Condoleezza Rice Joins Dropbox’s Board As It Names New CFO, COO
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It's a shame that they had to pick a Bush crony. These people should be in prison for malevolently misleading the public in order to start a for-profit war which killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The top cream must stay at the top.
Besides, her technical skills and understanding of IT for sure are awesome, making her the finest choice for Dropbox business.
Is this sarcastic? I can't tell.
/s
In 10 years time if Facebook put James Clapper or Eric Holder on their board it'd likely be more controversial.
http://apple-beta.slashdot.org/story/03/03/19/2246212/al-gor...
He wasn't in congress during the Iraq war vote.
There is a very wide bridge between having a personal opinion as a private citizen in agreeing with the war (as Gore did) and being part of a group of people who planned, orchestrated, operated & implemented two unjust and likely illegal wars.
fwiw, I don't like many of them and don't understand the whole red/blue R/D thing you guys have going on - they all seem very similar from where i'm sitting.
No sarcasm, seriously, I think both Biden and Clinton should resign from any positions they are holding. If they dont want to, we must make fire them.
But whatever, just like bankers, those who are on top obviously can not make any mistake, no matter how big or what kind of mistake, to jeopardize their income or influence in society.
But those poor people, you slip on one payment, or get caught with one joint, oh fuck god have mercy, you poor bastard. Also "whats this, B-? nah sorry brah you arent eligible for this position."
This definitely puts a taint on Dropbox, for me. We'll see if that leads to action. Sometimes it sucks to be a pragmatist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condolezza_Rice#Role_in_authori...
The facts have been on the record for years now. She's guilty, but there will never be a formal trial specifically because power will never turn on one of their own if there's nothing to gain.
"They just didn't know better"
It doesn't matter if they knew or didn't, they are responsible for what they did.
If ignorance was sufficient, they'd place a donkey in the white house and wash their hands in innocence.
No? It will be released 25 years after the fact /if/ they are not ordered to remained sealed.
I guess we'll have to wait a little while for your admissible evidence. How convenient.
I am disgusted by the way the Iraq war was sold to the American public. I'm disgusted by the legitimizing of torture, both legally and culturally, and I disdain anyone who was a part of that fiasco.
As a non-American living in another country at the time it couldn't have been more apparent how different the "facts" were inside the US reality distortion bubble and outside of it. E.g. in Canada we watch both US and Canadian news shows. Watching the same events reported in both gives an incredible insight into the amount of propaganda that US citizens are subject to.
Look up Knight Ridder's reporting on the run up to the Iraq war if you want to look at some good American coverage at the time.
I've looked at the facts. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be remembered as the end of the American era, unless Silicon Valley can build US 2.0. and disassociate themselves from Washington.
Will you look at those too or just conveniently ignore them like the other posters who downvoted the FactCheck link above?
If after an hour, what you meant to say isn't worth saying then it's clear it isn't worth having on the site.
I'm sure you can come up with a sharper instrument than "butt-hurt".
There's no doubting her ability and toughness.
If she takes the job seriously I'm sure that she will do very well.
Which is probably good business -- but I'd hesitate to call it toughness.
This appointment smacks of the corporate-political complex. It's practically inevitable that USG resources will be used in favor of Dropbox's business at some point.
But the thing is, a lot of this stuff works quid pro quo. What might happen is, USG will pay Dropbox a nice penny to use some of its service... aaaaaand in exchange they also set up a deal to snoop on Dropbox users.
(user management, share management, every user having permission to duplicate or destroy all files they can read, inability of admins to fix those changes, no API access for any administrative or reporting feature, inability to control own encryption)
Biden wasn't just appointed as a board member for a relevant tech corporation, though. If he was, I'd be up in arms, too.
That said, even so, Biden's role in promoting Iraq was far less than Condi's. Additionally, Biden didn't specifically push for advanced interrogation techniques AKA torture. Condi did.
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
Want more?
By the way, Rice never "enabled" for the war because she couldn't vote in Congress. Similar to Al Gore.
I just... I can't fathom the idiocy of your post. My neighbor billy bob supported the war too. I guess he had the same degree of responsibility for it as Rice did, because he couldn't vote in congress.
Whatever your views might be, This was a smart move by Dropbox, but for her government ties, but also for her intelligence. If you think she is dumb, or stupid, then I call you ignorant.
You're attacking a straw man. I haven't seen anyone claiming anything of the sort.
Another great example of how partisanship and shitty double standards have ruined our country. The fact is, the vote to invade Iraq was a bi-partisan vote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_t...
"Introduced in Congress on October 2, 2002, in conjunction with the Administration's proposals,[2][7] H.J.Res. 114 passed the House of Representatives on Thursday afternoon at 3:05 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133,[8] and passed the Senate after midnight early Friday morning, at 12:50 a.m. EDT on October 11, 2002, by a vote of 77-23.[9] It was signed into law as Pub.L. 107–243 by President Bush on October 16, 2002."
82 Democrats in the house and 29 in the Senate voted for the resolution. If you're against Rice for her actions leading up the war, then maybe you should take some action against the prominent Democrats who voted for the resolution as well:
Chuck Schumer
Joe Biden
Hilary Clinton
John Kerry
Harry Reid
The fact is, BOTH parties are to blame for Iraq. Too bad most Liberals just like to point the finger at Bush and his administration, when in fact there were plenty of Democrats to blame as well. Pretty sure you're not going to boycott any company if one of the democrats listed above lands on a board somewhere are you?
Two intelligence investigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.
http://archive.is/vAWQa#selection-283.0-300.0
Don't let facts get in your way though.
The final word on the 16 words may have to await history's judgment.
The CIA operative Valery Plame was crucified because her husband (a diplomat) that investigated the yellow cake claim in Africa wrote about how it was a sham drummed up for the war.
"He didn't technically lie" - Sure he did. They knew what the truth was. They knew they needed an event to galvanize American support for action in the middle east. They knew what they were doing with how they worded the "War on Terror" lumping in Saddam with fucking Osama. When 75% of Americans think Saddam had something to do with 911, we are way past just cherry picking stats. We had psychopaths that were concurrently trying to extend American power and their own gain invade a country that had very high strategic interest.
I'm not even partisan about this. Most of the American politicians that I like are Republicans. This is complete horse shit.
Then Rumsfeld said they wouldn't find the WMDs. Then he tried to claim that the war was never about WMDs.
At that point I knew I had been 'had' by a completely (intellectually) dishonest asshole, or perhaps a set of them.
The administration created its own shadow intelligence operation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans) that, effectively, ignored CIA National Intelligence Estimates and cherry-picked unfiltered/unanalyzed intelligence to made the case for war.
This was a mission in need of justification. The Downing Street Memo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo) pretty much makes this not open to debate.
"Lie"? Well, there are different kinds of lying.
A Foreign Office official who helped draft the dossier, Tim Dowse, told the Chilcot inquiry that disputed claims that Iraq had acquired special aluminium tubes for a nuclear programme were included because the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, had publicly referred to them.
Both changes to the weapons dossier were part of a detailed process of comparing the British claims with US statements and those in a forthcoming CIA dossier. The comparisons were made on the express instructions of Campbell. He told the joint intelligence committee (JIC) chairman, John Scarlett, in a memo on 9 September 2002, that the British dossier should be "one that complements rather than conflicts with" US claims.
Documents that the information commissioner ordered to be released last year show that the drafters of the UK dossier compared its claims closely with the CIA dossier and raised possible contradictions over estimates of Iraq's capabilities.
The commissioner also accidentally released a secret list of documents that he allowed the government to withhold on national security grounds. These included an email dated 13 September 2002 "covering a copy of a Bush speech to compare with UK dossier claims". The Cabinet Office has confirmed the speech was the one Bush gave to the UN the day before.
A new draft of the British weapons dossier virtually eliminated the difference between the US and UK positions. When Blair presented the dossier to parliament 11 days later, he said that Iraq might get the bomb in "a year or two".
The JIC, which prepares formal intelligence assessments, considered the scenario so unlikely that it did not estimate how long it might take.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/10/alastair-campbell-...
Rice is a well-known villain on the internet. It's not a surprise people will react this way to her.
But I get it.
He's okay because he agrees with Your Politics.
And Condi is bad because she agrees with Not Your Politics.
Did Al Gore approve warrantless wiretaps, illegal detainment of citizens and non-citizens and the use of torture by agents of the American Government?
In her role as National Security Advisor Ms. Rice did both of those things.
Now you might refuse to acknowledge that she is a war criminal, but that earns you the same contempt as someone who denies Climate Change; which incidentally Mr. Gore did his level best to warn us about.
Now I have to tell you that I find your politics reprehensible, your willful denial of reality as disgusting as that of a heroin addict. And think that you and your fellow travelers in the "Conservative" movement are exemplary of the craven habit of bending at the knee for that most unamerican of practices; the unearned aristocracy of inherited wealth.
You disgust me. You have no thoughts of your own, but merely parrot slogans handed to you by your betters.
Even his most adamant supporters that I know IRL are aware of those shortcoming & acknowledge them.
> Now I have to tell you that I find your politics reprehensible
Interesting how much you purport to know. I haven't stated any political beliefs.
> You disgust me.
It's disappointing how quickly you resort to ad hominem attacks.
Consider the discussion over.
plonk
b. Show me exactly where Al Gore committed an outright war crime.
c. If you think that war crimes are a mere baguatelle and should not interfere with a politicians later life in civil society; that is in itself a reprehensible political stance.
If justice were a feature of this world the entire war cabinet of the first Bush administration would be serving time; I'm sorry that you live in such an insulated little bubble that the murder of more than a million Iraqi civilians due to the documentable lies of the aforementioned does not register on your moral radar.
Do you have any evidence for that?
The whole Iraq war was an exercise in confirmation bias. Congressional Democrats certainly bear their share of culpability, but they also have very good excuses compared to anyone in the Bush administration. In an ideal world with Nuremberg-like tribunals, the Bush insiders would be swinging from gibbets, while we'd let the Democrats off the hook after a few years in Spandau. Claiming that the people you hired lied to you is no defense.
But Condoloza Rice could have spoken out about the illegal torture and abuse. She chose not to. In fact she chose to defend it.
That's why she is now responsible for and a symbol of warcrimes.
People are too quick to in-fighting over sides. Right now both are doing it and both are getting away with it. Just look at Kerry's recent syria, libya, etc. talks.
I don't forgive Condosleeza a pass just like I don't give Clinton a pass for bombing Iraq. (yea, we should remember that far back!)
- The option of war might seem a priori to be the swiftest. But let us not forget that having won the war, one has to build peace. Let us not delude ourselves; this will be long and difficult because it will be necessary to preserve Iraq's unity and restore stability in a lasting way in a country and region harshly affected by the intrusion of force.
- Faced with such perspectives, there is an alternative in the inspections which allow us to move forward day by day with the effective and peaceful disarmament of Iraq. In the end is that choice not the most sure and most rapid?
No one can assert today that the path of war will be shorter than that of the inspections. No one can claim either that it might lead to a safer, more just and more stable world. For war is always the sanction of failure. Would this be our sole recourse in the face of the many challenges at this time?"
"This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from a continent like mine, Europe, that has known wars, occupation and barbarity. A country that does not forget and knows everything it owes to the freedom-fighters who came from America and elsewhere. And yet has never ceased to stand upright in the face of history and before mankind. Faithful to its values, it wishes resolutely to act with all the members of the international community. It believes in our ability to build together a better world."
(this is a speech by a conservative guy, but a well travelled one)
I also don't feel theres been more justification for our actions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or Egypt than Iraq. So changing parties didn't help... at all.
As I said, look at Kerry's talks. He's very much a part of the Democrat establishment and completely contradicts what you're saying.
Now, look at Rand's position on these same countries. The false dichotomy you're presenting is exactly that - false.
And really it's a separate issue. The point is, who would you rather vote for? Would you really prefer voting for the really successful liars?
Not an inspiring choice.
That said, it's hard to be informed and not develop some loyalty to any particular politician. In all likelihood, you'll develop an affinity towards whichever politician you find agrees with you the most, and it's hard to say that "In general, I like so and so, but for his opinions on x and y."
Jonathan Haidt has done some fantastic research on the subject, specifically in the area of political psychology, and I would encourage you to read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion".
In practice though, most people are happy to swallow whatever their party tells them is true, even when it provably isn't.
1) She was part of the administration that started the Iraq War.
2) She is on the record supporting Anonymous Bulk Data Collection
3) She is on the record supporting Warrentless phone taps
4) She is on the record supporting the Patriot act.
5) She was part of the administration, that created, wrote, and legalized the Patriot Act.
Now she wants you to trust her with you data.
You can chalk up the current administration with 4 out of 5 of those same facts.
>>> Now she wants you to trust her with you data.
So does Facebook, so does Google, so do a shit ton of other tech companies. Are you railing against them as well?? Somehow I don't think so. This is the double standard I'm talking about.
Bush has been out of office for almost 6 years and nobody treads at all on the myriad of things Obama has done which mirrors almost to a tee the stuff Bush did. All you want to see is people who were aligned with him are somehow worse than what the current administration is doing.
Give me a break.
Though I may understand the business rationale for this hire, I certainly wont trust founders, board or anyone else at Dropbox who is OK working with a person that is partially responsible for deaths of thousands(arguably hundreds of thousands) people in the Iraq war based on false premises about "WMD".
Oh, and we shouldn't forget about her role in "enhanced interrogation techniques", too.
EDIT: Thinking a little more about this I will be cancelling my Dropbox subscription.
EDIT2: Yes, we are seeing an outcry. I am incredibly happy that coolness factor in tech is now more connected to ethical behavior of its top management and board members.
I don't understand the business rationale anymore for Dropbox anymore.
Well good for them and their stakeholders!
As politically correct and pro equal opportunity crowd as HN should be able to grok that.
Think of what doors have opened for Dropbox now that they've got Condi. Any door that Condi could open (which is quite a few) could now be opened by them.
I'll definitely consider hosting my truecrypt volume elsewhere once my two years of free 50gb is up..
Mega offers 50GB of sync for free.
Both are -okay-, if you have a spare server owncloud exists.
They literally wrote under "Risk Factor":
We have a history of cumulative losses, and we do not
expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future.
Besides, with cloud storage, you should plan for and expect that they could disappear tomorrow. That goes for every provider.
[1]: https://meocloud.pt/ [2]: http://the.taoofmac.com/
[Edited for clarity and fixed links.]
(A) the app is in English, even though the website is in Portuguese.
(B) the cli client is open source and on Github:
http://oss.sapo.pt/#!meocloud-cli-architecture https://github.com/sapo/meocloud-cli
File Manager -> Settings -> Remote storage -> add remote
Choose from:
dropbox, google drive, skydrive, others..., other (some open api)
Select > Authenticate > Mount points > Bring online
Something like that would be nice.
Remote options:
* Connect on demand * Low bandwidth mode * Offline mode
Shares:
* Share file/directory (and some kind of authentication mechanism) * Resource uris * Show public shares * One time downloads * Expiring downloads
Version control:
* View log/history * Retrieve older version / Roll-back
They give 25GB and are French.
Its servers are in CH, FR and DE.
It encrypts the data on your client before it is uploaded.
The free plan offers 5GB.
They sorely lack an API though. Hopefully they will adress this soon.
[0]: http://www.jottacloud.com/ [1]: http://forum.jotta.no/jotta/topics/jottacloud_in_linux
Eich was worse just because of his background and the immense debt that we all owe to him, and that we betrayed him because we're idiots, but you guys really need to get it together.
No, but that's not really the standard for an individual human making a personal moral judgement.
Her close involvement with the current state of US national security is enough to disqualify her for a role in a company like Dropbox.
She was one of the architects of a useless war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. I understand that in large organizations individuals may not be able to stop the machine, but they can always choose not to be part of it.
She is one of only a few people in history who have had that much influence, and who have used it to such devastating effect.
The gay marriage issue is a current one. It's a fight that's being fought right now. Protesting someone who is against gay rights has an actual impact in today's politics. Protesting against someone who supported going into Iraq over 10 years ago does not.
Yes, there will be public outcry, because many people view her as a deceiver, and others will think she is a tool of the NSA. But the outcry will not be the same as it was for Eich.
Does anyone know how Rice’s firm RiceHadleyGates would help DropBox do that?
I would assume that her elevation from consultant to board member means that she has been tried and tested.
....or ever been a core member of an administration that left us with two disastrous wars, an offshore gulag, the greatest economic disaster in 70 years, a record of legitimizing torture, a decline in prestige on the world stage. Oh, and a strong record or rejecting marriage equality.
* The Iraq war ended in 2011, and the Afghanistan war is winding down.
* The Obama administration has attempted to close Guantanamo, only to be blocked by Congress.
* We are no longer in the financial crisis left by the previous administration.
* Obama ordered an end to torture on his first day in office.
* Global attitudes about the United States have improved dramatically since 2008, according to Pew Research (http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/survey/15/).
So, you're either woefully misinformed, or willfully ignorant.
* Obama followed the Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that Bush had signed. He did not accelerate withdrawal of troops at all - if Bush was still president it would have been the same timeline. He also promised to get us out Afghanistan immediately, but he lied: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn134-KLL7Y
* Obama could release all prisoners of Guantanamo right now (that's what you generally do when you don't have evidence to convict someone). He was only blocked in attempting to transfer them elsewhere.
Here are some more facts to chew on.
* He has maintained a personal "kill list," one murdered target of which was an American citizen. [1] Other American citizens, including a 16-year old boy[2], have been killed abroad by drone strikes under his watch.
* He signed Patriot Act and FISA Amendment Acts extensions
* He campaigned on ending warrantless surveillance, instead he greatly expanded it
* He signed the NDAA bill w/ indefinite detention provisions after saying that he had "reservations"[3] about it. Proved a liar when he instructed DoJ to fight lawsuit challenging the provisions.
* He has appointed lobbyists to numerous positions of power in the federal gov't (one of them being from Monsanto to the FDA[4]), after campaigning strongly against the practice.
edit: Forgot to mention his wars on whistleblowers.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Abdulrahman_al...
[3]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/obama-defense-bill_...
He was not just blocked in attempting to transfer prisoners, he was blocked from having them tried in American courts.
The rest of your points don't seem to be related to the ones I was refuting. No administration is flawless. I was only pointing out that the parent comment to mine (specifically) was completely incorrect. Any other black marks against the current administration are beside that point.
The Guantanamo prisoners simply don't need to be tried by American courts in order to be released. http://images.politico.com/global/2013/05/03/lettertoobama_g...
Fair enough on the other points.
Golly gee, I wonder why I didn't vote for him again in 2012? When will people realize the two party system is a farce? Both parties are largely the same and neither will ever bring real change.
Someone call OkCupid and notify them of this so they can start working on their next PR campaign.
The housing crisis started well before the Bush administration. The affordable housing act was what enabled banks to start issuing loans without worrying about risk.
1. It will help them secure major enterprise clients, probably the govt. or with ties to the govt.
2. Great selling point to institutional investors come IPO time.
3. Navigating foreign business opportunities.
Although I'm not a fan of this move by Dropbox, it is important to note that Stanford has hired Rice as a professor as well. No one is abandoning Stanford, and the hits that Dropbox is going to take are going to be minuscule in comparison to the upside. This is just the hard reality.
Rice does have a lot of experience that is relevant to Dropbox and students at Stanford and I'd just like to leave it at that because at the end of the day, connections + experiences that come from being Secretary of State trump pure meritocracy or idealism.
Also
Dropbox announce two more executive changes today. The company has a new CFO, Sujay Jaswa, who is being into the role internally. Also, hailing from Google is Dropbox’s new COO: Dennis Woodside. In the post announcing those changes, it reaffirmed the above, indicating that Rice will help the company with its international operations.
Also check out Rice's consulting firm which has been providing consultation to DB for a while now. http://www.ricehadleygates.com/
The "work" page is illuminating.
- either way, this is potentially explosively bad for DB.
edit I'll also refer back to a recent comment of mine about how DP can scan your files
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498457
Now extend that to China providing lists of hashes of banned files, like Falun Gong texts or whatever.
If you rely on DP a lot, it's like allowing government(s) to sniff around your personal hard drive.
Well, that’s certainly something Condi know something about.
Popcorn status: Ready
Its easy to be the cool, caring, and tough guy, around the internet water cooler.
Angst ridden techie hipters!
Also if you think about it are choices of browsers are actually quite limited. You have Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari. Our choices in cloud storage provides are unlimited. Even my ISP provides the service now.
at the top.
{As it was one of the first,
and most prescient comments}
Of all the things said,
It also seems
the least arguable.
Then the article makes it more clear: "What’s interesting about bringing Rice onto Dropbox’s board is how normal it feels. Dropbox needs people with international experience to help it at once deal with foreign governments that have blocked its use — China, for example — and as it works to spread a product developed in one country to others that are culturally different."
Her connections at Stanford may help, though perhaps they're not as hard to find.
And she is in an advisory role, not managerial.
Forget the trust and security angle and just look at the local competition - TenCent offer 10TB of free storage!
Google, Facebook and Twitter are all banned in China and there is nothing they can do about it.
We know that the NSA et al. are always seeking access to new sources of electronic data. It is beyond doubt that they have considered how to get access to Dropbox user data, and almost certainly beyond doubt that they have approached Dropbox about it.
To me, this appointment signals that Dropbox wants to reach a negotiated settlement with the NSA over their access to Dropbox user data. They hire someone who knows all the key players and issues, to negotiate on their behalf. Presumably Ms. Rice will be instructed something like:
"We're getting a lot of pressure from the NSA. If the public knows we are giving away their data, there will be a shitstorm, it'll cost us a lot of business. So, you have to make sure NSA access to our data is somewhat limited, there's some kind of plausible legal authority, a court order or something, make sure they pay us for our efforts in copying the data over to the NSA, that sort of thing. Set it up so we can put all the blame on the NSA if anything leaks, and claim we were mandated to comply by law. Okay?"
And then Ms. Rice will be dispatched to undertake that negotiation.
So, if the NSA doesn't yet have a pipeline from Dropbox to that datacenter in Utah, they will soon.
There are two perspectives for this one --
#1 Dropbox wants an insider to help them be on the receiving end of better decisions related to non-consensual government surveillance
#2 Dropbox wants better information themselves on non-consensual government surveillance
From a PR perspective, this looks bad both to both Americans and international Dropbox users. It does not instill confidence in Dropbox.
Dropbox is a dominant platform right now but it certainly does not have to be the dominant platform. Any non-US company doing sensitive work is being negligent to their investors using platforms which enable easy spying (remember, the controversy in the US is about the NSA spying on American citizens, there is no legal barrier nor likely will there ever be one for spying on foreigners. The NSA has a blank check to do what they want if you are from abroad.)
Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the comment you replied to, at first I read your comment, then felt a negative reaction towards your reply. My (very much initial) thought process was to try and think of a rebuttal to your request for some details.
Just taking a few moments to think (and whilst I still think that the original post is probably correct), it's funny just how easy it is to fall into an emotional reaction and justification pattern of communication.
It's hard to admit, but I'm almost certainly emotionally biased against people that I think (whether rightly or wrongly) have been directly or indirectly involved in the deaths of others. It's logically obvious that that could occur, but it's surprising that my reaction has the potential to override my (mostly logical mind) that I agree with your point and think the original commenter absolutely should provide some supporting evidence to such strong opinions.
Apologies to anyone that found this to be an overly laboured and/or irrelevant point. It felt to me like an interesting bit of introspection.
Assuming that I have a great disdain for the architects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which other tech companies should I consider boycotting?
To avoid a combinatorial explosion, I'd limit myself to executives or boards pulled from state, military, and intelligence roles in the last three administrations. Oh, and McNamara. Fuck that guy.
Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any good open-source solutions at the moment. I'm not looking for a fancy web interface or anything, just a simple sync between devices, with a usable API for building apps.
In particular, rsync etc. doesn't really offer this interface, and I'm really not convinced by the usability of e.g. OwnCloud. Any solutions I might be missing? Or is this something I have to build myself?
[1] http://git-annex.branchable.com/
Please do let us know about the things you miss – on our issue tracker at http://github.com/owncloud/core/issues And if you use IRC you’re welcome in #owncloud-dev (freenode).
And be sure that we have a lot of improvements lined up for ownCloud 7 which will come out in a few weeks.
EDIT: Also, if you have specific feedback on ownCloud’s usability and design let me know, I work on that.
I love Dropbox, it's my favourite service that I use regularly. However, I cannot trust Dropbox with the privacy of my data now.
I realize, though, that neither me nor thousand others will change the Dropbox policy. They most likely anticipated the public outcry over Rice and considered it not a threat.
They play in the big league now, increasingly catering to the enterprise world. And those guys are not particularly worried about privacy issues. They rather cooperate, like the PRISM companies.
It's not the first nor last time a nice, user-friendly startup turned "evil" over a certain threshold of growth. If you happen to find a large influential company that stayed true to its original promise to their users - cherish it with all your heart. They are a very rare kind.
On the bright side, I wouldn't worry too much about the NSA browsing through your cat pics.
Or if you're willing to put in some work you can try something like this https://fak3r.com/2009/09/14/howto-build-your-own-open-sourc...
I'm not even angry at them for selecting a war criminal as a board member but she supports the NSA and warrantless wiretappings. This is such a stupid decision for so many reasons. But I'm not surprised, because we deserve companies like Dropbox who doesn't care about their users private data, because we've been prioritizing convenience over security for years. Well, not anymore. Good riddance.
My problem with this is that even though Condi Rice is a war criminal, no one will say so in the media (some will, those that public don't really listen/read). But it was easy to bash Eich (and rightfully so) because marriage equality sells. Don't expect Dropbox to back off from their decision because only a small group of people will boycott them.
Dropbox is going to improve the internet by finding all of the Documents of Mass Destruction.
Shutting down dropbox
Now I have to pull everything out of Dropbox and put it... somewhere. Google Drive, maybe. Sigh.
I hate leaving negative comments like this, but I really can see no positive light to this development.
I'm going to lighten the penalty on the other major Rice/Dropbox post, though, because although political causes are usually off-topic for HN, that story is at least new and the thread hasn't degenerated as badly.
Please note that when we say something is off topic for Hacker News, we do not mean that the topic is unimportant.
TC needs to correct that last sentence: "weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was KNOWN NOT TO possess" would be more correct in light of what actually occurred behind the scenes.
IIRC Powell's "evidence" (and some other evidence too) came from Curveball, not from the UK. It was very shaky evidence, but it wasn't known to be completely false. And even if it was, there was still the hope that Saddam had some kind of WMDs that we didn't know about.
I'm veering off into speculation now, but I think their thought process was... We gave him WMDs in the 80s and he used them in the 80s. What were the odds he really got rid of them all and hasn't tried to acquire more? I think everyone in the Bush administration just assumed that to be the case, so they weren't worried that the actual intelligence was incredibly suspect and possibly even fabricated. They already "knew" Saddam was guilty, they just needed to get the authority to take him out, and then they would be greeted as liberators and find copious evidence of all of Saddam's WMDs and evil deeds.
I remember trying to move some designers to a NFS share off of a netatalk fileserver and they flipped out when neither they nor their Mac knew what to open files in.
Classic MacOS X stored the type and creator codes in the resource fork. Early versions of MacOS X discouraged this, but preserved and respected the codes if they were present. 10.6 Snow Leopard killed them off with the UTI (an unfortunate acronym) framework.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/09/22/inside-snow-leopard...
I am super bullish about Dropbox, and have been since they were getdropbox.com. I think they have wonderful leadership and I've never had a single problem with their service. I've used both the paid version and the free model. I think they have amazing secret stuff planned for the next couple of years.
Even with all that said, I'm very confused. Does she have a personal connection with some of the founding team or something? I can't remember Rice ever expressing much care for tech while in the White House (unlike Al Gore's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway) and even then Al Gore joined Apple, not Box.com or Google Drive. Even if she had gone with Google, Microsoft, Oracle, or IBM, it would have made more sense to me.
Condi preached death and torture, Eich supported bigotry.
I'm sure however that nobody really give a f and the status quo will be maintained.
"But not someone whose politics we don't like!" —The Mob, today
The war criminal stuff, though, is just pointless. We're all war criminals for supporting this or that candidate. It's just more shades of Eich, grist for purists, but irrelevant to a decision to continue using or boycotting DropBox.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130116123236/http://blog.boxopu...
And if the opposite is true, and she will add alot of value, then who can blame Dropbox for making this call?
I guess this is the push I needed.
Obviously this question should only apply to NFL fans who also make this claim about dropping DropBox as a service.
Fuck this shit. I hope Hacker News doesn't fall for this garbage ass new trend. The Mozilla affair was bad enough. This bullshit is going too far.
I'm a libertarian leaning Democrat BTW, if you need to peg me in a hole.
I'm all ears.
Not that anybody sane should be using dropbox to store any sensitive/private information.
But yes your spot on about what you should store in the cloud and how. That does nail it but still leaves the unfetted tramplement of rights issue leaving a bad taste for the customer base. So I get that. Was just hard to cut thru everything as so many tangents going on that it was hard to get to the real issue at hand, which has people up in arms.
Thank you.
Couldn't she just get herself a job in the Oil/Gas industry or at some company that creates weapons of mass destruction like everyone else does after they leave a government position.
Good luck Dropbox, I hope you un-fuckup somehow.
(BRANDON EICH * BRANDON EICH)
EDIT: why am i downvoted? because i'm pointing out ex politics on both sides seat on boards or because i talked about being republican,which is not popular here?
Care to back up your statement with some facts with sources?
That said, the idea that she would ever be in a position to touch any user's data from the board is absurd -- however, with appropriate amounts of tin foil, if you were looking for a way in to a big-money data-sale to the NSA, you could do worse than Condy for your board.
Russia and China were meh.
Wrong.
Fox News and certain American talk radio hosts heavily promoted the belief that adequate inspections never occurred and that Hans Blix's conclusions were not to be trusted (because he hated America?). efa's understanding of the events might be based on such sources.
Example: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/01/news/la-pn-rice-katr...
This is IMHO the big, relevant one. Her role in the Iraq war may be vile ( to most of us), but this is directly in conflict with the expectations of Dropbox users. What were the Dropbox decision-makers thinking?
I don't have any problem with people who believe in small government, defense, the rule of law, and sound fiscal policy. Lying to the American public to justify a boondoggle of a war in Iraq is different.
Al Gore, whatever his failings, doesn't have that kind of massive black mark on his resume.
A talk-radio slogan when Bush was elected was that "the adults are in charge". How'd that work out for you?
Really, you can't talk about being "grown-up" out of one side of your mouth while basely insulting your opponents' "maturity" out of the other side just because we disagree politically.
BS. To me it's really simple, and not about party affiliation: A strong supporter of warrantless wire tapping and bulk anonymous data collection is a terrible choice for the board of a consumer file-storage service.
(Coincidentally, the bombing coincided with Monica Lewinsky's testimony.)