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Commenters To Dropbox CEO: Houston, We Have a Problem
theodp (442580) writes "On Friday, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston sought to quell the uproar over the appointment of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the company's board of directors, promising in a blog post that Rice's appointment won't change its stance on privacy. More interesting than Houston's brief blog post on the method-behind-its-Condi-madness (which Dave Winer perhaps better explained a day earlier) is the firestorm in the ever-growing hundreds of comments that follow. So will Dropbox be swayed by the anti-Condi crowd ("If you do not eliminate Rice from your board you lose my business") or stand its ground, heartened by pro-Condi comments ("Good on ya, DB. You have my continued business and even greater admiration")? One imagines that Bush White House experience has left Condi pretty thick-skinned, and IPO riches are presumably on the horizon, but is falling on her "resignation sword" — a la Brendan Eich — out of the question for Condi?"
Same intolerant crap.
There are some things that shouldn't be tolerated. War mongering is one of them. Thousands of American families lost a son, brother, or husband in a pointless counter-productive war because of this woman's lies and incompetence. The number of Iraqi families affected is a hundred times higher.
Dropbox has the right to have her on their board. I have the right to speak my mind, and take my business elsewhere.
Sounds like the same thing they did to the mozilla CEO. When will these loser knock this shit off? I dont like the woman either but there are other reasons to fault dropbox without bringing her into it
Yes; it's the same thing. The primary job of a member of the board is to be responsible to and represent the company to people outside the company. People are saying "either this is a bad person for the job or I don't like how Dropbox wants to be represented". Now Dropbox has to make a choice. Is Condi the person they want to represent them? Is Condi's image how they want to be. If yes, then she is the right person and if so then those other people should take their business where they want to.
Or perhaps we should take a page out of their playbook? why are they woman hating??? and shes black??? RACISTS!!!! You know thats what would be happening if the politics were the other way around
I find it interesting that you are explicitly proposing lying. You know that these things aren't true yet it's more important to you to win than to think about what's right.
How about discussing some actual issues. How about something worthwhile like "condi may have been batshit crazy about invading Iraq, but at least if we had her we wouldn't have this Obama idiot handing over Ukraine to the Russians without even as much as a trade blockade".
those numbers are all well and good, but when I see the deficit has damn near doubled in 6 years, when obama called that kind of debt unamerican to be a problem, as did 2006 obama.
I guess I just look at things different than most here, as I hated bush and hate obama damn near equally, I find both of them to be detrimental to the american way of life. Instead of cheerleading for one asshole over the other turd sandwich, I prefer to look at them both on their own merits, and frankly obama has been the biggest divider in american history since the civil war
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What i dont like is late comers to companies that get IPO, and then these get millions, ahead of the hardworking coders who started there from day 0.
I dont mind her there, but if the company IPOs for billions, she should not get a cent, as I cannot see anything she can contribute that would add to the book value or earnings values. /*
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I say that as a Democrat. I also say its legitimate to question her appointment for policy based reasons.
Brandon Eich was ousted for social policy reasons not directly tied into the day to day functioning of the board.
That was a board decision to force him to resign.
Dropbox and privacy are core to its mission. Condi Rice has served on several boards of directors including Hewlett Packard, Chevron and the Rand corporation
shes professional and experienced. Shes not going to sell dropbox out to the NSA and she brings experience with these issues to the board. She understands who shes working for and is loyal to her employer. She may be an attack dog but shes a loyal well trained attack dog and thats what dropbox sees in her.
If you dont want her appointed for past policy based reasons then thats acceptable but someone needs to take a deep breath and calm the hysteria.
Eh, since everybody on the left did it to me for not voting for Obama, I'm going to do it to you.
YOU'RE A RACIST!!!!!!!
You're against a black person, so no matter what you're other qualms are, and whether or not they're valid, you're racists!
*that's sarcastic in case you can't tell, but hopefully it'll help point out that the left needs to lay off the racist card so hard*
Being intolerant of bigot homophobes is crap? Being intolerant of war mongering assholes is crap?
Here's a big FUCK YOU. Some things just should not be tolerated at all. Eich and Rice deserve to be called out for their bigotry and war mongering
She should be tried in the Hague tribunal for war crimes instead.
Hiring a war criminal and domestic-spying person may not change Dropbox's stance on privacy, but it shows another darker side of DB, it's business-at-the-expense-of-morality side.
Did they really think, "She approved the mass snooping of private data saved online, which certainly included targeting our infrastructure to breach our customers' privacy. Oh, we won't worry about that, we need her expertise, we'll hire her!".
Then again, writing the above paragraph, what the fuck was their stance on privacy then, if hiring her didn't make them ask themselves whether they're doing the right thing?
And how exactly will Dropbox succeed in the international scene, when all the foreign companies fucking realize that they're basically in-bed with the Washington "Elite", the same people that created and supported PRISM?!?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Try SpiderOak. Free 2 GB, zero-knowledge, secure. Works on a load of OSs and devices. I'm a completely satisfied customer.
Or ... get a free dynamic DNS hostname (there are still plenty available) and take a few minutes to learn about SSH/SFTP (and SSHGuard if you are using passwords) and set up your own personal file server. It doesn't have to allow shell access.
Now the companies can do whatever they want because you did the little bit of learning it took not to care.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
In other news, Dropbox has announced that their appointment of Joseph Goebbels to their board of directors will not change their stance on Jews.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well ganjadude. May I call you ganjadude? I imagine that is what your friends on 'your side' call you, right? 'ganjadude' sounds like that kind of a name.
You're assuming that the people who are angry about the appointment of Rice to this role are the same people who were angry about the Eich being given the CEO position at Mozilla.
You're also roughly stating that because there are other reasons to dislike Dropbox, it is inappropriate to complain about their choice of someone who has historically be pro-surveillance and supportive of state-sanctioned torture (in certain contexts, like the state doing the torturing for the US). I isn't really 'inappropriate' to complain about both the color and performance of a car, and likewise I don't think that disliking some other attribute of Dropbox reasonably precludes me complaining about their choice of board members.
I didn't much like the way that Eich was attacked for his support of Prop 8, even though I didn't agree with Prop 8. Eich's views on same-sex marriage really don't relate Mozilla (I don't think), and they don't really make him a bad or nasty person either - at least, not themselves without knowing the reasoning behind them.
That Rice previously demonstrated support of intensive surveillance by government does directly relate to Dropbox. I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to criticise. I think that her support of torture and extraordinary rendition makes her an unpleasant person, but I'm not sure that so much relates to her role at Dropbox.
Your obsession with what 'they' do, those dirty liberals, is slightly bizarre and makes you sound like a crazy person. Also, you're presenting a weak caricature of liberals and then pretending it is reality. That doesn't make you sound clever, or steadfast in your role as an opponent of liberals. It makes you sound like someone who is to polarized to be able to think straight.
Trolling grammar nazis just makes you a different kind of idiot
The issue has nothing to do with Iraq. Nor the fact that she's a woman, or that she is Black. The real issue here is that in the wake of Snowdon's revelations about widespread surveillance of the general public by three letter government agencies, a former National Security Advisor is being appointed to the board of a widely used online storage site that has thus far managed to convince some people that it is on the side of privacy.
I find it very amusing how the tune has changed with regards to how vote with their wallet and corporate moral character.
For the longest time the argument was "Well if you don't like company x don't buy their products!". With the implication being that if you don't actually stop, then you are just a whiner or a hypocrite. But now people really are taking their business elsewhere. The actions of a company or the people that represent a company is effecting the bottom line. Yet somehow old "vote with your wallet" is no longer acceptable. Somehow judging a company based on it's moral character is an assault on free speech, maybe even down right persecution!
For a long time people (on Slashdot especially) have been warning of the dangers of putting your data in the cloud. Of the amount of personal information that can be gleaned from your web browsing habits. That that big business is cooperating with the government (willingly or not) in a massive breach of privacy. So how and can anyone be surprised that customers demand moral character from leadership of companies to whom we are handing over so much personal information?
If you had to make a choice between companies to store YOUR personal information and your choices are: Company A with Bruce Schneier on it's board of directors, and Company B with Dick Cheney on it's board of directors. Does anyone seriously think that difference shouldn't effect the decision?
I for one have no sympathy. Yes a company has every right to alienate their customers, but customers also have every right to vote with their wallets.
...but when I see the deficit has damn near doubled in 6 years...
The deficit has been reduced by more than half in 6 years. The national debt has increased greatly, because of the huge deficit which Obama inherited from Bush. But seriously, why I am wasting my breath on a fucktard who doesn't know the difference.
The issue has nothing to do with gitmo. Nor the fact that he's a man, or that he is Black. The real issue here is the massive deficit that we now have, that was called unamerican when it was half as big, also the issues we have with drone warefare on americans without trial, and also obamacare
Yet We get called racists for that statement I just made all the time....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I understand very clearly the difference between accumulated debt and rate of growth of debt (which is what the deficit is).
At the same time, you should understand that you can't "inherit" a deficit. The idea is poppycock. The budget for each year stands fresh on its own. You can change a massive deficit to a surplus in a single year just by adjusting the numbers in your budget. Yes, interest on the debt (which IS inherited), and a piss poor economic climate (which is inherited to some extent) are burdens on the budget, but it within the power of the budgeters to counteract these. I don't claim it would be an easy choice to do it, or to live with, but it is in point of fact utterly trivial procedurally to do.
A final point I'll throw in just to make the whole discussion even more fun. No President has any control over the budget beyond:
1) Submitting one, which can be mutilated or just replaced by the legislature.
2) Signing off on whatever budget DOES get passed by the legislature (if there is one).
3) Using the bully pulpit, which is not trivial, but still it's just talk and persuasion.
In passing, I call attention to the point that those responsible for making a budget can subvert the whole process by just failing to execute their duty. Both the President and Congress have been guilty of that.
One could argue that a President can take unilateral action, like engaging the military in action, which necessarily leads to hemmorhage in the budget, so yes, that has to be mitigated. However, the legislature can still use the war powers act to limit the effect by limiting the time scale - IF, and it is a big IF, they are willing to stick their neck out.
should her life be ruined over the fact that she made some mistakes while in government?
yes. when you 'make mistakes' at that kind of level and it affects the WHOLE WORLD in a hugely negative way, YES. 1000 times yes.
next question?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
>*that's sarcastic in case you can't tell, but hopefully it'll help point out that the left needs to lay off the racist card so hard*
No, it's actually the right that needs to lay off the "race card" card. Seriously, every time they bring up some pointless complaint about Obama, they whine defensively that they're only restrained from criticism because they'll be called racists.
No shit, when your complaint is that Obama's a Kenyan Marxo-Islamic Fascist Communist, that's going to happen.
Doesn't mean you can't find some legitimate complaint to make about Obama, but the conservative right can't even manage that most days of the week.
Dropbox starts scanning your files and prevents you from sharing what *it thinks* are copyrighted materials, and instead, you guys bitch and moan over some Hollywood-celeb-type bullshit?
There are some things that shouldn't be tolerated. War mongering is one of them. Thousands of American families lost a son, brother, or husband in a pointless counter-productive war because of this woman's lies and incompetence. The number of Iraqi families affected is a hundred times higher.
But you do tolerate warmongers. You seem completely predisposed to tolerate Saddam's warmongering, crimes against humanity, support for terrorism, and many other crimes.
The Iraq war wasn't pointless or counter-productive. Saddam is gone. His psychopathic sons that would have been even worse, and who stood to inherit power from him, are gone. Iraq is now a democracy, albeit a troubled one, and they are rebuilding the country from the ruin of Saddam's mismanagement. Iraqi oil money is no longer being spent to build huge palaces for Saddam and build illegal weapons but is instead helping to build Iraq's future. Iraq is no longer a threat to peace and stability of the entire region.
The price for that was by historical standards very low for the US, and below Saddam's long term average of death and destruction for Iraq.
If you oppose warmongering you are on the wrong side of this. You should oppose Saddam, not the US, and not blame Rice.
Dropbox has the right to have her on their board. I have the right to speak my mind, and take my business elsewhere.
You certainly do have the right to be wrong on the facts and wrong on the politics.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
USA had absolutely no grounds to remove Saddam Hussein from the power.
The only reason they received U.N mandate is because they fabricated the WMD evidence and outright lied at the hearing.
On top of it they captured people - detained unlawfully without a charge or trial and tortured during their captivity.
Condi Rice and the rest of the Bush Jr. administration should be tried for their crimes.
+1 Insightful
Yes, there are very legitimate reasons to dislike some of Obama's policies but the rightwingnuts have wasted years with birther stupidity, obstinate obstruction of things they previously supported to the point where the GOP Senate Leader filibustered his OWN bill!!
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Heh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
If killing people and attacking countries is enough for you to call for invasion and hanging, I assume you would be fine with the US being invaded and roughly a gazillion people being finally tried for their crimes?
And why stop with Saddam? There are so many way more brutal dictators around the world, so what gives? Are you unaware that the US govt actively supported worse than him, or are you just chosing to ignore it? Don't even pretend: his crime wasn't that he "invaded his neighboring country", but that he did so on his own accord, disobeying the US. That's what made him an enemy, not the gassing or being a dictator. And then there is the fact that the US was always keen on controlling the oil in that region... so either you play along or you get replaced, that is all; how brutal you are doesn't play into it other than that you get lauded for it while you follow orders, and demonized otherwise. Saddam was an asshole, but that doesn't make the US govt less of a war profiteering, hypocritical BS expedition, or you less of an useful idiot, who essentially gets to pay big money to have blood on your hands. Sorry, I know nobody wants to hear something like that, but step one to fix things is to stop pretending you're not being played like a piano.
There were certainly grounds to remove him from power. Iraqi genocide of the Kurds, for example. The largest reason was to gain control of Iraqi oil. Iraq had also already tried once to invade a peaceful neighbor, Kuwait, to gain control of their large oil reserves, and had been defeated in that invasion with US help
What there _was not_ was a reasonable hope of an invasion working to replace Sadam Hussein with something stable and US friendly. The country is a nightmare of inter-tribal fighting and has been ever since the British created it out of three smaller Arab nations.
Really.
Name an ACTUAL GOP official that's said Obama's a "Kenyan Marxo-islamic fascist communist"
I won't hold my breath.
Now let me show you ACTUAL DNC officials who've called the GOP racist
http://www.breitbart.com/Breit...
http://content.usatoday.com/co...
The House has been passing budgets, the Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid (D-NV) has not.
The Bush tax cuts have been continued by the Obama administration because they were judged to be a sound method of stimulating the economy. The economy would be in better shape if the Obama administration was not roiling the waters with a rapidly increasing regulatory burden of which Obamacare is no small part. (Note how they keep pushing out compliance deadlines? Guess what would happen if they tried to enforce them?)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What i dont like is late comers to companies that get IPO, and then these get millions, ahead of the hardworking coders who started there from day 0.
I dont mind her there, but if the company IPOs for billions, she should not get a cent, as I cannot see anything she can contribute that would add to the book value or earnings values. /*
Actually, when IPO time rolls around people with "names" can add a great deal to the IPO. I can certainly believe that a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor might have contributions to make on the "privacy and security" front, which is the focal point of the criticism. That aside, the IPO's that I have been involved in always included bringing in people with the right resume in high level posts at the last minute. That way the big institutional investors who are looking in to the company can say "Aha, I see they have big name official on the board, and look, they have the former CIO from Transamerica. They have all the right people in place to move the company forward!" And yes, it pissed me off that someone who had nothing to do with building the company made more than I did (by a couple of orders of magnitude) on the IPO. But Mr. Analyst working for the big investment group doesn't want to hear "we have this great guy who is super-bright and has been working 100 hours a week since the beginning as CIO".
But that is irrelevant to the major shareholders - they are simply asking themselves "can we make 30% more if we bring in this handful of people for the IPO?" If they can make an extra $200 million by spending 20 million, they'll do it every time. Once the VC guys get involved, loyalty kinda flies out the window.
So I guess the moral of the story is, make sure you get paid on the initial investments, because that might be the last bite of the apple you get.
Actually Saddam didn't keep terrorists out of Iraq, he provided them refuge, financing, and training. He just didn't have much to do with al Qaida. When al Qaida started conducting terrorist attacks in Iraq it resulted in massive loss of life for Iraqis which resulted in a large drop in support for al Qaida in the Arab and Muslim world. Their financing was significantly reduced, and many of their agents were captured or killed. Part of the reason that Afghanistan settled down for several years was the shift in effort from Afghanistan to Iraq by al Qaida. Eventually al Qaida was forced to flee Iraq and Afghanistan started heating up again. Al Qaida would have been stronger if it had not gone to Iraq.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
but lying to the American people to stage an invasion of Iraq, a country without ICBMs (and their inherent ability to deliver nuclear destruction to America), was not just a crime, it was a TREASONOUS act for which the architects of the Iraq War (Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld) should be prosecuted and then executed.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.