'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

[SilverSolder]

Saying Nietzche was in favour of the Nazis [...]

If I had actually said that, I would agree with you! 

Edit:  for the avoidance of doubt:  my original comment was meant in the sense that you can be pretty sure that those who want to change electronics master/slave nomenclature are also unlikely to accept Nietzche for the simple reason that the fascists liked him.  The perils of being too brief...

[EEVblog]

The Nietzche/Nazi talk stops now or I start deleting posts.

[Ed.Kloonk]

With the name Texas Rangers now under scrutiny, expect trouble if Chuck Norris gets involved.

[james_s]

With the name Texas Rangers now under scrutiny, expect trouble if Chuck Norris gets involved.

I missed that, what's controversial about the Rangers?

[Ed.Kloonk]

With the name Texas Rangers now under scrutiny, expect trouble if Chuck Norris gets involved.

I missed that, what's controversial about the Rangers?

Your guess is as good as mine.

From The Washington(com)post..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/13/texas-rangers-team-name-must-go/

July 14, 2020 at 2:06 a.m. GMT+10

As the Washington football team finally gives up its racist slur of a name, there is one major sports team that has avoided the spotlight and resisted meaningful engagement with the violent and racist implications of its name. To know the full history of the Texas Rangers is to understand that the team’s name is not so far off from being called the Texas Klansmen.

I grew up in Dallas, raised on myths about Texas Rangers as brave and wholesome guardians of the Texas frontier, helping protect innocent settlers from violent Indians. At church, boys could sign up to be Royal Rangers, the Christian equivalent of the Boy Scouts. I still remember the excitement when Chuck Norris himself, star of the television show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” came to visit my elementary school class.

My dad sometimes took my younger siblings and me to Arlington Stadium to watch the Rangers play. No state mythologizes itself quite like Texas, so of course, it made sense to have a team name that embodied that gauzy, self-regarding history. At the same time, being from a Ghanaian immigrant family, we weren’t that invested in baseball, or the team name. I just liked going because my dad would sometimes let me take sips of his Coca-Cola mixed with beer.

What we didn’t realize at the time was that the Rangers were a cruel, racist force when it came to the nonwhites who inhabited the beautiful and untamed Texas territory. The first job of the Rangers, formed in 1835 after Texas declared independence from Mexico, was to clear the land of Indian for white settlers.

That was just the start. The Rangers oppressed black people, helping capture runaway slaves trying to escape to Mexico; in the aftermath of the Civil War, they killed free blacks with impunity. “The negroes here need killing,” a Ranger wrote in a local newspaper in 1877, after Rangers fired on a party of black former Buffalo soldiers, killing four of them and a 4-year old girl. A jury would later find that the black soldiers “came to their death while resisting officers in the discharge of their duty,” an unsettling echo of the justification for modern-day police killings.

[paulca]

When a boat also had shore-power AC wiring then we had a potential problem where a black wire could either be DC ground or AC hot.

Here in  the uk pre 2004 the fixed wiring colour code was    black  neutral and the 3 phases were red yellow and blue .Post 2004 the phase colours changed to  brown grey and black with neutral becoming blue.Makes for interesting times when working on older installations with mixed colours.

The reason for the blue/brown is due to some common colour blindness seeing red and black as the same colour.

[MK14]

Going against the trend of this entire thread here. I'm all for this, it is the correct and sensible thing to do!
Otherwise, I would have started to be highly sarcastic and silly, in my response.

We should go much further. In support of inclusivity, we should ban the exclusive or gate.
So, no XOR/EOR gates. So, no more FPGAs, CPLDs, ASICs etc.
No more microprocessors/microcontrollers, because they include the XOR instruction(s).
No more op-amps, because the + and - inputs are too exclusive.
So, no more digital or analogue electronics.
Throw away and ban everything electronic, such as TVs.
TV was an illegal term anyway, because it could upset the transvestite/tranny community.

Let's go a lot further and ban dictionaries, because they contain a lot of rude and nasty words. Infact, lets ban the English language, or all languages, as they include various swear and other nasty words. There are still plenty of caves, we an go back to inhabiting.

tl;dr
Words are just words. They are NOT (in general) being inherently rude/racist about anyone. There is nothing wrong (my opinion and maybe others), using master/slave etc, in electronics/computer source, schematics etc.
It is referring to inanimate objects, i.e. things that are not living creatures, so nobody should take offence.
Anyway, a master/slave flip-flop is neither black or white (human), anyway.
Items in museums are historical facts/items (in general). They shouldn't be destroyed or damaged. Because history is history. Facts are facts.

[SerieZ]

XOR XAND etc sound like they could be misrepresenting a Gender.

Highly Problematic.

[madires]

Much simpler solution: some people should be banned from using social media

[tggzzz]

Because history is history. Facts are facts.

If only things were that simple, life would be easier!

As the old joke goes "In Russia, how can anyone predict the future when it’s so hard to predict the past?". Examples: https://www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/inv/prop_inv_ins.htm

[retrolefty]

The Nietzche/Nazi talk stops now or I start deleting posts.

 Supersized the tread has gone on as long as it has. Haven't read a new idea or thought is quite a while now. It's probably past it's bedtime and should be instructed to go to sleep.

[vwestlife]

The precise reasons may well be lost to time. Perhaps looking back to the original materials used for wire insulation will provide clues? Natural rubber for example is black, so maybe they first insulated live wires with rubber? I really don't know, but either way they had to choose colors at some point and no matter what they chose somebody is eventually going to wonder why.

Knob and tube wiring typically used black rubber coated cloth insulation for both the hot and neutral wires.

When polarized AC outlets were introduced, white was probably chosen for the neutral wire as the logical opposite to black, and also because other colors tend to fade over time.

In U.S. wiring, the hot wire isn't actually required to be black. It just has to be some other color besides white, gray, or green.

[PlainName]

Haven't read a new idea or thought is quite a while now.

Is there someone forcing you to read this stuff? You do know you can enjoy every other part of EEVBlog without ever seeing a post in this thread again if you want?

Come to think of it, your post is exactly why this thread exists: someone decides they don't like something and figures everyone else should feel the same.

[paulca]

Much simpler solution: some people should be banned from using social media

FIFY

[themadhippy]

The reason for the blue/brown is due to some common colour blindness seeing red and black as the same colour.

Another example of snowflakes interfering. A  colour blindness test used to be part of the interview prosess before being offered an apprenticeship  ,fail it  and  your out.But of course failures not allowed anymore.

[paulca]

The reason for the blue/brown is due to some common colour blindness seeing red and black as the same colour.

Another example of snowflakes interfering. A  colour blindness test used to be part of the interview prosess before being offered an apprenticeship  ,fail it  and  your out.But of course failures not allowed anymore.

You remember we used to wire our own plugs?

You also realise that it's not just trades men who feck about with installation electrics.

[bd139]

Bad idea that was. At school a friend of mine was entrusted to wire a plug for the new TV in the library. The librarian turned it on and quickly found out that the idiot had wired Earth to live  . She was ok just a bit shaken by it.

[vwestlife]

Another example of snowflakes interfering. A  colour blindness test used to be part of the interview prosess before being offered an apprenticeship  ,fail it  and  your out.But of course failures not allowed anymore.

Approximately 1 in 12 men have some form of color blindness, so I doubt "snowflakes" had anything to do with it; simply rather the commonality of this vision defect. (Only 1 in 200 women have color blindness, though.)

And you're still required to take a color blindness test to become an electrician, at least in the UK. Some forms of color blindness are more severe than others and may cause you to fail the test:

https://www.tradeskills4u.co.uk/posts/colour-blind-electrician

[Syntax Error]

Bad idea that was. At school a friend of mine was entrusted to wire a plug for the new TV in the library. The librarian turned it on and quickly found out that the idiot had wired Earth to live  . She was ok just a bit shaken by it.

B'coz brown is the same colour as earth ->

[themadhippy]

You remember we used to wire our own plugs?

flexible cables had there colours changed way back around 1970,keeping them different to the fixed wiring colours was an ideal way of separating what mr diy could or couldn't touch,but no we had to be in harmony with the rest of europe and also bring  in silly rules that banned  everybody,including qualified sparkys from  doing domestic work unless they signed up to one of the cartels .

You also realise that it's not just trades men who feck about with installation electrics

unfortunately yes,but cant complain as fixing their mistakes used to pay the bills

[bd139]

Bad idea that was. At school a friend of mine was entrusted to wire a plug for the new TV in the library. The librarian turned it on and quickly found out that the idiot had wired Earth to live  . She was ok just a bit shaken by it.

B'coz brown is the same colour as earth ->

Nope because the kid was a fucktard.

[MK14]

Because history is history. Facts are facts.

If only things were that simple, life would be easier!

As the old joke goes "In Russia, how can anyone predict the future when it’s so hard to predict the past?". Examples: https://www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/inv/prop_inv_ins.htm

Thanks, I enjoyed reading it all.
I didn't realise that 'photoshopping pictures'/airbrushing, was actually done/used a lot, a long time before the internet/computers, were commonplace/existed.

They do say, "History is written by the victors".
Anyway, history is often/usually very much an interpretation/speculation, of the 'facts'.
E.g. (factitious, made up example) Was this wooden gear shaped thing, from thousands of years ago. An artwork, early computer for calculating the moon phases, religious artefact, or simply a child's play toy ?

Back on topic, and being rather cynical. I think what is really happening, is as follows:

A boss of a giant entity, is considering the recent racial tensions.
Do they really/properly address the situation ?
I.e. Make sure their workforce is (locally) racially diverse enough, and racially fair, to everyone ?
Total Cost $10,000,000,000+, and annoy hundreds of thousands of otherwise, happy employees, and maybe an inconvenience for a billion customers worldwide and annoy many shareholders (maybe), with any disruption and extra product costs, to recoup the cost.

Or (they always hated the horrible IT department, anyway), do they say "They have just ordered the IT department to ban/remove all references to master/slave, from the companies software" ?
Total Cost $10,000 (<), and annoy the 10 people in the IT department, and around none of the customers, would be annoyed.

tl;dr
I think the announcements of "We are now removing all master/slave refences from ..", to be a cynical attempt (pretence) of taking anti-racism action. Purely for publicity reasons.

[Zero999]

'Fear of being called racist' stopped police from tackling Leicester's 'slave' sweatshops, Priti Patel believes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8513825/Fear-called-racist-stopped-police-tackling-sweatshops-Priti-Patel-believes.html

Where are all of those protesters when there really is slavery in the UK, going on today?

It's also blamed for the spike in COVID-19 cases in the city, which has had to go back under lockdown.
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/07/leicester-factory-change-modern-slavery-boohoo-quiz-opinion-comment/

[MK14]

Where are all of those protesters when there really is slavery in the UK, going on today?

So, they were kept in terrible conditions, with little food, had to work 18+ hours a day, and were not necessarily paid much, if at all.
But, they checked all the companies source code, and the word 'master' didn't occur, even once.
Get your priorities Right!   

EDIT: Rewritten to be partly less offensive, and details of story are made up, as I'm not sure about the details in the news story about it.

[SkyMaster]

The reason for the blue/brown is due to some common colour blindness seeing red and black as the same colour.

Another example of snowflakes interfering. A  colour blindness test used to be part of the interview prosess before being offered an apprenticeship  ,fail it  and  your out.But of course failures not allowed anymore.

snowflakes interfering? No. Colour blindness affects almost 10% of men (to various degrees); it is a genetic disorder. The genes responsible for this disorder are on the X chromosome.