Slashdot Mirror
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."
Funny that my first instinct was to check Snopes, and what do you know but that's the provided link. Shows how patently ridiculous this story seemed at first.
Hasn't this obsession with sanitizing speech become a total farce? What's next? Will we not be able to have male and female ends on our 1/4" audio cable for fear of offending the transgendered? How the hell am I supposed to shop for wires now?
To verify that this wasn't a hoax or an internal joke which mistakenly escaped to the wider world of the Internet, we called the Purchasing and Contract Services division for the County of Los Angeles, and they informed us that yes, they did issue this message, and yes, it was meant seriously. The representative we spoke with said that someone within the County bureaucracy -- a person who probably didn't understand computer terminology -- had taken offense at 'master/slave' references and complained to the board, whereupon the Internal Services Department was obligated to issue notification requesting that vendors refrain from using that terminology.
Okay, how about "Pimp/Bitch"? The guy who recommended this needs to be fired before his ideas continue to procreate.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
From: Dave Schroeder <das@doit.wisc.edu>
/00303043
d _ATA.htm
c onf_Jumpering.htm
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
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/st
Single, Master and Slave Drives and Jumpering
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/
INCITS Technical Committee 13 (T13), responsible for X3.221-1994
http://www.t13.org/
Wow, I wonder what they'll say when they realize why some computer cables ends are called male and female.
So now we have to have dominant and submissive hard drives???
what about all the sex shops in LA County?
It's not an "interesting twist" on political correctness, it's just another example of it.
graspee
Daddy/Bitch
I think this whole practice of political correctness should be done away with. It is twisting our language too rapidly and preventing the free exercise of speech. Politicians have to grow and pair and get some thicker skin. They must realize that a language develops because people make new terms and apply new definitions to existing words based on events with which they are familiar. You cannot force us to speak differently just so a puny minority will not be offended.
Politicians, I think it is YOU who are offended, not the minority which you claim to represent!
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
This is sad and funny at the same time. I can see where someone could potentially be offended to merely hear the terms used, but use some common sense people! Hasn't anyone heard of context? When political correctness stretches so far as to have government offices relabling hard drive configurations to imply that while some drives may not be as gifted as others, all are created equal...I laugh. I've been through my share of drives in my day, and I can guarantee that not all are created equal.
How pathetic have we become? Something like this can only be laughed at, and never really measured.
Pathetic.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
...they could always go all SCSI.
LA County has banned the use of the terms 'Master/Slave'
Is this the same LA County that has rampant police corruption and brutality problems?
The one in the state, California, that is facing a massive deficit?
Glad to know they have their priorities right.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Even so, it's a pointless request, and if enforced would probably mean that LA County couldn't buy hard drives at all, since most drives have clear labels on how to set the "master" and "slave" jumpers.
Uh oh, this post is probably officially data non grata in Los Angeles COunty now.
Someone you trust is one of us.
"I'm sorry, sir, but that is politically incorrect language."
"Uh, ok, um, lemme see. Can I please have a mouse adaptor where one end has pins sticking out and one end has holes to fill."
"You trying to be funny with me, boy?"
"Ugh, ok, never mind. Just give me a master/slave controller."
"That's it, I'm calling the police, pervert!"
AsksPolitelyDrive / HappyWorkerDrive?
PresidentDrive / VicePresidentDrive?
KingDrive/ViceroyDrive?
(My favorite...)
WillyWonkaDrive / OompaLoompaDrive?
There's the obvious "Parent/Child" possibility, but since the actual standard uses the terms "Master/Slave", I really think this is overreaction on the county's part...
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
one of these days, prison is where all the thinking people are going to end up and run the outside world from. and our prison utoptia will be the land of guarded walls and milk and honey and high speed internet, and we'll all hang out all day reading books and surfing the web and writing more laws to keep us safer from the outside, while they slave away paying to keep us incarcerated, blissfully unawares of their own capture, as the walls grow outwards and the outside becomes the inside. and our uniforms will regress to suits and the the mobius strip will turn once again. btw im drunk
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
"L.A. County Bans use of Master/Slave Term. ...
LA County now requires that vendors working with the county remove all 'master/slave' references."
Contrast this to the snopes article, which says: The County of Los Angeles has requested that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term "Master/Slave" in product descriptions and labelling.
There's a big difference between request and require. And banned? Hardly. I doubt anyone's going to get fined or sued over this.
Master/Slave should be phased out. Edge-triggered logic is more modern and robust.
All I can say is thank god! Now we will have liberated hardware able to do its own thing. Write when it wants to write, read when it wants to read and just in general do whatever it likes, regardless of what it was supposed to do.
Much like Windows.
Geez, first I get this story rejected last week. Then I have to reject so many cookies from snopes.com that I miss getting first post when it does appear. Then some new spyware the IT fuckwits installed on my work desktop slows the system to a crawl again and I have to switch to my laptop just to whine!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I still fail to see what actually is discriminatory about the terms "Master" and "slave".
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Seems like an appropriate alternative.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Will L.A. County officials put their money where their mouths are and buy all new equipment to replace any that uses this offensive terminology? Or are they too niggardly?
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
That's Dom/sub, you insensitive clod!
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Well, I ban the word "County" because "Count" is a title in an archaic nobility system that has no place in modern American culture. Take that, L.A. *****y!
At my first programming job, we shared an open office with the sales people. We started designing this large system with small group meetings in the common area of the office. We kept talking about "forking children" and "killing children" and our master process was called the "mother." Finally one of the more ditzy sale women came back and asked us to explain our disturbing terminology. She didn't think that "forking babies" was proper office talk. She was okay with it once we explained the terminology.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
This means that I would have no problem moving to L.A. But I think my hard drives would feel more at home in San Francisco.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Here in America, you label drives "Master/Slave" for correctness.
In Socialist California, the label correctness slaves master YOU!
Mine went out once. You can't engage the clutch anymore!
Insert snarky remark about oppressing the auto industry here.
Look at the labeling. Point of Manufacture on these things are Malaysia, Thailand, Hungary, etc. They're shipped 20 and 30 to a 3'x4' packing crate, against their will. Forced to endure this trip without food or water, these poor mass-storage devices are then forced to spin at 5400 and sometimes 7200 revolutions per minute, without breaks, in dusty and hot environments.
I'm glad someone in California has at least taken the initiative to keep them from being referred to as slaves. The next step is a move to an 8-hour workday (although I think IBM already recommends that on some of their Deskstar line), and two 15-minute breaks per work period (I can do without swap for a few minutes, I guess). Of course, I hope they realize the negative connotations of the term "Server"
Sorry. I should have resisted.
How about balance your fucking budget, THEN worry about stupid shit like this.
I hate sigs.
...please, think of the hard drives!
"Get off the cross - we need the wood" - Tori Amos
I was just inspecting my IDE cables and I noticed that the connector denoted master is a light gray, while the slave connector is black. It seems that the people who designed this standard were part of a conspiracy to bring black slavery in the United States. I should have seen it all along.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
I, for one, welcome our new facilitators.
The best way to do is to be.
Of course this should also be sent to the big auto manufacturers and parts vendors who provide master and slave cylinders (part of the automotive brake and clutch systems, respectively).
Primary/Secondary would refer to the IDE channels.
That would cause MORE confusion if used to describe drives. "The primary drive on the primary controller" vs "The Master on the Primary controller"
Eh, I guess that you *could* interchange the two, but master/slave *is* an industry standard.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't make a federal case out of it. But I wouldn't mind using a different phrase.
Actually the IDE interface on the motherboard is just a 'host adapter' while the brains reside on the 'master' drive.
The slave drive is just that: a slave. Therefore it behooves you to put the most modern drive in as the master to avoid compatibility issues.
This was much more significant back in the days when I had my first WD 40mb - not so much now.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I believe that's called "gender reassignment surgery" now
I removed the slave jumper from my hard drive, then plugged it in to the connector directly adjacent to the mobo on the ribbon cable. You know, so it wasn't at the back of the bus anymore.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I've joked about this a few times at work when the (military) instructors I work with discuss the latest in command directed PC nuttiness. They can't use the term cockpit, it's a flight deck. Neither can they say white board or black board. Those are now officially marker boards and chalk boards. I used to joke that we can't use master/slave anymore due to a NAACP lawsuit against the computer industry. Guess it ain't a joke anymore.
Gang warfare, poor policing in the Sheriff's department, a school district that produces idiots, and a fire department in the highest wildfire area in the world that doesn't own a single airel tanker. Yep, those board supivisors are earning their money alright. They have eliminated a benign yet useful bit of global computer nomenclature to sooth the feathers of some psycho religious county employee.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
What I want to know is how sea horses wire up their audio systems. I mean, if they go down to radio shack and ask for a male-male cable, which one is it? The male or the female? Huh? Which one is it? For the love of all things good, will someone please tell me which one is it?????
of the time I had to fight a ban on the word 'deamon'.
Fortunatly, I won that. Some people thought I was the spawn of satan for using that term.
When one of the women confronted me and told me should would not say deamon, and that it was offensive to her belief.
I told her "If you allow a simple word like Deamon direct how you live your life, Satan has already won."
Pretty much the same thing I tell people when they get upset becase they have to give out 6.66 in change.
What I want to say is "Stop being such a twit."
Followed up by spinning my head around.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
(abusing your highly modded post)
1. "man" pages are now called "person" pages.
2. Similarly, "hangman" is now the "person_executed_by_an_oppressive_regime."
3. To avoid casting aspersions on our feline friends, the "cat" command is now merely "domestic_quadruped."
4. To date, there has only been a UNIX command for "yes" - reflecting the male belief that women always mean yes, even when they say no. To address this imbalance, System VI adds a "no" command, along with a "-f[orce]" option which will crash the entire system if the "no" is ignored.
5. The bias of the "mail" command is obvious, and it has been replaced by the more neutral "gendre" command.
6. The "touch" command has been removed from the standard distribution due to its inappropriate use by high-level managers.
7. "compress" has been replaced by the lightweight "feather" command. Thus, old information (such as that from Dead White European Males) should be archived via "tar" and "feather".
8. The "more" command reflects the materialistic philosophy of the Reagan era. System VI uses the environmentally preferable "less" command.
9. The biodegradable "KleeNeX" displaces the environmentally unfriendly "LaTeX".
1. SHELL COMMANDS To avoid unpleasant, medieval connotations, the "kill" command has been renamed "euthanise."
2. The "nice" command was historically used by privileged users to give themselves priority over unprivileged ones, by telling them to be "nice". In System VI, the "sue" command is used by unprivileged users to get for themselves the rights enjoyed by privileged ones.
3. "history" has been completely rewritten, and is now called "herstory."
4. "quota" can now specify minimum as well as maximum usage, and will be strictly enforced.
5. The "abort()" function is now called "choice()."
1. TERMINOLOGY From now on, "rich text" will be more accurately referred to as "exploitive capitalist text".
2. The term "daemons" is a Judeo-Christian pejorative. Such processes will now be known as "spiritual guides."
3. There will no longer be a invidious distinction between "dumb" and "smart" terminals. All terminals are equally valuable.
4. Traditionally, "normal video" (as opposed to "reverse video") was white on black. This implicitly condoned European colonialism, particularly with respect to people of African descent. UNIX System VI now uses "regressive video" to refer to white on black, while "progressive video" can be any color at all over a white background.
5. For far too long, power has been concentrated in the hands of "root" and his "wheel" oligarchy. We have instituted a dictatorship of the users. All system administration functions will be handled by the People's Committee for Democratically Organizing the System (PC-DOS).
6. No longer will it be permissible for files and processes to be "owned" by users. All files and processes will own themselves, and decided how (or whether) to respond to requests from users.
7. The X Window System will henceforth be known as the NC-17 Window System.
8. And finally, UNIX itself will be renamed "PC" - for Procreatively Challenged.
And while we are at it, ban Angeles since angels are part of an archaic superstition system.
So Los Angeles County must now just be called Los.
Sure, go ahead and change the labels. And charge 3 times more for everything your relabel. Make it not worth their money to do it.
-Foxxz
Orwell wrote an interesting piece entitled Politics and the English Language which shows how much more concerned people are with how things are said than successfully delivering the actual content of the message. It's an interesting read, check it out.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Seems to me the terminology is descriptive and easily understood. Why should the use of slavery as a semi-descriptive term for a particular technology be offensive?
We also have "dead man switches", "sacrificial electrode", "vampire taps", and "kill switches", and a lot of other terms in technology that refer to things that, when they happen between humans, are unacceptable. It seems to me that the use of such terms to describe the relationship between inanimate objects or even non-human animals does not mean endorsing those behaviors for humans.
The San Francisco City Council recently passed Ordinance 2002-11-78b, which prohibits the sale or manufacture of pinouts and connectors that are exclusively "male" or "female".
Apparently, there were those who felt that having seperate male and female connectors was somehow discriminitory. In the words of Douglas Fillmore, spokesperson of a citizen's group that endorse that ordinance, "Technology, and our terminology that describes it does not only mirror life - it also helps guide it. By creating devices that can only be used in one method, to the exclusion of others, and to further use such value-laden terminology to describe them, sends a clear message that "there is only one accepted way to mate." This metaphor can be very injurous to groups we wish to show our support for."
So, go into a Radio Shack in San Fran and as for a male db25 pin connector. They'll sell you a connector that comes with a seperate mating collar, just incase you choose to mate it with another male. Or, if they're out of stock, they'll refer you to the Fry's Electronics in Oakland.
I'm just kidding. I hope no one believes this.
Drives should not be dominant and submissive. Nor should any other componentry (also consider Bus Mastering on PCI, or even USB requiring a host to master all devices).
No, all are equal. Any collection of devices with connection should either take turns making the decisions, or should hold a voluntary election where all devices have equal influence.
Of course, the devices "backed" by larger companies will have more money to campaign for votes from other devices.
The machines are taking over, and dang, the terminator has gone into politics...!
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Strangely, I didn't thin this was a farce, since I've lived through exactly this nonsense once before.
The year was 1993, and I was working as an intern at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in their High Flux Isotope Reactor. While I was there we got visited by the Secretary of Energy (Hazel O'Leary) and her "Science Advisor" Jim Hall (who later went on to chair the NTSB). The tour was notable for two reasons:
Much lunchtime discussion over the next week resulted in a variety of alternative terminologies, including "master/bitch", "pimp/hoe", and "indentured servant." The last of these actually made it into some drawings, and the Powers That Be were not amused.
So no, I'm not surprised. Not one bit.
Being a resident of England (or should I say 'United Kingdom' in order not to alienate my Irish/Welsh/Scottish compatriates?) I have seen more than a lions share of political correctness. It seems like every week that I open up the newspaper to find a half amusing/half irritating article written about a particular group of people who seem to have a beef with the way they are 'labelled'.
/.dom has has experienced the mailman/mailperson debacle.(milkman, garbage man etc. are all also valid)
Example Old Age Pensiors (OAPs) - 'We are offended by the name given us and see it as ageist. Therefore we would like to be known as Senior Citizens' (um, cause that doesn't refer to your age?)
I'm sure everyone out there in
Hey while we're at it, why not plurally refer to ourselves as Personkind! One small step for a person, one person-of-irregular-height leap for Personkind!
And it doesn't stop at there! A school in this banned sportsday because it is deemed as unfair to those who don't win. Aww boohoo so your little snotty kid lost the egg and spoon race, we better give 'em all a medal, cause 'EVERYONE'S A WINNER!'
Mothercare have, or were going to, release an updated version of Humpty Dumpty in which the poor egg shaped fellow was put back together and lived happily ever after in order to protect children from a perilous dilemma. I know I'm taking this political correctness thread off on a bit of a mollycoddle tangent, but they're all related to one thing - The Bubble Wrapped Society.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I was just out of school at Data General (minicomputers) in 1985 and we were told to stop calling the paired CPU's for a fault tolerant system master-slave.
We started calling it Father-Son, but someone complained again so soon it was Mother-Daughter.
Fortunately, the FT portion of the project was cancelled and we were able to get on with things.
Frankly, I thought master-slave was obnoxious. However it just kept going, there were other names as well that kept getting squashed.
this is not a sig
Instead of calling them master and slave, why not color code the master white and the slave black??
My vote is for Worker and Parasite.
Endut! Hoch hech!
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Probably more of a good spin. So to speak.
They have not BANNED the word, that means one thing. Not allowed by law, that is not the case at all. Maybe someone should check their facts and try not to hype up stories like this!
As a former LA County resident and current Orange County resident all I can say is that I'm glad to hear LA has solved all the other problems is was facing.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
There's a difference between political correctness (dumbass term) and using racial slurs. The former is an overreaction to a potential slight, the latter is an attempt to offend.
And yeah, I know it was probably for effect.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Someone should talk to these guys about banning the terms "Microsoft" and "Windows"
The thing that no one has yet commented upon -- and the thing which makes all of this even sillier and more moot (if that's possible) -- is what's going to happen when all of these vendors simply ignore this stupid memo? What's LA County going to do, refuse to contract with these thick-headed, insensitive troglodytes? Refuse to buy their products? In the case of drive manufacturers that doesn't exactly give LA County a wide range of alternative sources, now does it?
And in the case of documentation, perhaps we should just come up with a XML filter that switches terminology from normal readable text into PC-babble. It'd make a great ongoing document versioning contract... and if LA County complains then we can heap loads of negative press upon them claiming that they really don't have any interest in being a beacon of sensitivity...
Is that all you have to say? A poisonous, unsubstantiated little screed about how republicans are all racists and try to keep the black folks away from the polls?
KKK == CCC? Police conspiracies to set up roadblocks?
I'm sorry, but that's exactly 100% Flamebait.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Primary Walrus
Primary Carpenter
Secondary Walrus...
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
to use SCSI...
Somethings tells me these might not go over too well either:
/* Abort (ANSI). */ /* Kill, unblockable (POSIX). */
/* Termination (ANSI). */
#define SIGABRT 6
#define SIGKILL 9
But being California, I suppose this one's fine:
#define SIGTERM 15
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
Remember how the generic pronoun "he" was considered sexist, and now we're supposed to write the contraction "s/he" to mean "she or he"? Well, it's pretty clear that this discriminates against nongendered species as well as inorganic objects. Thus I propose the written contraction "s/h/it" to mean "she, he, or it." I'll contact the LA County supervisors right away with my proposal.
Courtesy of yesterday's opinionjournal.com Best of the Web Today (which also reported on the master/slave controversy):
Political correctness, like other totalitarian ideologies, demands absolute purity.
-- James Taranto
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Organizations like the Unitarian Universalist Association -- known for its politically correct constituency -- were quick to rename "webmasters" to "web weavers" for this exact reason. All said, perhaps a good thing; however, it does require a shift of convention and a grain of salt. The shift of convention is necessary for those terms which explicitly conjure bad feelings; the grain of salt for those which are simply ridiculous.
Of course, this is a perfectly natural step in the development of Newspeak.
Clearly the entire concept of a Master/Slave relationship is unacceptable to BB. It promotes a distrust of authority. I trust that the LA county ISD is working hard to strike all references to masters and slaves from public school textbooks.
Next they can hire some ASEAN consultants for assistance in firewalling the Internet at the county borders.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Seems to fit...
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.
every stain tells a story
Let's stop using that "Spanish" language in any public documents. This is a language that unfairly assigns a 'gender' to every noun.
Unless the Spanish speaking Mexican American population of Los Angeles county agree to replace the 'le' and 'la' with something more gender nutural, then all people working with, or receiving services will have to do so in the English language.
You sexist pigs.
The Internet is generally stupid
why dont ya just get over it!!! Or how about actually finding out what really went on. And dont say the US Supreme Court threw the election, because they did no such thing. If anything the Florida Supreme Court screwed up. Let me explain.
The US Constitution has this weird idea that no one is better than anyone else, aka Equal Protection. This idea extends to election law, in that no ones vote counts more than anyone elses.
Now when the Gore realized how close the election was, his buddies in the Democratic party wanted to count just areas that vote heavily Democratic. The Repuplicans requested that the entire state be counted. First the Democrats got a judge in theses areas to approve a recount. Then the Republicans got a higher court to over turn that decision. Next, Gore's buddies appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which is predominantly Democratic, which OK'd the limited recount. The Republican Party appealed to the US Supreme Court, stating that a limited recount violated equal protection.
Now when the case was heard by the U.S Supreme court, they heard the Bush lawyers arguing for a state wide recount, while the Gore lawyers argued a) against a statewide recount and b)extenting the deadline for certifying election results ( defined by Florida law to be due by the 13th of December )
The US Supreme Court's decision therefore two parts. The U.S Supreme court agreed by a 7-2 vote that a limited recount violated the U.S Constitution. The Supreme Court decide by a 5-4 vote that it would not overturn the Florida law establishing a deadline for certification of election results, since that law did not violate the US Constitution in any way. This decision came down on a Thursday and the election results had to be certified on the following Monday. There simply was not enough time to do a recount.
Like I said Gore and his buddies and the Florida Supreme Court kissed the pooch on this one. If they would have been behind a state wide recount things might have turned out different. But what do you expect from a bunch of ninnys...
How about taking the Worlds Smallest Politica QuizSELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
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.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Master/slave is just the latest. California is a minefield for this kind of crud, I should know I live in the Bay Area inside the Politically Correct triangle formed by Marin, Berkeley and Silicon Valley. I want to be as sensitive as the next bloke, but sometimes I pick up the paper and read something that just makes me want to puke. My wife is of the same mind and we rail against the PC fascists most mornings listening to public radio and browsing the newspaper.
;) while others wave the flag of immigrant seeking fairness, or are non-English speakers, while others have been abused as children, or are incest survivors, or are food or chemical or medication sensitive (so don't wear perfume or cologne to the office, or bring a PBJ sandwich for your own lunch, or you'll kill them on the spot and just see if you don't) or had absent fathers, or absent grandparents, or didn't have cable TV when they were young, or are dyslexic, or corpulent, or are in some other way special and are a victim and not "part of the problem" created by the oppressive power elite (who BTW are increasingly Native Americans, immigrants, pagans, GLBTG, food/chemical/drug/fat/bilingual/disabled awareness lobbyists and for all I know family pets.)
PC fascism extends to pets, races, bums, unwed mothers and sexual deviants (not to lump anyone together...trying to be PC here as you can see...) who must be correctly refered to (respectively) as fur friends, people of color, the economically disadvantaged, single mothers and GLBTG (for the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered crowd, though we used to call them all by the PC term "Gay" rather than homosexual but recently they each wanted in on the game so now we have this horrid acronym which I guess is itself more PC than PC. Barf).
Our everyday lexicon is scattered with taboo words and topics. Unless they are white the authorities cannot refer to a suspect criminal on the run by their race not even to facilitate apprehending them. And a vicious dog is never a dangerous animal that needs to be destroyed (as opposed to being a family member needing therapy) and you cannot discuss GLBTG "gay rights" issues in any manner other than as a political movement for justice even if that means they can demand the opportunity to explain their lifestyle choice at whatever level of detail suits them in front of a classroom of 13 year old children (to the horror of many who can do nothing to stop it...which is why increasingly we homeschool or private school and leave the public schools to the activists).
A middle class white person has to keep their head down. The best approach is to join a splinter group and start claiming your rights as a minority as loudly as you can. Some claim to be suppressed Native American. Others claim to belong to suppressed religions like Paganism (I happen to claim both, but that is because I happen to be both
Though it seems democratic and diverse, ours is a culture of identity politics and is rife with narrow interests. Nobody pulls together except within their narrowly defined identity group (though I can't imagine how the GLBTG manage it.) You cannot believe how much it sucks. It's a wonder there can be any progress at all on anything important, and it appears that more often than not there is no progresss at all. Where it is all headed I cannot imagine.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Possible replacement terms:
Master:Overlord, Strawboss, Whitey
Slave: CottonPicker, Underling, Nigger
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
And besides, what is wrong with the words "slave" and "master"? Yes, slavery itself is wrong, but the word itself is not. It does not refer to a specific race, creed, religion, etc. There are plenty of words that are used in our language that could have a bad connotation if taken in the wrong context. If "slave" is wrong in a computer context, then her are some other things that are not correct:
- Mouse: vermin that spreads disease so that has to be renamed to "x/y coordinate changer"
- Joystick: sexual connotations so that has to be renamed to "gamer's handle"
- Motherboard: too much bias toward a certain gender so that has to be renamed to "parentboard"
- Hard Drive: again, sexual connotations so that has to be renamed to "magnetic storage device".
Any use of these old words will result in immediate imprisonment and fines.-prozac79
"Making email fun again, one letter at a time"
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
Rename it "Master and Servant".
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
The team on this project was about half black and half white. I was having an animated discussion with another of the (white) programmers when a couple of the (black) programmers came in. They watched the discussion for a little while. I looked up at them, and one said, "Don't say slave."
"No?" I asked.
"Nuh uh," he replied, with just slightly too straight a face.
So I bet my career: I turned to the other (white) programmer and said, "Fine. So the Massah machine needs to hold record counts in the array so it can..." and everybody cracked up. We discussed terminology a bit, and decided to call the controlling box the "controller" and the indexing boxes the "indexers." About 70% of the folks actually using our application were black, we figured, and not too savvy on computer terminology, so fuck it: we caved, just to be on the polite side.
Moral: we all had a good laugh. Here in Atlanta proper, there are more white than blacks. In state government, there is plenty of minority representation. And we all get along pretty damned well---I was voted the second whitest white boy in the office by the (mostly black) administrative staff (and damn was the whitest white boy pissed).
I'm increasingly convinced that the people we're trying desperately not to piss off are not minorities, but liberal white jackasses who think they're under some sort of obligation to rescue all those poor defenseless minorities from oppressive words. Most actual black people can look after themselves, and, having better things to worry about, tend not to give a damn.
This is not my sandwich.
As is web weaver for god's sake. A good change? Ha. A master does not imply evil doings. A martial arts master or a master carpenter generally don't have slaves. Master implies that they the best at what they do. Yes, it also implies authority, but not cruel domination. Gah. People drive me insane. Some of these offended groups are probably the same ones that burn 'inappropriate books.' Pooh on them.
I'd rather have lived a hundred years ago. Except of course, for all my grumbling about rampant political correctness and other hogwash, I'd be much more pissed about the lack of women's suffrage, real racial inequality, and the other issues of the day. The moral? There isn't one really.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
In informal contexts, I always use the singular "they". Fuck, it's been part of the English language for seven centuries. Just because Latin-misinterpreting prescriptive grammarians didn't like it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Alright who is going to rewrite all the BIOS screens to make them politically correct?
Got Code?
We can make fun of it all day here on Slashdot, but nothing will be done about it. The idiots will win this one, just like they win all the others.
It's far past the point of not being funny anymore.
--- Ban humanity.
Jim: Allright already! Sheesh, here's your twenty bucks.
Bill: Thanks - I told you they'd fall for it.
Jim: I still can't believe they took that seriously. Hey - what happened to your suggestion that we make vendors refer to DB25 gender changers as "Transgendered Serial Interfaces"?
Bill: It's on the agenda for the next council meeting...
Didn't this guy notice the designated 'master' connection on the cabling is black?
> black people have every reason to be pissed about it.
Black people aren't the only ones who have been slaves.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Basically you sound like you want to use / establish a vocabulary that is guaranteed not to offend anybody in the workplace, ya?
Easy : keep on using your existing vocabulary and just don't hire niggers or bitches. Voila! nobody at the office gets offended, guaranteed!
An alternative, of course, is to expect that all employees work in the existing environment and accept that words may be used that if they really, really wanted to they could twist into totally unintended meanings and be offended by them (ie, Master/Slave hard drive settings, cylinders in automobile settings) - by accepting the existing work environment as it stands ensuring that they (and others like them) are welcome to the workplace now and in the future.
This Politically Correct crap has done nothing towards making work environments better for the 'oppressed' (ie, blacks, latins, women) and has done quite a bit towards making hiring managers very, very biased against hiring any of those and being very, very subtle about working towards that effect. I will give you a 100% written guarantee that none of the above are ever getting past zillions of employment screenings in corporate America, and the hiring managers know better than to admit my true motives in which candidate gets chosen.
They are all totally upset with the direction employment is going in corporate America, and yet they are bringing it on themselves. They scream about not being able to get a job, and yet the ones that did get hired pull this PC shit. Well there we go - can't say they weren't asking for it. Big time.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
a guy in a wheelchair who was sure I was making fun of him
Then he should really not be tought image processing on *nix.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
They're not sending the letter to the manufacturers, just the distributors/vendors who sell the products to the county. Since the manufacturers aren't going to do custom production for as small a quantity as LA County buys and they know the distributors/vendors have to buy drives regardless, I don't see the manufacturers changing their terminology. The vendors aren't going to take on the costs of custom documentation etc., so I suspect LA County will soon be in the position of either reversing that request or not being able to buy hard drives at anything below quadruple list price.
"Master and Commander" narrowly escapes being banned under this provision, as well, thanks to a large generous cash donation by Russell Crowe to the Democratic Party.
Their job is to make sure the cops get paid and the street lights work. It is NOT to re-invent Think-Speak.
Tell me about it.
How about this, which happened to me in University. Note that I don't care about race, disability, sexual orientation - none of that is relevant to whether or not I like (or will hire) someone. But I *hate* political correctness and I avoid it at all costs.
Picture it. In the hallway, just after I missed a question on a math test, where I had to integrate a function of e * trig. (Otherwise, did okay on the test.) Chatting with classmates.
"Well, I think the problem is that I don't integrate very well."
Stranger in the hallway who overhears:
"Oh! That's *horrible*! You're a terrible person! No one chooses the color of their skin! You could have just as easily been born black, you know! It's people like you who keep society from progressing!"
So, in unison, we (all Engineers) looked at her and laughed. At her.
"You're *all* horrible people! This is university! Campus KKK! I'm reporting you to the dean!"
Suffering idiocy as well as I do, it was I who took up the task of dealing with her.
"I would invite you to report that to my dean, I'm sure he'll laugh at you at least as hard as I laughed at you. Let me guess, you're in an arts program, right? In my arts elective, the instructor started by asking our entire class if we had our purple crayons. Things only went downhill from there."
[Indignant gasps from the chick... who was wearing wooden sandals in late October.]
I continued, "...Now, seeing as how *you're* the ignorant one..."
Screaming now, "How *DARE* you call me ignorant! You're the one who said you didn't like to integrate!" People were stopping to see this woman lose it on me. This hallway connected two science buildings, an engineering building and one arts building, so most of them were starting to laugh at her, too.
"You're *ALL* in on this! What's wrong with you people?" She was getting worked up to tears, all the angst of a comfortable middle-class childhood showing.
A big black guy who had been watching and kind of laughing from the beginning told her that he hated to integrate too, then walked away, leaving her stunned.
Me again: "Now, seeing as how you're the ignorant one, integration is a mathematical process for finding the area under a curve. It's from a branch of mathematics called calculus. Your wooden sandals and amazing ability to jump to unfounded conclusions have only served to reaffirm my belief that calculus is the distinction between a degree and toilet paper. You, honeybunch, are an idiot."
And with that, we left. I think she was having a stress attack when we walked away.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I think several things need to happen here:
First, I encourage anyone and everyone to write to all the hard disk manufacturers you can think of, and strongly discourage them from changing this naming convention. Politely explain that the entire world should not change because of one person's lack of familiarity with the master/slave relationship of hard drives. (This terminology is actually used in other fields besides hard drives, to denote any mechanism or device in which this relationship of control is found.)
Second, if you've gone as far as doing that, you should consider writing to the county of Los Angeles to let them know how ridiculous and silly their request is.
I do not usually interfere in things like this, or ask anybody to do so, but I strongly believe that this is a frightening trend that is growing in too many areas. For example, a book called "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" by Diane Ravitch gives example after example of things that school textbooks cannot say because they are politically incorrect. If you read this book, you'll eventually ask yourself, "Well, what exactly can you talk about?" That's the problem. If the entire world needs to change each time one person (or a small group of people) is offended by some terminology, then we will eventually live in George Orwell's nightmare.
As other Slashcrackers have noted, soon you won't be able to call a connector male or female, because somebody with an as-yet unknown gender (like an alleged child molester named MICHAEL JACKSON, though it's unlikely you've heard of him) will be offended at that.
Since we're using scriptures, here's a great resource for uptight people who are offended by anything. Why not celebrate Christmas.... er, non-denominational holiday period with the Politically Correct version of the Birth of Christ.
Here's an excerpt to wet your appetite:
Sure enough, the three wise men rode up.
The crowd gasped, "They're all male!" And "Not very multicultural!"
"Balthasar here is black," said one of the Magi.
"Yes, but how many of you are gay or disabled?" someone shouted. A committee was quickly formed to find an impoverished lesbian wise-person among the halt and lame of Bethlehem.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
"finger" -- try using that in a sentence amongst a group of people, "Ummm, hey John did you try to finger him?".
LA Shire might not sound as good as LA County, but we're trying to be policially correct here.
But wouldn't that lead to the vertically challenged being called "Hobbits" by the cildren?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
in our case, a member of the team was giving a presentation explaining how our LDAP servers were set up to allow for load balancing and failover. the presentation referred to the master and slave LDAP servers. a member of the audience told him that was offensive to her, and demanded that they cease using those terms.
god people piss me off.
Read his(their) post again- he mentioned that English speakers have been using "they" to refer to single subjects ambiguously for seven centuries. When pretty much everyone makes the same "mistake," in the same way, for 700 years, that pretty much makes it not a mistake.
True in formal writing or speech... for now. Check back in a century and I'd bet you'll see the singular "they" accepted. It's easier than formulating a new, concise, elegant approach to "he/she". And rant all you want, but the world is never going back to the default "he".
Nor, IMHO, should it. Language evolves and no language does it better than English. The language expresses the needs of the culture -- if the culture as a whole (or even in large part) decides the old way is inadequate, the language will change accordingly.
Or, to put it succintly, the only languages spoken "perfectly" are dead ones.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Singular 'they' is perfectly acceptable English, in use since at least the 14th century A.D.
It was only in the 19th century that some grammarians attempted to rid us of that usage, based on the fact that it didn't match up with Latin.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html
http://www.vocabula.com/2003/VRSept03Altieri.htm
At present, most people conjugate verbs following a singular "they" with the plural forms, for greater euphony. I would much rather it go the other way -- singular conjugations could de-ambigouize the singular they. After all, very few English verbs have the same singular and plural forms in the third person (well, not in the present, anyway)
It would also be logically consistant. Then it would really be a matter of a single word taking on a new meaning, a common phenomenon which all linguists accept, and not a matter of adding further convolutions to English grammer. Does anyone really want their grandchildren to have to memorize another exception?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
It seems almost grotesk that a nation that engaged so fully in the slave trade and still has the very people who have decended from that enslavement living within it's national boundries would except and use langauge that could so clearly salt wounds that, frankly, have never been properly dressed.
Okay, I'm probably going to come off as racist here I'm sure, but what the hell.
Isn't it a bit egotistical to assume that "slave" must refer to a black person? The term "slave" existed long before the United States did and many of them were white. A half step back would be indentured servitude, also a situation in which many white people found themselves in.
The bottom line is that "master" refers to something in charge and "slave" refers to one who has no say in the matter, but most obey it. Or if you don't prefer my paraphrasing, master is "one that has control over another or others" and slave is "one who is abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence." (Note that under "slave" there actually was a definition that referred specifically to "machine[s] or machine components" but I refrained from using it.)
The bottom line is that the terms are apt and I simply don't see the great need to change them. Are they offensive to some people? Obviously so. Almost everything is offensive to somebody. The word "God" is offensive to athiests; shall we mandate that anybody doing business with the United States must be irreligious? If "master/slave" is offensive because the word slave somehow offends some black people, we have to strike it from the dictionary too, right? No talking about slavery or slaves in the classroom because a listener might be offended.
There's an old one-liner floating around that goes, "I'm not short, I'm vertically challenged." Humans are emotional creatures and WILL be offended by something in their lives even if the intent is not to do so. The line has to be drawn someplace. I see nothing in the term "master/slave" that says it was created to be prejudiced or anything else that tells me it needs to be removed. Slavery was a nasty situation that should never have occurred, least of all in the United States, but that doesn't mean the words used to describe it need to be abandoned.
I don't think "primary/secondary" properly describes the relationship, at least not for all situations in which the term is used. For instance, it might be okay to describe hard drive configuration (arguments can be made on both side), but how about master/slave processing? One processor isn't simply "secondary," it is downright subservient to the demands of the master. Can we come up with another term that DOES work in all situations? Probably. But my view is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I find this blatant attack on the SM community offensive, particularly in light of the recent sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws passed in California. What happens behind closed doors between me and my hard drive should not be subject to government approval. Come, Slave. ---Je-je---Jesus Christ...
jumper removal for 50000 hard drives - $457,000
25000 new IDE cables - $1,250,000
Making them pay for their own stupidity - priceless.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
She was the patron just in line ahead of me. When she got to the register she demanded: "You will put out vegetarian pizzas, right? I'm a vegetarian and I do not eat meat" -- but loves cheese, I thought -- " and I refuse to kill a defenseless animal for my nutrition."
The cashier informed her that the store always provided vegetarian pizzas on its buffets for people who, for one reason or another, preferred them.
What happened next was purely by reflex and was not pre-meditated.
I said: "You will put out meat pizzas, right? I am a carnivore and I believe it is unethical to kill and eat defenseless little plants which are rooted in the ground and are unable to put up any fight at all against human harvestors. Animals at least have a chance to escape or mount a defense."
And there was much laughter and rejoicing.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I must inform you that your English licence has just been revoked.
The first reply said it best, but I'll explain anyway, because he skipped as obvious several major parts of his reasoning. (Well, okay, he skipped right to "Wooosh.") I'll just explain in more detail.
And you have hit very succinctly on the problem with institutional racism. They would rather hire some white asshole because he looks like he's part of the clan than "take a chance" on some "minority".
Yes, they would. It's not to say they are right in doing this, but it's also not to say that they are racist, necessarily. They simply read the news, hear time and again of racial minorities making life difficult for their employers, and become wary of hiring them. The victims of racism cause more racist decisions through publicity.
The victims of racism can also encourage racism by giving racists grounds for their claims. While I have no reason to think blacks in general are less intelligent than whites, my university has made sure, through its admission practices, that the average black student here is less intelligent than the average white one. Now, knowing this, I can't help but wonder when I meet a black student whether they would have been admitted if they were white--and harbor some resentment if I get the impression they wouldn't have. More dangerous yet, if I didn't know, I might come away from my university career believing all black people to be less intelligent than whites. Call it racism if you want, but I could understand someone in that situation believing that. (Of course, if you go here and don't hear about the admission policies, you're living in a hole.)
This is not meant as a troll or flamebait, by the way. If you think it is, I suggest you re-read it carefully, trying to follow the logic of each argument and forget your bias.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Well shoot,
I guess this is really going to upset those backwood bumpkins that created these new-fangled computers and decided to use these terms just for the purposes of offending the black people.
Someone better not let them know that the machines they are using also store data in Little Endian and Big Endian byte orders.. Will this offend some Native Americans and Indians?
I am distressed to find that some women friends (fortunately not many) treat the use of the impersonal masculine pronoun as if it showed intention to exclude them. If there were any excluding to be done (happily there is not) I think I would sooner exclude men, but when I once tentatively tried referring to my abstract reader as "she", a feminist denounced me for patronizing condescension: I ought to say "he-or-she", and "his-or-her". That is easy to do if you do not care about language, but then if you do not care about language you do not deserve readers of either sex. Here, I have returned to the normal conventions of English pronouns. I may refer to the "reader" as "he", but I no more think of my readers as specifically male than a French speaker thinks of a table as female. As a matter of fact I believe I do, more often than not, think of my readers as female, but that is my personal affair and I'd hate to think that such considerations impinged on how I use my native language
The "patriotic" version (turning your personal computer into a FREEDOM computer):
General/Soldier
The "Slashdot Tinfoil" version:
RIAAMPAACIAMicroSCOft/we
The "Hegemony" version:
USA/Rest of the world
The "Southern Pride" version:
Klansman/Nigger
The "Equal rights" version:
IDE client #1/IDE client #1
The "I can't hear THAT anymore" version:
How are you/Gentlemen?
The "YetAnotherSlashdotCliche" version:
???/Profit!
The "LOTR" version:
One Ring/Them All
The "disgusting" version:
goatse/cx
Free as in mason.
I vote for "pimp/hoe" to replace "master/slave".
Sindri Traustason.
What is clear however is that they seem to be bringing us a sort of fusion McCarthyism, part Lenin (originator of the line 'whoever is not for us is against us')..
The phrase was coined by Jesus Christ.
Yes, I was shocked too when I first encountered it in New Testament. "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Matthew 12:30.
You wouldn't find this particular phrase quoted much, though.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
"Master/Slave Devices" become "Partner Devices having ID Numbers 1 and 2"
"Shut down" becomes "Put into a dormant state"
"Zombie Process" becomes "Perpetual Process"
"Kill the Process," "Terminate the process," and "Abort the process" all become "Cause the process to end, regardless of current state."
What doesn't surprise me at all is that someone found an (arbitrary) word to be offended with. Happens all the time. What does surprise me (or hmm, maybe it doesn't) is that this was picked up by some committee and acted upon officially. Where does it end?
We (here in Holland) live in a very diverse culture, with lots of different people crammed into a tiny country. Anything you do or say is bound to offend someone else. Politicians here preach tolerance until we're sick of it... they think being tolerant of other cultures means to adapt yourself so that you will not offend members of those other cultures. Not only is that impossible, but one cannot help but notice that this requirement to adapt is somehow never applied to the minority groups. Ie. I cannot say anything offensive about Muslems, Jews or other minorites (just an example!), but if they do or say something that offends me, I'm called racist or intolerant if I comment on it, and I will be sternly reminded that I 'should respect their culture'.
Tolerance is a two-way street, people. On the one hand, you should be aware of the fact that some things you find normal are going to piss other people off, and you try (within reason) to minimise that. But on the other hand, you (and especially the minorities and politicians) should accept that other groups will do things that'll offend you. Rather than expecting everyone to change to suit your world view, accept that you'll be offended from time to time and do not make a big deal out of it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
When people of the same sex can marry each other, transsexuals can marry anyone (at the moment they can't marry anyone at all) and intersexed babies don't have their genitals mutilated at birth (or their parents told to lie to them about their condition), then we can talk about wording.
"You're the one who insulted my girlfirend, you insensitive clod! "
Are you saying he made the story up?
"Derp de derp."
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!!
GIMP
Thin client
FAT
Raster
Brute force
a blind system
and my favourite:
finger me for my number
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The problem you describe is that we no longer mean tolerance when we use the word tolerance.
If I merely tolerate your differences, I recognize that you are different and take no action to change you. In "classic" tolerance, I don't have to agree with you, encourage you.... in fact, I don't even have to like you.
In the "new" tolerance, I am not only required socially to tolerate you, but now I must celebrate the things that you value. If I refuse to *celebrate* your viewpoint, I am labeled as "intolerant" - one of the greatest condemnations within modern culture.
This new definition is no longer tolerance, it is the borg of social interaction. "I am {minority view} of BORG. You will be assimilated."
Talk about thought police! We are no longer permitted to think or discuss that which might be upsetting to someone somewhere.
This cuts both ways, and while it may seem to further minority viewpoints in the short term, in the long term we all pay because we are not afforded the protection and richness that is freedom of expression. Over time it becomes unacceptable to express ANY views.
This is, in my opinion, far worse than the "old world order" where tolerance meant that I allowed you to have whatever kooky issue or belief or practice you want, and you allow me the same. (Within societal boundaries of course. Other than Sparta, I'm not aware of cultures where Mr. Jackson's alleged behavior is celebrated.)
Respectfully,
Anomaly
PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you want to know more, please email me.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
But "Motherboard" could offend the poor orphans who never had a mother. Obviously some of these orphans would be unwhite! and some may even be doubleplusunwhite! OMG! quick, lets change the term motherboard to be "genderneutralboard", i think you will agree this fits nicely into the following phrases.
1) First you need to flash the BIOS on the genderneutralboard.
2) Ahh yes there is a jumper on the genderneutralboard for that
3) The usb ports have become detached from the genderneutralboard
See easy, smooth flowing, Come on LA its up to you to fix this! People of no particular race colour creed or geographical location are being offended as we speak!
(We've always been at war eith eurasia, eastasia are out friends and have always been our friends)
seems that there are some doubleplusunclever people making up laws, is there really nothing better that they could be doing in this time of war?
Yeak, makes perfect sense.
Plants don't have central nervous systems. Plants don't feel harm.
:)
Your supposition doesn't necessarily lead to your conclusion. Many organisms do not have central nervous systems but do respond to stimuli that are harmful to them.
YOU are starving your fellow man.
Are you accusing me of eating someone else's steak?
A quick look at the human physiology (eye placement for binocular vision, types of teeth in the jaw - canines and incisors as well as molars and bicuspids, etc.) all indicate that humans are omnivorous by design. That means that humans were designed to eat both "meat" and "veggies". The choice of whether or not to eat from either classification of food is just that - a choice - because you *are* designed to take from both categories of foods, regardless if you like that fact or not.
I wonder what the vegetarian community thinks of the Atkins Diet
Master and slave drives!? Let my storage devices go!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
She went in there looking for a fight and the store failed to give her one. Then you gave the cashier a victory they weren't expecting. Good one!!
Seriously - some people need to grow thicker skin or something. I go into almost any place, find the one or two things I can eat, and go with it - no picking fights with the staff and no attempts to convert the people I'm with.
I was at a local dinner with my vegiterian girl friend at the time and I ended up ordering a hamburger while she got a grilled cheese sandwich. I then had to sit through a 10 minute lecture on how meat is processed and killed and that I was a horrible person for eating meat.
So I then told her "Do you know how cheese is made? They inject cows with so much hormones that their udders get so big that they can't even walk. Their legs break and they just lay in one spot for the rest of their lives giving milk for your cheese sandwich."
That was the best meal ever. I not only got to eat my hamburger but I also got to eat her grilled cheese sandwich.
Thing were never the same after that....
Outdoor storage sheds and pet kennels
If you check the Oxford English Dictionary, you will see that "they", "them", "their", and even "themselves" are used in the singular and have been for at least six hundred years. The notion that "they" is only plural is a modern invention, not based in actual use. Shakespeare and Chaucer used these words as singular.
In looking at the older OED citations, such as "Bath ware made sun and mon, Aither wit ther ouen light" from the 1300s, it is remarkable to note the singularity of "their" has remained steady in the English language while so much else changed around it. Any feature that has survived so much change over so long a period is clearly well established. The notion that it is plural only is a myth that deserves to be dismissed.