News: 1605765727

Here's a little story, written in common UNIX terminology:

gawk, grep, unzip, touch, strip, init, uncompress, finger, find, route, whereis, which, mount, fsck, nice, more, yes, umount, head, expand, renice, restore, touch, whereis, which, route, mount, more, yes, umount, ping, make clean, sleep

Presumably you are planning on making this kind of thing impossible, right? No? Then what's the fucking point? And who is going to pay for updating all the technical documentation and textbooks, world-wide? Just to appease a small handful of hand-wringing namby-pambys who find insult around every bush, even (or especially!) if it's not there.

What a fucking waste of time. The mind absolutely boggles.

You said 'bush' - I'm calling HR!

(Well done for the little story - (best use of whereis I've seene!!) - posix-tastic!)

They'll be doing this all again every few years because far left people keep getting offended at everything and finding language they don't understand problematic.

It's hardly confined to left wing nuts. Wingnuts of every political stripe engage in this kind of asshattery, and you know it just as well as I do.

I humbly submit that this particular branch of human stupidity can and should stand alone without dragging politics into it.

Edit: Damn cat keeps posting for me ... This round's on me.

There is so much really worthwhile work needed in the free software movement.

Work that will benefit everyone in software, rather than just the perpetually offended.

This kind of thing is just make-work with very dubious justification.

I'm just ... speechless.

You know - the one when everything is sold cheaply - it's coming up soon - lots of places are doing it early - can you guess what it is yet????

Funny how the world has not exploded with rage over that yet...........

To say nothing of the name of the house the PotUS lives in.

Changing a 400 year old definition to appease a vocal minority with pointless gestures is just whitewashing.

If these multi billion dollar companies want to help, rather than posing in the ocean, try spending money on education facilities in poor neighbourhoods. Set up shop in run down areas to help build those areas up and you know, you make actually make a fucking difference.

^^^This....

Sums it up nicely and identifies the root of most of the lack of opportunities.

but, but, but, we go to do something ! and this is something, therefore we have to do it!

400 years? English was around well before, and slavery too.

The use of the term slave to refer to a logical process.... a lot less time, maybe 80 years, 100?

I dont agree that changing the term is useful, but I don't like arguments that try to fight this on a linguistic level. Language changes, and frankly its unusual that we have data from even 50 years ago at such volume. We've never had this problem before, signs rotted and books either got ravaged or were archived away from the populace.

I think its a new problem, and its interesting what we'll do about it. How to resolve data longevity and societal change?

The tech industry should have spearheaded this initiative years ago.

Im glad they are finally making the effort to change.

I look forward to the fantastic change in social equality this will bring.

Certainly IBM have a long heritage of treating their employees with dignity, equality and respect so their input here must be welcomed by all.

You realise this is a thin veneer of faux civility that simply won't change one tiny thing? This allows companies and people to look all nice and great whilst changing nothing in their actions. If they really cared they would, as already mentioned, implement actual education initiatives and truly create equal opportunity.

Newspeak is coming.

We have always had Newspeak, and the chocolate ration has been increased again! Doubleplusgood!

Of course, the anticipated beneficial effect of changing language on thought rather depends on whether the [1]strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true. There is some debate over this.

I'm also happy that suggested other choices to replace 'blacklist' do not include the ambiguous term 'blocklist'. In general, I am in favour of using descriptive names that are clear, accurate, unambiguous, and without negative cultural baggage.

NN

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I'm pretty sure it was Noam Chomsky who put the kibosh on linguistic relativity once and for all.

Yeah, but he says lots of things. I think his judgement is affected by having English as his native language.

for some value of {English}

Yeah, that Phily accent of his is atrocious.

He was raised bilingual, Hebrew and English.

Plenty of embedded device standards use master/slave terminology. e.g. SPI has MISO and MOSI (master in slave out). There will me circuit boards with those names printed on that will continue to exist for decades. Are we going to get a whole new set of standards with just the names changed?

It’s about ensuring new stuff is changed using better language.

No one is talking about replacing existing physical hardware.

Software updates can obviously update language as part of other updates, online docs can be amended, graphics may take some time to be redone or if the original files exist could be automated.

"Software updates can obviously update language as part of other updates, online docs can be amended, graphics may take some time to be redone or if the original files exist could be automated."

You are volunteering your time and money to implement this world-wide? Kewl. Be sure to let us all know when you are done, OK? Have fun!

Tsk. Just tipex over the offensive and fear-inducing names on the circuit boards, and replace them with nice words like 'flower' and 'peace'. See? Wasn't hard was it?

Meanwhile, I'm struggling with a Python app that I am developing right now which talks to obsolete RTUs made in the 80s using a long obsolete serial protocol. I literally have functions called poll_slave (in the master) and reply_to_master (in the slave).

I am reporting myself to HR for re-education as soon as I finish this post. I you don't see me again, please tell my family I love them.

No silly. Obviously in 10 years if you're found to have one of these devices with forbidden words you'll be dragged off to the gulag, never to be heard from again.

Or to put it another way what about my Genitofemoral nerve damage and other issues that impact on day to day life.

Facebook are advertising for me to join them with with the "we are a diverse company, look at the range of skin colours we have.."

And I am like "So where is the chrome and aluminium? Where is the Labrador?"

Where are the politically correct terms for Bolean states. The shades of gray that say you cannot type here.

I wonder who sees the word not mentioned. Icon because my prison is invisible and I cant.

Mastering the slavering over being perpetually offended by perceived slights, even when the most common use of 'slave', 'master' and 'blacklist' are not slights at all is truly a dark blight on humanity. When there will always be devices and services that will slavishly follow the instructions provided to them, and students will continue to slave over their homework assignments the day before it's due lest the teacher deems that their efforts are insufficient for mastering the course.

Language is meant to convey meaning, not to engender its own meaning from thin air, or have individuals with a simplistic agenda determine what it is that they feel you meant to say.

Or in the words of everyone's most beloved feminist: everything is misogynistic, even when you don't realise it is.

... they prefer the following for master/slave:

Preferred:

* Control plane/control plane node

* Controller/doer

* Primary/replica

* Primary/secondary

Also acceptable:

* Leader/follower

* Parent/child

Comrades, I feel I have to lodge strong objection to 'leader/follower'. The very notion of a leader and a subservient follower is the very epitome of traditional bourgeoisie class structure. Did we not revolt in order to remove these class structures? Yet here we are being encouraged to embody those very class-structure stereotypes in our software? Comrades, we must reject this motion immediately. The gender-non-specific persons that have made this suggestion shall be reported to the software-terms controlling committee forthwith.

I also raise strong objection to parent/child. In a perfect utopian society such as ours, there are no parents. Only guardians. Children are collectively taken care of by the collective, which clearly does not represent the same software relationship that is being described here. Indeed, it presents unpleasant authoritarian connotations which surely go against the spirit of what is being attempted here? Surely, in a peaceful collective, where all comrades are peers, the perfect description would be:

WillingParticipant1/WillingParticipant2

Though I encourage my comrades to come together in the spirit of participation in order to work, collectively, on the truly noble goal of removing '1' and '2' from the above; Having a WillingParticipant1 and WillingParticipant2 implies some sort pecking order, again unthinkable in the true software development collective. Are we not all peers, comrades?

Indeed, in an effort to solve this problem, I move to form a committee to look into possible alternatives. I appoint myself leader of this committee. Any objections, comrades?

No Master and Slave anymore?

It's a discrimination against the BDSM community!

This kind of stuff was a management requirement for us a very long time ago. I'm surprised it took RedHat and IBM so long...

** The 14th Official Gathering of the Software Terms and Definitions Sub-Committee **

** Urgent Communique for immediate release **

It has been brought to the attention of the sub-committee this day, that the concept of 'Boolean', or 'binary' truth exists within the software development discipline. Comrades are reminded, that only the Software Terms and Definitions Sub-Committee or their appointed deputies thereof may adjudicate and adjudge on what is 'true' and what is 'false'. Comrades are respectfully reminded that evaluating 'truth' is a complex exercise, based on careful consideration of facts known (or unknown), opinions (where these align with permitted and authorised principles) and denunciations.

Comrades are therefore hereby instructed to submit all software boolean expressions for adjudication by the Software Terms and Definitions Sub-Committee (Boolean-Sub-Committee) for evaluation and ruling. Failure to comply with the above directive will be met with punitive consequences.

How positively DARE you forget ternary logic!

Can't we just acknowledge the beautiful spectrum of numbers between 0 and 1?

I'm offended their offended.

Can't they pledge all this time, effort and money into solving world hunger or making sure every child can read.

Agree with other posters. Total waste of time.

I'm offended THEY'RE offended.

Sigh.

Still, for some reason, it seems particularly appropriate to be a grammar nazi in this context.

So are they going to change their org name to avoid offending the various natives around the world? Be careful what you wish for, someone will eventually force this on them if we go down this route

So I have this system where a view has an "owner". Is anybody offended? Should I change my design?

Why am I not surprised to see so much enraged Gammon? Exactly how does this affect how you do your job? Oh that's right is doesn't

... An AC who is seemingly in favo(u)r of somehow sanitizing Technical English so as not to offend anybody accidentally somehow sees fit to use insulting language when addressing the group he disagrees with?

There is a word for that, and I don't think it's going to become sanitized anytime soon.

[0] If my use of the word "straight" in this context offends you, seek help,

Shouldn't Red Hat start by addressing the non-inclusive word "red" in their name as that is clearly offensive to the native American minority?