Author Topic: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts  (Read 146198 times)

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Offline coppice

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1200 on: July 12, 2020, 12:52:29 pm »
Europeans didn't really start to attempt to classify different races, until they were already enslaving Africans.
When did Europeans actually enslave Africans? We know Europeans have a history of enslaving each other. We know people from the Barbary Coast enslaved a lot of Europeans. Europeans generally bought pre-enslaved Africans and traded and used them. The actual enslavers are still in business enslaving and selling their neighbours today. North America is a real odd man out historically, where the slave owners and slaves were generally easy to tell apart. Even the steady flow of black slaves into North Africa didn't create such a clear skin colour divide. It also didn't leave much of a black population, as it appears they castrated all their male slaves. Nobody cares about race when there's money to be made.
Sorry, I don't see any moral difference between Europeans enslaving others or buying slaves.
Well that totally misses the point of what I was saying.
Yes, slavery still goes on today, but not so much as in the past. Probably because nowadays machines can do many jobs, previously done by slaves, so it's less profitable/risky: machines can't mount a rebellion.
Organisations which track slavery say there are more slaves today than at any point in the past. A lot of this is clearly due to the massive increase in the world's population. The percentage of people in slavery is probably lower now, but the number of higher. Its certainly isn't going away, though.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1201 on: July 12, 2020, 02:33:20 pm »
No, I can see your points: slavery is still a problem today and the descendants of the African slave traders who worked with the Europeans are still around today. The difference is it's not got industrialised, like it was before and doesn't seem to be propped up by so many big governments.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1202 on: July 12, 2020, 03:29:47 pm »
No, I can see your points: slavery is still a problem today and the descendants of the African slave traders who worked with the Europeans are still around today. The difference is it's not got industrialised, like it was before and doesn't seem to be propped up by so many big governments.
Oh, I see, It has the merits of a rustic cottage industry. Very progressive. :)

Who are you referring to as the big governments propping up slavery? Sometimes slavery has been the result of conquest, which is definitely government sponsored. However, most slavery seems to have been of the out of sight out of mind type. For example, British slave traders in the North Atlantic were told explicitly that the government couldn't do an awful lot about what its people did outside Britain, but anyone who set foot on British soil was free.
 

Online Alex Eisenhut

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1203 on: July 12, 2020, 04:22:52 pm »
What about mastering music recordings and master tapes/copies?
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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1204 on: July 13, 2020, 09:01:33 am »
Personally if I designed a system that needs that type of designation I would purposely call it master/slave just to piss off the SJWs.   >:D   
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1205 on: July 13, 2020, 09:05:03 am »
Personally if I designed a system that needs that type of designation I would purposely call it master/slave just to piss off the SJWs.   >:D

 ;D

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Offline GeorgeOfTheJungle

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1206 on: July 13, 2020, 10:17:43 am »
And a prominent, properly labelled MASTER switch. Then send it to https://certification.oshwa.org/ for certification.
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Offline daqq

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1207 on: July 13, 2020, 10:28:20 am »
I haven't been watching the thread for a few days. Could someone fill me in? Have enough terms been banned to solve racism already?
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Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1208 on: July 13, 2020, 10:34:06 am »
I haven't been watching the thread for a few days. Could someone fill me in? Have enough terms been banned to solve racism already?

This popped up two minutes ago..

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Offline GeorgeOfTheJungle

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Offline KaneTW

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1210 on: July 13, 2020, 03:16:12 pm »
All of this is just pointless feel-good-activism and I fucking hate it.

No single usage of master/slave in a technical context has even the tiniest link to human slavery.

Blacklist/whitelist was never something negative to begin with!

Utter insanity.
 
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Offline madires

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1211 on: July 13, 2020, 04:34:20 pm »
Yep, those do-gooders are reading discrimination and racism into words which have a completely different meaning. And it's shortsighted too. What will happen after replacing "blacklist" with "blocklist" when a new religion called "blocks" turns up? Will they replace "blocklist" with "denylist"? And when there's a new political party named "deniers"? Replace the term again because we don't want to offend anyone? Maybe they should simply stop communicating with others. No words - no harm! >:D
 


Offline GeorgeOfTheJungle

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1213 on: July 13, 2020, 08:14:19 pm »
Oh dear.
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1214 on: July 13, 2020, 08:21:47 pm »

Can a very dark night safely be called "pitch black" any longer?
 

Offline coppice

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1215 on: July 13, 2020, 08:27:50 pm »
Can a very dark night safely be called "pitch black" any longer?
Qualified by pitch I assume black should be OK. I'm not sure, though. I haven't completely CENSORED this new language yet.
 

Offline xrunner

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1216 on: July 14, 2020, 01:06:47 am »
What about the Masters golf tournament?  :palm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_Tournament
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Offline PlainName

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1217 on: July 14, 2020, 02:17:59 am »
Just caught some BBCNews24 item about the Washington Redskins changing their name. Being interviewed was some (presumably - it didn't actually say) Native American lady who argued that the name was racist and you wouldn't see anything like that with African Americans, Jews, etc. Anyway, her surname turns out to be Blackhorse...
 


Offline james_s

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1219 on: July 14, 2020, 05:02:17 am »
What about the Masters golf tournament?  :palm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_Tournament

https://www.theblaze.com/news/the-masters-name-change-racist#:~:text=The%20sports%20blog%20Deadspin%20published,moniker%3A%20The%20Augusta%20National%20Invitational.
https://www.sportsbettingdime.com/news/golf/odds-masters-augusta-renamed-blm-movement-favorite/

I'll say it again, it doesn't end, it never ends.

'When you hear anyone say the Masters, you think of slave masters in the South'

Who is "you"? 2 months ago if someone asked me to list every possible thing that comes to mind when I hear someone say "Masters", I would not have thought of slave masters in the south in a million years. I don't think I've ever used the word in that context in my entire life. Slavery in the South is something that happened long before I was born in a part of the nation I've never been to. It makes no sense to me that this is even a thing, I'd honestly be curious to know what percentage of "normal" non-engineer type people ever think of slavery when they hear that word.
 

Online EEVblog

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1220 on: July 14, 2020, 05:29:27 am »
Who is "you"? 2 months ago if someone asked me to list every possible thing that comes to mind when I hear someone say "Masters", I would not have thought of slave masters in the south in a million years. I don't think I've ever used the word in that context in my entire life. Slavery in the South is something that happened long before I was born in a part of the nation I've never been to. It makes no sense to me that this is even a thing, I'd honestly be curious to know what percentage of "normal" non-engineer type people ever think of slavery when they hear that word.

You (and everyone else) are making the mistake of trying to rationalise all this. The people who are behind this are not rational people.
 
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Offline nuclearcat

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« Last Edit: July 14, 2020, 06:56:18 am by nuclearcat »
 

Offline paulca

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1222 on: July 14, 2020, 07:38:36 am »
The worst bit of this is not them changing the words.  It's them projecting THEIR racism onto words we all use.  By pointing at an innocent term and declaring it racist... is racist.

I am livid that they are projecting their racism onto me.

Racist fuck bags.
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Offline bd139

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1223 on: July 14, 2020, 07:52:20 am »
Personally if I designed a system that needs that type of designation I would purposely call it master/slave just to piss off the SJWs.   >:D

I did that in a presentation last week and no one said a damn thing  :-DD
 
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
« Reply #1224 on: July 14, 2020, 08:25:46 am »
Yesterday's Dilbert has comments that are tangentially relevant to this discussion.



I expect there will be a few follow-on cartoons
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