Dear Richard,
Thank you, that?s interesting. There is also something called an ?etymological
fallacy?. I think current usage is more useful here than the ?science of truth?,
i.e. the Ancient Greek idea that the (sometimes inferred) derivation of a word
allows us to grasp ?the truth of it?.
In current usage, a ?server? is someone who brings you dishes in a restaurant. A
?client? is a customer. A ?slave? is a human being forced to perform work under
duress and considered nothing more than a machine, say a dishwasher or a
tractor. And in some regions, this echoes on and is offensive and hurtful to
some.
A new user, wanting to reduce output from R, would probably reach for ?-q? or
??quiet?. This makes sense in the same way that ??stentorian? is not a good
alternative to ??verbose?.
Best,
Ben
> On 19 Sep 2019, at 10:55, Richard O'Keefe <raoknz at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> One of my grandfathers was from Croatia. Guess what the word
"slave" is derived
> from? That's right, Slavs. This goes back to the 9th century. And
then of course
> my grandfather's people were enslaved by the Ottoman empire, which was
only defeated
> a little over a hundred years ago. My other grandfather was from the
British isles,
> where to this day followers of the same prophet are enslaving people like
me
> (except for being female). So I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed.
>
> How many computers are "servers"? There's that whole
client-server thing.
> Guess what "server" comes from? That's right, the Latin word
"servus", which
> means guess what? You got it again: "slave". Are we to abolish
the word
> "server"? What about the word "client"? Ah,
that's part of the client-patron
> system from Rome, so what about the patriarchy, eh?
>
> We are dealing with something called "the genetic fallacy".
> "The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins ...)
> is a fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone's
> or something's history, origin, or source rather than its
> current meaning or context." (Wikipedia.)
>
> Context matters.
>
>
>
>> On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 at 17:10, Abby Spurdle <spurdle.a at
gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Personally I much prefer backwards compatibility to political
correctness.
>>
>> I agree with Rolf, here.
>> And as someone that's planning to write a Linux Terminal Emulator,
in
>> the medium-term future, I *strongly* defend this approach.
>>
>> And to the original poster.
>> Haven't you seen The Matrix?
>> (Second best movie ever, after the Shawshank Redemption).
>>
>> I would prefer the technology to be my slave, than I be a
>> prisoner/slave to the technology.
>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
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