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Comment by gohrt | Hacker News Reader

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gohrt

That's a disgustingly insensitive name.

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Insensitive to whom? all the dead people?

What about 'killing a process'?

What about 'master / slave' relationships?

Terms get used for purposes other than offending people

Insensitive to survivors. I don't find it disgustingly insensitive, rather potentially troublesome.

Also, yes, master / slave is outdated. If you are developing a new product, do not use master / slave terminology. It is not appropriate for professional work product.

Daemon is troublesome in many households for young hackers, which I don't advocate changing; this just makes me a little sad.

Killing, I have no problem with, but I'm an American. If I were, say Austrian, I might prefer terminating processes.

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The whole point of PC (political correctness) is to take power away from racists, sexists and other -ists by demonizing words and concepts. I think this has obviously gone too far in many areas. For instance, people should be able to discuss slavery, racism, violence, etc in a grown-up environment without fear of undue reprisal. If someone is still an actual racist shithead then they deserve the consequences of their free speech.

Speech and names should be respectful, especially in the professional arena. Being witty is fun, but causing real pain is not. Some people are killjoys who pounce on every troublesome or ambiguous potential "trigger" word. Some people are assholes who don't believe words can cause real pain - or worse - enjoy negging, controlling, and demeaning.

Personally, I tell horrible jokes and say mean things about people pretty often, but only verbally, and only to small audiences who take them in the manner intended. I'm sure I say hurtful things in amongst the jokes sometimes, but I also try to show respect in most of my dealings as well.

> Killing, I have no problem with, but I'm an American. If I were, say Austrian, I might prefer terminating processes.

Why do you feel that Austrians have a special sensitivity to the term "killing"?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Austrian. He played the Terminator.

True, but do you think that is the point OP was making? "Members of a particular country should have a preference for a word that is associated with an individual from that country" seems like a rather strange linguistic argument to make :-)

> the point OP was making

He makes no point.

Yes, it was a joke that apparently was only funny to myself, which I am fine with.

Your first comment reads like if it was serious though, sorry. I suggest use '/s' for this situations, even though it's a bit lame to have to denote sarcasm. Also, the head of the thread is flagged out, so people who took yours seriously probably thought that you made that comment.

Yea, I should know better than to write comments after midnight when I'm feeling silly, but it does help to get my thoughts down.

I had more silliness in the comment, but I removed it, so the tone is kinda weird right now.

You take away what your bring to the party, I guess. I read it as "we all succeed or fail together", and it wasn't until I read hackernews outrage it occurred to me someone would deliver another interpretation.

"together" seems to be a neutral name, semantically fits, and is not used.

I'm sorry, but I disagree with this current trend of making language "safe" for everyone. Yes, I know about triggers and some good reasons for changing words (there's no real reason to be using master/slave in a new piece of software).

Eventually you end up with bland, uninteresting language. Pact, while a little confronting if you follow the connotations far enough, is an excellent and succinct name.

I would have also accepted "contract".

How do you not reel in horror at the kill command itself?

That's actually a pretty good question. I would guess that killing is so generic from the News, games, movies, etc that killing doesn't usually strike a personal chord - whereas family and friends of suicide victims[1] tend to take suicide personally.

1. Typing that out reinforces how weird it is to think about suicide terminology - a subject one would be advised to not spend too much time pondering.

Why would this be insensitive? 'Pact' just means a formal agreement.

perhaps it conjures up "suicide pact"?

Ah, I hadn't considered that. Still, not sure if I buy that the term 'pact' automatically has a negative connotation due that one usage..

well, we never know what situations words may be linked with for some people.

"pact with the devil" is another negative twist.

Someone want fill me in on the piece of popular culture I apparently missed? All I've got is either "an agreement" or compilers for ancient IBM mainframes (704s, I think it was?).

I assume the OP assumed it was a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_pact

... why?

A pact, from Latin pactum ("something agreed upon"), is a formal agreement.

The OP is not upset about the name alone, but against the twinge of realization that dawns after reading the accompanying description.

I'm not exactly sure it's possible to describe killing processes much differently.. I mean the Linux command to kill a process is 'kill'..

the kill command just sends the signal of the user's choice, not necessarily SIGTERM (the default) or SIGKILL or whatever.

This lets you change behavior in a running process from the shell by triggering a desired handled signal.

Hopefully they never come across parents reaping children....

Orphaned processes are probably very offensive too, right?

Don't forget about the zombie processes.

I disagree. It is very succinct though.

I'm not married to it. Would you like to suggest an alternate name? (Aside from "atomic bomb," as was suggested elsewhere in the thread.)

spitballing here - some of these may be more offensive than pact, included to get mental juices flowing. Also, not looking these up for dupes in current use.

mad - mutually assured destruction

mat - mut. ass. termination

jenga

atdi - atomic disintegrator

dms - dead mans switch

psd - process safety device

vigil - alert watching

turret - are you still there

ff - fail fast

faro - the pharoah gets buried with his servants

tact - terminal action

pact - positive action (same name, different story)

fact - final action

rapture - it's time

raptor - they hunt in packs

coterm - coterminous https://www.google.com/search?q=coterminous

I see why you were downvoted for the initial comment, but I don't see why you are being downvoted for this one. This seems like a creative list of alternatives to back your complaint. Personally I don't think the name should change at all. Although, I do like ff for the alternative name you could give it in your head that describes the exclamations of the processes involved. Upvoted for creativity and constructivity.

Edit: also, dms? o_O ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch

I did say some of them were worse...

Pact!

Odysseius... or more seriously killpg, for 'kill process group' sounds fine.

I suggested a name below in this thread: "together"

How about "unchain" ?

If any link is severed, no more chain.

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