LA City Council bans "master-slave" hard drive terminology as culturally insensitive

[astro]

I honestly had to double check and see that the date was not April 1st when I saw this story.

County deletes ‘master-slave’ PC term

By Troy Anderson , Staff Writer

Los Angeles County officials have gone PC (politically correct) on PCs (personal computers) – banning as potentially “offensive or defamatory” the words master and slave from computer hard drives and video equipment where they are used to describe primary and secondary circuits.

Under orders from the affirmative action office, county departments have surveyed about 1,000 pieces of equipment and taped over “master/slave” and put “primary/secondary” on the equipment, officials said.

Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services in the Internal Services Department, started the flap with a memo to electronic equipment vendors saying the county wants master and slave labeling removed from computer equipment it buys

[BuckleberryFerry]

There’s a Pit thread here if you’re interested.

Personally, I find the concept incredibly childish. I don’t think there’s anything even remotely offensive to it.

[Chefguy]

The term is also used for intercoms. I guess that will be next…

[threeorange]

Just curious…why are the circuits called master/slave instead of primary/secondary in the first place? I’m not offended by the terminology applied to inanimate objects, but this nomenclature sems a bit peculiar.

[Czarcasm]

Moving this to MPSIMS.

[Yllaria]

There is also a master cylinder and slave cylinders in the brake systems of most cars. Master and slave are not necessarily the same as primary and secondary. In a lot of systems, the secondary unit can function independently if the primary system goes out. A slave unit cannot function if the master system goes foo.

I hope they void their warranties when they re-label equipment. This is every bit as silly as deleting the word sewage from sewage - oops, I mean wastewater - - treatment. That was done decades ago. (It’s just been a few years since they banned the word sludge because it had ‘negative connotations.’ Don’t get me started.)