Slashdot Mirror
Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination
touretzky writes "Two ex-employees have sued Diskeeper Corporation in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, alleging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment (complaint, PDF). Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level, publicly avowed Scientologist who has given millions to his Church. Diskeeper's surprising response to the lawsuit (PDF) appears to be that religious instruction in a place of employment is protected by the First Amendment." The blogger at RealityBasedCommunity.net believes that the legal mechanism that Diskeeper is using to advance this argument ("motion to strike") is inappropriate and will be disallowed, but that the company will eventually be permitted to present its novel legal theory.
I guess it is Raxco's PerfectDisk to defrag my disks from now on....
Isn't that religious discrimination in the workplace? Seems like a cut and dried case to me. I'm sure the Co$ will lawyer up and try to fight it, but I don't see how they could possibly win this case.
Diskeeper is not a country club. It's not some sort of fraternal organization of old men in funny hats.
It is a COMPANY. It EMPLOYS People.
Religious preferences, or training has nothing at all to do with the ability to program software. So it's not like some big hairy dude getting mad since the strip club won't let him on the pole.
The laws are extraordinarily clear about this. You cannot base your decisions on whether to employ somebody, or to continue employing them based on religion. The 1st Amendment does not apply here. Last time I checked PEOPLE, NOT CORPORATIONS enjoyed constitutional protections such as the 1st Amendment.
It's a novel argument, but it won't last 60 seconds in court.
Good to know, that means I won't have to hire Blacks, cripples or homosexuals either.
Oh wait, that's not how it really works now is it?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Some people don't feel they need to behave unless there is an omniscient parental figure monitoring their every thought. Essentially a large group of people never progressed beyond childhood. They are just children with a job and a mortgage.
When referring to Scientology as a "church", please put quotes around the word "church".... because, well... it's not.
Anyone who says otherwise is either stupid, or lying... and, if you disagree with this then you must be, by definition, complicit in their crimes.
Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high levelI, publicly avowed Scientologist who has given millions to his Church ...but we're repeating ourselves...
When has prior law ever mattered to the Church of Scientology?
In this case, the Church of Scientology is not, to my knowledge, being sued. But Diskeeper is going to find out, like many companies have, that the law starts to matter to public corporations very quickly when equal opportunity violations happen.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
they are confusing their right to free speech as the right to force people to listen - sure they can hold all the scientology sessions they want, but employee's shouldn't be forced to go and it shouldn't be allowed to impact on their jobs.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
As one of my professors loved to say:
You can fire someone for no reason, but you can't fire them for the wrong reason.
Well, doesn't believing in ancient (or even modern) nonsense demonstrate a severe lack of critical thinking skills? I believe that could have a negative impact on job performance. What if their religious belief is having a negative impact on their job? You still can't fire that person?
Yes, but the Constitution applies to the PEOPLE of America, NOT corporations.
Forcing someone to actively practice a religion is probably illegal
There's no 'probably' about it. It is illegal.
but requiring someone to be knowledgeable in the religions practices even if it requires training, probably isn't anymore illegal than requiring someone to receive training about how to operate a piece of machinery.
Cause that makes sense. A company that develops software would have need of its employees being knowledgeable in any religion.
The "link" (however security-audited and tested) that was entirely removed for Server 2008/Vista? Really?
Christ, freetard. Get a grip.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Religions more than carry their weight in society. They don't pay taxes, but they do provide services to the community that more than make up for that, which would cost the state far more to provide on its own than the tax revenue it would gain.
Furthermore, many of the great institutions in America were started by churches, including most hospitals and the primary school system. All were run as non-profits, and most still are. If a church is making a profit that they aren't re-investing in ministry to the community in which they live, there's something wrong with that church.
Nope. Religion is fundamentally belief in a deity or a particular set of values or both. Believing in a deity does not indicate anything wrong with critical thinking skills any more than believing in string theory. Both involve belief in things that are currently untestable. Similarly, in many ways, the rules of mathematics are arbitrary. The operations have some basis in reason, but so too do nearly all religious rules, when examined in the context of conditions at the time and place those rules were established.
This is, of course, ignoring the question of people who continue to dogmatically believe in something even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That's a completely different matter altogether. However, such dogmatism is not an inherent characteristic of all religions, nor inherently true of all religious people. Thus, painting religion in general with such a broad brush just makes you look every bit as closed-minded and arrogant as you are portraying religious people to be.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That is total and utter bullshit. There is more than adequate proof throughout the ages that religion retards society. It is the basis of many of the wars we have fought and continue to fight, it is the basis of much of the discrimination that we still see practiced, and it is the basis of many teachings that threaten the future of mankind on this planet - such as the ban on birth control by the Catholic church.
Not true. They use the provision of these "services" as the basis for spreading their beliefs. You can't get the "services" without the propaganda. If you want that, go work for Diskeeper.
Lets see what religion brings to the table right now:
The Bible, like many religious texts, is hate literature writ big.
And that just means that the money was there, and that it could have been just as easily raised by taxation, keeping religion out of it. So, why did religion do this? So that they could get their religious teachings as part of the system. Start class with prayer. Keep a cross in the classroom. Provide jobs for the faithful, rather than for secular teachers.
Fuck that shit. The world wil be better off once the last religion is abandoned.
Yeah... but the first amendment also does not prevent a private employer from discriminating on the basis of religion either, because it is impossible for a private employer to violate the first amendment (see state action doctrine). Instead, the violations (if there are any) are of federal statutory law.. and if a statute is deemed to violate the constitution the constitution will win. It looks like Diskeeper is trying to argue that current statutes that these employees are using to sue them are unconstitutional restraints on their first amendment rights to practice their religion. This is an interesting issue since there definitely are cases where it is completely acceptable to have private discriminate based on religion.... like for example it is perfectly acceptable to prevent non-Catholics from becoming Catholic priests. However, since Diskeeper maintains an outward appearance of being a normal, for-profit company, it will likely not get the extra leeway that an organization based around a particular religion would receive. Scientology is a whack-job cult, but its tax-exempt status is still a matter of law (unless they manage to screw up and lose it again).
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The uncertainty principle says that you can't know the exact location and velocity of a particle. It doesn't say that a space warlord nuked some aliens on Earth thousands of years ago, set up a force field to keep their souls trapped here, that those trapped souls are the source of all problems in the world, and that the only way to get rid of them is to pay the Church of Scientology thousands of dollars to take courses.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Evangelical Christians have been doing this for years. You've either 'found Jesus' or you're out. And complaining about a hostile workplace can work both ways. The Christians can claim a hostile environment is being created by those of other faiths in their workplace.
Have gnu, will travel.
Oh, please. Slashdot activists are going to kill DiskKeeper's product. Just like they killed Microsoft. Right.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Well, I would posit that the "hate literature writ big" would accurately describe your entire post. That anti-religion thing has sure made you a better person, huh?
Christianity, properly practiced, is none of the things you describe it to be. I go to a church that practices it properly. Not one full of legalistic judgmentalism, just full of serving one another and our community. Can your atheistic "community" say it does that? For free?
A religion does two things: Prays to God, and passes the collection basket.
Scientology is not a religion.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion.
Tag lost or not installed.
So how much of Linux was programmed by avowed Scientologists? Christian fanatics? Or other types of people who some others might not like?
Will we really want to split up the world along such kinds of lines?
In a civilized country this "church" would be declared to be a criminal organization, banned, and its leaders would be prosecuted for fraud, extortion and other obviously illegal activities -- all without a need for a single complaint or a civil lawsuit because this is what police and criminal courts are for.
However in US, where people value "freedom" (the American version of "freedom" that means "you can get away with anything as long as you are rich enough"), they would rather pretend, it's all perfectly normal, and instead chase pot smokers and random Arabs.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Religions more than carry their weight in society. They don't pay taxes, but they do provide services to the community that more than make up for that, which would cost the state far more to provide on its own than the tax revenue it would gain.
I challenge you to back up that statement with any verifiable data. Because churches don't have to file form 990, there's NO way to verify that they do indeed put substantial money back into the community. Some do, some don't. (And some own the office building across the street, and have just installed really gorgeous travertine mosaics in the elevator lobbies of all the floors they occupy.)
Based on good estimates of how much churches actually spend on works, it turns out that people who give only to secular charities end up putting MORE money back into the community. This is because most charities run at 10-20% admin overhead, and churches run much higher, so much less of the money donated to the church actually goes to program.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Only a very tiny percentage of Microsoft's customers read this site. I'd wager that a significantly larger percentage of diskeeper's do.
I personally don't care if the developer killed his wife or not - if the filesystem works, it works.
While working at a place may have you end up with forced Scientology indoctrination, I really don't think a file system is going to make you kill your wife.
However, I'd say that a program with a root-level access to the disk made by a Scientologist is a risky thing to have on your computer. While the CoS has officially abandoned their Fair Game doctrine, I would not go so far as to assume it is completely abandoned in practice. Maybe I'm paranoid, but techincally, the moment you oppose them, your data may be theirs. It's not like we can inspect the source.
Ignore this signature. By order.
When the prayers kick off, stand up, go outside, and ask them to call you back when they are done. I did this and very soon they dropped off the agenda.
[FUCK BETA]
What kind of logic is that? You assert the Uncertainty Principle and conclude that science may or may not be right.
Then it follows that the Uncertainty Principle itself may or may not be right!
*POOF*, there goes your argument.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
First, quantum mechanics "proves" no such thing. What you're talking about related to the fact that atomic scale objects (molecules, atoms, protons, neutrons, etc) behave in ways consistent both with waves and particles.
Second, the uncertainty principle deals with PARTICLES ONLY, in that you can not know with infinite precision both the location of a particle, and it's velocity. The greater precision you measure one, the less certain the other becomes.
Third, you have proven beyond a doubt that having a low slashdot UID truly does NOT mean one is smarter than high UID users. For this, I thank you.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Ahem... If I were to walk into, say, a predominately black church, stand at the pulpit and say "Water is wet, niggers!" my 'correctness' would not even slightly dampen the raw power of trollishness that I have just unleashed.
When are you insecure nerds (I'm a secure nerd, myself) going to learn that being smart and being a douchbag don't go hand in hand, nor does being right excuse unnecessarily rude behavior. People like to joke that nerds can't get girls, but it's just not true. Nerds can get girls, but nerds who've never bothered to spend even an ounce of thought about social graces don't get along with much of ANYBODY (especially girls), except similar people who are willing to overlook your social ineptitudes out of sheer loneliness.
BTW, this applies to that "I'm going to be so helpful and easy to push over she'll HAVE to love me" train of thought too, which is a thought that most people would easily see the flaw in, if they bothered to spend the effort thinking about it.
In short, anyone who can successfully manage memory in C should EASILY be able to discern at least basic social rules and strategies. Slinging terms like 'freetard' because someone is misinformed about a recent development in some obscure topic is 10x the fail of getting the fact wrong in the first place.
I don't know how it is around your family and friends, but in THIS place, you're not the brightest bulb in the box, there are many bright bulbs here. Random insults at strangers on the internet don't make you look cool, or too smart for the rest of us, or 'leet' or whatever you're going for, it makes you look immature. The GP was troll, flamebait and informative all in one, but I would argue that it's more of the first one than it is the last.
You know what the fun thing is? I agree with you.
I did not call NeverVotedBush a freetard because he was "uninformed." I called him a freetard because he is very much exemplifying the knee-jerk, "MUST TIE EVERYTHING INTO WHY WINDOWS SUCKS" attitude that pervades a very large part of Slashdot. The groupthink that anything even peripherally related to Windows or Microsoft, whether or not it still applies, is--well, more or less precisely that: the act of a freetard. It's a behavior pattern, not simply a pejorative.
And for what it's worth, I agree with you regarding insecure nerds. My fiancee might suggest that it doesn't quite apply to me, though. ;-) Or, at least, not IRL, and I don't consider being pointed and aggressive online to be a mark of security or insecurity. I have no real issue with being as pointed as the situation warrants--and given that the person I replied to is more or less a troll himself, "very pointed" was the order of the day. You'll notice that in speaking to you, to another poster who writes with a degree of eloquence and intelligence, I'm making a concerted effort to be respectful and explain my position. "NeverVotedBush" does not rate that, and so I did not do so. :-)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
would you expect promotion from a $cientology-based organization to include anything but non-fact based opinion?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
It seems to be that falsely claiming you are officially abandoning your Fair Game doctrine would be perfectly fine under the Fair Game doctrine.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
A wiccan might not be able to hold a job as an ED nurse if she were required by her religion to display numerous dangling body piercings that could become entangled in tubing, patient body parts, etc. (not to single out witches but this is a matter I actually had to deal with).
Ah, but that Wiccan, if they were indeed fired over this matter, would not be fired for being a Wiccan: they'd be fired for wearing jewelry that interferes with their ability to do their job. If anyone else did the same thing without citing religious reasons and then get fired for refusing to remove them, nobody would bat an eyelash at that.
The Wiccan in question may bring up their religion, but - and this is important - it'd be THEM who did so. The employer, throughout the whole process, would be entirely agnostic, and would at no point care about the religion of the employee at all.
I think these two things - religion obviously and demonstrably NOT being the reason for the firing, and there being ANOTHER reason for the firing - would quash any argument that it's religious discrimination.