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Re: Master / Slave

Subject: Re: Master / Slave
From: Win Day <winday -at- home -dot- com>
To: "David Chinell" <dchinell -at- msn -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 06:59:54 -0400

At 03:07 PM 5/15/00 -0400, David Chinell wrote:

The political correctness issue doesn't bother me
too much. What does bother me
is that the meaning of master and slave in a
computing context is often learned
by experience, rather than being indicated by the
definition of the terms.
Further, the exact meaning of master and slave can
vary widely from application
to application.

Does the master actually control the slave's
appearance or behavior in an active
way? Will changing the master automatically change
the slaves? Is the master
indistinguishable from the slave except by arbitrary
specification?

Here are some possible alternatives:

Control copy and work copy
Master and clone
Original and duplicate
Source and reflection
Primary and secondary


And only the last one of these defines master/slave the way I understand the terms when referring to computer hard drives.

I have a PC that has two hard drives. One is configured as the master, and one is configured as the slave. The master drive is what the PC uses when it boots. That's where Windows is loaded. That's the one configured in the BIOS as the boot drive. That's the one that controls the operation of the PC.

The slave drive is NOT a copy, or a mirror, or a clone, or a duplicate, or a reflection. The two drives do not hold ANY of the same content.

Primary and secondary, yes. But even that doesn't really communicate the idea that one controls the other.

I don't like the master/slave reference at all. But I have yet to find an alternative.

Win
------------

Win Day
Technical Writer

http://www.wordsplus.net

mailto:winday -at- wordsplus -dot- net

http://members.home.net/winday/index.html




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