Commenters To Dropbox CEO: Houston, We Have a Problem 448
theodp (442580) writes "On Friday, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston sought to quell the uproar over the appointment of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the company's board of directors, promising in a blog post that Rice's appointment won't change its stance on privacy. More interesting than Houston's brief blog post on the method-behind-its-Condi-madness (which Dave Winer perhaps better explained a day earlier) is the firestorm in the ever-growing hundreds of comments that follow. So will Dropbox be swayed by the anti-Condi crowd ("If you do not eliminate Rice from your board you lose my business") or stand its ground, heartened by pro-Condi comments ("Good on ya, DB. You have my continued business and even greater admiration")? One imagines that Bush White House experience has left Condi pretty thick-skinned, and IPO riches are presumably on the horizon, but is falling on her "resignation sword" — a la Brendan Eich — out of the question for Condi?"
Ghostery (Score:2)
Ghostery blocked comments powered by Disqus.
Oh well.
Recycling Personalities (Score:4, Interesting)
Now George is a painter, Condi is on the board, Dick -- well, Dick is still a dick. So, are we supposed to forget or what? And forgive? Hard to do when we're still payin' the bills.
Re:Recycling Personalities (Score:5, Informative)
The bills from the Obama administration will dwarf the minor fraction of debt that was from the Iraq war.
Discretionary spending under Obama has grown at the slowest rate for any president since Eisenhower. Admittedly, the sequester has played a big role in this. The annual deficit Obama largely inherited from Bush has been cut in half. Go ahead and live your delusion. Some of us, including the parent poster HAVE moved on. Will you?
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...but when I see the deficit has damn near doubled in 6 years...
The deficit has been reduced by more than half in 6 years. The national debt has increased greatly, because of the huge deficit which Obama inherited from Bush. But seriously, why I am wasting my breath on a fucktard who doesn't know the difference.
Re:Recycling Personalities (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand very clearly the difference between accumulated debt and rate of growth of debt (which is what the deficit is).
At the same time, you should understand that you can't "inherit" a deficit. The idea is poppycock. The budget for each year stands fresh on its own. You can change a massive deficit to a surplus in a single year just by adjusting the numbers in your budget. Yes, interest on the debt (which IS inherited), and a piss poor economic climate (which is inherited to some extent) are burdens on the budget, but it within the power of the budgeters to counteract these. I don't claim it would be an easy choice to do it, or to live with, but it is in point of fact utterly trivial procedurally to do.
A final point I'll throw in just to make the whole discussion even more fun. No President has any control over the budget beyond:
1) Submitting one, which can be mutilated or just replaced by the legislature.
2) Signing off on whatever budget DOES get passed by the legislature (if there is one).
3) Using the bully pulpit, which is not trivial, but still it's just talk and persuasion.
In passing, I call attention to the point that those responsible for making a budget can subvert the whole process by just failing to execute their duty. Both the President and Congress have been guilty of that.
One could argue that a President can take unilateral action, like engaging the military in action, which necessarily leads to hemmorhage in the budget, so yes, that has to be mitigated. However, the legislature can still use the war powers act to limit the effect by limiting the time scale - IF, and it is a big IF, they are willing to stick their neck out.
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At the same time, you should understand that you can't "inherit" a deficit.
1) Every president does so his first year. In OP's claim that the debt doubled during Obama's first 6 years, he was implicitly including Bush's last budget. (Submitted to Congress by Bush 5 months before Obama was elected, 7 months before Obama took office.)
2) It's not possible, barring massive social and economic disruption, to strip the better part of $1 trillion from the deficit in a single year. Massive deficit reduction such as what Obama has accomplished takes time. (BTW, I agree that more needs to be
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In passing, I call attention to the point that those responsible for making a budget can subvert the whole process by just failing to execute their duty. Both the President and Congress have been guilty of that.
This is not a point to be made in passing, it's the entire core of the problem.
Congress hasn't passed an Obama budget since he was sworn into office.
Everything since 2009 has been a continuing resolution based on Bush's last budget.
Even the sequester wasn't a proper budget, as it was just cutting 10% off the previous continuing resolution.
Which puts the lie to your statement that
At the same time, you should understand that you can't "inherit" a deficit. The idea is poppycock. The budget for each year stands fresh on its own.
The real irony of it all is that Republicans want to cut spending by $1 trillion/year.
Which happens to be the exact amount of Bush
Re:Recycling Personalities (Score:4, Insightful)
The House has been passing budgets, the Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid (D-NV) has not.
The Bush tax cuts have been continued by the Obama administration because they were judged to be a sound method of stimulating the economy. The economy would be in better shape if the Obama administration was not roiling the waters with a rapidly increasing regulatory burden of which Obamacare is no small part. (Note how they keep pushing out compliance deadlines? Guess what would happen if they tried to enforce them?)
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sorry you are correct, I did mean debt, which again someone said was unamerican in the past. But yeah, im a fucktard because i mistyped something. You could have ended it after your second sentence and gotten the same point across without sounding like a smug asshole
I wasn't just the typo. It was the blame-shifting onto Obama of Bush's fiscal disaster. So I stick by my second sentence, because it applies to your post as a whole.
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and when taking the bridge of an underway battleship, your first question would be "What do you mean we can't stop right here?"
that said, you probably do "look at things different from most here", but your last independent clause indicates the place where you think entirely like the others.
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The bills from the Obama administration will dwarf the minor fraction of debt that was from the Iraq war.
The amount wasted on the war due to incompetence in carrying out the occupation would easily pay for the health care for all uninsured citizens for almost a decade.
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And you will assign zero blame to Saddam.
WTF? Are you fucking blind? Read what I said more carefully this time: "...the amount wasted on the war due to incompetence in carrying out the occupation...".
I wasn't even arguing against having gone to war with Iraq. Just pointing out the fact that Rumsfeld's incompetence caused the cost of the whole Iraq mess to be at least twice what it should have been. (Not to mention US casualties probably being 10x what they should have been.)
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well, they moved on with their deaths...
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You should probably prepare yourself for disappointment on multiple fronts. Both Bush's reputation and popularity have been improving. His presidency is likely to end up being judged rather favorably in the future.
The real question (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question is, "what does she bring to the table" as a member of the Board? Does her tenure as a faculty member in the Stanford School of Business matter? What about her time as the director of the Stanford Global Center for Business and the Economy?
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shocking.. you mean she is not an NSA plant? I thought for sure that Rice was still on Obama's payroll alone with Cheney.
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Because all that matters is the Dropbox stock price?
Some of us will never forgive her and so some of us will cease using Dropbox.
This is legit.
Re:The real question (Score:5, Informative)
The real question is, "what does she bring to the table" as a member of the Board? Does her tenure as a faculty member in the Stanford School of Business matter? What about her time as the director of the Stanford Global Center for Business and the Economy?
Ms. Rice is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of Political Science, and the Faculty Director at the SGCBE.
Outside of Stanford, Rice is the founding partner of RiceHadleyGates. She also serves on the boards of C3 (energy software), Makena Capital, Commonwealth Club, Aspen Institute, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Rice is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ms. Rice is also an author, a contributor to CBS, and makes frequent appearances on the lecture circuit.
I have a lot of respect for Ms. Rice, but when you look at all the organizations and activities she's involved with, I really *do* wonder what value she would bring to the board of Dropbox. Rice seems to be spread pretty thin already.
I suspect Dropbox put her on their board for visibility/star power as much as anything.
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They have put a leading member of a political party on their board so that's the answer. Your mistake is thinking US politics is in some way special and you need to look at this as if the same thing was done in a corrupt banana republic.
Drop Dropbox (Score:2)
Try SpiderOak [spideroak.com]. Free 2 GB, zero-knowledge, secure. Works on a load of OSs and devices.
I'm a completely satisfied customer.
Re:Drop Dropbox (Score:5, Insightful)
Try SpiderOak [spideroak.com]. Free 2 GB, zero-knowledge, secure. Works on a load of OSs and devices. I'm a completely satisfied customer.
Or ... get a free dynamic DNS hostname (there are still plenty available) and take a few minutes to learn about SSH/SFTP (and SSHGuard if you are using passwords) and set up your own personal file server. It doesn't have to allow shell access.
Now the companies can do whatever they want because you did the little bit of learning it took not to care.
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Perhaps once the client is open source then the "Zero Knowledge" will begin to apply
Condi Rice is legitimate choice (Score:2, Insightful)
I say that as a Democrat. I also say its legitimate to question her appointment for policy based reasons.
Brandon Eich was ousted for social policy reasons not directly tied into the day to day functioning of the board.
That was a board decision to force him to resign.
Dropbox and privacy are core to its mission. Condi Rice has served on several boards of directors including Hewlett Packard, Chevron and the Rand corporation
shes professional and experienced. Shes not going to sell dropbox out to the NSA and she
Re:Condi Rice is legitimate choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because the last three companies she was on the board of did not need to be sold out, it doesn't follow that she won't sell this one out. Remember, warrantless wiretapping began on her watch. As a former National Security Advisor, her ties to the intelligence community are strong.
Try reading beyond the subject line (Score:2)
You might actually try reading something other than the subject line. In any event you dont get appointed
to major boards because rich people like you...okay well not most board members. Most board members
of major corporations usually are recruited for some expertise they bring to the board in Condi Rices case
im guessing government and education.
board members dont make day to day decisions thats the job of the Chief Executive Officer.
If your asking what shes done competently, she was the provost of stanford
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"Most board members of major corporations usually are recruited for some expertise they bring to the board"
No. There are there because of connections (i.e. they are "liked"). If your E suite is relying on the board for "expertise", you're doing it wrong. In most cases, these boards meet once a year for a few hours. Just how much expertise are you getting from that? You just want their phone number so you can call them and say, "Hey, I need you to talk to your friend about this..."
Oh, I guess there is a
Connections do not mean ability (Score:2)
The events that happened on her watch show either that either she was not in control or should not be trusted in a position of responsibility again.
Hiring A War Criminal highlights something else... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hiring a war criminal and domestic-spying person may not change Dropbox's stance on privacy, but it shows another darker side of DB, it's business-at-the-expense-of-morality side.
Did they really think, "She approved the mass snooping of private data saved online, which certainly included targeting our infrastructure to breach our customers' privacy. Oh, we won't worry about that, we need her expertise, we'll hire her!".
Then again, writing the above paragraph, what the fuck was their stance on privacy then, if hiring her didn't make them ask themselves whether they're doing the right thing?
And how exactly will Dropbox succeed in the international scene, when all the foreign companies fucking realize that they're basically in-bed with the Washington "Elite", the same people that created and supported PRISM?!?
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Hiring a war criminal and domestic-spying person may not change Dropbox's stance on privacy, but it shows another darker side of DB, it's business-at-the-expense-of-morality side.
More importantly: What the actual fuck is she bringing to the table that we actually want there?
Also (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, Dropbox has announced that their appointment of Joseph Goebbels to their board of directors will not change their stance on Jews.
Same if it were Hillary, right? (Score:2)
Would we be seeing this same faux "privacy" outrage if it were Hillary Clinton or some other person from Obama's national security team? Has not the surveillance state expanded exponentially under the current administration? Doubtful. And what exactly was Rice's "central role in creating the surveillance state"? That she, at the President's direction, authorized NSA to spy on foreign diplomats? WTF do you think intel agencies are there for? Considering her not very good relations with Darth Vader..er D
Change of tune (Score:5, Insightful)
For the longest time the argument was "Well if you don't like company x don't buy their products!". With the implication being that if you don't actually stop, then you are just a whiner or a hypocrite. But now people really are taking their business elsewhere. The actions of a company or the people that represent a company is effecting the bottom line. Yet somehow old "vote with your wallet" is no longer acceptable. Somehow judging a company based on it's moral character is an assault on free speech, maybe even down right persecution!
For a long time people (on Slashdot especially) have been warning of the dangers of putting your data in the cloud. Of the amount of personal information that can be gleaned from your web browsing habits. That that big business is cooperating with the government (willingly or not) in a massive breach of privacy. So how and can anyone be surprised that customers demand moral character from leadership of companies to whom we are handing over so much personal information?
If you had to make a choice between companies to store YOUR personal information and your choices are: Company A with Bruce Schneier on it's board of directors, and Company B with Dick Cheney on it's board of directors. Does anyone seriously think that difference shouldn't effect the decision?
I for one have no sympathy. Yes a company has every right to alienate their customers, but customers also have every right to vote with their wallets.
Huh? (Score:2)
For Eich, there were plenty of great reasons for him to be CEO of Mozilla, clue wise. But what does Rice have to do with anything here? Does she have some 'putar expertise she did not let on during her time of accompliceship with war profiteering?
Not to pick on just her, I wonder generally: What's with these random politicians on the boards of random corporations? Do they just get paid for having connections? Are they actually doing anything?
It seems so obvious now (Score:3)
By the by, wouldn't life be the tits if I had no background in tech other than abusing it but had political connections as 99% of my resume and could land sweetheart preIPO deals like this?
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land sweetheart pre-IPO deals
The thing about pre-IPO is that it means IPO is in the future. Think about IPO. Now, if you're working for investors who pay you to analyze investment risk, then wouldn't having Rice on the board factor into the Risk category pretty heavily? One fucked up privacy/advertising foobar influenced by this spy-happy nutter on the board could easily end the company. It's not like everyone and their mother isn't competing in cloud storage now.
Furthermore, in a post-Snowden world the appointment of Rice doesn't
Seriously? You Guys Shitstorm Over This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dropbox starts scanning your files and prevents you from sharing what *it thinks* are copyrighted materials, and instead, you guys bitch and moan over some Hollywood-celeb-type bullshit?
Re:"won't change its stance on privacy" (Score:5, Funny)
If you can't spell "you're", you're an idiot. An illiterate idiot....
Re:"won't change its stance on privacy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Trolling grammar nazis just makes you a different kind of idiot
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:5, Insightful)
Same intolerant crap.
There are some things that shouldn't be tolerated. War mongering is one of them. Thousands of American families lost a son, brother, or husband in a pointless counter-productive war because of this woman's lies and incompetence. The number of Iraqi families affected is a hundred times higher.
Dropbox has the right to have her on their board. I have the right to speak my mind, and take my business elsewhere.
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:4, Insightful)
What i dont like is late comers to companies that get IPO, and then these get millions, ahead of the hardworking coders who started there from day 0.
I dont mind her there, but if the company IPOs for billions, she should not get a cent, as I cannot see anything she can contribute that would add to the book value or earnings values. /*
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:4, Insightful)
What i dont like is late comers to companies that get IPO, and then these get millions, ahead of the hardworking coders who started there from day 0.
I dont mind her there, but if the company IPOs for billions, she should not get a cent, as I cannot see anything she can contribute that would add to the book value or earnings values. /*
Actually, when IPO time rolls around people with "names" can add a great deal to the IPO. I can certainly believe that a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor might have contributions to make on the "privacy and security" front, which is the focal point of the criticism. That aside, the IPO's that I have been involved in always included bringing in people with the right resume in high level posts at the last minute. That way the big institutional investors who are looking in to the company can say "Aha, I see they have big name official on the board, and look, they have the former CIO from Transamerica. They have all the right people in place to move the company forward!" And yes, it pissed me off that someone who had nothing to do with building the company made more than I did (by a couple of orders of magnitude) on the IPO. But Mr. Analyst working for the big investment group doesn't want to hear "we have this great guy who is super-bright and has been working 100 hours a week since the beginning as CIO".
But that is irrelevant to the major shareholders - they are simply asking themselves "can we make 30% more if we bring in this handful of people for the IPO?" If they can make an extra $200 million by spending 20 million, they'll do it every time. Once the VC guys get involved, loyalty kinda flies out the window.
So I guess the moral of the story is, make sure you get paid on the initial investments, because that might be the last bite of the apple you get.
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She should be tried in the Hague tribunal for war crimes instead.
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:4, Insightful)
USA had absolutely no grounds to remove Saddam Hussein from the power.
The only reason they received U.N mandate is because they fabricated the WMD evidence and outright lied at the hearing.
On top of it they captured people - detained unlawfully without a charge or trial and tortured during their captivity.
Condi Rice and the rest of the Bush Jr. administration should be tried for their crimes.
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Just as United States had "no grounds" to remove Hitler from power. Nazi Germany did not attack the United States in Pearl Harbor. Did United States illegally fight the war against Nazi Germany, too? Everyone knew that it was Imperial Japan which attacked Pearl Harbor.
Ridiculous comparison. Germany had invaded nearly all of continental Europe and North Africa, and the US barely lifted a finger. Know your history... prior to Pearl Harbor, a large portion of this country wanted little to do with Nazi Germany and what was going on in Europe, beyond what money they could make from trade. Few in the US were concerned about how Germany was treating its people, or the people it invaded. The economy was finally showing signs of pickup after the depression, and nobody wanted
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:4, Insightful)
but lying to the American people to stage an invasion of Iraq, a country without ICBMs (and their inherent ability to deliver nuclear destruction to America), was not just a crime, it was a TREASONOUS act for which the architects of the Iraq War (Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld) should be prosecuted and then executed.
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
If killing people and attacking countries is enough for you to call for invasion and hanging, I assume you would be fine with the US being invaded and roughly a gazillion people being finally tried for their crimes?
And why stop with Saddam? There are so many way more brutal dictators around the world, so what gives? Are you unaware that the US govt actively supported worse than him, or are you just chosing to ignore it? Don't even pretend: his crime wasn't that he "invaded his neighboring country", but that he did so on his own accord, disobeying the US. That's what made him an enemy, not the gassing or being a dictator. And then there is the fact that the US was always keen on controlling the oil in that region... so either you play along or you get replaced, that is all; how brutal you are doesn't play into it other than that you get lauded for it while you follow orders, and demonized otherwise. Saddam was an asshole, but that doesn't make the US govt less of a war profiteering, hypocritical BS expedition, or you less of an useful idiot, who essentially gets to pay big money to have blood on your hands. Sorry, I know nobody wants to hear something like that, but step one to fix things is to stop pretending you're not being played like a piano.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely right. And I have the right to call you on it, you racist mysogynist dictator lover.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"Dropbox has the right to have her on their board. I have the right to speak my mind, and take my business elsewhere."
The problem is, though, you do business with hundreds of other companies. Have you vetted their board of directors and leadership to see if they follow your political views as well? Or are you only picking on Rice and Dropbox because she was in the news for a few years and they popped up on Slashdot? You do realize there are many other Bush administration officials currently in leadership
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There are some things that shouldn't be tolerated. War mongering is one of them. Thousands of American families lost a son, brother, or husband in a pointless counter-productive war because of this woman's lies and incompetence. The number of Iraqi families affected is a hundred times higher.
But you do tolerate warmongers. You seem completely predisposed to tolerate Saddam's warmongering, crimes against humanity, support for terrorism, and many other crimes.
The Iraq war wasn't pointless or counter-productive. Saddam is gone. His psychopathic sons that would have been even worse, and who stood to inherit power from him, are gone. Iraq is now a democracy, albeit a troubled one, and they are rebuilding the country from the ruin of Saddam's mismanagement. Iraqi oil money is no longer being spe
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> The Iraq war wasn't pointless or counter-productive.
It's just too bad we lost it. What's stepping in as the US leaves is a puppet government, doomed to fall to the even more genocidal religious leaders, the very "terrorist" factions that Sadam would never have allowed to threaten his power.
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When did Saddam Hussein attack America? He was a jerk, but he never attacked us even though we threatened the sovereignty of his nation by using no-flight zones which had not been approved by the UN. The US acted unilaterally against Hussein, or perhaps Bilaterally if you include the UK.
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As long as you're only targeting republicans for this kind of scrutiny your righteous indignation rings hollow to me. Most democrats supported the war at the time, and our current democrat president continues those same policies, still has troops in those same countries and has, in fact, escalated hostilities in numerous other countries as well. You don't give a shit about the poor souls slain in war unless it furthers your political agenda. It's sad.
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:5, Insightful)
>*that's sarcastic in case you can't tell, but hopefully it'll help point out that the left needs to lay off the racist card so hard*
No, it's actually the right that needs to lay off the "race card" card. Seriously, every time they bring up some pointless complaint about Obama, they whine defensively that they're only restrained from criticism because they'll be called racists.
No shit, when your complaint is that Obama's a Kenyan Marxo-Islamic Fascist Communist, that's going to happen.
Doesn't mean you can't find some legitimate complaint to make about Obama, but the conservative right can't even manage that most days of the week.
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+1 Insightful
Yes, there are very legitimate reasons to dislike some of Obama's policies but the rightwingnuts have wasted years with birther stupidity, obstinate obstruction of things they previously supported to the point where the GOP Senate Leader filibustered his OWN bill!!
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Or show up on someone else's doorstep. Close enough, right?
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Being intolerant of bigot homophobes is crap? Being intolerant of war mongering assholes is crap?
Here's a big FUCK YOU. Some things just should not be tolerated at all. Eich and Rice deserve to be called out for their bigotry and war mongering
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... what?
Do you even know what the word means? Christ.
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Sounds like the same thing they did to the mozilla CEO. When will these loser knock this shit off? I dont like the woman either but there are other reasons to fault dropbox without bringing her into it
Yes; it's the same thing. The primary job of a member of the board is to be responsible to and represent the company to people outside the company. People are saying "either this is a bad person for the job or I don't like how Dropbox wants to be represented". Now Dropbox has to make a choice. Is Condi the person they want to represent them? Is Condi's image how they want to be. If yes, then she is the right person and if so then those other people should take their business where they want to.
Or perhaps we should take a page out of their playbook? why are they woman hating??? and shes black??? RACISTS!!!! You know thats what would be happening if the politics were the other way around
I find
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yet We get called racists for that statement I just made all the time....
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I'm not sure why you seem to think his policies change then the dude playing him does.
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:5, Insightful)
Well ganjadude. May I call you ganjadude? I imagine that is what your friends on 'your side' call you, right? 'ganjadude' sounds like that kind of a name.
You're assuming that the people who are angry about the appointment of Rice to this role are the same people who were angry about the Eich being given the CEO position at Mozilla.
You're also roughly stating that because there are other reasons to dislike Dropbox, it is inappropriate to complain about their choice of someone who has historically be pro-surveillance and supportive of state-sanctioned torture (in certain contexts, like the state doing the torturing for the US). I isn't really 'inappropriate' to complain about both the color and performance of a car, and likewise I don't think that disliking some other attribute of Dropbox reasonably precludes me complaining about their choice of board members.
I didn't much like the way that Eich was attacked for his support of Prop 8, even though I didn't agree with Prop 8. Eich's views on same-sex marriage really don't relate Mozilla (I don't think), and they don't really make him a bad or nasty person either - at least, not themselves without knowing the reasoning behind them.
That Rice previously demonstrated support of intensive surveillance by government does directly relate to Dropbox. I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to criticise. I think that her support of torture and extraordinary rendition makes her an unpleasant person, but I'm not sure that so much relates to her role at Dropbox.
Your obsession with what 'they' do, those dirty liberals, is slightly bizarre and makes you sound like a crazy person. Also, you're presenting a weak caricature of liberals and then pretending it is reality. That doesn't make you sound clever, or steadfast in your role as an opponent of liberals. It makes you sound like someone who is to polarized to be able to think straight.
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Eich's views on same-sex marriage don't make him a bad person, any more than having the view that starving children should be fed makes you a good person. However, the second those views manifest into actions, whether it's giving money to a charity to feed those children or to an organization attemptin
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:5, Insightful)
should her life be ruined over the fact that she made some mistakes while in government?
yes. when you 'make mistakes' at that kind of level and it affects the WHOLE WORLD in a hugely negative way, YES. 1000 times yes.
next question?
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The world is far better off with Saddam's regime being replaced by a democratic government.
Tell that that to the thousands of Iraqi's WE KILLED to make that happen.
We probably killed or led to the death via our war of more Iraqi's than Saddam did -- and I'm not forgetting that Saddam attempted genocide of Kurd's in the 80s either.
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The US and its allies actually killed a relatively small number of Iraqis
As for what Saddam did:
Anfal ~ 180,000?
Another 10-20,000 in other atrocities?
Call it 200k?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Which figure are you arguing isn't valid? We're looking at 100k at least, civilians directly, and violently killed. The the larger numbers, showing indirect deaths... like people dying because they couldn't get to the hospital for X or Y or Z because we blew up all the infrastructure? Easily adds up to another 100k
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A question that could be asked of any war-criminal.
Most of her colleagues have received promotions and honors for their failures, so I can see how this might seem unfair from her point of view.
But let's quit thinking about fair for her for just a moment and think about fair to her victims. US soldiers and foreign civilians, dead, maimed brutalized, thousands and thousands of them. Think about it from their point of vie
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It's Black folk who HATE Condi Rice. (Score:2, Informative)
Condi Rice is as black as Barack Obama's corporate lawyer wife. Condi Rice is utterly detested by her fellow black folks for going on a NYC Ferragamo shoe shopping spree and catching a Broadway Musical Comedy, Spamalot, quite literally as Hurricane Katrina came ashore in New Orleans and her brothers and sisters were fighting for their lives. Quite literally fiddling while Rome burned. You forgot, huh? Here's snopes.com to reminds you...
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/... [snopes.com]
"...That evening, upon arriving at the
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I attended Historically Black College. Ooops. (Score:2)
White guy who attended a Historically Black College on a Minority Scholarship. To make real long story brief, Federal lawsuits against Old Dominion Univ. and Norfork State Univ. for state schools so close geographical, opposites racially. There were some extra scholarship money to help balance the schools in 80-90's. My first year of college was Norfork State. Lived in the dorms. I made a ton of great friends. People at NSU bent over backward to try to make me feel at home. Terrific experience.
Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu (Score:4, Funny)
Right! To be fair, it's really hard someone to find someone for your board of directors who isn't a war criminal.
The choice was between Condoleeza Rice and Slobodan Milosevic and he backed out due to health reasons. I understand they sent feelers out to Joseph Kony, but he thought they were children's arms, so he cut them off.
Welcome Condi! Maybe a little more money will help you sleep at night, because you're looking a little tired, girl.
Board of directors (Score:3, Interesting)
The text book reason to put someone on the Board of Directors of a company is for their expertise in the business. She has NONE.
Condie Rice is a bureaucrat - a shitty one at that.
She is there for one reason - connections.
If you or I had a job history like her's, we would be unemployable. But for the ruling and CEO class, being a fuck up means nothing as long as you know the right people.
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You're really stretching to say this isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters, because it's clearly both.
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Nerd != left wing.
Ex secretary of state != Matters.
Now if you're a leftist with unrealised dreams of punishing GWB, you might persuade yourself otherwise.
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Well thank you for making this special trip to /. to tell us all about how you don't visit /. anymore.
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I don't see how being Secretary of State even relates to running an IT business.
Her connections can help them influence government regulation, and win contracts.
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Killing and torture are not the same, by any measure.
They might not be the same, but they're both evil, or at least by my standards. Do yours differ?
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There's nothing wrong with intolerance at all, as long as it's directed at an actual problem.
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*gets tablet*
Install Firefox... already there.
Remove Dropbox... oh, wait, can't do that without rooting the thing.
Re:Justice (Score:5, Interesting)
This goes beyond that.
Rice directly contributed to the waste of O($1 trillion) of taxpayer money, the loss of thousands of lives, and the torture of prisoners. That should make her persona non grata to any organization that gives a damn about not wasting public money for political gain, not murdering people, and not engaging in state violation of human rights. This isn't "gave some money to a dishonest and illiberal election campaign" (Eich). This is "shit on American values and wiped with the Constitution for good measure".
That's on top of the security/espionage concerns.
If Condi Rice were the checkout clerk at Safeway I'd refuse to do business with them.
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The "only following orders" defence was invalid 70 years ago. Why do you think it is valid now?
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Indeed -- but that doesn't matter.
When Bush pushed Colin Powell to do something unethical, he pushed back. He lost his job and kept his integrity.
Condi made the opposite choice.
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It's simple (Score:2)
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Actually, it was Clinton's CIA man (that remained on for Bush) that said the intelligence was a "slam dunk" on WMD. The day before Bush took office, the entire world's intelligence (including Clinton's) believed Iraq had WMD. The exception of substance was Russia.
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ACTUALLY, it was the Republicans in Congress who successfully blocked the nomination of Anthony Lake leaving Clinton with the option of having the CIA with only an acting director (Tenet) while getting jerked around by Congress or just advancing Tenet to the position (who was unanimously approved by Congress).
So whose choice was he really?
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The Streisand Effect has barely started yet. Many people that have never heard of DropBox to begin with will be hearing about it for the first time. We'll see how it turns out.
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Ankle biting
More like "ankle grabbing" for the lovers of the NSA and water boarding. Going back as far as Napoleon, torture was already dismissed as ineffective, so its sad to me that some people are glad to regress a few centuries. And the "everybody does it" theme neglects that few others countries, ie none, have 30,000 employees and a $10 billion a year budget.
I'm switching to Google Drive since their theme of "do no evil" is still intact enough to avoid high publicity idiocy like politicising their business. Why th
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Allow me to commend you on your decision to switch to another American company that does large amounts of business with the US government and which is growing more involved with robotics and autonomous navigation of interest to the US Defense Department. Did you know that there are rumors that Google has ties in with the CIA and NSA?
Have a great day!
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More like "ankle grabbing" for the lovers of the NSA and water boarding. Going back as far as Napoleon, torture was already dismissed as ineffective, so its sad to me that some people are glad to regress a few centuries. And the "everybody does it" theme neglects that few others countries, ie none, have 30,000 employees and a $10 billion a year budget.
To the contrary, torture is highly effective... at spreading fear and exerting dominance, and/or to produce false confessions. That's why it is used by a number of other countries.
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the non-paying subscribers are the product. no one is going to invest (for long) in a company without a product.
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just wait 'til you see her commits in the openssl.org changelog...