DK's letter is from 2002. Which makes it even more admirable.
Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
21–30 of 187 posts
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#22I 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…
Have we learned nothing from the Mozilla incident ? Liberals do not forget. Liberals do not forgive. Not even the liberals donating against gay marriage themselves [1].
This happens when people get power and feel confident. Perfect ideological adherence is a basic condition, hurting and damaging valuable people the order of the day [2].
And what makes people attackable by these liberals ? Because Obama kills babies in their sleep using robots paid by taking 50% of your paycheck. That does not seem to damage him.
And, it doesn't really matter what the answer to that question is, I'll hate people even more if I ever do find out I think.
Enjoy it while it lasts, guys. Because it won't last.
[1] http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/04/08/okcupid-ceo-once... [2] http://www.bitstampede.com/2014/04/06/standing-strong-and-st...
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#23Amazon 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 believe this and Eich are easy targets (soft targets if we want to keep with the war theme) for people to go after.
Seeing the internet mob rally behind this and Eich remind me that these are easy targets for people to pick because it doesn't require much work (internet slacktivisim at work).
It would be more enlightening if someone would research all of the board members of many well known SV companies whos names none of us know, and post all of their political donations and leanings we might not all get along with, then we can see how picky we are in our outrage. Board members of Apple and Tesla donating to groups overseas who violate human rights? How about Apple supporting Foxconn, where is the boycott in that?
Eich and Rice are just being picked because it is easy to change your Facebook picture to protest, throw together a quick .com, or if you are really motivated write a petition on whitehouse.gov to show your outrage, vs. real actual sleuthing to determine if you agree with said Big Corp.
Unfortunately the latter takes much more work and that isn't in the general interest of those of us clicking +1 to show our "outrage"...
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#24Simply 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?
They wanted a board member with international experience, as they hope to expand internationally. Including, as TechCrunch put it, to "deal with foreign governments that have blocked its use".
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#25Amazon 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…
Better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled.
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#26Amazon 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…
Wikileaks violated the AWS TOS by publishing classified material in violation of US law.
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#27Simply 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?
What's the upside for any external management appointment ? A large investment, that's what.
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#28I 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."
> 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."
You're presenting a false dichotomy.
If I am concerned with how my government handles privacy, shouldn't I take it up with the government? If I am concerned with how my goverment tortures and murders people, shouldn't I take it up with the goverment?
I understand people like Ms. Rice are hard to prosecute because most of the government data that would serve as evidence are kept secret for a long time, if not forever. Isn't that just another point which you should take up with the government? Bullying some private citizen because you can't sue him through legal means seems hardly fair.
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it's such a bizarre move. What's the upside?
They wanted a board member with international experience, as they hope to expand internationally. Including, as TechCrunch put it, to "deal with foreign governments that have blocked its use".
You don't think there's more money in her US Government contacts?
Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
#30[deleted]