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Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

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

#51

Post by dmix »

res0nat0r wrote: post #23
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 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…

This is my primary criticism of modern representative democracy and why I lost faith in it. Every couple years we politically assassinate a few easy targets, mostly in the press, we all pat ourselves on the back for standing up for something, while the massive entrenched groups stay in power and everything stays exactly the same.

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

#52

Post by vinhboy »

bendoernberg wrote: post #25
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…

Better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled.

I like your quote. It reminds me of a buddy of mine who says I am a hypocrite for buying local fruits and vegetable, because I buy toilet paper made by a Koch-owned company.

For some people, unless you live in a cave and refuse all modern technology, you are not allowed to have any moral authority.

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

#54

Post by deveac »

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.

Agreed. As a cloud service provider, they seem to have forgotten or not cared about the fact that they aren't just selling space, they are selling trust.

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

#55

Post by venomsnake »

res0nat0r wrote: post #26
higherpurpose wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Publishing classified information is legal. Otherwise the editorial team of NYTimes would have gone to jail lots of times. It is the leaking of the information that is illegal IIRC

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

#57

Post by rjzzleep »

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…

there's a few fundamental differences between condi, amazon, and eich.

I'm sure I'll get a few downvotes, but basically the former two are plain business decisions. A lot of the people complaining about dropbox's service are either free tier customers or lower end business users.

Having Condi on board means immediate trust of huge multinational concerns likes Chevron. It doesn't matter if the people in there trust dropbox as long as the board does.

I didn't know Amazon builds the data center, I thought SAIC did, but I guess there is more than one contract. Amazon has huge experience in building data centers. They also have a govcloud. They probably bid on one of the contract offerings, and won. Well that, and some dude from the Amazon probably went golfing with some NSA dude. But it really doesn't matter, since in a way these are morally correct decisions.

Of course there is no such thing as a universal moral standard. By that standard though, you would have to boycott a lot of the tech universities in the US that get their money from DARPA contracts(a view I used to share when I was a bit younger, and still "kinda"(notreally) do).

For the record, it's important to know that I'm against both of these things, but generically speaking my argumentation speaks against what I might be morally thinking, but they're both legally correct, and from a business perspective correct.

OTOH Eich was just a personal tirade. condi, and amazon are just plain old money decisions.

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

#58

Post by er35826 »

jbooth wrote: post #29
fennecfoxen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's money in both places to be made. They're not exclusive.

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

#59

Post by probably_wrong »

edw519 wrote: post #53

You lost me at almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation . Why is it that people who know so much about one thing feel compelled to open their big mouths about something else they clearly know so little about?

Which part are you objecting about, the implication that the US blindly supports Israel, or the implication that Israel's occupations are unjustifiable?

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

#60

Post by deveac »

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…

>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;*

I actually think this part is besides the point. The problem for me is her leading role in an administration that performed extensive and expanding illegal surveillance of Americans. A cloud storage company welcoming her on to their board makes my hair stand on end.

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