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 <rao...@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 <spurdl...@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. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
