Dan Williams wrote: > On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 1:40 PM, One Thousand Gnomes > <gnomes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On Wed, 05 Mar 2014 19:33:04 -0800 >> Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >>> We want our contributors to spend their anger, resentment, and >>> frustration emotional resources on finding and fixing broken code. We >>> do not want those valuable resources wasted on unfortunately worded >>> comments. >> The comment appears to be very accurately worded in this case. To retard >> is to slow down. We allow 30 seconds of idleness for very slow devices. > > Right, as a verb, if the comment had said "some devices retard the > reset recovery process" that would be pedantic word choice but more in > line with a specific technical meaning of the word. > >> Now I can see why you might want to remove the word in some other context >> such as if we had /* Linus is such a retard */ but this context appears >> to be correct, and in fact a rather clever bit of wordplay (intended or >> otherwise) > > Actually, no, int this case I'm specifically concerned with adjective > usage "retarded devices". Where the implication is there is something > wrong with the device. Unfortunately in the US it has become a slur > and slang term to classify the "worst of things". I suspect that > usage has not made it to the UK? I think what hasn't made it to the UK is an undue emphasis on political correctness. 'Retarded' at least implies slowness whereas 'outlier' is a meaningless noise word. Furthermore, it's actually a noun rather than an adjective, so the proposed change makes the comment ungrammatical. The word you're looking for is 'outlying' though I would prefer a meaningful description such as 'extremely slow devices' if obsequiousness to political correctness is deemed necessary. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
