MemeMachineGo!

Oh good grief. Boing Boing excerpts this email from the Los Angeles County Purchasing and Contract Services Director :

The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived. As such, it is the County’s expectation that our manufacturers, suppliers and contractors make a concentrated effort to ensure that any equipment, supplies or services that are provided to County departments do not possess or portray an image that may be construed as offensive or defamatory in nature.

One such recent example included the manufacturer’s labeling of equipment where the words ”Master/Slave” appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label. We would request that each manufacturer, supplier and contractor review, identify and remove/change any identification or labeling of equipment or components thereof that could be interpreted as discriminatory or offensive in nature before such equipment is sold or otherwise provided to any County department.

In the PC world, this is standard terminology for devices sharing an IDE cable .
More generally, in engineering, slave means :

A machine or component controlled by another machine or component. When two devices are synchronized to one another it is necessary to have one be the master and the other the slave. The slave unit responds to commands or information from the master and is thus controlled by it. This is the basic principle behind all synchronization in audio and video. For example, if a computer system is following an analog tape machine (or video deck) it can be said to be “slaved” to it.

There are zillions of uses of ‘slave device’ .

I hope no one tells them about male and female connectors .