You do realize there were almost 2 million federal cases last year? Even if the Supreme Court was in session 24/7 for the entire years, they'd have to hear arguments, rule, and write an opinion every 20 seconds to avoid ignoring any of them.

There's a distinction between "free speech" as a legal concept, and "free speech" as a moral concept. Yes, this doesn't infringe on his right to free speech from a legal standpoint. But then again, I've not seen anyone suggesting boycotts like this should be legally banned.

But this is ultimately an "argumentum ad baculum", which I consider immoral behavior even in cases where it's legal to do so.

Was his resignation actually voluntary? Or was this one of those "you can either resign, or we're going to fire you" deals?

We ought to be fighting to discourage the practice, not demanding more of it.

Corps shouldn't dig into employee lives. But if we want that to be the social norm, we can't threaten to boycott companies for not doing a sufficiently good job at it.

Don't forget that while your actual votes are secret, whether or not you voted and which party you are registered for is public record. What happens if your employer decides maybe he doesn't like having so many registered Democrats/Republicans on the payroll?

And conversely, we have the right to criticize your criticism.

I work with a number of people I don't particularly like. As long as they're doing their job and act professionally, I don't care. I'm not there to party.

So where do you draw the line?

The office door. Eich's employment shouldn't be based on what he's doing in his personal time. If he says something intolerant at work, then yeah, fire him.

If he'd said any of that at work, you'd have a point. But think of the precedent here. Do you want your employer monitoring your political views outside of work and firing you if they think one of your opinions could prove embarassing to the company in the future?

Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail, but not to allow the same option in the form of "virtual DVDs" that you could "check out" through their website, and stream them while they're checked out to you?

DVDs are covered by the first sale doctrine (c.f. Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and the movie companies have no legal basis to stop Netflix from renting out the DVDs. Digital copies aren't covered by the first sale doctrine and thus require licenses.

Who said anything about regulation? I'm not saying Kickstarter should be illegal, I'm just saying it's foolish to participate in for things like this.

Code you develop under the old headset will still run on the new ones

Will it? Why would it? Facebook gets no future money form you, why would they care if your old dev kit code still works?

you just migrate to newer versions of the SDK and make whatever tweaks are needed to keep running

How much is that newer version gonna cost? If the upgrade to SDK 3.0 is $3500 instead of $350 are you still going to buy it? What if the new SDK isn't for sale to the public at all, just companies that Facebook wants to work with?

Oh I know Kickstarter has been explicit. My point isn't that Kickstarter is being misleading. It's that many Kickstarter supporters are being foolish throwing good money into projects like Oculus Rift.

Yeah, and I'm sure people have HD-DVD dev kits too. Doesn't do much good when there's no one making HD-DVDs anymore.

Likewise when Facebook modifies the interface to be completely incompatible with your dev kit, what good is it? Maybe you can make stuff for your own amusement, but you'll never be able to share it with anyone who doesn't also already have their own dev kit.