onto the MOTHERBOARD.

Then I'm going to plug the MALE speaker connector into the FEMALE line-out port on the sound DAUGHTERCARD.

What next, "Mr.", "Ms.", et al are seen as wrong as well? :eyes:

Give me strength...

[SoCalDem]

33. Ohhh, Master !

[The Straight Story]

34. If I rub my bottle hard enough will a genie pop out?

:rofl:

[Deja Q]

35. Wouldn't it be more fun if you allowed me to rub it? I'm strong yet oh so gentle...

:D

[The Straight Story]

36. As long as you are not really bender and you bend it :) (nt)

[SoCalDem]

49. One never knows, does one:)

:evilgrin:

[MyNameGoesHere]

37. I agree everyone start using SCSI

drives and then they are just a number and a channel.

[undeterred]

38. What about "male" and "female" connectors?

That bothers me a lot more than "master" and "slave" since it invokes the image of genitalia where no image is needed.

[The Straight Story]

40. For some geeks that is the closest they will get to getting laid

plugging one into the other :)

So we should keep that term for em :rofl:

[undeterred]

45. Yeah, but I'm the only female geek in the room

while they're having that fantasy of plugging it in.

[sleipnir]

51. I guess you have never had to work with various and odd connectors.

The terminology exists exactly to do what you do not believe is needed.

When working with a strange or unusual connector, the only thing that is easily available to describe which end you need is "male" or "female" as it instantly registers images in your mind. You could be looking at the most bizarre connector, and the tech person over the phone (in Europe) tells you to find the "male" connector. The protruding pieces of metal instantly tell you that it's the "male" connector. It's a cross-cultural way of communicating images and safety that doesn't rely on a proprietary naming system.

I think that the genitalia imagery is vital to establishing a quick and safe identification of the connector.

[undeterred]

61. I guess there might have been a time when it was mostly men

using the language. I realize it isn't meant to offend, but I think a group of women would have found some other universal way.

Edit: The first few times I heard this my thought was "Don't these guys ever think about anything else?"
Then I realized it was actually a convention.

[many a good man]

41. When descriptive words lose their menaing

Will people in the future start thinking that masters and slaves were equal and therefore there was nothing wrong with slavery?

[steve2470]

42. This is really quite ridiculous

Those terms are referring to at least two completely inanimate objects known as hard drives. I"ve been around this language for about 10 years now and I've never once thought of plantations or antebellum slavery. This will just drive up the cost of computer hardware. Information via computer networks is actually a very progressive idea. It seems that progressive idea just got set back a very small iota.

[steve2470]

43. Wednesday, November 26, 2003 Posted: 3:24 PM EST (2024 GMT)

date of original article above. I'm sure this is dead by now.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

46. Holy Cow Consider Me Fooled.

I woulda SWORN this was gonna end with a sarcasm tag, gotcha tag, satire tag or something.

But nope... It was real. The article was fucking real. Holy fucking cow, what the HELL is some people's malfunction!

Sure, this is from a couple of years ago, but wow do some take PC shit too far (no pun intended).

For the record, my drives say master and slave on them as well. But now I'm thinking about switchin the cable setup on them and reversing the roles. I can just hear the current bottom drive in his new role screamin 'how ya like that biatchhhhh. How ya like me now motherfucker!'.

[dysfunctional press]

47. Did you know that Master Lock Co. used to spend it's entire ad budget on 1 Super Bowl ad?

that would only air once...

just sayin' is all.

[Katherine Brengle]

48. Does this seriously bother anyone? (Honest question.)

On its face it seem ridiculous, but I've been wrong before...

[The Straight Story]

50. No, but I have seen rather serious articles on electricity and black being negative

and red positive. I don't think anyone is changing it anytime soon though.

Eventually we will have positive and positive2 :)

[Katherine Brengle]

52. There's a point...

where things become silly...

It's hard to see where that point is sometimes tho.

[MazeRat7]

53. The concern, albeit silly, will obsolete itself. M/S drives (PATA) are fading....

You really only find them in low/mid-end consumer systems. Most high-end consumer systems and virtually all servers use either SCSI or SATA inter-connects where there is no concept of "Master & Slave".

FWIW.

MZr7

[rman]

56. It's been called "Server - Client" for ages

where Master = Server
and Slave = Client

So instead of slaves serving a master, you have a master serving slaves. That is, if you want to dwell on literal interpretations of technical jargon.

[maine_raptor]

57. That "discrimination complaint" is just too silly

"Move along."

"Sargent Major!"


:rofl:

(As a retired "early days" computer geek, that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it!)

[slampoet]

58. Master and Slave are also still used in MIDI terminology,

the standard that is used to connect Musical synthesizers, Drum machines and other musical equipment to each other and computers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midi

One can have a Master Tempo and have a series of devices Slaving to that tempo.


The standard in Film synchronization called SMPTE Time Code also uses "Master Tempo" and "Slave to SMPTE SYNC" as terminologies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_time_code




The entire music and film industry commonly uses Master and Slave to describe Synchronized devices and uncommonly these terms are also used for TV/Video.

I've had a lot of hip-hop clients and working tech support for musical devices can have some awkward moments when you have to use these terms around clients who are unfamiliar with the terms. Unless that person really needs to learn it and I'm giving lessons, I usually say that there is a Master device and everything else is Syncing to it rather than Slaving to it.

Midi has been around since 1983 and everyone keeps predicting its death every 3 years since. Any term is going to be around for quite awhile after the standard is obsolete. If the standard is still used changing the term will only create confusion and lower sales. The music industry proved this when they couldn't make up their mind on what to call a synthesizer sound based on filtering a sample. They confused customers with dozens of terms for a decade, (LA Synth, PCM, playback, digital wave, wave table, ect).

[SemperEadem]

60. oh please!

they are machines, not humans.

the terms are also used in television production. There comes a time when one must put stupidity aside and this is one of those times. There are far bigger issues to get one's panties in a twist over than this.

[undeterred]

62. Panties in a twist?!

What about briefs or boxers in a twist?! :hi:

[woo me with science]

64. We obviously need another terrorist attack

if people have time to worry about this.

[MadHound]

65. What insanity!

These terms are not just used in the computer industry, but the broadcast industry, electronics, and some others. So should we change the terminology in all of those industries too.

Sorry, but I think this is just wrong.