Wow. So, you can factually measure a "hostile working environment", no opinion necessary? Set up a meter to record hostility radiation, maybe? And laws are always, always, in full, unquestionable agreement with what is right? If something is legal it's OK, and vice-versa? 'cause, laws in different places (and times!) are different: if this had happened in somewhere else (and assuming you're right that this memo was legal while the firing was illegal, which I really, really think you're super wrong about... but I'll get to that) where the laws were against the ex-employee, you'd suddenly be shouting down anyone saying Google was the bad guy, would you? "The law on this side of the border says this is hostile, the guy should never work again! Wait, hang on, let me check that map again..."

So, yeah: I absolutely, 100%, disagree that this isn't a matter of opinion, (possibly alongside law and facts, but absolutely not in complete deference to the former, nor singular interpretation of the latter). Which is why the rest of what you said is pretty much irrelevant to me. But, for funsies, let's play on your yard for a bit.

Well, buttercup, funny thing. You've linked... umm... jury instructions from one court about a subset of hostile work environment cases? OK. And they conclude that... let's see, what's that last sentence there... "An employer may be held liable for the actionable third-party harassment of its employees when it ratifies or condones the conduct by failing to investigate and remedy it after learning of it. ... Title VII prohibits discrimination against any individual..." Well, gosh, that looks like it says, if Google hadn't investigated and "remedied" the situation this guy's memo caused, they could be held as ratifying or condoning those actions and could be held liable. Aaand... let me see here... absolutely nothing about what that remedy must or mustn't be. Congratulations: you've supplied one link that does nothing to support your stance, and in fact just confirms Google probably couldn't legally do nothing.

Now, if you'd clicked the little link at the bottom of that page, to "10.5 CIVIL RIGHTS—TITLE VII—HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT—HARASSMENT BECAUSE OF PROTECTED CHARACTERISTICS—ELEMENTS", you'd come to something at least slightly more relevant, and at least slightly more enlightening. (Hey, did you know that sex is one of Title Vii's protected characteristics? Learning is fun!) For one thing, it sets aside the circumstance in which a working environment can be described as hostile, and... hey, what do you know? They mostly boil down to "did the people involved feel it made the environment hostile" and "would a reasonable person feel if made the working environment hostile". (Protip: "reasonable person" is not necessarily synonymous with "person who agrees with you".) Sounds like a matter of opinion to me!

I do love this. In an argument about what constitutes sexual harassment, you were literally linked one click away from a page explaining how this applies. Sooooo close.

Now, you basically have two choices right now. First: find a parent, gives them the baby eyes until they lend you the cash to hire a lawyer because you want to win one over the bad man on the internet, and get them to write you up some cast-iron legal arguments proving that Google was in the wrong here. (And if they do, don't waste posting it time here: contact this guy and let him know you've found a bullshit artist good enough to get him some of that sweet lawsuit payout, if he gives you a cut.) Second: move on. When all it takes to rip your side apart is to read the single link that you supplied, you're in over your head. If you honestly think you're on the side of the "better-informed" here because, what, you managed to find something legal-looking on Google that you really really thought helped you in some way... then, damn, that's legitimately quite sad.

I suppose you could always take a third option and try an actual reply all by yourself, but... who am I kidding. Of course this is what you're going to do. Oh dear.

Cheers, I'll do that! If I don't reply to your inevitable response, it's probably because I'm running far far away, very very fast, towards a bright sun, with a smile on my face and a lighter in my hand to burn all the bridges between here and there I can. (Oh, and 'cause I know you get confused about this: that's an "if". I might still stick around to reply.)

I think my favourite bit about this, apart from you still failing your reading roll (learn the difference between a stated opinion and a claimed fact, cheers), is the use of the "sorry that offends you, snowflake" meme. Aww, bless, you think you're edgey.

By the way, I was serious about that "other tech site" thing, so if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Not sure if you've noticed, but slashdot has started pulling some illiterate, hateful, faux-logical idiots recently.

Stop. Go back to my first comment. Find the first word; it's pretty small, two letters, you may have missed it. Think about that first word. Consider how it may impact on the meaning of the sentence that follows. Try imagining the sentence with and without that word, to see how it changes the meaning of the sentence as a whole. This may help you shed a false assumption you're working from, possibly with a few reading comprehension lessons; if you don't get it, come back and let me know, and I'll try to help you. No guarantees; I'm not a miracle worker.

As a side note, if, while you're doing this, your mind starts wandering to the question of whether the viewpoints you're investing your time in protecting are really worth it, embrace that. Ask yourself if it's really contributing, even in a small way, to making the world overall better for everyone. Take a walk. Look at trees. Talk to friends. Think about people facing struggles you aren't. Spend as much time as you like on it, as much as you can.

If the choices are to make the environment hostile to people who question feminist "dogma", or to allow it to be a hostile environment for woman, Google made the right choice. Oh, and given discrimination laws and their own terms of employment are against the (former) employee's behaviour here, good luck on that "unlawful firing" thing. "5: Insightful" my ass.

As a tangent not directed specifically at (but definitely including) you, this article's comments have been a wakeup call to me on just how awful the wider slashdot community has become. Anyone know of any half-decent tech news sites out there that aren't filled with terrified little people who think 1) that you need a penis to write good code, and 2) you should get to say so, at work, without repercussions?

Without disagreeing with your larger point ...

I've read through about half the comments here (at -1), replies to a question specifically asking how these could be repurposed... and no-one's come up with anything. (Well, except "it could be a low-grade antenna", with no followup on what it could be an antenna for, and a bunch of replies saying it wouldn't work.)

Can you describe some of the "many things" this cable could be repurposed for? I suspect the OP would appreciate it.

Surely that's only important if the plug and cable are limited in what they can do? I mean, if my PC has separate ports for my PS/2 mouse and my PS/2 keyboard, it's important for me to know that the two are different and I shouldn't plug the latter into the socket for the former. It's far less important when they have identical ports and sockets and it doesn't matter which way round they go.

There are absolutely some scenarios where distinguishing them is useful, but they've become small and rare enough (over IT users as a whole, perhaps not for you personally) that, compared to the benefits of just having ports and cables be nigh-interchangeable across most or all or your devices (if it fits, it's good), it's a great trade off; most people don't care how much power their USB cable provides, just that it works. (And, OK, yeah, they probably should care, but that's another issue. And, come to think of it, so is the existence of crappily-made cables that don't fit the standard: that's not a problem with the standard).

I mean, I notice that the big complaint you mention (Displayport/Thunderbolt) is an issue is where there are two physically compatible, but only partially functionally incompatible, cables. That's not "one-plug-for-everything", that's "one plug for some things, and now a second identical plug that does those things but also some more things that the first doesn't"; it's closer to PS/2 than USB. If those two cables had stayed as one that did everything, there'd be no problem... which is exactly where the trend you're arguing against is leading, and has been for the past couple of decades. And damned if life isn't a lot easier than it used to be. For most of us, anyway.

I would not be surprised if news of the NES Classic's demise is being greatly exaggerated.

The summary suggests that the desperately-needed answer to the issue of people being split between multiple communication platforms... is another platform. I probably don't need to go over why that doesn't make much sense but, to summarise: not everyone would go over to it, and then you've just introduced one more circle to the diagram.

Personally, my approach would be an umbrella app, linked to whatever existing platforms you use but abstracting out the particulars, and configurable based on the user's priorities (security, functionality, speed, cost etc). When you want to talk, you add the people (potentially setting some other parameters as well), and it intelligently decides what the best platform is to send your message/host your discussion. "Oh, you want to have a personal discussion with Roy and July? I'll use WhatsApp, they both use it and respond quick.Oh, you need a confidential business discussion with Paula, Derek and Sam? They all use email, but that's a low security channel: do you want to use it anyway, set up a Slack channel with P & D and invite S to join, or Slack with P & D and send a separate message to S by Yammer?"

While universal IM clients go some way towards this, the next steps are to group contacts across services for individuals, start including none-IM contact methods (email, SMS etc), and to pull the decision of how to contact people from the user to the client. That said, I'm out of date of UIMs, it may be that some already do some/all of this?

This is a big one for me, both online and off. Separating 2D and 3D versions into two products (or as a more expensive variant to 2D only) leads to a chicken/egg scenario: I don't yet have a 3D setup, so I'm not buying any 3D content, so I have nothing to warrant a 3D setup, and round and round we go. If it was standard that buying a film online or a boxed disc got you the 2D and 3D versions, I'd have days worth of 3D content by now, and plenty of reason to be pricing up the hardware to view it.

It's similar to what happened with Blu-Ray. Once it became relatively commonplace for Blu-Rays movies to include digital copies, I started buying them far more because I was no longer having to choose between a DVD I could watch pretty much anywhere, or a Blu-Ray which looked nicer.