The Curmudgeonly Clerk has yet another example demonstrating that thin-skinned, word-banning political correctness is much funnier than any satire could hope to be. He quotes a CNN story:
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters)—Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms “master” and “slave” on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive.
The request—which has some suppliers furious and others busy re-labeling components—came after an unidentified worker spotted a videotape machine carrying devices labeled “master” and “slave” and filed a discrimination complaint with the county’s Office of Affirmative Action Compliance.
In the computer industry, “master” and “slave” are used to refer to primary and secondary hard disk drives. The terms are also used in other industries.
You can poll me all you want but I will not respond! We Bluetooth devices will no longer be slaves to the master computer.
“Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
I have been teaching computer communications courses for many years. The master slave paradigm is used in many different communications protocols to describe how the communications channel operates. Since I am sensitive to this PC idiocy, before I teach a topic that discusses this communications technique I actually consider in my mind whether any of my students would be sensitive to the language. At times, I have actually been apprehensive discussing this topic. As it so happens, I will be discussing Bluetooth next week in my class. It should be interesting. I will let you know if I am still on the faculty the following week.