Paper is Dropbox's new vision for how teams can work together
engadget.com
engadget.com
I'm on the infrastructure (storage) team, so I haven't really had anything to do with its development. My team's use started out as "dog fooding", like most internal adoption, but now we'd all be pretty pissed if it disappeared because it's simply way better than the array of tools we were using before. Great usability, speed, etc. Feels lightweight but powerful at the same time.
Anyway, hopefully you all like it too.
1. Will there ever be a zero-knowledge option at Dropbox? I just stopped using Dropbox in favor of SpiderOak because I wanted to start storing medical records in the cloud, and there's no way I'd do that where you (or your coworkers or hackers) could read them.
2. How do Dropbox employees feel about the Drop Dropbox campaign? Is Condoleezza Rice's involvement part of an overall culture or just a small anomaly (or somewhere in between)?
1.
The best answer I can give you is here: https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/28
The background behind it is we evaluate this option (and debate it internally) all the time, and it's neither in line with the type of services we are expected offer (collab, etc), and there is insufficient customer demand for it. It is also dangerous, since nontechnical users lose their private keys with startling frequency, and it's difficult to explain to them that we're completely unable to help them when this happens.
We do, however, totally know there is a small slice of technical users that want to treat Dropbox as an opaque "backup service", and they're willing to take on the risk of key management. So we refer them to one of our partners that specializes in providing this layer on top of Dropbox.
Never say never, so we may decide to offer this type of account in the future--possibly to businesses. We would have to alter or disable large swaths of collaboration features that require server-side representations/alterations of data. But, as I said, it's a product feature under constant consideration.
2.
Once again, I have to emphasize, this is a personal take, not Dropbox's take.
I sympathize with the tinfoil hat crowd, but I think most Dropbox employees find it a disappointing take on the company that has always strived to make the very best cloud storage product possible, on all platforms.
We are in a segment (cloud sync/collab, not backup) with some very, very large players. Storage is not a loss leader to us. It is not subsidized by a massive advertising network capitalizing on customer behavioral data. Our customers are not what's for sale--our storage services are.
If you or your business does not like our services--does not consider them fast, secure, etc--enough to pay for them--we don't get revenue.
I very much doubt any of our competitors cares as much about your data staying private, available, usable, etc, as we do. There is no other way for us to capture value from the market then make you all ridiculously pleased with Dropbox and Dropbox's treatment of your data.
So I would ask you to imagine what the culture of a company looks like that is incentivized thusly. We obsess over doing the right thing with your data. So threads like this are hard to read, to be honest.
And that's all I'll say about this issue.
wow.
This is inflammatory insulting language and your use makes me trust Dropbox even less. The thing is that post Snowden companies like the one you work for are assumed to be in the wrong on privacy and the "tinfoil hat crowd" as you put it are demonstrably correct. Companies (and individuals) don't use Dropbox because they trust it (anymore) they use it because they think that they documents they store there don't have any important intellectual property that the US government can pass to their competitors/ will contribute much to the sum total of what the NSA data store knows about them.
But this smells like negative PR triggered on purpose by competition. It also happened with Mozilla's Brendan Eich as well.
One has to wonder, why doesn't this happen with bigger companies, like Microsoft, Google or Apple? I can tell you why. It's because they've got big PR and legal departments. But pumping money to avoid PR disasters is not the same thing as having a moral consciousness.
Plus the idea that Dropbox is more susceptible to wiretapping than the equivalents provided by Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon is absolutely laughable given that Dropbox is the only one on this list for which cloud storage is the product being sold and not something complementary. But yeah, fight the man.
I have not yet abandoned DropBox. I am still paying ~$10/mo for their services. But I sympathize with the GP. Those questions are exactly the things I want answers to as well.
JungleDisk provides this. It offers a Dropbox-like native interface powered directly by S3 with support for client-side encryption. That is, your computer encrypts the data locally and then stores it directly into S3. You provide your AWS credentials to the client at setup time.
Not needing to depend on any company beyond AWS to store my data appealed to me. Beyond the trust that one must place in the JungleDisk client itself, at least.
It used to be available to buy as a single software program, but now it's a monthly subscription service.
There is usually some pitiful excuse about free users being able to abuse the system, but screwing things up for your paying users (all my personal and business accounts are paid) is stupid. The major thing keeping me and related companies going with Dropbox now is that you support Linux. If Google or someone else fixes that then you are likely toast!
(Dropbox employee here)
Paper seems closer to what I want for my team. Release an email server on top and I'll buy as much Dropbox storage as I can.
Out of curiosity, would anyone know if Paper supports markdown? I like the fast lightweight formatting it provides. (edit: appears an earlier comment says its supports a subset of markdown )
With a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service.
I think all users should carefully consider if they are happy with using Dropbox in light of the views of their board members.
I'm happy with it but I do have a NAS at home that serves as a "always on" sync point for my other devices.
I haven't researched it, but it could work like this: scan the local machine, find duplicates, upload unique files, and then create links to any place a file is duplicated. It all happens locally, so only encrypted data is ever uploaded. Some tiny bit of info about the structure of the file system might be transferred and known by SpiderOak, but I can't conceive of a situation where that matters.
> Another benefit of SpiderOak is that they de-duplicate your data, so you may end up using less space on SpiderOak than you do on your own machine.
1. If your files change, SpiderOak saves versions of them indefinitely, with each taking up space (of course, all the deltas and stuff). There is no simple way to set it up so that file versions older than X days/years get deleted. The SpiderOak client is completely useless if you want to delete older versions of files because you'd have to wade through all your directories and subdirectories looking for files with multiple versions.
2. The SpiderOak client has also been buggy and ends up creating file versions of unchanged files too (like photos you may have saved once on your computer and never touched). So there's no easy way for you to get to specific places where files have several versions stored and do some cleanup.
This cleanup of older versions matters a lot more if you have a smaller account quota, lesser free space on your account, and you're not willing to pay for the $129 a year 1TB option that is heavily pushed (compared to the other tiers) by skewed pricing on SpiderOak's part.
Overall, SpiderOak is still better though. Dropbox is more dishonest in its approach to deduplication. Dropbox dedpulicates data across user accounts (so if you and I store the same free eBook from Project Gutenberg on our Dropbox accounts, Dropbox saves only one copy) and deduplicates data within your user account for files you may have replicated across folders. But in both the cases it treats your space quota as if deduplication is not done at all, effectively charging you for more than the space you're actually using.
Also, realize that SO is a poor substitute for Dropbox, as it's only really a backup service. Although it includes a sync option which works passably, the moment you access your files from a mobile device, you upload your keys to the server, and zero-knowledge goes poof. And even if you're willing to give that up, I've never met a mobile app which allowed you to access and manipulate files in the ways Dropbox does. You can do some basic "share just this file" stuff, but it's a very different product.
I really hope that was just because I was on it when they were growing massively due to the NSA leaks, but sadly, for me, they were a textbook example of "Great idea, bad execution".
Don't apologize. Bring this up every single time. It's relevant every time Dropbox is mentioned, and easy for them to change.
> the views of their board members
It's not just the views. It's also the basic resource of trust: Dropbox is not a trustless vendor - their basic service requires trust. And yet they have a board member who has unambiguously and without apology violated client trust in her previous engagement.
I disagree. If the thread is about Dropbox in relation to their security/privacy, then yes, it's relevant. In a thread announcing a new service, with no other mention to privacy? Not so much.
That said, I'm not saying it's not important to bring it up. It's very much important to discuss the implications of something like that, and people clearly didn't know about it judging by the comments here. But I disagree that this is the right place for it; a repost of that thread from 2 years ago I'd consider more appropriate for this discussion.
Arguably, security is an issue for anything that contains user content. Dropbox's business is enabling users to share content.
I could see that the issue might not be appropriate everywhere but I think it's appropriate here.
The security of this one feature might be relevant, but the security of the company, especially in the context of a completely separate decision that isn't at all related to this product is, IMO, not relevant here.
My concern is that such a topic is going to dwarf the discussion of this feature, which is really what we should be discussing here. You can already see it happening; the comment thread is the top thread here, and most of the comments on this story are related to it. So while that shows people are interested in that particular topic and its implications, it's also by far dwarfing the real discussion topic for this link, which is the Dropbox Paper product.
It's worse than that. If sharing was their only business, as opposed to backup, storage of data -- then it wouldn't matter as much if you could trust them or not. If your intention is to share data, then that data shouldn't be considered as secure any more -- even if you trust the person(s) with whom you share it.
But as Dropbox does more than just enable sharing of data, trust is paramount. Without trust, docker isn't a service, it's a liability (I don't necessarily I think the addition of a pro-surveillance board member makes much difference for how much I trust Dropbox, I'm making the point that trust is/should be a core business value of Dropbox -- if you can't trust it, I don't see how you can use it (without engaging in doublethink).
Microsoft/Skype - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/nsa-prism-tech-comp...
In the first case, it's something that companies can fight back against (and some have) as long as their hands aren't tied by unconstitutional, secret pressure.
In the second case, it's the company actively going out to ask for that kind of influence on their organization. And, furthermore, Dropbox's reason to exist is to keep your privacy. It's not like a gaming site or something. Leaking your Dropbox information would almost always compromise your privacy/safety.
I humbly suggest people look into the following, and am eager for suggestions from other HN readers:
- rsync
- btsync
It handles file conflicts, which is massively critical for anyone thinking of rolling their own. It also works over ssh, so it's encrypted.
You may also want to set the --max-delete option, to avoid the scenario where the sender doesn't have the volume mounted, resulting in the receiver deleting everything.
Be also aware that rsync is completely unencrypted, so you need to use it in conjuction with sshfs, ecryptfs, or some other method if you want security.
(You can also use other backup solutions, but I suspect most use the rsync transport, whether it's by itself or with Duplicity)
If you tell us more about your needs, we could give more tailored recommendations.
After trying out Unison, Sync, and plain old rsync, Syncthing turned out to be the best of the bunch for me. Open source, modern interface, relatively simple to set up, seemingly quite secure... Hard not to like it.
http://www.skylable.com/products/sx/
(Self-hosted, GPL)
Second place on my shortlist would probably be:
For syncing a mix of files, I'd probably not go for rsync, unision handles "real world" (messy) syncs across files better. For backup I personally use duplicity driven by backup ninja (encrypted with GnuPG). But I've yet to do any restores, so I don't really have backup yet ;-)
For anything tex-ish, Mercurial works fine for me. I'm not sure if git (today) is any less capable of handling small binary files -- I'm guessing not. But mercurial text UI/UX is much friendlier IMHO.
I have great hopes for IPFS, but personal/private use is still on the roadmap, so it's not usable for what I personally would need most. But I'm more and more confident they'll get there.
rsync.net has a deeply discounted rate for new "HN" customers.
Also, we just enabled explicit support for attic/borg.
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/googles_secret_nsa_alliance_...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/04...
Hillary hires Google executive as CTO
..and of course the data mining startup that Eric Schmidt is using in an attempt to get Clinton elected as president (the same one that worked for Obama):
http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working...
Many companies in Silicon Valley are tied to bad politicians and politics. At this point, it's almost necessary to survive.
My point is that if you are using this as a basis for services that you will or will not use, you will be left with a computer running GEOS...and no access to the outside world.
I just don't put any data on any cloud provider that I don't want the government to see. Bittorrent Sync works pretty well as a personal cloud provider.
https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-government-data-reques...
Arthur D. Levinson, Ph. D. Chairman of the Board, Apple Former Chairman and CEO Genentech
James A. Bell Former CFO and Corporate President The Boeing Company
Albert Gore Jr. Former Vice President of the United States
Robert A. Iger Chairman and CEO The Walt Disney Company
Andrea Jung President and CEO Grameen America, Inc.
Ronald D. Sugar, Ph. D. Former Chairman and CEO Northrop Grumman
Susan L. Wagner Co-founder and Director BlackRock
A lot of my personal moral concerns with Dr. Rice's appointment are as a result of actions she condoned or advocated for during her time in government. Don Knuth's letter to her in 2002 expresses my feelings on this topic much better than I think I can myself.
That's extreme and unfair, and a little like telling someone that if they oppose American drone warfare, torture, or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, they should move to another country.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We should encourage as much protest as possible.
Not op. I don't trust Google. In a transition period I do use some of their services, but I don't recommend doing that, and I'm slowly migrating away. Except perhaps for using their crawler (as in, having my public content be visible through Google search -- I've recently moved to DDG for my searches).
I also consume some content from youtube, but frankly the UI isn't all that great, and I mostly do it for music -- so I'm moving off that to -- to a lesser degree.
> My point is that if you are using this as a basis for services that you will or will not use, you will be left with a computer running GEOS...and no access to the outside world.
Fortunately we have some recourse between Replicant and Cyanogen (helped by Google using open licenses, even if their ASOP effort is... not all that friendly towards enabling all users to compile custom distributions for their handsets) -- and most other services can be self-hosted.
There aren't really any viable trusted/open hardware, so the degree of trust we can put in our computing/communication equipment is bounded -- but it's certainly viable to have a much more trustworthy (IMNHO) experience than relying on services designed on a business model that has spying on users as a core business model.
For "cloud files", I'm planning to use http://www.sxdrive.io/ backed by a rented server. Not perfect privacy, but a far cry from just pushing things to a random SaaS. At some point I hope git annex and/or IPFS might be a viable alternative. I don't see much point in using closed source software as an alternative, if the goal is to move to a "less untrustworthy" platform.
In reality, Rice could've been recruited because of her relationships with top govt. security officials, in the hopes of facilitating more conversations, in which Dropbox has more leverage, to push back against mass surveillance.
If something like this isn't the case, then firing Rice wouldn't be a resolution anyway.
That's not exactly reassuring vis-a-vis their ethical character.
As for character, it's unclear what's unsettling about presumed utilitarians acting towards what they believe to be best outcomes.
If that's the problem, then shouldn't they explain the connection? Since they won't, it's only natural to assume the obvious.
And why would one presume them utilitarians?
The guys at Dropbox are smart; isn't the "obvious" assumption that Rice could be useful in helping them to better manage some of these interests (e.g. potentially reducing govt. snooping by facilitating a more level playing field for comms. and negotiation)?.
Aren't most reasonable people utilitarians? :)
If by reasonable, you mean "rational" in the sense of rational choice theory, and if by "utilitarians" you mean "maximize of their own individual utility" rather than "adherents to the philosophical school of utilitarianism", then, yes, all reasonable people are utilitarians, by definition.
Rice was probably hired for several of the reasons that you mentioned above. Ultimately though, it's hard to make useful speculation from outside of the company, with little knowledge of the company's long-term goals.
That feels... wrong to me.
Some people do that, some people don't. There's no meaningful "we" here.
> That feels... wrong to me.
Why?
Paper looks really similar to http://onword.co (by Daniel Eden at Dropbox) regarding the minimalism and limitation on formatting. I guess Hackpad team is working on the backend.
I just hope this project will not end up like Mailbox. I've been using Mailbox on OS X for half a year. Although once in a while I encounter some bugs, it's still very usable. A few months ago, they released an upgrade from 0.4 to 0.7. The UI became uglier in orders of magnitude and many basic functionalities just broke. After experiencing it for 3 days I switched back to Mail.app. I have sent quite a few bug reports and suggestions, but got no response. I wonder if they still care about Mailbox at all.
And, while I only make simple things with paper, some other people are able to make fantastically complicated strcutures with it.
Dropbox should buy Evernote, especially since they're in trouble, and fix one of the biggest problems with that service by making it sync using Dropbox (and making its data easily accessible).
If there's something that sets apart Dropbox from its competition is that (1) Dropbox is simpler (2) without compromising on the really important parts, like having a history or Linux support and (3) the set of available features work really well. Not sure what the right word for it is. Minimalism?
At times it's annoying of course. For example Dropbox's native client is the best, but their web interface sucks. Like for example if a folder is too big, the web interface will refuse to move it. Comparing that web interface with Google Drive is not even funny, though the native client and the cross-platform support more than makes up for the shortcomings of the web interface.
But going back to Evernote - seriously, it's a piece of shit and I always wondered why people use it. I would rather have Dropbox build something minimalist by themselves than to acquire Evernote. Or let others build things that integrate with Dropbox. I just bought licenses for 4 different operating systems for 1Password precisely because it integrates with Dropbox.
But...in my business experience with teams across a few different industries, however, I'd say "No" so fast you'd think I had some kind of inherent bias.
Well, I think I do. The modern conference call, speed of data transfer, and online presentation tools that exist should - and do - work just fine when there is one expert at the controls. Usually that expert was me. Taking disparate pieces from different people and getting them in right, often in real-time, was part of my job. Another part of my job was helping people "talk through" what they intended to communicate, and help phrasing and spelling along the way.
Examples include responses to RFPs in a Word template, or any one of the development phases in a PowerPoint 11x17 or slide deck. These would eventually be client-facing, and could be done on the fly if so desired (rather than input/output versioning, often hosted on SharePoint). Then, when finished, it was suitable for production.
I don't see how Paper is an improvement on this process, but rather, a situation of allowing too many cooks in the kitchen. Again, I'm only speaking from my realm, and take pride in learning about new things (like JamKazam) that are still developing or even ahead of their time. YMMV.
Moleskine notebook? check
iPhone? check
This passes the generic tech news site photograph test.
I'm using the 0.7mm point, but intend to try the 0.5mm point in short order, as most of my writing is diagramming infrastructure/code/etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Deluxe-Retractable-Ink-...
(it doesn't seem to be sold directly here)
Edit: found http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/pentel-ener...
Carousel has had major bugs in their iOS client that have not been fixed in nearly a year. I'm talking core features, like background upload of photos not working, which could have led to the loss of priceless photos of my kids, had I not been more vigilant before taking my phone in for service.
Its a fair bet that a goodly number of dropbox customers have lost photos due to this bug. No fix in sight.
Regarding the background upload, I think you can enable cellular in the settings for the app?
For me, the biggest missing piece for Hackpad, and why it was always a non-starter for any serious knowledge collection purposes was its lack of hierarchical structure. A few weeks ago, Paper finally added support for folders, which while still a bit clunky/not-ideal (the sidebar doesn't give you a tree nav, there's no way to see the whole structure), it at least meets that minimum bar for organizing say, more than 20 notes.
I haven't done much group collaboration work (the teams/org stuff was just introduced, and honestly, the thought of Dropbox completely messing up my/my coworkers personal Dropbox accounts terrifies me - the horror stories posted in the thread don't help assuage my fears, and I am not sure I have a conceptual understanding/trust of how Dropbox models accounts/teams), and while Folders have permissions, I can't figure out how to assign/inherit permissions (crucial for working with clients, contractors), but on the bright side, it's not literally insane like Google Sites' permission system (it involves modifying global inheritances to give access to specific sub-trees).
In most other ways, it is like Hackpad++ - mostly like you would have expected it to evolve: great feeling typeahead search, instant editing, OT-based multi-user editing, and improved/extended embeds, and adds annotations, which I can see being conceptually pretty useful.
The biggest thing missing for me now is offline editing - it's not strictly a requirement for our office use, since that's online-only as well, but there are so many times traveling/offsite where it's a huge pain. The other things are mostly niggles - ways to actually see the site/document structure, the option to attach files (especially images) w/o them being directly embedded, a way to view/track embeds/media/files only, but overall it may be the best wiki-like app out there for small groups now, especially those that hate traditional (modal editing) wikis.
Dropbox two account works great. It's specifically designed to keep your personal Dropbox completely separate (and unscrewup-able) from your company assets. We built it because people had been intermingling personal Dropboxes with company assets and it created messes for them when they left the company, etc.
Anecdotally, I've had my personal Dropbox account since 2007 (was one of the first 1000 beta users), and my family manages tons of stuff in it. I started using two account in 2013 when joined Dropbox (the company), before we released it publicly. Your existing Dropbox gets moved to "Dropbox (Personal)" and a second folder gets created called "Dropbox (Your Company)". Nothing changes about the behavior of "Dropbox (Personal)".
No problems whatsoever with the separation of personal and company--and that reflects the vast majority of our users' experiences as well onboarding a team.
As another user in this thread mentioned, Dropbox doesn't support 3+ accounts, so if you work for multiple companies (who all use Dropbox), that might be a problem.
Just a guess, I think the other problem report in this thread was someone who wasn't expecting Dropbox "for teams" to create a completely new type of account for everyone at his/her company. They probably use basic or pro accounts in an ad-hoc way at their company and were unfamiliar with the teams product and the fact it is distinct.
Your answer to my second question is interesting because I kind of understand the tin-foil-hat argument, but I don't totally see how Rice would create additional pressure to violate privacy. She's a civilian now and, presumably, completely locked out of the current administration.
To me (someone without a tin-foil hat), I think the issue is more symbolic. Rice is a terrible human being and a seasoned deceiver of the public. It's almost like we're asking ourselves, "If you'd allow her to be part of your leadership, what else would you do?"
When I've thought about it, that wasn't enough to counterbalance exactly what you mentioned -- the idea that a single privacy breach at Dropbox could mean the end of the company. She's barely a part of the leadership and may have almost no say in what the company does. The ultimate decisions are probably still in the hands of the executive team. That's why I was a customer until very recently.
All that said, I don't understand how Rice is valuable enough to counterbalance the bad PR from the tech community. Tech-y people get small companies to adopt certain brands over others, and then those small companies grow into large companies. Maybe I'm naive, and Rice offers some amazing connections or something?
Either way, if much of the Dropbox team has your attitude and values, I can honestly say I hope the company has a prosperous, breach-free future ahead of it.
In this case her political opinions directly affect the business she joined.
Direct participation in war crimes is not comparable to being vaguely associated with American leftists during the mid-20th century.
What Rice contributed to was a violation of American and international law, a betrayal of her oath of office and of the public, and a shameful episode in our history.
I too hope we can “wake up from this binge in a few years and realize just how far we've strayed from our best ideals”. If we had any such ideals, the justice department would have aggressively prosecuted the criminals involved, up to the highest levels of government.
Brendan Eich has the right to his opinion, and his employers (and customers) have the right to fire him for them. Political beliefs are not a protected class.
(As for Condoleezza Rice, she participated in war-mongering, which is totally different from "political opinions".)
To your point about it being fine to fire people for their political beliefs, the legal right to do something doesn't say much about whether you should. I think everyone would be appalled if it became common practice for employers to look through every campaign you ever donated to, every cause you ever lent support to, to find something to disqualify you over. It also does nothing but further alienate and divide people.
Going back to the McCarthy era, there was nothing illegal about firing communists. And the people doing it had lots of reasons to think they were doing the right thing. The US was in an existential battle against an empire that had worldwide gulags and purges as its goal. Stalin was a proven master of infiltration and palace intrigue. More recent evidence shows that McCarthy's paranoia was not ill-founded -- Soviet intelligence had infiltrated large parts of American society and government. It was still morally wrong to fire people for their political opinions. Especially if they aren't loudly advertising them.
This is a pretty callous thing to say, even for HN. I think there's a real discussion to be had here about data privacy and the power of law enforcement agencies, but demonizing Condoleezza feels like creating a straw man. She's just a board member-- it's not like she's VP of Product or CEO or something.
I get your point, but calling her a "terrible human being" is kind of extreme, don't you think? Not sure that statement adds to a well-reasoned argument. I personally don't agree with all her politics or behavior, but I don't think she ranks up there with the truly "terrible" humans. She was a professor at Stanford, is an accomplished musician, has done a lot for international US diplomacy, was the first woman in many of her roles, etc. etc.
I'm sure she plays a lovely piano sonata though.
It's never a black and white decision.
Yes, we may not agree with his decisions - but I guarantee that if you go through history, you will find many political decisions that each of us would disagree with.
I may not like a lot of the decisions my political leaders make (I'm Australian).
However, I don't pretend for a second that political leadership is an easy calling - it's a tough job, and a lot of pressure - which can affect people in different ways.
I dislike armchair pundits who will dissect every decision, and then try to force it into their own black/white view of things.
At the end of the day, they made the call to topple Saddam Hussein, and take out Iraq.
I don't think anybody will argue that Saddam was a great human being, or that his regime wasn't responsible for atrocities - for me, the question was more that did we (well, America and its allies) have better things to do with their soldiers and money?
And look, we took out one dictator and put in a democratic government - and gave them aid and training - but it remains to be seen what they can make of it.
That's like saying "The Holocaust thing has been done to death."
Louis CK nails this beautifully http://youtu.be/LQEqbTWa0Aw?t=48
When I was 8, saying all the other kids did it too didn't make whatever I did ok.
If a student gets caught cheating in Rice's class, and says 'but the other students were cheating too' that wouldn't make it ok.
This wasn't about cheating - this was about war leaders making decisions during times of war or conflict (or what they believed was war).
As a President (or political leader) you will need to make hard decisions.
And you are guaranteed to annoy some sub-section of the population by your decisions.
And like it or not, conflict (or war) is a part of our world - and as a leader, you need to make tough calls.
We can dissect those decisions afterwards - and offer our own commentary. But I am not arrogant enough to think that I would make a better President or political leader - I don't have the stomach for those sorts of decisions, or a thick enough skin.
My question to you - do you think you could make better calls in each of those cases?
Personal opinion - I didn't agree with a lot of Bush Jr's decisions. However, I think he did the best with the information and advice he had. Whilst some people may not like him, I don't think anybody has actually ever accused him of being outright deceptive, or misleading? (Stupid, perhaps, but he was anything if not earnest).
Another thing - often on HN, we don't understand that we aren't really the majority - we're in our own little echo chamber here (for better or worse).
Most of us are fairly affluent, technologically advanced - and let's face it, out of touch with the average person.
And some of us are also part of the tin-foil hat crowd =).
Take the Snowden leaks - a lot of us are up in arms about the invasion of liberties (and possibly for good reason).
But for many average people, Snowden is nothing more than an American traitor - and the fact that we're spying on other nations? "Gee, I thought that's what our government was meant to do?". A lot of the people outside of tech don't really care that much about the invasion of privacy - they are so far removed from that sort of thing that it doesn't really impact them (or so they think).
Depends. What would one of the victims families say?