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Linus Torvalds approved on Friday a new and more inclusive terminology for the Linux kernel code and documentation.
Going forward, Linux developers have been asked to use new terms for the master/slave and blacklist/whitelist terminologies.
The Linux team did not recommend any specific terms but asked developers to choose as appropriate.
The new terms are to be used for new source code written for the Linux kernel and its associated documentation.
The older terms, considered inadequate now, will only be allowed for maintaining older code and documentation, or "when updating code for an existing (as of 2020) hardware or protocol specification that mandates those terms."
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Linux kernel will no longer use terms 'blacklist' and 'slave'
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Linux Team Approves New Terminology, Bans Terms Like 'Blacklist' and 'Slave'
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TAPPING? You POLITICIANS! Don't you realize that the END of the "Wash
Cycle" is a TREASURED MOMENT for most people?!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:17AM (52 children)
They needlessly anthropomize computers, which are after all not sentient or intelligent (yet?). I would have started off using terms like block-list/pass-list, director/executor, source/sink, and so on. Isn't that closer to the reality on the ground anyway?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:31AM (12 children)
I looked into blacklist and it goes way back to the 16th century or thereabouts. The fact that people are getting offended by things like that is a pretty clear indication that there's little actual work to be done other than to allow things to take their natural course. At some point, individuals and groups need to step up to create something new. It's been that way with numerous other groups to the point where many of them are no longer acknowledge to have gone through persecution. For example, the Germans during the World Wars in the US were badly mistreated, but you don't hear people talking about the language being banned from schools or the thousands that wound up in American concentration camps during WWII.
The reality is that some groups seem to have figured it out and others haven't and it's not even really a matter of skin color either as Africans that immigrated to the US more recently don't seem to be affected by racism to the same extent as those that have been here for generations.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:48AM (7 children)
No. People are getting offended because the current political sensibilities have been rubbed raw in this area. People always react to the way they understand symbols (and words count as symbols, though of a particular type) rather than to the historical context that generated the symbols. E.g., I have speculated that the term "son of a bitch" started out as a politer form of the term "dog" (as in "seadog", "'til the last dog is hung", etc.). These days the improper meaning of dog has faded away, because nobody uses it anymore, but "Son of a bitch" is improper enough that it's often referred to by its initials. The other examples I can think of off the top of my head have antique forms that are still grossly improper, or have modern forms that are sufficiently improper that I tend to censor them even online.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:22PM (5 children)
People are "getting offended" because now there is profit in it. Before, in the times when a grown man making hysterics was looked at with contempt, those same people would "grin and bear it" instead. Opportunism at its best (or worst).
The problem is, the ancient wrongs and rights entirely notwithstanding, the "offended class" creates social friction where before there was none. Social friction slows down the economy and progress, by making every action and transaction costlier, harder, and slower. Now compound that with COVID, "green economy" and whatever else, and you get societal suicide.
What the "offended class" is led to forget, is that barbarians on future ruins of their cushy welfare society will offend them for real.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:30AM (4 children)
"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."
-- Booker T Washington, Up From Slavery (1911)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 16 2020, @06:28AM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday July 16 2020, @06:34AM (2 children)
He makes a good point!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:25PM (1 child)
Your quote's better though, there's something about the 100+ years of forewarning, as well as the preciser language, that gives it more gravitas.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:47PM
I've paid zero attention to Kanye so no idea, but took it to mean the obvious... any situation you continue living in that long, you're not making much effort to get out of.
The Booker T quote gets a lot of use... sure does point up that some things never change. And it's a fantastic book... right up to where he figures out that he can get more funding for his school by begging it from rich folks than from doing for himself. Yeah, they needed the funding regardless, but there's a fundamental change in his attitude that really saddened me. But the first few chapters are quintessential bootstrapping.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:21AM
You do realize that there is an actual field called etymology where experts trace things like this, right?
And if you spent maybe 5 minutes looking into this, you'd realize you're wrong. While the "female dog" meaning of "bitch" is the original one, the word has been used contemptuously for women since around 1400, which is roughly the time "biche-sone" arrived in Middle English, roughly meaning "son of a slut." ("Dog" has a very long history in English as a derogatory word for people, so "bitch" for a whore goes back a LONG way.) By the time the actual phrase "son of a bitch" is seen in English around 1700, the word "bitch" had been implying "whore" for over 300 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)
Ban the German language! Nazis were evil! Ban the evil language!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @08:09PM
It's worth noting that the Supreme Court ruled language bans to be unconstitutional in 1921, which was years before there was such a thing as a Nazi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @09:41PM (1 child)
Germans are 60% of the US population - it's pretty hard for them to be bullied by racists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @11:59PM
And yet it happened during and after both World Wars. The reality is that there's a bunch of us that have genes from that part of Europe, but those with an actual cultural connection of some sort are a minority.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:35AM (22 children)
Those terms were originally created by nerds, i.e. people that we know today to score high on the functional-autism spectrum. Nerds are notoriously socially inept, and most of them relate more to computers and machines than to other human beings. Therefore it's not surprising that they would have a tendancy to anthropomorphize said computers and machines.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:43AM
... and not relating to other people, who may be offended/upset by the use of some words?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:49AM (19 children)
Blacklists weren't, in (approximately) IT use they go back to financiers who used cheque blacklists and later credit card blacklists, originally printed out on paper and mailed to stores, and in pre-IT times they go back decades if not centuries, see e.g. "Hollywood blacklist". So geeks just used a well-established term with a widely-known meaning.
And that's the problem with this touchy-feely "did not recommend any specific terms but asked developers to choose as appropriate", if I see "blacklist" and "whitelist" I know exactly what I'm dealing with, but if I see "noodlelist" and "meatballlist" I have to spend ages reverse-engineering metadata to figure out what on earth each one is. If you're going to replace long-established terms that have a known meaning then at least come up with a unified replacement for them.
And figure out what to use in place of greylist, which accompanies whitelist and blacklist.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:51AM (11 children)
There's other issues. For example, you can have white lists, blacklists and greylists for use with your email. With other colors that wouldn't work and with other words it gets rather complicated. People generally know what two of those words are already, the third doesn't require much explanation that it's in between the two options.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:01AM (3 children)
blacklist = badlist
whitelist = goodlist
graylist = ???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:36AM
blacklist = badlist
whitelist = goodlist
graylist = doubleplusungoodlist
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:17AM
delaylist?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @11:06AM
Badlist and Goodlist are associated with santa claus. As a devout atheist and anti-consumerist I renounce your trying to oppress me with your christian words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:02AM (6 children)
"block-list/pass-list/, director/executor, source/sink"
Time to exercise that imagination instead of that emotional outrage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:46AM
Playing sport, making a film, running software, leaking information and washing my hands of it all.
Why do you hate me bigot?
(Score: 3, Touché) by chromas on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:15AM
Emotional outrage is the entire reason for changing the terms in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @11:11AM (3 children)
Nope, can't use executor (nor executive) because it has associations with capital punishment.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 15 2020, @11:52AM
Hmmm … “Chief Executive Officer”? But then “capitalism” and “capital punishment” obviously share linguistic roots, so maybe it fits. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:02PM (1 child)
the highest title in our company is now "secretary"
let that sink in for a moment
and yes occupied by a female at the moment
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:29PM
IF IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR STALIN IT IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU
sheesh
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:02AM (5 children)
Because allow/deny is such a hard terminology that the next easier choice is noddle/meat, right?
Do you have a speech impediment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:52AM (4 children)
allow/deny is a poor choice because both terms have two syllables. pass/fail would work though. So would do/skip. And lots of other choices. Getting a new consensus, however, maybe difficult.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday July 15 2020, @04:10AM (1 child)
Rrright. Even more so because Microsoft uses allow/deny for their ACL and Linux must never adopt Microsoft terminology (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:29AM
Considering that if they did Microsoft would probably use it as grounds for a lawsuit so it might be for the best. (big grin)
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:36AM (1 child)
That has sexual connotations that are offensive to those of us on the skip list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @04:24AM
Not to mention ableist concerns. Many disabled people are not capable of skipping.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:11AM
"account balance being in black" seems to be good to their mind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:43AM
Whoever modded that flamebait is a tool
(Score: 5, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:36AM
stop anthropom[...]ing computers. they *hate* that.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:45AM (3 children)
"they" being humans. Anthropomorphize everything.
"I would have". Good for you. "Black" and "White" as terms have a usage in common parlance for centuries and millennia without a racial connotation. When you look for offense you will find it. The Salem witch trials did find witches. It's too bad that witches are fiction.
"closer to the reality on the ground anyway". No. Lists are inherently hierarchical and represent capitalist misogynistic imperialism and colonialism. Bigot. "Block" and "pass" are transphobic slurs used by bigots to stereotype "passable traps".
If you want to speak like a robot divorced from any linguistic flair or cultural heritage from a paucity of expression be my guest. Don't expect others to adhere to your grey newspeak based on offense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @04:37AM (2 children)
Beware the "die trap" message I've seen in response to SIGTERM. I lol every time I see it because I'm just waiting for some cis-gendered liberal luser to freak out about it. I just never remember what program it is that does that, because it's a stupid message that makes me laugh. Some "die" event happened (sigterm?), and it was trapped, maybe, probably, and somebody felt the need to announce this to stderr.
Suggestion for how to deal with that: don't let cis-gendered liberals use computers. Malcolm X said a lot about white liberals that is roughly applicable to cis-gendered ones.
The outrage pours in over some stupid comment say J.K. Rowling made which could have been effectively answered with "so what you're saying is that women turn into men at age 55?" or just ignored. Nobody even attempted to educate her and help her do better (assuming what she said was a slur and I'm not convinced it was--girls tend to have menstrual cycles, but some have dicks). Why not get outraged about the sorry state of women's healthcare instead and promote single payer healthcare? Why not get outraged that the right to abortion is not held in the same regard as the right to free speech and the right to bear weapons?
Well, that might "cost" the 1%ers money (in truth they will merely accumulate it at a slightly slower rate), but outrage "journalism" makes money. There are things worthy of being outraged about. Creating a new class of swear/taboo words is not helpful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @09:29PM (1 child)
Somebody needs a human anatomy class, or some "girl" convinced them that "some have dicks".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @10:32PM
pro-trans propaganda > biology education
(Score: 1) by PaperNoodle on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:18AM (1 child)
>They needlessly anthropomize computers
Server! Check please.
Server:80 GET /Check
What's the difference?
B3
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:40PM
about 50 dollars
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @06:48AM (2 children)
Why do you hate white people? Why don't white lives matter to you? Why are you obsessed with trying to get people to say the n-word? You use it more than EF does.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @08:17PM (1 child)
TBH, it's just easier than doing the work to build the community up. Blaming things on the white devils is a really good way of avoiding having to ever take responsibility. Some communities recognize that a broken taillight is a legitimate reason to be pulled over, some don't. Care to guess which group winds up being ticketed and hauled off to jail more?
I'm going to laugh my ass off when we're no longer a majority white country and these people start to realize just how much of this was their own doing.
Severely oppressed groups in the US have managed to overcome it, it's just that they didn't waste time looking for reasons to be offended.
Living in a racist society is going to be hard and the standards are going to be higher for those that want to achieve something. But, knee capping yourself by breaking laws, giving the police an excuse to use violence and not taking school seriously just compounds things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @05:44PM
They will never learn. 100 years after they have murdered and bred out all the whites and the infrastructure we designed is in crumbled ruins they will be blaming the legacy of white oppression, or some shit. We have to separate ASAP.
The White Nationalist Manifesto: https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=31425122 [thepiratebay.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:37PM (2 children)
Oh, sure. Yeah that definitely isn't in hindsight, you would've done that anyway
bullshit
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:42AM (1 child)
I'm not joking. I first ran across the master/slave terminology in fourth grade and remember being squicked out even then, and that was almost a quarter of a century ago.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @03:23AM
Prepubescent triggered is a thing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Wednesday July 15 2020, @04:57PM
>They needlessly anthropomize computers
They don't anthropomorphize by using black(a color)list. Those that read blacklist, antrhopomorphize, baselessly connect that with a supremacist stance, get offended, and protest, do.
But I can see the programming of leftist does not contemplate the case of their side doing wrong, so I appreciate your rationalizing around it.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @10:12PM (1 child)
Closer to reality?
It started out having absolutely nothing to do with Africa apparently. So people that want to see blacklist as a negative, and that the black component of the word references people with black skin, or suffering from that cognitive bias where you see what you want to see. So blacklist was actually very close to reality, in that it was an actual list of entities that were undesirable and not allowed.
Where the problem may have arise was the use of whitelist. As near as I can tell, it was created to be the exact opposite of blacklist. So again, people see what they want to see. The terms are much close to reality than you assume.
As for master/slave, I don't know the origins of those terms exactly.
Personally, I don't give a fuck. Just as long as it is documented. If I see blocklist/passlist, that is something I understand. So as long as the meanings are clear, and I can continue to work with the terms, I'm good. Allow/Deny is also popular, and I've seen those terms used in many different projects along with blocklist/passlist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2020, @12:54PM
Well, speaking as a Slav, I object to the cultural appropriation of the term bolded above by the schwartzes and their stooges, there are quite a number of words in the various African languages (and they pre-date contact with whitey...go figure...) to describe what their leaders and the Arabs sold them into, use them tnstead..
It's use in technical terminology?, fine.