Derailed topic with MISO/MOSI, and related to forum censorship

No, @straubm, @paulvdh is not targeting you. He is subtly hinting that I should not support him by writing even longer posts complaining even louder about the ridiculous political correctness many must suffer.

In my opinion, that attitude does more harm than good.

Here in the Netherland we have a thing called:

In that period companies like the V.O.C were bigger then amazon is now. And they did much worse things then first forcing people to pie in bottles because of exteme work pressure and then firing them for the same offence.

Go read a bit about the Opium Wars.

I never learned about the bad things of the V.O.C or the opium wars at school. It was only many years later, and I guess those opium wars had a very big influence on how the Chinese people view “Westerners”.

Things like that should not be shuffled under the carpet in attempts to forget them. They should be recognized for the ugly things they are and what people are capable of doing to each other.

We also have:

Don’t go try to ban the world “war” from the dictionary. Wars won’t stop because of it. It’s completely counterproductive. If people start forgetting how horrible wars actually are, the become more likely to start new ones.

I firmly believe that having casual references to those horrible systems is a good thing. It helps people to remember that those things exist and be aware of them. Same with OCD. It’s no joke in itself, but making a joke about it every now and then helps with spreading awareness.

The problem is in the broad and carpeting generalizations, not with the words. Trying to ban words reminds me of “new speak” in George Orwells 1984. (Go read that, it’s excellent).

(Oops, it’s turning into a big hijack now. Is that world also supposed to get banned?)

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This all just reminded me of Depeche Mode.
Quite the irony that was released in 1984, when people were more relaxed about words, concepts and diversity.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/depechemode/masterandservant.html

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I strongly object to that.
You are absolutely right to remove it from this topic (I was considering doing this myself), but deleting it is not the right way to go. It’s too close to censorship.

Splitting it off would have been far more appropriate, maybe even locking it, although it was not very ugly, just a difference of opinion.

Done. I had to learn new tricks. EDIT: didn’t learn well enough :slight_smile:

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IMHO there is no justification for keeping a highly political discussion about political correctness which boarders on agitation anywhere in this forum.

Although I do feel sympathy for your argument, censorship is not the solution, except in rare cases of direct attacks, blackmail or other borderline behavior. And even then, even if people show ugly behavior sometimes, I guess that quite often it is better to keep it so others can form an independent opinion then to go towards censorship.

When I deleted the posts (which are now undeleted here) I didn’t think about cencorship but the purpose of this forum. Heated discussions about sensitive topics, including worldviews, politics, religion etc. make any forum really heavy to visit. Our forum has been kept delightfully useful and pleasant. Let’s keep it that way. I know a thing or two about controversies from my personal life, and I’d like to keep them off from this forum.

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@paulvdh I strongly object. What you say is utterly true for public media and discussions. But this is a forum with a distinct purpose - all things KiCad - and a thread derailing THAT heavily has no place here. This is no case of censorship, this is forum hygiene.
This said, I agree with you that censorship or any sort of restrictions in systems / political systems are ultimately the death of - even - democracy. I am 69 now, but I still opose such tendencies in a sometimes pubertarian manner.
Anyways: no room for that here.

@eelik You beat me to the punch.

I understand both your arguments, but still believe censorship is too heavy for a thing like this. It’s just a too ugly tool to be taken lightly.

Part of the usefulness of keeping / splitting off a thread like this is also to have a thought about human behavior and where the limits are.

As an intermediate solution, and to keep within this forum’s software ability, I think it is best to let this sit for one or two weeks, to give everyone who wishes to vent an opinion a chance to react, and then make the topic unlisted, so it does not show up in searches, but only in direct links. That even gives people interested in this topic an opportunity to continue, while it’s completely invisible to all the other forum users.

Edit:
actually, I want to read it back myself in a few day’s time to see how it got so derailed. I think jmk’s remark of OCD can be taken as the starting point but was still “within limits” and it really derailed after the MISO/MOSI thing, but I’ll have another look at it after a few days. (And this is another reason for not bluntly censoring it).

Didn’t see this thread before. It gets interesting. Never heard about the CIPO / COPI, but it makes sense. There is one issue though. For Polish speaking forum users though (I know there is a few of them here). CIPO in Polish means “You c*nt!” and it sounds very funny in this context :rofl: :man_facepalming: TBH I prefer MISO/MOSI thing…

EDIT: Read about it and seems like there is also POCI / PICO terminology. That would work for me and not make me laugh each time I work with SPI :slight_smile:

A guy from my school had to implement a master slave system for a farmer. That system had several displays, displaying master or slave.

Most polish employees (immigrants) were pissed of about these words and it was changed. Can’t blame them If you look at how much they are paid. Immigrant workers get paid so little they are practically slaves, we just pay them just enough so we can’t call it slave labour ‘officially’. And they are ‘free’ to leave. I really hope this situation gets rectified one day. I worked with many polish coworkes, fine people :+1:t2: who deserve more.

I personally find it also a bit rediculous to rename things like MOSI and MISO. I still use words like master and slave because it simply covers the load best. But I do understand where it is comming from…

I am puzzled more how this discussion started. It was just one guy who posted a project without saying anything at all.

Bas

I ditched MOSI/MISO a few years back but not because of ethical reasons but because I think SDI/SDO (Serial Data In/Out) are much more descriptive in the modulized schematics I normally do.

Concerning the ethical questions: I strongly believe that I as a descendant of the European colonizer culture should not have to much too say in what is considered harmful to the descendants of slavery and European suppression.

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I think avoiding errors is more important than being descriptive.
When you have to connect MOSI-MOSI and MISO-MISO there is lower chance of making mistake then when you have to connect SDI-SDO and SDO-SDI.
You even can’t use such labels directly as that way you will short both wires.

I’d argue with ‘exactly’. What if you have controller and peripheral (named by the useful functions they do) but in their SPI communication the peripheral works as Master (just generates clock).
I think SPI in controllers can be set to work as Master or Slave.

Nealy all SPI peripherals in uC’s can be configured as either master or slave. I’ve been reading some datasheets of STM32 chips, and they support some multi master configuration too, just like with I2C.

But I²C-bus specification rev. 7.0 calls them controller/target (UM10204).

not really. if you have one controller block with SDI and SDO and one peripheral block with SDI and SDO how should you mess the connection up there?

and if you use multiple peripherals or daisy chain peripherals the whole MOSI/MISO topology technically is completely wrong anyway.

Why?
The master controls the bus, the clock and sends data over MOSI. A slave responds over MISO. Just like Full Duplex RS485.

But more general, this thread derailed towards naming conventions in itself.

I did not read that newer spec sheet. A lot of companies seem to change their wording and to give in to … (I don’t really understand what or why actually).

“Controller / Target”, is yet another naming convention than the “Controller / Peripheral” that scandey used. How is that helpful?

But the biggest problem I am having is in why names of electrical signals on a PCB can be interpreted as racism in the first place. It’s like people are fighting for the rights of a poor defenseless EEprom or bus expander IC just in case it may feel inferior to the microcontroller next to it. It does not make any sense at all to me. Words have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used. Just open any dictionary, and you will easily find many examples. “Dictionary” swings from a stack of paper to a software library to store data.

A microcontroller can easily be used as an I2C slave to. In that case using the word “controller” is just confusing.

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I don’t understand what you mean. I use MOSI/MISO with multiple peripherals. I have never heard that it is technically completely wrong. It simply works.
I connect all MOSI pins together and all MISO pins together. With SDI and SDO you have to think a little to connect one SDO to all other SDIs and one SDI to all other SDOs.

For me too. Shortly we will be not allowed to say about white paper and black toner as both being racist.

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