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Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

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Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#11

Post by NotOscarWilde »

I think it's important to ask not only whether somebody is a good ideological representative for a company, but also whether ousting them does us any good.

The parties on both sides of the Rice/Dropbox debate have good arguments:

* Ms. Rice has been a very important representative of a US administration that caused a lot of people to die in Iraq and elsewhere;

* but she is not the only one in the government of that day, and many other (non-bullied) politicians are complicit as well;

* and the current president has not shown much anti-torture sympathies either, yet him being branded a Democrat makes him much less of a target.

I believe channeling energy to make Ms. Rice leave Dropbox solves nothing. Channeling the same outrage to make the elective system into a non-money-based race, to make the politicians accountable for what they promise before elections -- that may solve something.

As a non-American, stating an opinion is about all I can help you with. Good luck!

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#12

Post by m52go »

Simply removing Condi as a board member doesn't solve anything. The move to make her a board member puts the motivations of the entire Dropbox leadership team in question.

Today, Dropbox hurt its reputation very badly, regardless how this ultimately plays out.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#13

Post by dmix »

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it?

The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent.

I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet and in the press (especially on the Daily Show) and this isn't really about upholding some strong high-moral consistency that we all have.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#14

Post by thenmar »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #11

I think it's important to ask not only whether somebody is a good ideological representative for a company, but also whether ousting them does us any good. The parties on both sides of the Rice/Dropbox debate have good arguments: * Ms. Rice has been a very important representative of a US administration that caused a lot of people to die in Iraq and elsewhere; * but she is not the only one in the government of that d…

How are those two things at all comparable? Changing the elective system might require nothing short of a constitutional amendment. At least voicing outrage about Rice/Dropbox raises awareness of privacy issues. You can't just say, "this one thing your doing isn't going to make a radical paradigm shifting difference, so you should just sit around until someone drops one of those in your lap."

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#15

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

dmix wrote: post #13

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent. I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet…

I don't use EC2 over it. I host a site with a million+ pageviews per month with >250GiB of user data and I host it with Voxility. It used to be on AWS.

Edit: FWIW, I also don't use dropbox. I use rsync and a VPS.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#16

Post by mark212 »

not_paul_graham wrote: post #9

I really hope that these top posts on HN influence at least some employees at Dropbox to resign publicly because Dropbox's core (meaty revenue generating) users aren't HN readers anymore, but the mass market & enterprises that aren't going to care.

You have that backwards. Plenty of corporate managers will look at this addition to the board of directors and think "A serious adult non-tech leader just joined, I can now take this company seriously."

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#17

Post by hindsightbias »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #11

I think it's important to ask not only whether somebody is a good ideological representative for a company, but also whether ousting them does us any good. The parties on both sides of the Rice/Dropbox debate have good arguments: * Ms. Rice has been a very important representative of a US administration that caused a lot of people to die in Iraq and elsewhere; * but she is not the only one in the government of that d…

> solves nothing

Sometimes, the best solution for bad behavior is making it have consequences.

> promise before elections

By that logic, Bush and Rice met their promises. They didn't say they wouldn't invade anyone, they said they wouldn't do nation building.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#18

Post by Tloewald »

dmix wrote: post #13

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent. I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet…

I don't [yet] use AWS but thanks for raising this issue.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#19

Post by higherpurpose »

dmix wrote: post #13

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent. I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet…

I've been trying to avoid Amazon since they censored Wikileaks with a single phone call from a politician. I'll never forgive them for that. The fact that they're working with the CIA now just adds to the pile of reasons to dislike them.

Will history make a difference between IBM selling mainframes to Nazis to help their holocaust and Amazon selling servers to the CIA to help them assassinate people around the world and plan state coups? Maybe not quite on the same level, but pretty damn close.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#20

Post by Tloewald »

m52go wrote: post #12

Simply removing Condi as a board member doesn't solve anything. The move to make her a board member puts the motivations of the entire Dropbox leadership team in question. Today, Dropbox hurt its reputation very badly, regardless how this ultimately plays out.

And it's such a bizarre move. What's the upside?
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