L.A. County Bans Use Of "Master/Slave" Term

SlashChick writes "In an interesting twist on political correctness, L.A. County has banned the use of the terms 'Master/Slave' (commonly used to denote hard drive arrangements.) According to Snopes.com, 'someone within the County bureaucracy... had taken offense at "master/slave" references and complained to the board.' L.A. County now requires that vendors working with the county remove all 'master/slave' references. Incredible. Read the full story."

Comments

My response to the county

[daveschroeder]

From: Dave Schroeder <das@doit.wisc.edu>
Subject: Computer terminology
Date: November 24, 2003 12:27:14 PM CST
To: jsandoval@isd.co.la.ca.us
Cc: seconddistrict@bos.co.la.ca.us, thirddistrict@bos.co.la.ca.us, fourthdistrict@bos.co.la.ca.us, fifthdistrict@bos.co.la.ca.us, firstdistrict@bos.co.la.ca.us

Regarding the recent memo sent to a county vendor regarding "master/slave", it may interest you to know that this is, and has been for years, the accepted and only terminology that refers to the hierarchy of the most commonly used computer hard drive interface in the world, known as "IDE" or "ATA". It may also interest you to know one of the definitions of "master" and "slave" according to Merriam-Webster:

master - 3 a master mechanism or device
slave - 5 a device that is directly responsive to another

And from the definitive reference on the English language, Oxford University's Oxford English Dictionary:

http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry /00303043
master - e. A component of a system which controls or regulates the operation of one or more of the system's other components. Cf. SLAVE n. 5b. See also master-slave, sense C. 6.

http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00227171
slave - c. techn. Used to denote a subsidiary device, esp. one which is controlled by, or which follows accurately the movements of, another device.

master-slave a. (attrib.) (b) chiefly Electronics and Computing, designating or relating to a system in which one component controls the behaviour of one or more other components.

The names "master" and "slave" are codified in the official ANSI ATA-1 interface standard, X3.221-1994, titled "AT Attachment Interface for Disk Drives". You may be aware that ANSI, the American National Standards Institute, is the largest standards body in the United States. It would seem odd that a county purchasing agency would want to throw out well established standard names created over years of cooperation and deliberation by scientists, engineers, and standards experts. Further, almost every hard disk currently in the possession of the county has the words "MASTER" and "SLAVE" printed directly on them. Perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to destroy this labeling on each drive, spending thousands of manhours and voiding manufacturers' warranties in the process. Your next computing equipment bid will likely be an interesting one, since all hard drive manufacturers refer to their drives using the same terminology.

Insisting that vendors comply with the requirements in the memo makes the county look extremely, extremely foolish, and directly flies in the face of accepted, descriptive technical names for device interaction. You may also wish to caution your vendors about using the words "male" and "female" in the description of plumbing and electrical fixtures.

Regards,

Dave Schroeder
Los Angeles County native

cc: County Board

Ref:

ATA (ATA-1)
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/std _ATA.htm

Single, Master and Slave Drives and Jumpering
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/c onf_Jumpering.htm

INCITS Technical Committee 13 (T13), responsible for X3.221-1994
http://www.t13.org/

Colored Paper and Manholes

[CowboyRobot]

About 15 years ago my town (Ithaca, NY) started recycling paper and every school had two bins in each classroom, one labeled 'white only' and one labeled 'colored' - since, at the time, the recyclers didn't want the two mixed when pulped. As a joke, a kid scrawled the word 'racist' on one of the bins, and the administration freaked out. Within a few days the labels were changed to 'bleached' and 'dyed'.

Around the same time the city was exploring alternative names for 'manhole' and 'manhole cover'. Many suggestions were submitted, but none were euphonious to be adopted ('sewer hole', 'conduit entry point') and in the end nothing happened.

So, sometimes offense can be avoided when simple and obvious alternatives can be found, but sometimes it can't. In the case of 'master'/'slave', the nomenclature is too established and there is no obvious alternative, so I doubt anything would come of this.

(In the case of 'male'/'female' cable connectors, we could just as easily get along with plug/socket|jack)

Ithaca is the same town where there were serious debates about eliminating the word HIStory, as it was gender-biased. A simple counter of the bias of the word HERitage was enough to stop that.

Re:No Master/Slave?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The infamous "niggardly" case is a bit different, IMO. Yes, it's a perfectly good word, and yes, it has nothing to do with race -- but it's also a rather archaic word (I don't think I've ever actually heard anyone use it in a sentence, except to discuss the case) and, obviously, has a lot of potential to be misunderstood. As I said at the time, using "niggardly" in a room full of black people is kind of like being in a room full of homosexuals and saying, "It's cold in here -- throw another fagot in the fire."

All that being said, the person who complained about "master/slave" on racial grounds is not only an idiot, but also a racist. Slavery is not and never has been confined to any one group of people based on the color of their skin. There have always been, and unfortunately still are, slaves of every race.

Exactly missing the point. (and wrong to boot)

[IBitOBear]

Well, you managed to put a nice technical sheen on supporting the error with an error.

It is true that as far as the user is concerned, the difference between master and slave on an IDE bus boils down to which drive is "first".

However, the terms "master" and "slave" directly relate to the two drives and how they relate to the IDE controller and system. Yes, they don't send commands to eachother, but the master constrains the clocking on the bus and the slave is, well, slaved to the clocking the master negotiates. That is why you must have a master even if there is no slave. Further, "cable select" selects the master via its position on the cable, but it is still the master.

Even a quick google on IDE handshake clocking would reveal to you that there is *TECHNOLOGY* involved in the distinction.

For instance, you always make your fastest device on the IDE bus the master, otherwise, if the slower device were the master the faster device would be bounded to clock with the slower. (Etc.)

My full attention isn't being paid to this post, but it clearly trumps your "but the bios lets me switch them" level of investigation.

It is not so much the questioners that are causing the fall of this society, it is the persons like yourself, willing to answer those questions without even bothering to decide if they have the requsite knowledge.

sigh.

Re:For the love of all that's good and holy

[SETIGuy]

Not that I agree with LA county on this one, but I think you are assuming that human slavery has been eradicated. It has not. Not even in the U.S.

Singular They - not illegal :))

[waterbear]

Act of parliment (1890? about then) made it illegal to use "they" for singular

It's wonderful to see how these things get garbled. There was an Interpretation Act around 1889. One of the things it did was to make it officially unimportant whether a singular or plural word is used in (UK) legislation. The aim there was to get rid of one kind of lawyers' delight (like arguing that if a law makes it illegal to steal horses, then could it still be legal to steal only one horse?). It had nothing to do with making the use of singulars or plurals illegal!!