Phrases and firing offenses: big dongles; forking a repo

[Amy West]

On 3/25/13 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:25:06 -0400
> From:    ADSGarson O'Toole<adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Phrases and firing offenses: big dongles; forking a repo
>
> A controversy over phrases in the tech world has emerged. TechCrunch
> has coverage:
>
> A Dongle Joke That Spiraled Way Out Of Control by Kim-Mai Cutler
> March 21st, 2013
> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/
I read about the furor from this source:
http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

And was following the story not for linguistic reasons (but rather how
it blew up on the Intertubz . . .)

But as a FB Friend's Friend commented, "fork" is a simple pun on "fu*k"
and "fork" is a Unix command by which you have a single process start
another process. This Friend/commenter noted that it was common at his
work to make jokes about "forking execs" (with "exec" being executing
new code).

And frankly "dongle" has been used with juvenile connotations since day
one ( and that may have been a reason to use that word. . .)

---Amy West

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