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."

No Master/Slave?

[Ridgelift]

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.

They think that's bad

[helix400]

Wow, I wonder what they'll say when they realize why some computer cables ends are called male and female.

Name Change

[mvpll]

So now we have to have dominant and submissive hard drives???

sex shops too?

[searleb]

what about all the sex shops in LA County?

What does the county prefer?

[Gyan]

Daddy/Bitch

Well...

[daveschroeder]

...they could always go all SCSI.

Re:Name Change

[helix400]

I personally am hoping for oppressor/oppressee. It's much for fun to use, and it's even less politically correct. =)

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

[Anonymous Coward]

shh, don't give them any ideas.

Re:They think that's bad

[niko9]

"Wow, I wonder what they'll say when they realize why some computer cables ends are called male and female."

Wait 'till you tell them said cables are being used on a computer running a "stoned beaver" OS kernel!

Female/Male next?

[FunWithHeadlines]

"I need a mouse adaptor, please. Female to male."

"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!"

Alternative?

[Dimwit]

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...

Re:Well...

[mariox19]

...they could always go all SCSI.

And risk offending the homeless?!

Master/Slave should be phased out

[Waffle Iron]

Master/Slave should be phased out. Edge-triggered logic is more modern and robust.

Help Help I am being repressed!

[Herkum01]

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.

G'dammit!

[Otter]

2003-11-21 21:06:11 LA County bars "Master/Slave" labels on ha (articles,humor) (rejected)

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!

Why discriminatory?

[slavemowgli]

I still fail to see what actually is discriminatory about the terms "Master" and "slave".

How about Government/Taxpayer?

[Chuck Chunder]

Seems like an appropriate alternative.

But is their money where their mouth is?

[Phredd]

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?

Re:In California

[Stile 65]

That's Dom/sub, you insensitive clod!

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

[cgenman]

Will we not be able to have male and female ends on our 1/4" audio cable for fear of offending the transgendered?

There have always been male / female converters for cabling. If only humans were so lucky.

Oh yeah?

[achurch]

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!

Other funny tech words

[ryanhos]

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 never used those words anyway

[donscarletti]

That doesn't worry me in the slightest. I have never had a master and slave on any of my IDE chains. I simply have "the butch" and "the bitch".

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.

In Socialist California

[notcreative]

Here in America, you label drives "Master/Slave" for correctness.

In Socialist California, the label correctness slaves master YOU!

Re:What does the county prefer?

[u-235-sentinel]

Next thing you know they will outlaw "Master and Commander" from viewing in LA Country.

Get real.

Of course it's offensive!

[UserChrisCanter4]

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"

I don't want a PC PC!

[paranerd]

Sorry. I should have resisted.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

What's next? Will we not be able to have male and female ends on our 1/4" audio cable...

I'll never forget the day my coworker and I were talking by speakerphone with a coworker, doing tech support. He asked if the equipment had a "male or female" end. She, puzzled, responded "what's the difference?"

I had to leave the room as he explained "the female one has a hole..."

Just the beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

The terms 'Hard Drive and 'Floppy drive' are offensive to those with erectile dysfunction.

The term 'Computer' is offensive to those who cannot add.

The term 'Mini Tower' is offensive to midgets.

The term 'Midget' is offensive to little people.

One can only imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

what will happen when this offended chap reads up on 'mount'.

Re:Well...

[dopaz]

Then maybe the Governator's Office will make sure everything is properly terminated.

Re:No Master/Slave?

[Cordath]

Pimp/Bitch is actually a bit of an improvement, since it implies that the controlling device is actually providing an interface to the services of the controlled device. (This is not implied by Master/Slave unfortunately)

I'm not in L.A. (thank the powers that be), but I strongly recommend we move to this new terminology nationally for the sake of clarity and political correctness.

For the love of God...

[lendude]

...please, think of the hard drives!

Broader Racial Conspiracy

[gnarled]

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.

Re:Other funny tech words

[clj]

Multiple times at work I've seen people taken aback when hearing a comment like "his Sun died", meaning
the workstation on his desk wouldn't boot, not that
his male offspring was deceased.

Re:Alternative?

[tigertiger]

There's the obvious "Parent/Child" possibility,

Gee, is "parent/child" still politically correct? I thought it would be something like "generator/generated in a genetically-challenged relationship" or so...

In fact, I think they should require the disks to take turns in their positions. That would only be fair.

Let's not stop there...

[rdewald]

I have been scanning my technical documentation and I have found several similarly offensive and discriminatory terms. I propose the following modifications:

1. Server/client - please use transactor/transactee.
   
2. Ones/zeroes - please use numerically-advantaged/disadvantaged
   
3. directory/folder - please use facilitator/facilitatee
   
4. physical/virtual - please use reality-enhanced/disenhanced.
   

I, for one, welcome our new facilitators.

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

[Hi_2k]

word cleaning not bad. Doubleplusgood.

Re:No Master/Slave?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

In the terminology of IDE/ATA chains, chain #1 is primary and #2 is secondary. I think primary master makes more sense and looks less idiotic tham primary primary.

I like to think that pieces of hardware won't get offended if I call it a "slave". Unless you think that harddrives now have AI? It would certainly be different if I started referring to humans in that way.

I think people that get offended over how frigging hardware is referred to need a smoking break, preferably pot.

Re:Hey....

[jx100]

I believe that's called "gender reassignment surgery" now

Free at last!

[Colonel Cholling]

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.

What about the sea horses?

[bleckywelcky]

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?????

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

[donscarletti]

There have always been male / female converters for cabling. If only humans were so lucky.

It's called a "strap on"

I realise that I run the risk of being modded (-1, Obscene) but I just had to say it.

This is lame.

[Anonymous Coward]

What next, someone "offended" by the term, "cracker", boycotting Nabisco, etc.?

Geez.

This reminds me

[geekoid]

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.

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

[jd_esguerra]

What's next?

Eliminating the numbers 55378008, 80085 and 7734.

(Young'ns, think old fashioned solar powered calculators.)

Oh yeah. Not quite the same, but just as disturbing: Pi is exactly 3.

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

[TKinias]

scripsit donscarletti:

It's called a "strap on"

Nah, that's female/male. What you're thinking of is called a `cleaver'.

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

[Foxxz]

Funny that "strap on" spelled backwards is "no parts"

-foxxz

Politically Correct Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

(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.

While we're at it, ban "Angeles"

[cabalamat2]

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.

Oh, that's nothing...in San Francisco..

[The Breeze]

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.

Re:Of course it's offensive!

[jd_esguerra]

and two 15-minute breaks per work period

Tried two 15 minute water breaks. Didn't work. In fact, the second one turned into more of a smoking break.

Just out of spite for a stupid idea....

[jemenake]

This is probably going to get me totally flamed, even though I'm not a racist myself, but... Just for spite, I think it would be hillarious if the County IT techs started replacing all of the "Master/Slave" stickers with "Massa/Coon" ones. :)

In the interests of equality..

[swordfishBob]

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...!

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

[j3110]

I thought the first amendment rights superceded such non-sense anyhow. I'll call it whatever the hell I want. Arbitrarily picking words to be offended with is a very silly practice. I'm offended by the word cheese, from now on, I want everyone to use fromage. Isn't that about the same caliber. Why do we even have the words master and slave if we can't friggen use them? It's not like anyone has ever referred in public to the jumper setting as "Massuh". Maybe they are trying to free the oppressed drives! They deserve their own channel to call home!

Next we'll have to free the symbology of having only female connectors on devices... Female connectors can leave home and lead very low impedance connections too!

Lets just really upset them

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of calling them master and slave, why not color code the master white and the slave black??

Worker and Parasite

[s20451]

My vote is for Worker and Parasite.

Endut! Hoch hech!

Re:Name Change

[gid13]

Maybe this is the result of growing up in Canada, but when I first read the article title, I thought THAT was the group they were worried about offending. The racial implications didn't even enter my mind. I wonder if that's good or bad.

A Spin

[jefu]

Probably more of a good spin. So to speak.

As a former LA County Resident

[rjamestaylor]

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.

While we're on the subject

[VirtuaKnight]

Someone should talk to these guys about banning the terms "Microsoft" and "Windows"

Walrus/Carpenter

[Trejkaz]

Primary Walrus
Primary Carpenter
Secondary Walrus...

oh man

[maxdamage]

No offence to any californian slashdoters, but I wouldent expect anything less to come from a population that elected Arnold their governer.

Yet another reason...

[John.Thompson]

to use SCSI...

Let's hope they don't start looking at code...

[BeBoxer]

Somethings tells me these might not go over too well either:

#define SIGABRT 6 /* Abort (ANSI). */
#define SIGKILL 9 /* Kill, unblockable (POSIX). */

But being California, I suppose this one's fine:
#define SIGTERM 15 /* Termination (ANSI). */

Re:Name Change

[Pinky]

Someone's gone and added a ridding crop to my HD icon..

a proposal

[commodoresloat]

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.

Replace with Label/Artist?

[thumbtack]

Seems to fit...

Let's take it to the next step.

[interstellar_donkey]

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.

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not let anyone know. The Church of the BSD is indeed a worshipper of the Great Satan. BSD actually stands for "Brothers and Sisters of the Devil". They regularly kill their children and chant in ancient the ancient language "chmod six six six (666)". This guttural noise even sounds unholy, like something from Lovecraft in fact. The BSDers religion is an amalgamation of voodoo and Satanism (zombies are a common occurrence) and coded references to Wine and b_read in their code (i.e., the book, or doctrine) refer to unholy rituals involving wine and bread (the body). I won't even mention their unholy mascot.

Possible replacment terms

[Robawesome]

Possible replacement terms:

Master:Overlord, Strawboss, Whitey

Slave: CottonPicker, Underling, Nigger

Re:This isn't new.

[Anonymous Coward]

A number of years ago doing tech support I had to explain about the enabled and disabled folders in a Mac OS 7.5 system folder to a guy in a wheelchair who was sure I was making fun of him...

*sigh*

Sara

I can be less PC than "Master/Slave"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to start referring to my hard drive configuration as "whitey/nigger."

I'll call up Seagate tomorrow: "How do I set the jumpers for 'nigger'?"

I am also going to email my Electrical Engineering profs to ask them to start referring to "Master/Slave flip-flops" as "Whitey/Nigger flip-flops."

-Anon

Re:This isn't new.

[Flower]

What? Nobody came up with Mistress/Slave? Or if that's still too close how about Dominatrix/Slave?

Certainly would spice up the diagrams if done properly.

i checked my drive

[Anonymous Coward]

it says "MA" on it.

this is an outrage, an offense to all the down-home whitebread little, redneck, podunk, white trash, [kickass!] mothers in the U.. S.. A!

Re:Truth is stranger than fiction

[DA-MAN]

Alright! One bathroom for all, see some good does come out of this whole "politically correct" bullshit!

Re:a proposal

[QuantumFlux]

Perhaps "he-or-she-or-it" could just be shorted to "HOrShIt"...

Re:Truth is stranger than fiction

[Wyatt Earp]

It won't work.

See, fellas don't talk in the bathroom. Unless it's to talk about sports in grunts, or "what movie are you in? It good?" types of coverstations.

On the otherhand, women talk about everything under the sun in there, the public bathroom for men, at least in my experiance is a temple of silence, albeit silence punctuated with "Dude! I'm hammered!" or long deep farts echoing on tile.

That said, I may not be honoring diversity because I've not used the john with some some sex-gender continuum benders. Perhaps Gender-Bender can shed some light on it, I'll look to my DVDs.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly microsoft have been promoting this for a long time with their device msexchange product offerings.

I once had a complaint from a customer over rude emails being sent to her. Seems she somehow thought that msexchange in the headers might actually mean someone thought she should get a 'Male Sex Change' rather than it coming from a Microsoft Exchange server.

Sad but true :(

Re:My response to the county

[Anonymous Coward]

biggot

Or a Niggot.

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

[zephc]

While they're at it, change all the web forms in the world so that they don't say SUBMIT, as it's far too S&M. Perhaps the generic ENTER or OK would do, they're just not kinky enough though.

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

[ewilts]

I don't know about the IDE spec, but I did a quick search on faq.org for "master/slave" in the rfcs. I matched at least 16 RFCs (it also matches older versions of the same RFCs).

So, I guess you can't be RFC-compliant when bidding on LA County contracts...

Conversation Overheard in LA County Hall

[stygar]

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...

Re:This reminds me

[Just Some Guy]

One of my previous bosses bid a job at $666.00 for parts - unfortunately, as it turns out, to a devout Assemblies of God believer.

Quote (and I couldn't make this up): "I ain't payin' the devil-number!"

He was less than pleased that my boss's suggested fix was to round up to $667: "you mean I have to pay extra?"

Re:This isn't new.

[Schnapple]

Reminds me of a marginally related college story.

It would take too long to explain everything but suffice to say the Band I was in in College had a crew in public loading and unloading instruments from an 18-wheeler truck before a football game, and to get into things this crew (friends of mine, but I wasn't on the crew) had nicknames on their shirts. One was called "Gasmaster" because... he farted a lot. Was his trademark. Could peel paint and clear rooms with it. Another got the name "Gestapo" because he looked a little Aryan (white, blonde hair, blue eyes) and was mean as Hell.

The Band Director got an angry letter from an elterly Jewish woman who nearly had a heart attack when she saw "Gestapo" and the "Gasmaster" standing next to each other. He was going to make them change the names, but since this was sort of a one-time freak occurence in another state, he dropped it.

Role reversal

[E1v!$]

Didn't this guy notice the designated 'master' connection on the cabling is black?

What in the wild world of sports !

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean i can't play Depeche Mode's Master and Servant while visiting LA ?

The Gimp?

[GQuon]

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.

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

[Jaysyn]

I know, we could make up some new words & call em kok & kunt, that shouldn't offend anyone.

Jaysyn

Re:slavery and racism are not synonymous

[loraksus]

oh no. You mentioned the bible.
You're infringing on my non-denominational beliefs that may exist, may not exist or can not be determined!!
I demand you have your post removed.

And in other news....

[vudufixit]

"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.

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

[the_2nd_coming]

sorry, I meant ignent.

BigBlockMopar in University...

[BigBlockMopar]

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.

Re:While we're at it, ban "Angeles"

[DeadMeat (TM)]

How about "esto"? It's gender-neutral. Besides, if any city deserves to be called "this thing", it's Los Angeles.

Politically Correct Bible Story

[CHaN_316]

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. [omegafaith.org]

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.

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

[j_kenpo]

Yeah, this is almost as bad as Indiana's attempt to legally set Pi to 3... (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.html)

Just goes to show you the stupidest people are running the show.. (I would have said "Too many chiefs, not enough Indians", but who knows where I'd get that outlawed).

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

[raider_red]

Just tell them that it's not a technical term and that it applies to an "alternative lifestyle" and the freaks will back off immediately.

Your forget one:

[Kashif Shaikh]

"finger" -- try using that in a sentence amongst a group of people, "Ummm, hey John did you try to finger him?".

Hobbits?

[GQuon]

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?

Re:The Gimp?

[Boing]

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.

Or about different MP3 encoders.

Re:Other funny tech words

[Brad Mace]

My girlfriend was similarly confused when I was typing commands like man kill | more and killall. To make her feel better I made a symbolic link so that I could use happysunshine to disconnect the modem rather than killall pppd

My Girlsfriend!!!

[soft_guy]

You're the one who insulted my girlfirend, you insensitive clod!

Discrimination

[C10H14N2]

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...

Re:Truth is stranger than fiction

[greysky]

She pointed out that many women's restrooms have a caricature of a person in a dress on it. "Going into it implies that we are willing to be associated with that image. There are only two [images] to choose from. This moment involves an act of self-labeling."

Replace the pictures of people with a rooster and a cat. Problem solved

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and we wonder why Engineering students have a bad reputation and can't get laid...

Here's my bid...

[lone_marauder]

jumper removal for 50000 hard drives - $457,000
25000 new IDE cables - $1,250,000

Making them pay for their own stupidity - priceless.

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...Similar event

[rjamestaylor]

I met this same girl at the just-off-campus pizza buffet joint. Maybe not the same instance, but class: self-righteous, pop-culturally correct, loud.

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.

Re:Singular They - Insightful my ass

[fcw]

...de-ambigouize...

I must inform you that your English licence has just been revoked.

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, you sure showed bigotry and intolerance in your description and assumptions about this girl. Maybe she misheard and embarrassed herself, but it turns out you are, in fact, an asshole.

Look, if it upsets you that much, post your address and we'll be glad to mail you a hankie - a nice, pink one to go with your politics!

Attack the small things it's easier.

[hankmask]

I'm a African-American web designer/geek and never took offense to the term Mater/Slave. But, I do get offened by alot of thing in the tech industry(hiring practices, unequal schooling for minorities, high price of new G5's).

If the term to describe HD set up was something like Yankee/Confederate, Nazi/Jew, USA/Canada, or something else along those lines people won't stand for it. African-American are the most resent victums of Slavery(it only ended less than 150years ago) It is only reasonible that people are still upset. In 150 years will the Holocaust be a forgotten memory?

It is sad that we cant change the larger problems in our world.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally would like to see the word "motherboard" replaced with the more politically correct "caregiverboard"

Re:Let's take it to the next step.

[roe1352]

You insensitive clod! In Spain there are 5 languages, not just one! (Basque, Gallego, Catalan, Valenciano, Castellano) And the proper name of the language you speak of is Castellano not Espanol (damn English keyboards)

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

But wait, you forgot the rest of the story! Then like, three big muscular art majors came up to you and was going like "Are you bothering that lady you nasty republikkkan rightwinger?" And they thought they were so cool? And you like, smack, pow, totally kicked their asses cause you are even quicker with your feet than with your wit and know kung-fu, and they were totally frightened and ran away, and then lots of cheerleaders wanted to have sex with you?

True story. At least, just as true as the rest of it.

Redneck's disappoitned

[kidgenius]

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.

Endian?

[yourlord]

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?

quick we better help them

[LittleBigLui]

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

pimp/hoe

[Sindri]

I vote for "pimp/hoe" to replace "master/slave".

Re:One example is one too many

[Hobbex]

'We are offended by the name given us and see it as ageist. Therefore we would like to be known as Senior Citizens'

'I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television. We are not all vibrant, fun-loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals, who remember the gold old days when entertainment was bland and inoffensive.'

Re:Politically Correct Unix

[zoeblade]

You can prise gunzip from my cold, dead hands.

Re:Political Correctness is pure egotistical B.S.

[TiggsPanther]

LA County is infringing no one's rights. You can still call the relationship master/slave if you want, that's OK. Just don't expect them to buy disks from you. That's their right.

And they'll exercise that right, up until the point that all their hard-drives break and they can't get any replacements,

The Politically Correct Dictionary of Computing

[EmagGeek]

"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."

Re:The Politically Correct Dictionary of Computing

[Zarf]

"Master/Slave Devices" become "Partner Devices having ID Numbers 1 and 2"

Some ideas I had for replacing "Master/Slave":

• pilot/co-pilot
• pilot/stewardess
• president/intern

Re:pimp/hoe

[Zarf]

I vote for "pimp/hoe" to replace "master/slave".

You get my vote! That's much more descriptive than my idea: "president/intern"

Re:Tee hee!

[theonetruekeebler]

Whenever I get fill out a form that asks me for my race, if there is a box for "Other_____" I check it and write "honkey" (and for country I write "Estados Unidos", but that's another thing).

Hopefully I've cheered up some poor bored clerk. Even more hopefully, they went ahead and entered it into the computer, skewing their marketing demographics ever so slightly.

In truth, if it's a government agency's form, they probably held a meeting to decide whether to classify me as white or to add a record to the ethnicity table. See, no matter what a person tells you their race is, that's how you have to enter them. Billy D. Williams could stand in front of you and tell you he's an Eskimo, and that's how you have to enter him. If I haul my lilly-white ass down to the health clinic and tell them I'm black, they have to check the box that says I'm black. Hell, even if Michael Jackson tells you he's black, you have to enter it that way.

Time was in the U.S., the government decided what you were. Mixed-race problems were handily solved by considering any "dilution" of the white race to be overriding: even fifteen years ago an observably white Mississippian lost a court battle against a state law that said that since her great great great grandmother was black, she was black!

Re:My Girlsfriend!!!

[NanoGator]

"You're the one who insulted my girlfirend, you insensitive clod! "

Are you saying he made the story up?

Hey! How about...

[Craig3010]

"Mistress/Slave"?

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

[cdrudge]

And remember that `cleaver' spelled backwards is revaelc...hmm...I guess it only works with `strap on'. Feel free to mod me up to 5 though.

Re:Singular They

[sharkey]

Fuck, it's been part of the English language for seven centuries.

But what about those of us in the United States? Around here, "fuck" is considered to be a *dirty* word, and an insult to address a person or persons as "a fuck" or "fucks".

Bumper Sticker...

[Anonymous Coward]

Saw this on a Bumper Sticker:

' If we not supposed to eat animals,
then why are they made out of MEAT? '

Motherboard? - offending orphans?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Better would be:

[LedZeplin]

they do not be swayed

Yeak, makes perfect sense.

Free the hard drives!!

[Hoi Polloi]

Master and slave drives!? Let my storage devices go!

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...Similar event

[tipsymonkey]

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....

Re:Bumper Sticker...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey buddy, eat MY meat

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...

[0x00000dcc]

...and we wonder why Engineering students have a bad reputation and can't get laid...

And we wonder why arts students can't get a job and wonder how they're going to retire on 25k in life savings ...

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...

[Dave3.14159]

The Union for Linguistic Propriety (ULP) has written to the Americal Mathematical Society to demand changes in socially-offensive mathematical terminology. "The term 'least upper bound' is clearly derogatory," according to the ULP memorandum. "A perfectly satisfactory alternative, 'supremum,' carries the same mathematical meaning without the adverse connotations." Similarly, ULP insists that "infimum" be abolished, to be replaced by "greatest lower bound," a term that "reflects the struggle to overcome the adversity associated with membership in a stigmatized group or set." When asked whether ULP intends to abolish the use of the term "negative," an ULP representative said that "that issue is under active consideration."

Re:BigBlockMopar in University...

[BigBlockMopar]

You dumbass, you missed a great chance to score. A smart sexy beast like me would have taken here to the side, told here she heard the part about integrating out of context, invited here for cup of coffee to have a "deep" conversation about integration and how multicultural I am. If all things go well, a kiss + a huge + a little butt squeeze would be granted without prejudice.

The only way to have tolerated her would have been to duct tape her mouth shut, and I'm pretty sure that she would have objected. Besides, it would have lessened the promise of the evening.