Re: It did happen on a Friday...

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com> wrote on 02/24/2004 10:44:10 AM:
> I like Diane's suggestion of "primary" and "secondary."

But that suggestion is/may be incorrect. Unless the master is determined 
at start-up and if the master is lost, a new master is selected. Then 
perhaps a slave could be referred to as a secondary. But even then, 
secondary suggests some autonomy or decision making capability and does 
not implicate the total subservience usually required by a slave. In my 
experience, a secondary device has usually referred to a redundant device 
that is used only in the event the primary fails.

Seeing as master and slave are both perfectly reasonable words and have 
various acceptable uses (regardless of whether the act they are describing 
is acceptable or not), it seems pointless to confuse readers who should be 
able to recognise and distinguish technical nomenclature from support of 
kidnapping/indenturing human workers.

And as far as other leader/follower analogies, I think some people are a 
little too sensitive. If it's being used in the context of reflecting the 
structure why is it offensive? Why is Chief/Indian more offensive than 
Captain/Private or Officer/Soldier or Manager/Worker or Coach/Player or 
...

Next thing you know we'll be having trouble with words like niggardly. :P

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer