Linus Torvalds banishes masters, slaves and blacklists from the Linux kernel, starting now Linux overlord overseer principal developer Linus Torvalds has signed off on a new policy to adopt inclusive language across the project. A Git commit adopted changes recommended by kernel developer Dan Williams, with the result that Linux will no longer refer to masters, slaves or blacklists. In their place coders will be …
The world has gone mad.
O wait, not allowed to say 'gone mad' anymore.
As many have pointed out, this destruction of language is straight out of 1984. I wonder who has really started this and what their vested interests were. It's certainly not going to be good for the stability of Linux, both as a codebase and as a community.
And does absolutely bugger all to help the downtrodden of society, which is its supposed pretense.
And they had best not translate some of the Gaelic dram names either.
On Sundays our local community centre becomes an African pentecostal church and lots of African people turn up neatly dressed all in White. The Woke should perhaps have a word though I doubt there would be much mutual comprehension. Telling folk from West Africa they and their children & grandchildren will be forever victims will not go down well. I know and have known folk from West Africa and victims they certainly are not. Post Independence they took their fate into their own hands and there will be no going back.
White saviour angst complexes from America are not universally applicable. If they ever collide I fear for Woke sanity (more than I do already).
It is, from the Woke idiots.
If a hypermelanistic individual, who needs extra illumination to be visible at midnight, feels offended when I use the word "black" in whatever context, I will seriously try to accommodate him once he makes this known to me. If some sjw Woke idiot feels the need to be offended on behalf of the aforementioned hypermelanistic individual without that individual being around, aware or offended, I find it an insult to common sense and feel extremely offended.
Actually there is a racist connotation to the expression of calling a spade a spade.
(Why don't you just call it a shovel?) ;-P [KIDDING!]
So while I joke there is some history to this. You can google it.
Essentially the comment goes back a couple of hundred of years (~500)
"To call a spade a spade" entered the English language when Nicholas Udall translated Erasmus in 1542. Famous authors who have used it in their works include Charles Dickens and W. Somerset Maugham, among others.
- This is from an NPR article on the subject. 'Is it Racist to call a spade a spade' (circa 2013)
However since the 1920's post WWI, the term spade became code for a black person.
And that's the thing... you can pretty much claim anything to be code for something else.
Take the eggplant emoji. Or a pointing finger followed by a doughnut. I wonder what is meant when people sent those texts? ;-P And I somehow doubt someone is talking about what they want from the store.
And that's the point.
At what point do you say "Time to grow up and get a thicker skin" .
Sometimes when a person says something and you think its a micro-aggression, its really not.
"Actually there is a racist connotation to the expression of calling a spade a spade."
Correction. There is a racist connotation to calling a black man a spade.
There is not any racist connotation in calling a spade a spade, unless the speaker makes it obviously racist due to context ,,, which is kind of the point of this whole kerfuffle.
But that Icon isn't a person of color and thus is racist.
If I said I wanted to slave those drones to the primary craft in the swarm, would that be racist?
Note the Pedantic Grammar Nazi icon...
I used slave as a verb. Not a noun or did I say enslave.
To say that the technical terms 'master'/'slave' is racist shows the lack of any technical understanding.
Somehow we need to say enough is enough.
Next you'll be saying we need to rewrite our history books because the 'black death' is racist.
The word "slaves" derives from Slavs. Why? The Slavs were stolen, especially the blonde women, by invading Turkish, other Arab and Hun armies over the centuries. They were kept busy in the harems.
I am a Slav. My ancestors were slaves. I am in no way offended by modern IT using the terms Master and Slave. Please carry on Linus. Ignore the faux outrage, the faux offence, the Cultural Marxist claptrap.
I approve, on behalf of the original slaves. I and we know your usage is not in any way meant to be offensive.
So “whites” get a “pass” and “blacks” are “denied”?
Are you sure that is what you wanted, Dan?
Also, once this is done, will we have rooted out systemic racism from Linux?
Seriously, this is no different from the spin which renamed all the “daemons“ to “angels.”
Oh dear, did I mention “roots”?
Shrug. If certain phrases offends some people it is worth considering changing it.
And in the case of "allow lists" and "deny lists" the 'improved' phrase is more descriptive of how they're usually used.
Having said that, the "black" in blacklists has a longer history of being used to mean "bad" than used to refer to people with built-in suntans. The OED has references in that context going back to the Old English era including some confusion relating to the switch from the word "swart" (meaning black (meaning swart)). Although "black" has been used in reference to people for as long, it was principally descriptive - even used for people with dark hair - and it wasn't until the 1960s that it was popularised as an identity.
Its not only about "offence" and "PC gone mad". There is an actual body count associated with this whole issue. If some el Reg snowflakes have their feelings hurt, then so be it. The least we can do for our fellow human beings is to listen and act if they are saying that something is negatively affecting their lives. Changing some terminology is trivial. I hope they go much further and address the underlying issues which have cost them so much suffering and death. Either you just don't believe the black community or you are an indifferent rsehole. Which one is it?
No, there isn't. There is absolutely zero body count related to the terminology used in the Linux kernel. Or to people failing to comprehend words like blacklist and ascribing some non-existent racist connotation. Suggesting otherwise is the kind of idiotic nonsense that is rapidly propelling me along the road towards becoming an indifferent arsehole.
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"Changing some terminology is trivial."
Oh! So you're the one who has volunteered to do that in the kernel. Make absolutely certain you don't introduce any new bugs as you go, mkay? When can we expect you to be done? Inquiring minds & all that.
Funny how many ACs have all the answers, isn't it.
If certain phrases offends some people it is worth considering changing it.
And it's also worth telling overly-sensitive people that make demands upon others (to do work, change, whatever) where to go and "how far" etc. because *BEING* *BULLIED* *BY* *THEM* and then *CAVING* is actually *WORSE* since they *NEVER* *STOP* and *JUST* *DEMAND* *MORE*.
Now the article doesn't say, but if those "offended" people actually DID ALL OF THE WORK, then it's like "sure, whatever" and no harm just adopting the edits. They're just names for things.
And I suspect it _WAS_ this... and moving forward, it's nauseating, but I *SUPPOSE* 'new terms' could be used instead in the future. Whatever. At least there's no pile of extra WORK to do just to please people who are (in their own way) INTOLERANT.
DOWN side: I suspect that this is ONLY the beginning. *THEY* never *STOP*. *THEY* are never *APPEASED*. It *WILL* happen. Again. and Again. and AGAIN.
We shall see.
(so, WAS it the case that those who CARE about changing terms to be more 'inclusive' or whatever did the actual EDITING? I hope so)
> Shrug.
Exactly. I feel the same way about all those Confederate memorials. If they were "great works of art" or something maybe I'd suggest moving them to a museum, but I grew up surrounded by them and, well, ugly. It's not even worth having a discussion, just throw them out and move on to important issues. By an large this situation is similar: lose the names and get on with work.
In spite of this, it is *not* ridiculous to discuss it: this is an issue worthy of discussion, largely because of the long tradition of using these names and their clear meaning in the context. Naming is easily the single most difficult task of programming[*]. Fortunately, "exclusion lists" and "dom/sub" are definitely more accurate descriptions of the concepts involved, so in the long term this is a clear win across the board. In other sad cases where they've chosen opaque, non-obvious replacement terminology, it's not a win.
* - the two most difficult problems in programming being, of course: naming, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors
As has been pointed out by others (like jgarbo), the phrase "blacklist" comes from the 1600's of having folks of ill repute getting their names in a book with a black leather cover. Conflating the word "blacklist" with racism is as stupid as conflating the old accounting practice of filling out ledgers using black ink for positive sums and red ink for negative sums (in addition to having a "-" sign) for "clarity at a glance" as having something to do with Africans and Native Americans.
I'm waiting for the BLM clowns to clock the Black Country are and start mooing about it being racist, not realising it comes from the huge quantities of coal that used to be mined there. But then you can accuse BLM and its hangers on of many things but knowledge of history is not one of them.
Too late! The word "black" in the English language has now been appropriated by a minority (around 10%) of the US population. It is theirs, and THEIRS ALONE to decide how it be used. Understand?
The rest of the Planet's English-speaking nations must now obey their directives.
Or you will be judged as a RACIST and forfiet your life to ajob, income,family, etc!
More to the point, we'll have to ban all languages that utilize syntactical whitespace. Sorry, Pythonistas, all y'all are outlaws now.
And we'll also have to completely fill all allocated radio frequencies.
IBM will no longer be able to publish pages marked "This Page Intentionally Left Blank". This last one makes me cry.
Is suppose. I can remember when I started using 'shadow' instead of slave. I was teaching an internal session in the States for the Bank *something SSL I think* and as it turns out those chosen were all older black women some very close to retirement.
This was almost 20 yeas ago, so quick math said that a good half of my class had been denied the right to vote based on their colour. Born in the 1940s that meant their grandparents likely were not slaves, but their great grandparents...? No one asked not to use the word, I just couldn't say it in front of them.
And it's more recent than that. My grandfather was born in 1887. If he was black and born in the US (he was neither) his parents would likely have been born as slaves and his grandparents certainly would. I am in my late 50s. So people who have not retired today can have great-grandparents who were slaves, and grandparents and parents who experienced the most horrible systematic racism, supported by the government of their country.
This is not ancient history.
ALL Lives Matter!
And for the fucking clueless, that is about as inclusive as you can get, as it incorporates every set of humans. If you argue against it you are, by definition, a racist.
Besides, BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management, the agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for mismanaging public lands these last 70+ years. Yes, folks, the BLM are the much hated government department who are responsible for the tinder-like underbrush which has directly lead to the United States wildfire problems these last several years. Most of Rural America hates those three letters on sight, out of reflex. Way to pick a devisive acronym, guys. One would almost think it was on purpose.
Would these SJWs please take Etymology 101 before banning every other word in English. Blacklist has nothing to do with ethnicity or BLM or IOU or WTF, etc. Stop the nonsense. A few changed words will not covert bigots to saints. It takes more..such as intelligent thought.. Yeah, I know, too hard.
FYI:
blacklist (n.)
also black-list, "list of persons who have incurred suspicion, earned punishment, or are for any reason deemed objectionable by the makers and users of the list," 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (a sense attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.1). Specifically of employers' list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1884. As a verb, from 1718. Related: Blacklisted; blacklisting.
Unless you actually have to speak the words.
Do these people really think they can remove all negative associations with darkness and black and all positive associations with light and white in the English language? That is the aim, right?
I guess we can erase vast swathes of poetry and literature. Perhaps we can persuade criminals to rob during the day for 50% of the time.
Or maybe this is just about wielding power for its own sake.
Blacklist doesn't imply "block". Nor a whitelist does imply the function of "pass". Items in a blacklist may be used to activate warnings or other kind of processing, still without being blocked or denied. Whitelisted addressed in my email server don't undergo spam processing, for example, and are never flagged as spam and moved to the spam folder.
Let's see what happens next to red-black trees... although the colors here are from playing cards.
Anyway, I'm happy I'm no longer involved in any open source project. I will also stop releasing any of my code under an open source license, I do not really want someone could become upset because of my naming conventions - as long as they don't complain about assembly opcodes and even bit sequences....
Or maybe I will create a new open source license - if you object to the naming convention you are barred from using the code.
Anyway, can't wait to see Linus heavily insulting someone because they didn't care about the new rules....
Blacklist doesn't imply "block". Nor a whitelist does imply the function of "pass". Items in a blacklist may be used to activate warnings or other kind of processing, still without being blocked or denied. Whitelisted addressed in my email server don't undergo spam processing, for example, and are never flagged as spam and moved to the spam folder.
Which is why 'blacklist' is a terrible term: it doesn't tell you what the list means. It's like calling all your variables 'x' or 'y' or something. Use variable names which tell you what the list is for, how hard can it be. Sometimes those names will be long, but we all have editors which complete names now and we're not programming on a PDP-11 any more where things like the size of the symbol table were a problem (and I guess most of you never did).
I mean, I'm a physicist, I spend my life having to deal with single-character names for things because of hundreds of years of tradition ('This R is the Riemann tensor, this one is the Ricci tensor, this one is the Ricci scalar, this one is the radius', OK the first three are actually easy to distinguish by indices ... unless you're not using indices) and it's a real pain. I have no idea why computing people, who had the wonderful opportunity to start over, inflicted the same stupidity on themselves.
"Which is why 'blacklist' is a terrible term: it doesn't tell you what the list means."
That's terrible spin. The words flavo(u)r and colo(u)r don't tell you what they mean, either. But as a physicist you know what I mean when I type them, and can get to the bottom of my meaning.
Top o' t' mornin' to ye.
Neither of your phrases is "objectively" better than the established, and clear, terminology.
You need context to understand that what the "block" is and that the list is not a list of blocks. "Allow list" is pretty unclear all around.
"Blacklist" on the other hand is less ambiguous as there is really only one meaning.
It’s more complex than simply quoting the dictionary definition. Sure, an important thing is to expunge language that the majority of ordinary folk from a particular section of society find objectionable. However, if it’s done for any other reason, it’s either insulting their intelligence, which would be a racist thing in itself, or trivialising racism, both of which actually make matters worse.
Given the general dearth of protests aimed specifically at Linux (current protests seem to be more concerned with vital topics such as police brutality, etc), I’m fairly sure that the choice of language inside Linux source code is not a high priority matter of concern for anyone other than the kernel dev management.
What people ought to stop and consider is how such a change in source code terminology comes across when someone asks, “Does that mean I can have a well paid job in the tech industry?”. In that context, employment, the current fashion for terminological adjustment is extremely inadequate.
The tech industry has a terrible track record when it comes to well balanced employment ratios, and this sudden rush to change wordings in source code seems to be eclipsing more substantive corrective measures (if they exist at all) in the PR machines’ outputs.
So, what could be done? Linux doesn’t employ anyone as such, so it’s hard to see what they could practically do there. However, the tech industry has a few rotten apples, eg Facebook and Twitter that profit from the racist behaviour of their users. Facebook in particular is effectively an unrepentant cesspit of a company when it comes to stamping out racism in society. A more pertinent point for the Linux kernel management to consider is, does Facebook use Linux and is the Linux kernel management happy with that? Are they going to actively stop Facebook doing so? Or would they find some reasons why their hands are tied? Saying “we’re not responsible for how our kernel is used” would amount to condoning companies like Facebook, which many would argue would be far worse than having words like blacklist in one’s source code tree.
The tech industry has a terrible track record when it comes to well balanced employment ratios
There's nothing terrible about it. People have different interests. Equality of opportunity is a good thing, but we cannot possibly expect equality of outcome. Life does not work like that.
an important thing is to expunge language that the majority of ordinary folk from a particular section of society find objectionable
Nonsense.
If people have no use for a word, they don't use it, and it drops out of use (we have hundreds of such words, in English).
The very idea that words can or should be expunged from a language is straight out of George Orwell. The society he wrote about that controls language that way comprised a handful of masters and everyone else was a slave.
Only a regime that repressive would consider expunging words from a language because the regime's masters don't like them.
The purpose of language is to communicate; it is entirely neutral in all matters human. If people use it to communicate hatred, it's not the language's fault.
Look up sayings about bathwater and babies.
This is not Orwellian but a pragmatic measure taken by a private (non-state) group as a significant gesture recognising terms like “master” and “slave” as offensive.
It’s your right to think it’s an overreaction, it’s also the right of the rest of us to embrace this as a positive step and mute your whining arses.
My understanding is that the phrase originates (and is still used) in London clubs where members voting on a new joiner could select a white ball to allow or a black ball to reject. Hence the phrase "blackballed". Clubs shared a list of those blackballed members and so you get the phrase "blacklist": nothing whatsoever to do with slavery.
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Perhaps they should also study some linguistics, where they will learn that the connotations of a term have absolutely nothing to do with its ancient history in the form of its etymology. No-one worries when they're talking about 'avocado' that it comes from a word in Nahuatl which also means 'testicle', because the etymology of the term just does not matter to people speaking modern English: what matters is what the term means and what its connotations are in the language spoken today.
"Stop the nonsense. A few changed words will not covert bigots to saints"
Indeed. In fact what it does do is lend credence to the bigot's argument along the lines of "there, told you so, anti racist campaigners are ignorant fools who are trying to tell you what to think so nothing they say is worth listening to". Unfortunately the kids shouting and screaming for these changes don't have a good enough understanding of human nature to realise this.
The Temper Tantrum Generation have won this particular battle.
Hopefully sanity will win the overall war.
It ain't the words, people. It's the intent behind them. Period.
During the meanwhile, now with this utterly meaningless feel-good change, people for whom English is a second language are now at a competitive disadvantage for the duration of time that it takes to stabilize out the new meaning of meaning within the kernel. But that's OK, eh Linus? None of them are American. Or was that FinnishSwedish?
These changes are objectively better than the original phrasing; "primary" and "secondary" let you define a proper tree hierarchy ("tertiary" etc.) and block-list / allow-list is more explicit of its function and therefore is easier to understand (especially for non-native English speakers).
All very rational, except...
"Primary" and "secondary" are only useful if there IS a hierarchy. Most master-slave relationships are one demands and the other supplies -- that's not an hierarchical relationship.
"Blacklist" and "whitelist" have been in the language for centuries, but not quite as long as the words "black" and "white", and not used nearly as much, though.
So, since "black" and "white" are obviously more frequent and longer-term offenders, and therefore much more offensive, they should be "cancelled" from the language first.
Never forget that there's a grey area between [cancelled] and [cancelled].
"...and block-list / allow-list is more explicit of its function..."
is that block-list a list of breeze blocks, or is it a list of cinder blocks, or a list of file system blocks?
If it was to define more explicitly, and its use was to not to allow things to occur and to be consistent with its counter part, it should be a deny-list and and allow-list.
But then that's too specific, as a black-list wasn't only about denying something and a white-list was about allowing something. Sometimes they are used to bypass, so now it should be called a passthrough-list and a bypass-list.
But now we have another problem, lists....
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That wouldn't work on old IDE devices where Primary and Secondary names the channels each of which can have a Master and Slave disk, so there's a Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary slave.
I bet the Linux kernel has code to talk to IDE, so I wonder what will happen there!
"I bet the Linux kernel has code to talk to IDE, so I wonder what will happen there!"
To quote this ElReg article: "The proposal has allowed for exceptions when maintaining a userspace API or when updating a code for a specification that mandates those terms."
In other words, this has all just been meaningless handwaving. The so-called offensive words will still be in there, despite all the kerfuffle claiming otherwise. It's all smoke and mirrors, don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain ...
What about the TV show Blacklist, should change its name, damn it, I'm sure everyone of the people on that list must be black, and its about criminals, Jesus man, how racist is that show. Oh wait, its not, most the people are white on that list, damn racists only having white people on that list, and calling it a damn black lists.
Should be called "arrest or kill those f*cking criminal scum list".
I wonder what the hacker community will do ... ?
Soft Hat Hacker. (good)
Hard Hat Hacker. (bad)
Nahh... Doesn't sound right...
Green Hat Hacker. (good)
Red Hat Hacker. (bad)
Oh, shit, that won't work.
Hacker 1. (good)
Hacker 2. (bad)
Oh Frig It! The world has gone mad!
@Jake
"It ain't the words, people. It's the intent behind them. Period."
Surely the difference between Black Hat Hacker and White Hat Hacker is the intent as you yourself mentioned above.
For the majority here, we understand immediately from Black Hat Hacker that the intention was quite different from White Hat Hacker . Whereas simply stating "hacker" creates an ambiguous role..
As a smurf, you have the SOLUTION to the whole mess. We just smurf the smurf-list into smurf the smurf-library of the smurf-OS and everything will be just smurf. Noone can be offended by smurf. I mean, noone can be smurfed by smurf. OH, no! I mean: Smurf smurf smurf smurf smurf!!
(Legally and peacefully) petitioning for the removal of statues of @rseholes is highly commendable.
"Cancelling" words from a language is arrogant stupidity at its most crass.
... And the flocker isn't even a native-English speaker!
Let's start making amendments to the Finnish language! (We can start by "cancelling" about a dozen noun cases!)
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It's called context.
It matters.
That's why there's such a thing as "taking things out of context."
No one thinks of black people when they are talking about blacklists, any more than they are thinking of the black plague or black cats or blacktop or blackout curtains or blackheads or anything else that starts with black. No one is thinking of slavery when they replace the master cylinder in their car's braking system, or when they refer to the biggest bedroom in the house, or when they get a degree above bachelor but below PhD.
These are established terms that have meaning that is understood, and to change them because of a misunderstanding that no one has ever had is just a lame attempt at virtue signaling. It can't possibly be anything else, because no one is actually dumb enough to think things that have nothing to do with one another are related because they use the same words in vastly different contexts.
The things that are bad about history are bad because they were bad. They were not bad because of the words we used to describe them. Changing the words for established terms doesn't do anything except make things that used to be clear less so.
"Changing the words for established terms doesn't do anything except make things that used to be clear less so."
This is exactly the point of the exercise, they want to create confusion, they want you to be in a permanent state of doubt.. It's straight from Orwell "four legs good two legs bad"
Nobody has said anything about how this is unjust, Sabroni. What people are saying is that it is a totally pointless, feel-good bit of nonsense that will cause lots of problems while fixing none.
And frankly, I see very little bile. What I see is people voicing well thought-out opinions.
And no, I don't think Linus us a SJW. I think he's taking the easy way out just to stop the unnecessary noise surrounding the issue. In other words, he's rewarded a temper tantrum ... which anyone who knows anything about training kids (or animals) is never a good idea.
"You yourself said Linus is in the "tantrum generation""
No, I did not. I said the Temper Tantrum Generation has won this battle. That is not bile, that is an observation. Likewise, I did not say that Linus was a part of that generation.
Logic is still not one of your strong suits, is it Sabroni?
What people are saying is that it is a totally pointless, feel-good bit of nonsense that will cause lots of problems while fixing none.
Whilst I agree with the pointless stupidity of the whole thing... there is one potential benefit...
To actually expurge all 'offensive' references, Linus's slaves/apprentices/minions/acolytes etc. will actually have to read (and to some extent understand) the code! Good luck finding all those abbreviated references where for example Master/Slave have been abbreviated to simply xyz_M and xyz_S - which should not be confused with abc_M(ono) and abc_(S)tereo...
Probably.
There is no end as to what snowflakes can be offended by.
I would genuinely like to know what a black person thinks about the term "blacklist", if he/she knows what it applies to and if he/she feels anything when the term is used.
Personally, I think of blacklist when I use my mail and do not want to receive any more mail from a given address. I have never, ever associated that with any human being whatsoever.
i'm the only black guy in the office. If i was asked what i thought, i can lie and say its nonsense or i can tell the truth and say it should be changed and face the awkwardness of what follows.
people in minorities don't always feel they can tell the truth when herded upon and asked awkward questions when the questioner implies a required answer.
I know a guy who is sixth generation Haitian. His surname is Blackmon. He is white; his multiple-greats grandfather was from Scotland. The name has generated much mirth in the community for well over a hundred years. He says it's better to laugh because of our differences than at them ...
When will the electronics community finally catch on, and change the hetero-normative and sex-oriented classification of connectors as male and female. For one, it is offensive that only male/female mating is considered acceptable. In addition, the term mating itself refers to the act of having sex in order to reproduce. Won't somebody think of the children? Finally, the male/female distinction excludes a whole spectrum of sexual identification in between. Take the venerable din connecter. What is commonly referred to as the male din plug has properties of both masculanity as well as femininity.
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No, plug/socket is more associated with lead/component. You can have both male (got pins) and female (receptor) based sockets - depends on which way the power, or signal, is flowing. It's much easier to short across "male" pins than accidentally poke wires into a "female" so you arrange things accordingly. Your component may be supplying power, so it is a female socket to accept a male plug - EG some Christmas light adapters. Otherwise it could be a component accepting power with a male socket and a female plug - EG a kettle.
Nope! My kettle has a chassis-mounted plug, and the cord has a cable-mounted socket on the end.
(I.e. the exposed pins are in the kettle, in a recess. The receptacles are in the moulded part mounted on the cable.) Male and female don't apply.
If it has pins, it's the plug. Once I got my head round this, it made booking the right thing out of the stores a lot easier. I also appreciate that this terminology is NOT universally accepted, so we may just have to agree to differ!
Quote: "My kettle has a chassis-mounted plug, and the cord has a cable-mounted socket on the end."
No it doesn't, at least not unless there is something seriously odd with your kettle!
A plug by definition is portable/movable, i.e if you can pick it up and push it into something, it's a plug, pin layout is irrelevant.
Whereas a socket is typically fixed in place. i.e. If it's mounted on the wall, or on the side of something like a PC case, TV, kettle etc, then it is a socket, again irrespective of any pin layout. [*]
Quote : "Male and female don't apply."
Yes it does, generally (although not always), if it has pins, it's male, if it has receptacles for those pins, it's female.
Therefore the kettle has a male socket, and the cord has a female plug.
If you don't believe me go lookup 'C16 male socket' on Amazon or somewhere. (C16 is the IEC standard code for the kettle type socket, i.e. the bit that goes on the kettle).
* There are exceptions to this, such as with mains extension leads, but even there, the 'socket' is usually still mounted on something, such as a cable drum, or a small box.
"In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined with all subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten."
'block' is so harsh and unneeded. Why use it when 'allow' already exists and is more friendly? It even contains its opposite meaning right in the word, with 'unallow'.
Unallowlist is doubleplusungood.
Allowlist is doubleplusgood.
Henceforth, no such vulgar term like 'slave' shall be used, but instead the opposite of 'master', with 'unmaster'. The term 'master' in the sense of 'learning' is to be extinguished, to be replaced with 'goodlearned'.
Tom goodlearned Newspeak. Tom is a doubleplusgood boy.
Here is to a world free of thoughtcrime by 2050.
That is of course the part where in Nineteen Eighty-Four 'cancel culture' comes into play. Anyone who does not follow the rules gets 're-educated' until they accept the rules.
No need to complicate matters with intellectual discussions if one can just shun and ostracise people into compliance.
If anything, it should be "blocking list"
No, that suggests a list of things that are "blocking", and methinks you mean to suggest that it is a list of things that are "to be blocked".
... but that's not right, either, because -- as another poster upthread has already pointed out -- the action taken on encountering an item on a list list formerly referred to as a "blacklist" might be to issue a warning or perform some other special processing not necessarily to block it.
OK for the downvoter: The drone does exactly what it's told by the pilot unless it crashes, when the wind definitely caught it, of course I know what I'm doing, yes I've done this loads of times before, I'm sure it will be fine, those parts are cheap and easy to replace, I'll order them this evening, a bit of glue and it will be good as new.
Sheesh. Tough crowd.
I think that in a discussion about precision of language being diluted, when that discussion is about binary naming, introducing an ambiguous analogy is unhelpful.
Pilot-controller wrt drones can mean either controller of pilots (ATC/ drone control room comander), or controller of the drone. The drones themselves maybe directly controlled or semi-autonymous, so drone controll may be a chain of command thing not just a binary choice.
In case you are wondering I didn't vote either way, but I am surprised you garnered any upvotes.
Pilot-controller, pilot, drone-controller, drone. This analogy could be even worse because sometimes drones have co-pilots who standin while the pilot is otherwise engaged.
I support this decision 100%. I'm a 49 year old white male IT professional, and so presumably part of the demographic that seems to find this so onerous.
But this change is not about me.
If you could make a simple change that potentially makes our industry more inclusive then why wouldn't you?
Does it? The US Constitution has an Amendment abolishing slavery, and despite that segregation was enforced for a century, and still there is racism. There are more form of racism than colours. Just look at what happens in the world outside US.
No simple change makes anything more inclusive - it requires deep and voluntary changes in people's minds - and anyway what's less inclusive than trying to blame more and more terms used without any bad meaning? Anytime I see new Savonarolas I'm terrified - because usually what they achieve is more divisions, more sectarianism and more violence.
>If you could make a simple change that potentially makes our industry more inclusive then why wouldn't you?
Don't see how this will make the industry (in general) more inclusive (and yes, I've attended diversity indoctrination courses as well as living with a cognitive phycologist who has studied unconcious-bias) and so the sheer pointlessness of the exercise makes it onerous.
In all the discussions, I've not seen anyone saying how the use f these terms have actually caused them harm and what benefits changing them would bring about.
The fun and games start with defining the new terms:
Minion: Defn: See Slave. A word used instead of slave so as to not upset the snowflakes.
And so you institutionalise racism...
If you could make a simple change that potentially makes our industry more inclusive then why wouldn't you?
I would, but this is not such a change.
To increase inclusivity you have to change the way people think, not just the way they speak.
There is even a danger that by changing the words you convince racists that they are no longer racist because they are no longer using recognized racist terms, so it's OK for them to carry on with the same old thoughts and actions ... and you make it harder for others to recognize racism in their speech because they no longer use the recognized tell-tale phrases.
If you want to promote inclusivity in society you should start with inclusivity in language.
"a simple change that potentially makes our industry more inclusive"
As you say, "potentially". Which isn't a certainty, not even if you squint.
"then why wouldn't you?"
Because this change is obviously divisive and causing strife, and you don't even have to squint to see it?
You most likely won't hear from me again because I'm not cut out for moshing in the comment pit. But I got involved this time because I was astonished that so many seem viscerally threatened by this story and see it as part of a larger personal attack or disturbing change in society.
The pull request asks for developers to "avoid introducing new usage of 'master / slave' (or 'slave' independent of 'master') and 'blacklist / +whitelist'". I can't comment on the technical aspect of implementing this as I'm not involved in Linux kernel development, but if you're somebody that is and you feel this is going to make your life more difficult then that's unfortunate.
But most responses here aren't anything to do with the impact on Linux kernel development.
There is bile, dismay, whataboutism, retro "political correctness gone mad" arguments I've been hearing for decades (or the modern equivalents of "woke twats" & "SJWs") and downright hysteria.
This change is a gesture yes, but one made by an organisation with a broad reach in an industry that clearly has a problem with inclusion. None of us know if this will "make things better" but I don't think anybody is expecting this alone to solve the problem.
I just can't understand why anyone would be opposed to it. Yes we are living in an Orwellian dystopia, but not because of this and not because of "wokeness". That isn't driven by the state, it's driven by a society that is re-examining the last few hundred years of history, an unbroken thread of events that continues up to this moment.
If you're reading this website then you probably work in IT, in which case you're probably 68% likely to be white European, which means your ancestors most likely benefitted from colonialism & slave trading.
The pull request doesn't suggest banning words or eradicating them from all existing code, but maybe when you're writing new code you'll be occasionally reminded of this history. That's raising awareness, which is one of the main goals I would think.
Why is your instinctive reaction to efforts like this to want to shut them down, to belittle them, dismiss them as either pointless virtue signalling or an attack on western democracies? Are you really opposed to this for the reasons that your kneejerk reaction says you are, or would you rather not have to think too deeply about it because it's not your problem?
@sqrbrkt
"If you're reading this website then you probably work in IT, in which case you're probably 68% likely to be white European, which means your ancestors most likely benefitted from colonialism & slave trading."
Where did the white man buy his black slave? From the black slave trader who enslaved others to sell. The slave practice which has been (and still is in some places) applied around the world.
So, Dr_N ... you actually deny that black folks enslaved other black folks in Africa? And that Europeans bought those enslaved black folks from the black slavers for the Atlantic Slave Trade?
And further, you deny that even today black people are still enslaving other black people in Africa, and then selling them on?
It's a misdirect, isn't it? Some whataboutery.
Centuries of abuse, exclusion and baked-in discrimination shrugged off with some spurious and disingenious arguments such as, "Ah well, they brought it on themselves!" and "It's a Black-on-Black thing!"
I guess as long as one isn't on the recieving end this kind of sophistry and handwashing is appealing. Fill your boots.
shrugged off with some spurious and disingenious arguments such as, "Ah well, they brought it on themselves!" and "It's a Black-on-Black thing!"
You're the only one doing the whataboutery and disingenious arguments. No-one has suggested that this is a "Black-on-Black thing", they have only related the facts that the slave traders (note the word, trader, one who buys and sells) bought slaves from Africans, shipped them across the world, and sold them. Look up the "Triangular Trade", or perhaps pay a visit to the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. People of all races and nationalities profited from slavery.
It would appear that people are already forgetting the past story of this, which is all the more reason to reject these cosmetic language changes designed to make people forget about the history.
Phil O'Sophical>No-one has suggested that this is a "Black-on-Black thing"
It's all about building up the narrative to excuse slavary, segregation and also the current situation/status quo, isn't it ?
And down-playing or misdirecting by taking cues from current alt.right/supremacist tropes makes me question their use.
@Dr_N
"It's all about building up the narrative to excuse slavary, segregation and also the current situation/status quo, isn't it ?"
That has to be one of your top most stupid comments. How is acknowledging and actually recognising actual slavery excusing it? These people have tried to educate you in an area you are obviously in deficit and then you accuse them of excusing it?
Your attempt to trivialise it so you can troll shows very poor character.
I'll bow out at where I came in, being incredulous at what you posted:
"Where did the white man buy his black slave? From the black slave trader who enslaved others to sell. The slave practice which has been (and still is in some places) applied around the world."
If you are ok posting that as a response to someone trying to have a little empathy and understanding about a generational, painful and complex story then as I said above to jake, fill your boots. And be thankful we'll never find ourselves on the wrong end of any of it.
"Dublin had a big slave market at one point. Up until the 11th Century. That wasn't the Romans, was it?"
No, that wasn't the Romans. They didn't have a foothold in Ireland, and besides they pulled out of the British Isles in the early 5th century ... it would seem they were having issues with the Visigoths a trifle closer to home and didn't feel the need to hold a nondescript little island in the far western reaches of the Empire.
I was channeling Honorius and translating his vernacular in a way that wouldn't have got me a clip 'round th' ear 'ole when I was at school ... But with the exception of "Europe" (which wouldn't have been used in that way at that time), you are absolutely correct.
@sqrbrkt
"The fact that black people were/are complicit in the slave industry is nothing to do with this."
You need to read what I was replying to. I didnt bring skin colour into this conversation but the person I responded to tried to claim this was a racial issue and I have corrected his big mistake. This is what I responded to:
If you're reading this website then you probably work in IT, in which case you're probably 68% likely to be white European, which means your ancestors most likely benefitted from colonialism & slave trading.
The severely uneducated make the massive mistake of believing slavery was a white man - black man issue. Unfortunately there are people who truly believe this (see my troll Dr_N digging a hole above). Real actual slavery is still going on in the world and I dont mean working for a low wage but actual slavery of various skin colours and races by various skin colours and races.
It is the same lack of understanding and education which makes virtue signalling like changing standard words because the uneducated think its bad.
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I just can't understand why anyone would be opposed to it.
Because it's like wallpapering over subsistence cracks in your house. It does nothing to fix the problem, and just hides the real issue while allowing people to say "Look, I did something, aren't I good".
in which case you're probably 68% likely to be white European, which means your ancestors most likely benefitted from colonialism & slave trading.
The slaves that were taken to America from Africa weren't created by white traders. Those traders bought the slaves from (black) Africans, they were often prisoners taken during tribal conflicts. It wasn't just the white traders that benefitted from the trade, it was all those involved, all along the line. Painting this purely as white colonial abuse is itself a racial slur.
Why is your instinctive reaction to efforts like this to want to shut them down, to belittle them, dismiss them as either pointless virtue signalling or an attack on western democracies?
Because it prevents people from discussing and solving the real underlying problem. You don't fix history by rewriting it to hide the abuses of the past, that just hides it so it can happen again.
Are you really opposed to this for the reasons that your kneejerk reaction says you are
Yes
or would you rather not have to think too deeply about it because it's not your problem?
The historical issue isn't my problem, because it happened generations before I was born. My problem will be preventing it from happening again, which I do by helping to educate the next generation about why it's a problem. Hiding the words used to describe it does not help with that.
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Yeah, sure...renaming those technical terms sure will stop those 90% plus blacks who murder other blacks from killing in the future.
Fatuous sh*te.
I note that Linus lives in the most affluent suburb of the whitest big city in the US. Portland. This is not a random accident. The more "progressive" a big city the more likely the black population (as a percentage) has diminished over the last 30 to 40 years. San Francisco by two / thirds. Berkeley by half. And in these cities the whitest areas vote most "progressive". Very true in SF.
In fact the part of Portland where Linus lives is 0.7% black. Portland metro is 6% black. Bet you Linus has never stepped foot in the projects in his life. Or known anyone who lived in one. Sure looks like just another rich white "gentry left" hypocrite who lives in a very very white ghetto.
ISTM that if the problem is the inadvertant association of certain words, then instead of making up alternatives for every term in which those words exist, the easiest would be to substitute something innocent for the banned words. You could then simply execute a global search & replace (even on object code) and "fix" existing code in seconds. Have the substitutes contain the same number of letters and change the minimum amount of letters in the words they relaplace, and it won't even mess up the formatting.
Not sure how many words are involved, but it can't be that many. "Black", White", "Master" and "Slave" are the obvious. Change those to "Brick","Whine", "Matter" and "Shave" for example.
And what exactly is the "real problem"? Because quite honestly I have no idea what it is apart from some people taking a label completely out of context and claiming that it means something completely different to what was intended.
And why would changing "whitelist" to "whinelist" not achieve exactly the same as changing it to "allow list" or "anything else?
But if that's still offensive, then search & replace "white" with "allow" (same number of letters).
But perhaps the real problem is that it is not acceptable to block anything because it is wrong to discriminate so all connections must be treated equally, and there should not be anything that serves the function of allowing some connections but not others.
And how about the TCP/IP flag "Time to Live"??? Surely all packets' lives matter?
Or is that too ridiculous for even the sensibilities of the PC brigade?
So much effort to complain by so many about the small change of using better more descriptive words. You complain that it won't make much difference & refer to the original meanings of the words etc, yet if you just went with it it would make little to no difference to your lives yet be much more inclusive to many.
I'm fully with Linus & the Linux movement for being brave enough to stand up and make a difference.
Anon because i'll just be downvoted on this post and other simply because of my views on making a small change to be more inclusive to others and help end racism in all ways however small.
TO BE CLEAR: i'm not saying that the use of the terms being discussed is racist, just that the continued use of this type of language, especially when better terms are available, fosters discrimination and puts candidates off of pursuing a career in something that uses language that can be viewed as demeaning.
Plenty of real things to beat the SJW into sanity and this is not one of them. Like when they begin to object to using dark or black as night, etc.
The black/white/gray list thing is super old but cultural not racial; makes sense to replace with a more universal clear phrase without cultural metaphors.
master/slave is universal but not as accurate as primary / secondary as a description. MORE CLEAR communication should be the goal; but also bullying over minor word choices needs to stop. Grammar Nazis are not as bad as SJW..
Master/slave is not the same as primary/secondary. If the primary fails, the system can fall back onto the secondary. If the master fails, the slave just stops working. At least, that's how this native speaker has always understood these words in an engineering context.
So are we now also banning "master" and "slave" from all dictionaries and our vocabulary? These two terms clearly explained the relationship between two devices when one was subservient to the other. Oh wait, will "subservient" also be banned?
I support BLM and the changes that are staring to occur, BUT this is getting ridiculous.
"Master" and "Slave" are not bad words when used appropriately. I never used them for people but for systems where one is the master controlling the other. I'll adapt (no choice) but I still find this going overboard. I can think of dozens of other common words which could be banned because some consider them offensive.
How far will this go? We ban those two words but swear words like d*mn (etc.) are now accepted on TV, movies and elsewhere. Even our POTUS openly uses them .
Its a bit silly changing these names to more cuddly variations. Now, one thing puzzles me. If Linus wanted to change the terms on account of how 'rascisty' they are then why follow this pattern:
white list shall be “primary” and blacklist “secondary”. Oh, whitelist could also be “leaders” and blacklists now “followers”. Oh, one more... whitelist can now be “directors” and blacklist “performers”. Uh oh, there's more.... Whitelists will become “allowlists” or “passlists” and Blacklists are to become “denylists” or “blocklists”.
Hmm...... I'm getting a vibe here that I wasn't getting before.... Where can one draw the line?
I rather suspect that what you view as "the real world" is the thing that is out of touch with reality.
Consider that there are a LOT of people here on ElReg who completely disagree with each other about lots of things, and are willing to argue the meaning of meaning at the drop of a hat ... and yet we seem to agree far more than not that banning words will not do any good, and in fact may well do harm.
And if you Google Dan Williams you will find a black dude. Why I am not surprised? But what I did not expect, is Linus to turn woke and the rest of the guys/girls... Truly this world is getting nuts every day. BTW now that you have changed that term which was BTW used for the past 30 years, congratulations on solving a racism problem. Who would figure that changing those words would solve a thousand years old problem... Well done, simply well done.
There are 0 connotation between Black/White list to racism, and neither Master/Slave unless someone makes it so.
Black/White comes from the fact that things in light are visible and things in darkness are harder to see... So if you want to use that as racist, I suppose night/day is racist to you.
Master simply means "main" however in this case it's better than main as main has other meaning by itself.
None of these terms are racist, unless you do what Linux/Linus have done and make them so. Now we divided world more and created more power for SJW who are doing nothing better than creating more grievances and more victims.
So congratulation, you just gave idiots more ammunition to make further idiotic demands and help split us even more. Great job.
"Black ashamed" is a once common, though increasingly rare, phrase in working class Scotland that means mortified. It's not racist, it comes from coal miners who hadn't washed, but I wouldn't use it in front of my South African neighbours for fear of causing unnecessary offence. Mortified works.
I recently upbraided my friends wife for describing black people as "n*g n*gs". She replied, "I'm not racist, I had a black friend at school and she never complained when I called her a n*g n*g."
"Aye, because you are an ignorant bully."
So called 'Political Correctness' is really just thoughtfulness, politeness and respect. That works in both directions though, so if someone has used language you find offensive then discuss it, don't demonise. Racism is so irrational and mostly unintentional that it rarely survives discussion.
From a 70's Failed Pilot - The Stranger*, about a astronaut left stranded on a second Earth like planet in our Solar System (Doppleganger\Journey To the Far Side Of The Sun type of place).
The twin planet, which is on the far side of the sun and unknown to Earth, is known to its inhabitants as Terra. It has a system of government and citizen comradeship that is alien to Stryker - The Perfect Order. The enforcement of the order is facilitated by a hierarchy of officials who scrutinize their subordinates extremely closely, and by inspirational messages, "pep" talks to remind citizens of the great family they're part of, and electronic monitoring through technology including telephones, televisions and car radios.
The Perfect Order has only been around for about 35 to 40 years, after a terrible war. The order was instituted to foster a sense of family among every person on Terra, to help each other and think of each other and the good of the whole. People with incompatible ideas are removed and reconditioned, and if resistant, executed. Culture has been heavily excised (no concerts in the park), religion outlawed, and alcoholic drinks are viewed as a future target to eliminate. Among its accomplishments, the Perfect Order has eliminated suffering and poverty, and has a vibrant space program.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(1973_film
What an idiot our Linus is to fall for this claptrap.
All this nonsense is about undermining western democracies and nothing at all to do with attacking racism.
Now every opportunity I get to influence an operating system choice I will not be pushing Linux as hard as I have done because now numpty-in-chief Linus has decided that facts, truth and history are up for grabs.
The pull request:
"For symbol names and documentation, avoid introducing
new usage of 'master / slave' (or 'slave' independent of
'master') and 'blacklist / whitelist' "
Your reaction:
"Linus has decided that facts, truth and history are up for grabs"
You probably need to calm down
.. I suspect "green lighting" will have to be renamed to to avoid offending Martians. Heck, red lights may offend the toothless denizens of America's Soutehrn provinces, wat are we going to do there? Remember, the buggers are armed.
Sigh. I understand the idea to a degree, but at some point it just becomes stupid. Are we going to redesign male and female connectors now too because it's sexist? Just asking so I'm prepared.
I must admit the 'master / slave' terminology was a bit odd and makes me wonder who on earth first came up with that for computer use.
Otoh, the 'blacklist / whitelist' pairing is a perfectly acceptable use and nothing racial in its origin or content, as far as I know.
That's just a piece of over-sensitive manufactured offence and a load of bullshit.
I know. It was used in machinery long before.
I find it odd that a new technology would employ such casually racist terminology.
Mind you, my ancestors were guilty of slavery, I've no doubt. More than likely some of them were enslaved also. It went on a lot in the Old World. Raids here, raids there, tit-for-tat.
When I think of the casual racism that was expressed in my family when I was a young'un I think we've moved on a lot from that unthinking blindness.
"I find it odd that a new technology would employ such casually racist terminology."
I would find it extremely strange if Engineers didn't use the words associated with common technological concepts on new technology.
Besides, since when did "slave" (for example) only apply to one particular race? Last time I checked, members of every single race on the planet have been enslaved by members of pretty much every other race on the planet. The word "slave" is a generic word denoting a relationship. To suggest it is a racist term, targeting one specific race out of all the races which have been enslaved, is very demeaning to the memory of all those other slaves, who not being the right colo(u)r, are in your mind apparently insignificant and forgettable. How dare you!
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