Frankly, given the piss poor treatment the president receives, I don't blame him one bit for not sticking his neck out.
So you're OK with having a leader who doesn't lead, and instead cowers, and is afraid of criticism? And he's willing to adopt right-wing policies so the right wing won't criticize him, but doesn't mind having the left wing criticize him for the same?
Sorry, I thought you were arguing in favor of the idea of government-mandated support, as TFS seems to argue. My whole argument is that MS should be free to do what it wants, and if it wants to abandon XP customers and leave them high and dry, that should be their right and their choice. If the XP customers don't like it, they're free to choose from many, many options as you point out. We can argue whether this makes business sense for MS, but honestly I don't really care. I'd rather see them shoot themselves in the foot; I have as much love for them and their business as I do for Best Buy and Circuit City. I just really bristle at the idea that MS should be forced by the government to support an old product just because a bunch of people decided to buy it ages ago and never upgrade.
Turns out, when you don't stand up for your rights and let them slowly be eroded because 'it doesn't apply to you' or 'you aren't doing anything wrong', eventually every government in history has used this as justification for even more and more power
I'm sorry, I'm not sure this is correct. Every government in history? Every single one?
I never hear about about the government of Liechtenstein trying to grab inappropriate amounts of power. Or the government of Monaco. Or the government of Andorra, or Iceland. Or Switzerland. Is the government of Fiji trying to grab power and oppress its people? How about the government of Jamaica? I only hear about it from big governments of highly-populated countries, like the US, Russia/USSR, UK, etc.
I'd like to see more companies release the software, code, etc. to the public domain as a formal way of walking away from it, but leaving customers with something more than "gee, must suck to be you" for support.
That'd be nice. It'd also be nice to have a pony that farts rainbows.
If you don't like the terms offered by the company (i.e., "we keep the source of the software, and when we decide to drop support, you're up shit creek."), then don't buy it. You have alternatives, you're just too fucking lazy to make use of them.
The US did some really amazing stuff 40-60 years ago. But it hasn't done anything at all of note in the last 15. It's really quite pathetic that Americans can only trot out stuff they (or more likely, their now-elderly grandparents) did 40+ years ago, and which they have absolutely zero capability to do right now.
Did America put men on the Moon? Sure. Can America put men on the moon now? Not a chance. America can't even put men into low-earth orbit now. America is a sad shadow of its former self, and even resembles Stalinist communist states like East Germany with its constant NSA surveillance and its ridiculously high prison population.
I don't know of a car flaw that can tank an economy, cause a nuclear disaster or cause oil to spill out into the sea. But a software flaw can do all these things.
The risk to society is too high for things to continue in this way
If software carries these risks, then stop using proprietary software in these applications. If your proprietary software causes a disaster like this, the fault is with the persons who chose to use proprietary software for high-risk applications.
The handy thing about Linux is that it's free and usually pretty easy to update it. You're not stuck with using KDE3.0, you can easily upgrade your distro and use KDE 4.11, and it won't cost you one red cent. This isn't true for Windows. Also, unlike Windows, Linux software generally doesn't get remarkably slower with new releases.
Sorry, but this is absolutely wrong. The codes are still secret, you still have to go to the dealer to have it read or repaired. The only thing the government did was standardize on one particular connector and on a small subset of the codes, namely those dealing with emissions. So if some emission-related component fails and the car's ECU flags a code saying such, then you're in luck: you can get an aftermarket code reader to see this, and clear the code after you replace that component. If some other code is flagged for something entirely different, then you'll just see "P9876" and have no clue what that means.
It's worse than that; modern cars have a lot more electronic systems than before, and many things are only adjustable by the dealer. For instance, some cars have computer-controlled shocks; they stiffen the fluid (and thus the damping rate) when the car is in a turn, but not when driving straight. The problem here is that the system has to be zeroed out when the car is standing still, at its normal ride height. If the springs sag or any changes are made to the suspension, you have to go back to the dealer so they can re-zero your suspension. An aftermarket tool doesn't have access to this stuff. There's also lots of features where if you want to add some factory option, perhaps by buying the part used on Ebay, you still have to go to the dealer and spend hundreds of dollars for them to enable it in software. You can't just bolt it on and go. This also applies to keys. On the latest cars, you can't just program a key for a car; you have to program the car to accept the key. Only dealerships have the hardware to do this.
Companies exist to make money. Yes, they could continue to provide security updates for XP for little money, relatively, but why should they? Why should MS be forced to do something that's only going to hurt their profitability (in their opinion)?
You can continue to use XP for as long as you wish. If you don't like that it doesn't have security updates anymore and is open to hackers, then switch to something else. No one owes you a free OS, or an OS that gets unpaid support indefinitely (no home users are paying MS $x/year for XP support). Either pay up for a new MS OS like 7 or 8.1, or if you don't want to spend any money, just download an excellent Linux distro like Mint for free and install it yourself. This isn't 1997; there's lots of alternatives now.
This bitching and moaning is absolutely pathetic. It's like a bunch of people have 1990-era cars that are all falling apart, and they're complaining that they can't get free repairs from the automaker. Someone comes along and points out that they can get brand-new Teslas for free, they just need to call and ask for one to be delivered, but they whine that they want their old 1990 Beretta fixed up instead and that the Tesla can't as easily drive across the country.
Why? What benefit is there to the company to do this?
How about this: if you don't like the product as offered by the company (for instance, the limited support period), then go find a different product from a competing company. It's not like there's a lack of competition in OS software; there's dozens of Linux vendors like Red Hat who will happily provide you an OS that really is open-source just in case you want someone else to support you later.
The problem here is proprietary software; because of its proprietary nature, it becomes impossible to support after the vendor decides to move on. The solution isn't to force the vendor to alter their business practices or to give away their source code; the solution is to move to vendors that already have open source code, and/or better business practices. If doing that is too difficult for you, too bad; you should have chosen better.
Basically, this guy's advice is "let's all just succumb to inertia and think in the short-term only!!"
If something's too hard, even though it'll produce a better long-term results, it isn't worth doing according to this guy because too many people are stupid and lazy and want quick fixes rather than to do things right, which takes more time. In the short term, this will seem like a winning strategy, but over the long term so much cruft will build up that we'll be in a much worse position.
I'm sorry, I don't see the relevance here. Obviously, Henry Ford was an anti-Jewish bigot, though that wasn't uncommon way back in the early 1900s (not that it excuses it, but go back just 30 years and see how many people would be in favor of gay marriage...). I wasn't talking about Ford the man or FoMoCo circa 1920, I was talking about FoMoCo circa 2014. But even back then, expressing pro-Jewish (or at least anti-Jewish-discrimination) opinions as a Ford employee in 1920 probably would have gotten you fired. Sucks, but that's the way it is when you work for someone else. Of course, when unions came around, they were able to exert power against company management, so companies firing employees for things too petty and irrelevant to work could have triggered a strike or other problems from the union (which is a good case for unionization). But there's give and take here; suppose Ford (2014) fires some employee who makes a big public name for himself as a KKK member, trying to revive the KKK's image and bring back anti-black bigotry the way they had 100 years ago. How many people are going to complain about his firing? Would the union care? Probably not; who wants to be associated with a KKK member? But firing an employee for donating to some anti-gay-marriage campaign might be deemed petty enough in that locality and that company to get pushback from the union (which is likely comprised of more conservative people, I'm guessing. Michigan isn't really the most socially liberal place in the US; it's no San Francisco.). But, that's between the union and the company, and here we're talking about some rank-and-file assembly-line employee, not the company CEO. There's a gigantic difference between the two. The company CEO's opinions can be assumed to mirror the company's; some low-level employee's cannot. But back to Henry; yeah it sucked he was so anti-Jewish, but he basically owned the company so what can you do? At the time, that wasn't an unpopular sentiment, so it probably didn't cost him much in sales, unfortunately. As I've said all along, everyone has the right to their opinion, they just don't have the right to be insulated from consequences stemming from airing their opinion in public. Sometimes this works out for the better (bigoted attitudes leading to public criticism, such as what happened with Chick Fil-A's CEO), sometimes for the worse (activists losing their jobs).
Thanks for the kudos on my username. It's too bad I got stomped by a walking tree. Or was I killed by a Rider of Rohan? I can't quite remember. Whichever way I died, I blame that idiot Ugluk.
It depends on if you're doing GbE or regular 10/100. GbE transceivers auto-negotiate, so you don't really even need to bother wiring connectors correctly. 10/100 transceivers don't do this, however.
No, it's absolutely objective, and not subjective in any way whatsoever. The proposition is to deny rights to a group of people. What the fuck is subjective about it?
Not least, it includes the assumption that marriage is a right.
It's a privilege that the state has provided to couples. It's discriminatory to make a privilege available to some people and not all people...and we're back to the Muslims that want you stoned to death for promoting homosexuality. Or are you also supporting Sharia law?
You see, they think you're the bigoted one.
The definition of "bigot" is "one strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, politics, etc and intolerant of those who differ", so they'd be in violation of the definition of the word.
Look, it's obvious here that you're just a bigot who's twisting words around to try to justify your own insane bigotry and hatred of homosexuals. I'm done here. Have a nice day, and fuck off.
So all Muslims should be sacked because they all oppose gay marriage (as a side effect of believing homosexuality to be anti-Islamic)? No CEO can be Muslim?
Not all Muslims oppose gay marriage, just like not all Christians do. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with having religious beliefs, it has to do with promoting and funding hate groups which seek to enshrine religious values as laws on people who don't share your religion. There's a reason we have separation of church and state, as Thomas Jefferson promoted. Not all Muslims believe in pushing their religion on everyone, just like not all Christians do (just most of the ones in America, apparently).
Someone's support for Prop 8 can't breach your rights either, so just what's the fucking problem here?
YES, it can: the whole fucking point of Prop8 is to breach people's rights using the force of law. Are you really so fucking dense that you don't understand this?
I'm just seriously confused that people are celebrating someone losing their job because they happened to express a political opinion outside of the workplace.
You're confused because you don't understand why people don't like having hate groups push for laws to deny them rights and make them second-class citizens, and don't like people who financially support these hate groups?
You can believe whatever the hell you want, but when you try to have laws enacted to enforce your bigoted views, then people are going to have a real problem with that. If you don't understand that simple concept, then I don't know how to help you.
So I'll rephrase my query in a form that you can maybe answer: If you mention at work that you're "glad Eich is no longer CEO as his gay marriage views are bigoted" and a Muslim colleague complains to HR that your views on gay marriage breach his rights to religious freedom, should you be sacked?
That depends on the company. If I work for Koch Industries, I can probably expect to be sacked. If I work for Whole Foods, I can probably expect nothing, and the Muslim colleague can expect a lecture about respecting diversity.
Incidentally, I've heard of 'right to work' and luckily I live in a jurisdiction in which that does not apply. So ignore the legality and tell me whether you should or not?
That's a matter of individual opinion, which is exactly why we have laws. My opinion is yes, if a company doesn't like your opinions and thinks you're going to cause problems there, then they have every right to terminate you. That's why you don't run around your office pushing your opinions on people if they're not agreeable. And I can't think of a single place in the US where this isn't the case legally. Where are you located where there's no at-will employment? Certainly not any place in the US; employers here can fire you for just cause, and starting political arguments at work, bullying coworkers, etc. is certainly grounds for termination in any sane jurisdiction.
As for that Muslim idiot in they hypothetical example, a person's views can't breach your rights to religious freedom. That sounds exactly like what all the Christian nuts keep spouting. Your religious freedom doesn't mean you get to be insulated from things which offend you or from people who disagree with your religious views.
(btw: pedophilia doesn't necessarily mean it's against their wishes
Yes, actually it does. Minors are legally unable to consent. There are exceptions, which vary state-to-state, for cases where minors have sex with other minors, or with adults that are within a few years of their age. Anything else is statutory rape.
You continuing to attempt to equate relations between legal consenting adults and sexual activity with minors unable to give legal consent just proves you're yet another conservative loon who hates homosexuals and is a bigot.
Wow, you're an idiot. If you really think companies should retain CEOs who are KKK members, there's simply no hope for you.
As for "imposing viewpoints", as a low-level employee, I don't have any power to impose my viewpoint on anyone. CEOs do. And yes, making a nuisance of yourself in the workplace by having ideological arguments of any kind with coworkers is cause for termination. I guess you've never heard of "right to work" or at-will employment.
What the hell are you talking about? No one (sane) is calling for legalized pedophilia, or legalizing any kind of activity which involves victimizing people against their wishes.
Where the hell do you get that idea? Pedophilia involves underage children, people who are unable to give consent. You sound just like all the religious nutjobs who compare homosexuality to bestiality.
The cheapo NVG monocular I have is waterproof to the point where I can throw it in the river and it'll float, and still work fine after I retrieve it. Portable equipment is usually subject to harsher treatment than automotive equipment: cars don't get dropped 6 feet onto concrete.
And we're not talking about GM and Ford low-end cars here, this was about a BMW 7 series, a car that IIRC costs nearly 100k, from a company that doesn't have any kind of bad reputation regarding safety that I can think of, unlike GM and Ford which are infamous for their safety problems and cover-ups. (To be fair, Ford's big incident was the Pinto, which was 40 years ago; I can't think of any recent incidents with their products. These days, GM and Toyota are on my shit-list, GM for the recent ignition-switch fiasco and Toyota for the accelerator pedal fiasco involving bad firmware. Also, at this point I think it's a good idea to stick with European-made cars (both designed and built there), since they're the only ones who seem to really take safety and regulation seriously. Obama's NHTSA (and Bush's before him) has done an atrocious job looking over the automakers, which isn't surprising since our government these days "partners with" industry to help them increase profits and cover up defects and look the other way when people are killed.)
People have every right to advocate treating others as second-class citizens through quirks of birth. People even have the right to advocate slavery, or any other horrible thing you might think of. You can't have freedom of speech without allowing people to express (IMO) wrong views.
Freedom of speech (and association) is one big way we progress as a society, so that when there's things wrong with society (like people being treated as second-class citizens through a quirk of birth), people are able to speak out about it, and over time change society's attitudes about it, to the point where the traditionalists who want to hold onto the old way of treating such people poorly are called out and shunned for their hateful speech.
You can get consumer-grade NVG equipment for a couple hundred dollars or less now. Here's an example. There's no reason they can't put this technology in cars fairly cheaply.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, given the piss poor treatment the president receives, I don't blame him one bit for not sticking his neck out.
So you're OK with having a leader who doesn't lead, and instead cowers, and is afraid of criticism? And he's willing to adopt right-wing policies so the right wing won't criticize him, but doesn't mind having the left wing criticize him for the same?
Sorry, I thought you were arguing in favor of the idea of government-mandated support, as TFS seems to argue. My whole argument is that MS should be free to do what it wants, and if it wants to abandon XP customers and leave them high and dry, that should be their right and their choice. If the XP customers don't like it, they're free to choose from many, many options as you point out. We can argue whether this makes business sense for MS, but honestly I don't really care. I'd rather see them shoot themselves in the foot; I have as much love for them and their business as I do for Best Buy and Circuit City. I just really bristle at the idea that MS should be forced by the government to support an old product just because a bunch of people decided to buy it ages ago and never upgrade.
Turns out, when you don't stand up for your rights and let them slowly be eroded because 'it doesn't apply to you' or 'you aren't doing anything wrong', eventually every government in history has used this as justification for even more and more power
I'm sorry, I'm not sure this is correct. Every government in history? Every single one?
I never hear about about the government of Liechtenstein trying to grab inappropriate amounts of power. Or the government of Monaco. Or the government of Andorra, or Iceland. Or Switzerland. Is the government of Fiji trying to grab power and oppress its people? How about the government of Jamaica? I only hear about it from big governments of highly-populated countries, like the US, Russia/USSR, UK, etc.
I'd like to see more companies release the software, code, etc. to the public domain as a formal way of walking away from it, but leaving customers with something more than "gee, must suck to be you" for support.
That'd be nice. It'd also be nice to have a pony that farts rainbows.
If you don't like the terms offered by the company (i.e., "we keep the source of the software, and when we decide to drop support, you're up shit creek."), then don't buy it. You have alternatives, you're just too fucking lazy to make use of them.
The US did some really amazing stuff 40-60 years ago. But it hasn't done anything at all of note in the last 15. It's really quite pathetic that Americans can only trot out stuff they (or more likely, their now-elderly grandparents) did 40+ years ago, and which they have absolutely zero capability to do right now.
Did America put men on the Moon? Sure. Can America put men on the moon now? Not a chance. America can't even put men into low-earth orbit now. America is a sad shadow of its former self, and even resembles Stalinist communist states like East Germany with its constant NSA surveillance and its ridiculously high prison population.
I don't know of a car flaw that can tank an economy, cause a nuclear disaster or cause oil to spill out into the sea. But a software flaw can do all these things.
The risk to society is too high for things to continue in this way
If software carries these risks, then stop using proprietary software in these applications. If your proprietary software causes a disaster like this, the fault is with the persons who chose to use proprietary software for high-risk applications.
The handy thing about Linux is that it's free and usually pretty easy to update it. You're not stuck with using KDE3.0, you can easily upgrade your distro and use KDE 4.11, and it won't cost you one red cent. This isn't true for Windows. Also, unlike Windows, Linux software generally doesn't get remarkably slower with new releases.
Sorry, but this is absolutely wrong. The codes are still secret, you still have to go to the dealer to have it read or repaired. The only thing the government did was standardize on one particular connector and on a small subset of the codes, namely those dealing with emissions. So if some emission-related component fails and the car's ECU flags a code saying such, then you're in luck: you can get an aftermarket code reader to see this, and clear the code after you replace that component. If some other code is flagged for something entirely different, then you'll just see "P9876" and have no clue what that means.
It's worse than that; modern cars have a lot more electronic systems than before, and many things are only adjustable by the dealer. For instance, some cars have computer-controlled shocks; they stiffen the fluid (and thus the damping rate) when the car is in a turn, but not when driving straight. The problem here is that the system has to be zeroed out when the car is standing still, at its normal ride height. If the springs sag or any changes are made to the suspension, you have to go back to the dealer so they can re-zero your suspension. An aftermarket tool doesn't have access to this stuff. There's also lots of features where if you want to add some factory option, perhaps by buying the part used on Ebay, you still have to go to the dealer and spend hundreds of dollars for them to enable it in software. You can't just bolt it on and go. This also applies to keys. On the latest cars, you can't just program a key for a car; you have to program the car to accept the key. Only dealerships have the hardware to do this.
Companies exist to make money. Yes, they could continue to provide security updates for XP for little money, relatively, but why should they? Why should MS be forced to do something that's only going to hurt their profitability (in their opinion)?
You can continue to use XP for as long as you wish. If you don't like that it doesn't have security updates anymore and is open to hackers, then switch to something else. No one owes you a free OS, or an OS that gets unpaid support indefinitely (no home users are paying MS $x/year for XP support). Either pay up for a new MS OS like 7 or 8.1, or if you don't want to spend any money, just download an excellent Linux distro like Mint for free and install it yourself. This isn't 1997; there's lots of alternatives now.
This bitching and moaning is absolutely pathetic. It's like a bunch of people have 1990-era cars that are all falling apart, and they're complaining that they can't get free repairs from the automaker. Someone comes along and points out that they can get brand-new Teslas for free, they just need to call and ask for one to be delivered, but they whine that they want their old 1990 Beretta fixed up instead and that the Tesla can't as easily drive across the country.
Why? What benefit is there to the company to do this?
How about this: if you don't like the product as offered by the company (for instance, the limited support period), then go find a different product from a competing company. It's not like there's a lack of competition in OS software; there's dozens of Linux vendors like Red Hat who will happily provide you an OS that really is open-source just in case you want someone else to support you later.
The problem here is proprietary software; because of its proprietary nature, it becomes impossible to support after the vendor decides to move on. The solution isn't to force the vendor to alter their business practices or to give away their source code; the solution is to move to vendors that already have open source code, and/or better business practices. If doing that is too difficult for you, too bad; you should have chosen better.
Basically, this guy's advice is "let's all just succumb to inertia and think in the short-term only!!"
If something's too hard, even though it'll produce a better long-term results, it isn't worth doing according to this guy because too many people are stupid and lazy and want quick fixes rather than to do things right, which takes more time. In the short term, this will seem like a winning strategy, but over the long term so much cruft will build up that we'll be in a much worse position.
I'm sorry, I don't see the relevance here. Obviously, Henry Ford was an anti-Jewish bigot, though that wasn't uncommon way back in the early 1900s (not that it excuses it, but go back just 30 years and see how many people would be in favor of gay marriage...). I wasn't talking about Ford the man or FoMoCo circa 1920, I was talking about FoMoCo circa 2014. But even back then, expressing pro-Jewish (or at least anti-Jewish-discrimination) opinions as a Ford employee in 1920 probably would have gotten you fired. Sucks, but that's the way it is when you work for someone else. Of course, when unions came around, they were able to exert power against company management, so companies firing employees for things too petty and irrelevant to work could have triggered a strike or other problems from the union (which is a good case for unionization). But there's give and take here; suppose Ford (2014) fires some employee who makes a big public name for himself as a KKK member, trying to revive the KKK's image and bring back anti-black bigotry the way they had 100 years ago. How many people are going to complain about his firing? Would the union care? Probably not; who wants to be associated with a KKK member? But firing an employee for donating to some anti-gay-marriage campaign might be deemed petty enough in that locality and that company to get pushback from the union (which is likely comprised of more conservative people, I'm guessing. Michigan isn't really the most socially liberal place in the US; it's no San Francisco.). But, that's between the union and the company, and here we're talking about some rank-and-file assembly-line employee, not the company CEO. There's a gigantic difference between the two. The company CEO's opinions can be assumed to mirror the company's; some low-level employee's cannot. But back to Henry; yeah it sucked he was so anti-Jewish, but he basically owned the company so what can you do? At the time, that wasn't an unpopular sentiment, so it probably didn't cost him much in sales, unfortunately. As I've said all along, everyone has the right to their opinion, they just don't have the right to be insulated from consequences stemming from airing their opinion in public. Sometimes this works out for the better (bigoted attitudes leading to public criticism, such as what happened with Chick Fil-A's CEO), sometimes for the worse (activists losing their jobs).
Thanks for the kudos on my username. It's too bad I got stomped by a walking tree. Or was I killed by a Rider of Rohan? I can't quite remember. Whichever way I died, I blame that idiot Ugluk.
It depends on if you're doing GbE or regular 10/100. GbE transceivers auto-negotiate, so you don't really even need to bother wiring connectors correctly. 10/100 transceivers don't do this, however.
That's a very subjective view
No, it's absolutely objective, and not subjective in any way whatsoever. The proposition is to deny rights to a group of people. What the fuck is subjective about it?
Not least, it includes the assumption that marriage is a right.
It's a privilege that the state has provided to couples. It's discriminatory to make a privilege available to some people and not all people. ..and we're back to the Muslims that want you stoned to death for promoting homosexuality. Or are you also supporting Sharia law?
You see, they think you're the bigoted one.
The definition of "bigot" is "one strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, politics, etc and intolerant of those who differ", so they'd be in violation of the definition of the word.
Look, it's obvious here that you're just a bigot who's twisting words around to try to justify your own insane bigotry and hatred of homosexuals. I'm done here. Have a nice day, and fuck off.
So all Muslims should be sacked because they all oppose gay marriage (as a side effect of believing homosexuality to be anti-Islamic)? No CEO can be Muslim?
Not all Muslims oppose gay marriage, just like not all Christians do. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with having religious beliefs, it has to do with promoting and funding hate groups which seek to enshrine religious values as laws on people who don't share your religion. There's a reason we have separation of church and state, as Thomas Jefferson promoted. Not all Muslims believe in pushing their religion on everyone, just like not all Christians do (just most of the ones in America, apparently).
Someone's support for Prop 8 can't breach your rights either, so just what's the fucking problem here?
YES, it can: the whole fucking point of Prop8 is to breach people's rights using the force of law. Are you really so fucking dense that you don't understand this?
I'm just seriously confused that people are celebrating someone losing their job because they happened to express a political opinion outside of the workplace.
You're confused because you don't understand why people don't like having hate groups push for laws to deny them rights and make them second-class citizens, and don't like people who financially support these hate groups?
You can believe whatever the hell you want, but when you try to have laws enacted to enforce your bigoted views, then people are going to have a real problem with that. If you don't understand that simple concept, then I don't know how to help you.
So I'll rephrase my query in a form that you can maybe answer: If you mention at work that you're "glad Eich is no longer CEO as his gay marriage views are bigoted" and a Muslim colleague complains to HR that your views on gay marriage breach his rights to religious freedom, should you be sacked?
That depends on the company. If I work for Koch Industries, I can probably expect to be sacked. If I work for Whole Foods, I can probably expect nothing, and the Muslim colleague can expect a lecture about respecting diversity.
Incidentally, I've heard of 'right to work' and luckily I live in a jurisdiction in which that does not apply. So ignore the legality and tell me whether you should or not?
That's a matter of individual opinion, which is exactly why we have laws. My opinion is yes, if a company doesn't like your opinions and thinks you're going to cause problems there, then they have every right to terminate you. That's why you don't run around your office pushing your opinions on people if they're not agreeable. And I can't think of a single place in the US where this isn't the case legally. Where are you located where there's no at-will employment? Certainly not any place in the US; employers here can fire you for just cause, and starting political arguments at work, bullying coworkers, etc. is certainly grounds for termination in any sane jurisdiction.
As for that Muslim idiot in they hypothetical example, a person's views can't breach your rights to religious freedom. That sounds exactly like what all the Christian nuts keep spouting. Your religious freedom doesn't mean you get to be insulated from things which offend you or from people who disagree with your religious views.
(btw: pedophilia doesn't necessarily mean it's against their wishes
Yes, actually it does. Minors are legally unable to consent. There are exceptions, which vary state-to-state, for cases where minors have sex with other minors, or with adults that are within a few years of their age. Anything else is statutory rape.
You continuing to attempt to equate relations between legal consenting adults and sexual activity with minors unable to give legal consent just proves you're yet another conservative loon who hates homosexuals and is a bigot.
Wow, you're an idiot. If you really think companies should retain CEOs who are KKK members, there's simply no hope for you.
As for "imposing viewpoints", as a low-level employee, I don't have any power to impose my viewpoint on anyone. CEOs do. And yes, making a nuisance of yourself in the workplace by having ideological arguments of any kind with coworkers is cause for termination. I guess you've never heard of "right to work" or at-will employment.
What the hell are you talking about? No one (sane) is calling for legalized pedophilia, or legalizing any kind of activity which involves victimizing people against their wishes.
Where the hell do you get that idea? Pedophilia involves underage children, people who are unable to give consent. You sound just like all the religious nutjobs who compare homosexuality to bestiality.
The cheapo NVG monocular I have is waterproof to the point where I can throw it in the river and it'll float, and still work fine after I retrieve it. Portable equipment is usually subject to harsher treatment than automotive equipment: cars don't get dropped 6 feet onto concrete.
And we're not talking about GM and Ford low-end cars here, this was about a BMW 7 series, a car that IIRC costs nearly 100k, from a company that doesn't have any kind of bad reputation regarding safety that I can think of, unlike GM and Ford which are infamous for their safety problems and cover-ups. (To be fair, Ford's big incident was the Pinto, which was 40 years ago; I can't think of any recent incidents with their products. These days, GM and Toyota are on my shit-list, GM for the recent ignition-switch fiasco and Toyota for the accelerator pedal fiasco involving bad firmware. Also, at this point I think it's a good idea to stick with European-made cars (both designed and built there), since they're the only ones who seem to really take safety and regulation seriously. Obama's NHTSA (and Bush's before him) has done an atrocious job looking over the automakers, which isn't surprising since our government these days "partners with" industry to help them increase profits and cover up defects and look the other way when people are killed.)
People have every right to advocate treating others as second-class citizens through quirks of birth. People even have the right to advocate slavery, or any other horrible thing you might think of. You can't have freedom of speech without allowing people to express (IMO) wrong views.
Freedom of speech (and association) is one big way we progress as a society, so that when there's things wrong with society (like people being treated as second-class citizens through a quirk of birth), people are able to speak out about it, and over time change society's attitudes about it, to the point where the traditionalists who want to hold onto the old way of treating such people poorly are called out and shunned for their hateful speech.
Legally, yes.
Political leanings are not a "creed". Please point to any example of someone suing based in this and winning.
You conservatives are ridiculous. You're just like all the Obamabots who calls anyone who criticizes Obama a "racist".
You can get consumer-grade NVG equipment for a couple hundred dollars or less now. Here's an example. There's no reason they can't put this technology in cars fairly cheaply.