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Drop Dropbox
- davidgaw 13y agoThe way I would "drop Dropbox" if they or Rice give in to this shameful attack on diversity of thought. Otherwise, thanks in part to this effort, I will remain a loyal Dropbox customer for life.
- aioprisan 13y agoWeren't John Kerry and Hillary Clinton arguably equally responsible for any war that Condy supported? The voted for the funds that made it possible, how is that less responsible for the results?
- fit2rule 13y agoI didn't know they were on the board of directors of Dropbox. Very interesting. Yes: a large percentage of the politicians in power today are responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being committed, even yet daily, in the name of the American people - and YES, you SHOULD hold them accountable, since - as an American - you, yourself, are also responsible for the heinous actions of your nation state.
- NikolaTesla 13y ago(Virtual) Downvote
- mbrutsch 13y agoSadly, most Americans don't hold themselves responsible for the actions of our duly elected leaders. It's how we sleep at night. brb, dropping Dropbox...
- fit2rule 13y ago>Sadly, most Americans don't hold themselves responsible for the actions of our duly elected leaders. Something is going to have to change, sooner or later. I hope its for the better, but I doubt it will be.
- Karunamon 13y agoSee, that doesn't work. There's no such thing as a recall for some positions, and it's pretty hard to be responsible for someone who says they're going to do one thing and then does a completely different thing once they're beyond accountability.
- fit2rule 13y ago>beyond accountability There is your problem, America. Fix it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- aioprisan 13y agodo other countries fix that somehow? in a way that actually has some teeth?
- fit2rule 13y agoIts called violent social revolution, and it happens all over the world where political injustice is perceived by the masses. But not in America.
- Karunamon 13y agoAll that means is that Americans value social stability over all else. The threshold hasn't been crossed yet. Despite what the media might say, life is still pretty damned good here, and what injustice exists affects a minority, rather than a majority of people.
- aioprisan 13y agoI have to disagree with this. Look at the civil rights movement. When a minority is affected, we will rise up to change the status quo.
- 13y ago
- dotBen 13y agoActually Rice has never held a democratically elected office - a strange trait of the American government system is that The President can appoint anyone he likes to hold these offices. This counters to countries like Britain where these roles have to go to,democratically elected Members of one of the two Houses (usually the lower House of Parliament where the Prime Minister sits). So assumeing Condeeleza Rice had some degree of agency in her role of Secretary of State, it's hard to even hold President Bush accountable for all of her actions.
- aioprisan 13y agoThe check there is that all cabinet members have to be confirmed by the Senate, which are all elected officials.
- mcherm 13y ago> Rice has never held a democratically elected office Technically true, however, she WAS approved by 2/3 of the Senate to hold what is widely considered the second-highest administrative office (after the President).
- aioprisan 13y agoSo you also never eat ketchup as well, right? What about making sure that you never buy gasoline from a major, evil gas producer? Are all of your clothing options carefully selected and verified as to not benefit from child labor? And, of course, you didn't write that message on an Apple product, since they are assembled in what are essentially slave labor camps?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- iambother 13y agoWe are in the midst of the imperial order, not the end of it.
- harrystone 13y agoI think the way that's usually handled is to say that George Bush tricked them into it. George Bush. Tricked them.
- roc 13y ago> "how is that less responsible for the results?" Devil's Advocate: It's not. But they didn't join Dropbox's board, so it's irrelevant. It is possible this isn't about partisanship, just personal history. Though I have a hard time believing that's actually the case.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoEasy. Voting to give someone the authority to go to war, and actually taking the country to war on faulty or fabricated evidence are in entirely different universes. Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections. That Bush took that as a blank check and skipped further diplomatic processes is entirely on his (and his administration's) shoulders.
- aioprisan 13y agoWhat evidence do you have that there was fabricated evidence to justify the war? I'm not saying it wasn't faulty, but all the parties has closed door access to all the intelligence to make a decision. Just because we don't like the decision retroactively doesn't mean it was done on purpose, but rather due to mistakes being made. Not to say that's more comforting, just that they are different things.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoI don't have citations off hand, but from memory: 1. Cheney strongly pressured the CIA to discover a smoking gun for Iraq WMDs 2. CIA produced a document that they themselves questioned the authenticity of (the "yellow cake" purchase document) 3. Bush/Cheney ran with that, ignoring the caveats of the intelligence and trumpeting it as the smoking gun 4. Later discovered that the document was fabricated So while I haven't seen any evidence that they were personally involved in fabricating the evidence, they fabricated the narrative that justified the war by interfering with the intelligence gathering and vetting process and ignoring their recommendations. Claims that senators that voted for war are just as responsible because "they saw the same evidence" does not account for reality. Senators are shown evidence, they are not involved in the process of gathering and vetting that evidence. If this process is interfered with then the conclusions are worthless.
- aioprisan 13y ago> Senators are shown evidence, they are not involved in the process of gathering and vetting that evidence. If this process is interfered with then the conclusions are worthless. Senators can request additional information on the processes that is shares in closed doors. There is also the intelligence oversight committee that can investigate those actions and bring all the parties involved to actually testify. The fact that not many members of Congress questioned what was presented ultimately rests solely on their shoulders, since they can choose to request more information and open inquiries.
- bluedino 13y agoIf you put together a list of companies that the politicians who voted for the Iraq war were board members of...you'd be boycotting a lot of companies.
- aioprisan 13y agoMy argument exactly. Isn't Chuck Hagel on the board of PBS, Chevron, Deutsche Bank etc.
- nraynaud 13y agoI think there is a difference between telling a lie and believing a lie.
- bachback 13y agoI'd suggest the alternative http://mega.co.nz http://mega.co.nz
- Karunamon 13y agoI'd be on board with this if it weren't for the fact that Mega as it exists is a gigantic middle finger in the general direction of the copyright industry. While admirable, that is not conducive to their continued well being.
- kzrdude 13y agoThey didn't seem to know how to do cryptography right though.
- pavs 13y agoMega is not a drop-in replacement for dropbox. Unless they drastically changed how they worked since the last time I checked.
- izzydata 13y agoWell they do have a desktop folder syncing program so it works more like dropbox. They probably don't have a lot of the same APIs and more in depth ways to use it. It is just file backup and encryption.
- antonius 13y agoWhen looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint. Condoleezza sure left a global footprint in the Middle East alright. Hate do this Dropbox, but time for me to move on. Edit: Suggestions for a Dropbox substitute?
- MPiccinato 13y agoWe have been using https://copy.com https://copy.com without any issue.
- bambax 13y agoIt's an American company (Barracuda Inc.)
- EC1 13y agoAny no bullshit European companies that can match the quality of Dropbox software? I hate that I even have to make decisions like this, what the fuck kind of world are we living in.
- Zsolt 13y agoYou should look into Tresorit. https://tresorit.com https://tresorit.com
- luos 13y agoThere is tresorit ( https://tresorit.com/ https://tresorit.com/ ), but depending on what you want to do, they seem to be a little expensive.
- perakojotgenije 13y agoTry hubic (https://hubic.com/en/ https://hubic.com/en/), they are a French company.
- atmosx 13y agoWuala Switzerland (run by Lacie inc.)
- pritambaral 13y agoThe fb share link has href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<url>" http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<url>". It still functions though, js triggered.
- walden42 13y agoSpider Oak is great, and cares about your privacy. Everything's encrypted client-side.
- bicx 13y agoUnless a company is actively hurting people, I'm going to choose what I use based on the quality of the product, not on a board member's past. Maybe they determined that a hardened political voice would balance them out in the boardroom. Maybe they need someone there to play the devil's advocate in an industry that can be extraordinarily narcissistic.
- tomp 13y agoIraq war has not yet ended.
- bicx 13y agoThat is currently in the hands of the Obama Administration, not Dropbox.
- woofyman 13y agoObama pulled all combat troops out of Iraq after they were told to leave.
- talmand 13y agoAccording to an agreed timetable signed by Bush and Iraqi leadership.
- aioprisan 13y agoAccording to the request of the democratically elected Iraqi leadership and the inability of the Obama and Iraqi leaderships to negotiate something mutually beneficial.
- bsaul 13y agoAnd iraq is such a more secure place thanks to that move, i guess ?
- ahassan 13y ago
- KhalPanda 13y agoYeah... or I could continue using Dropbox as I have done for the past couple of years safe in the knowledge that a director's political background has little-to-nothing to do with the day-to-day running of a tech company.
- vishalzone2002 13y agoits not only dropbox. She is also on board of multiple class-A valley startups including thomas siebel's c3 energy http://www.c3energy.com/about-board-of-directors http://www.c3energy.com/about-board-of-directors
- alandarev 13y agoThe pictures on drop-dropbox sites are self-explanary and exponentally stronger, than common comments on why tech X shall be avoided I come across every day. That is first time a "stop using tech X" site made me change my opinion. Fully supporting. Those who are searching for alternatives - try out BitTorrent Sync. I have been using it for a while, will pull a plug on Dropbox acc.
- Deusdies 13y agoI have generally been using Google Drive anyway, but after what this person did to my country as well, I am not going to support a company that supports her. Time to move all of my files from Dropbox to GDrive.
- nb4hnp 13y agoFrom one evil directly into another.
- mbrutsch 13y agoThat was quick and painless. I was already using gdrive for my work files; downloaded and installed gdrive sync in about 5 minutes, and now I have over 3 times the free space I did with Dropbox. Thanks, Condy!
- CamperBob2 13y agoThat's fine until Google gets distracted by something shiny, as they usually do, and kills GDrive.
- mentos 13y ago>Tell Drew Houston: drop Condoleezza Rice or we will So if they drop Condoleezza Rice you'll be fine with their decision making process and keep your dropbox account?
- watty 13y agoNo. It's more of a "let's hurt their image because we don't agree with the political decisions of Condoleezza Rice" at this point.
- ajsharp 13y agoThis is just silly.
- equalarrow 13y agoHow so? So it's ok to be a part of the team that was responsible for killing many men, women, and children and not only not answer for it, but move on to be on company boards where you can be a part of some serious collection of money at some point? Wow, ok. We must be living in different realities because those years that she was part of will be looked at (or already are) as some of the worst - if not the worst - in American history. It's sad that none of that crew will ever answer for what they started and did. Granted, there were a lot of people in that chain that should have stood up and said no and not killed anyone. But they didn't. And if you or I did any of those things not wearing an army uniform, we'd be locked up and/or on death row. I would never in a million years even acknowledge anyone from that team let alone bring them on the board of my company. We really are in an era where it's all about valuations, elevator pitches, and exits. I'm waiting for some young company to bring Dick Cheney on next. Pick your battles I guess and I will be looking for an alternative that doesn't welcome war criminals.
- ajsharp 13y agoWhile convenient to paint a picture of everything being messed up and different than previous generations, none of this is at all accurate. The difference is that we lived through the Bush administration, remember it vividly, and many of us disagreed with nearly everything that happened during those 8 years. And it just happened, so it's still fresh(ish). As the saying goes, "everything's different, everything's the same." I agree those years were really bad; whether they were the worst or whatever is relevant only to someone trying to make a broader point (which I'm not). Personally, in most cases, I don't have a problem with hiring someone based on their merits, despite what their past job was, or even what their political beliefs are (see: Brendan Eich). Apparently Condoleeza Rice is extremely smart, capable, and, as the former Secretary of State, obviously well-connected in the international community. And while you made a pretty good attempt at equating her to Dick Cheney, she's just not Dick Cheney. At the end of the day, this is about Dropbox, not the Bush administration, and if Drew Houston has a spine, nothing will change about this situation.
- elliott34 13y agogrow up
- Zikes 13y agoCome on everyone, if we work together we can get Condy fired just like we did Brendan Eich!
- secstate 13y agoThanks for the flippant comment. Eich resigned because while talking heads on TV would have you believe otherwise, the gay rights movement is a civil rights movement. By actively donating against it, he was making a strong statement about his leadership qualities that he would actively discourage equal rights for homosexuals. That said, the idea to drop a product over the composition of its leadership is perfectly valid. If Robert Mugabe showed up on the Dropbox board of directors, I imagine a great many people would be nonplussed and Dropbox would have undergo a trial by public that would not end well. A great many people would argue that given Rice's track record as a public servant, her personal and professional proclivities, while certainly more nuanced and less egregious than Mugabe, are not great when considering where you should store your data. IMHO, tapping Rice for their board was a terrible decision and speaks more towards Houston trying to pump up the old-school market strength image of Dropbox than a wise strategic move to improve the quality of their service and business. TL;DR, Houston, you fucked up.
- shiftpgdn 13y agoKind of wish there was a picture of dead kids warning before I clicked the link.
- beaker52 13y agoEven if Rice goes, I'm not going back. The board has already shown it's ugly face. No amount of backtracking will convince me I didn't see what just happened.
- cscheid 13y agoDoes anyone know of a version of http://theyrule.net http://theyrule.net with updated data?
- jimmytidey 13y agoIt makes it easier that I don't really like Dropbox as a product anyway.
- theorique 13y agoWhy all this politicization of Rice's role? What possible relevance could her actions (or hysterical descriptions of her actions) in the Bush administration have in regards to her role as a board member of Dropbox? Most likely, this is a political appointment to get Dropbox connections in Washington, to sell large contracts into the federal government. And, possibly, to sell into governments abroad where Ms Rice's connections may also be of value. (None of which has any relevance to the usefulness of their product to me.)
- doktrin 13y agoActions have consequences. It's perfectly acceptable for individuals to choose to no longer support a product based on its leaderships decisions.
- joshstrange 13y agoAnd sell our data to the NSA while they're at it?
- jbellis 13y agoITT: people who have no idea what board members do.
- joemaller1 13y agoI was wondering how long this would take. Thoughtcrime is here. The quest for ideological purity is kneecapping our future. Shutting out half of the brainpool because they hold opposing views about disconnected topics is a recipe for societal failure.
- ekianjo 13y agoWell, what happened at Mozilla was certainly "Thoughtcrime" (just happened to be on the unpopular part of the spectrum, if it were 20 years ago nobody would have said anything) but Rice is something different altogether. Her hands are not clean, if you know what I mean.
- gregd 13y agoInteresting, since Condoleeza Rice seems to be the very definition of Thought Police. Her quest for ideological purity resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed or maimed.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gregd 13y agoChoosing not to consume a product based on the actions of a board member, is hardly imitating her, unless of course you're telling me that every time someone drops Dropbox, God kills a kitten...
- talmand 13y agoI require sources to prove your claim of "Her quest for ideological purity". I already know of the Thought Police claims so I don't require those.
- gregd 13y agoI.R.A.Q.
- edlebert 13y agoKeep those torches lit for everyone in the current administration too, right? Torture, war, and mass-surveillance continue to this day, 5 years after she stopped being Secretary of State. In addition, many in the current administration were involved in the Iraq war as well.
- nomadcoop 13y agoAnyone know of a Dropbox equivalent based in Europe?
- Cyclenerd 13y agoI recommend http://www.wuala.com/ http://www.wuala.com/ In order to protect your privacy, Wuala encrypts the data on your computer before it is uploaded.
- jpwagner 13y agoI don't get this kind of stuff. I'm sure it's based on good intentions, but this will just lead to MORE nepotism and less transparency because the price of negative press is that much greater. It feels similar to the hit on the Mozilla guy, which really rubbed me the wrong way. For all I know he clubs baby seals in his free time, but nobody bothered to investigate the truth until it was too late. One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.
- mcv 13y agoTo me, this feels totally different from the Eich case. His political beliefs has nothing to do with Mozilla's product. However, giving someone who approves of wiretaps an important position in a company that people trust with their data, seems like an unbelievably bad idea. It's not just about whether someone in the company has an opinion I find despicable, it's about whether my own data is still safe.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mattzito 13y agoShe's an independent board member. She does not have the ability, in practice, to do anything other than vote on compensation and various other corporate policies. And if all it takes to get dropbox execs to turn over data is fiscal threats from a board member who is a former government employee, then they were going to give up long before Condi shows up on the board. EDIT: and I just want to be clear. If you just don't like the idea of having someone who was involved with the war in Iraq/Afghanistan on the board of a company, you're entitled to your opinion (though I think it's pretty hard to be secretary of state or any other position of power in the govenrment without being involved in something evil). But I find the idea that somehow Condi's presence on the board an indicator that they'll disclose my data to the government borderline ludicrous.
- tomasien 13y agoDropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally. But Condi Rice joining a completely private Dropbox as a board member - this is a non-issue. I'm as strongly anti-Bush administration and anti-war in general (especially the Iraq War - good grief) as anyone you could hope to meet, but this is ridiculously naive and short sighted to think that Condi being involved with Dropbox is something to get excited about. There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends. Edit: that Condi Rice is a "privacy" concern - ok. Fine. I think that's ridiculous but you know what - nothing is particularly ridiculous when it comes to privacy anymore. So I will accept that argument.
- geekam 13y ago>>There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends. What do think we do then if we find that a decision-maker in a company is highly partisan and maybe bad for privacy?
- mcv 13y agoIt's not about partisanship, it's about whether your data is safe. Of course maybe data can never be safe in the hands of a US company, but I put significantly less trust in a company that hires someone who supported all the violations by various secret services, than in one that fights those violations.
- EdiX 13y agoBefore this I could at least pretend they didn't play ball with the NSA, I knew it was self deception but I'm also very lazy. Now they might as well hang a "Friend of NSA" sign in front of their building. I downgraded my Pro account.
- 13y ago
- tommo123 13y agoA lot of people here seem to have absolutely no issue with saying "I have no problem with the ethical ramifications of a company's actions or choice of representatives or the beneficiaries of a company's wealth that my support helps grow". I can't tell if you're sociopathic or just utterly clueless. Not taking a 'moral stand' isn't business -- it's taking a moral stand of not caring. Culpability can stem from inaction as well.
- ezrameanshelp 13y agoThis is why my company's board is 100% cyborgs.
- grannyg00se 13y agoI'm sure that bringing Brendan Eich's politics into question when he moved into CEO position has made this a more popular trend.
- xenophonf 13y agoBusiness leaders' politics have always been an issue, and people arrange boycotts all the time because of them (left, right, and center). It's called political speech, and it's actually a good thing. Heck, it even cuts both ways - for example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has definitely changed my opinion of the Microsoft founder, and in a good way.
- digitalcraft 13y agodrop everything, after all you have the NSA - silly
- jays 13y agoDropbox certainly has lost some peoples trust. What makes any of the other companies more trustworthy though? Has someone personally interviewed all the employees, performed a security audit of their system, and determined they are legit? Seems like a false sense of security.
- dctoedt 13y agoI'm as anti-war as the next guy; we military veterans tend to be more so than most, and I've gotten even more so as I've gotten older. Still, there are those who appreciate that: (A) political leaders aren't supermen and -women. Like all of us, they have to make the best decisions they can with the limited information available to them at the time; (A1) [ADDED:] the signal-to-noise ratio can be problematic; the available bits of information are often of varying quality and sometimes are flatly contradictory --- a major part of the leadership challenge is figuring out what the hell is really going on; (B) most political leaders genuinely want to do a good job, even if that's mixed in with a larger- or smaller dollop of self-interest (as is the case with most of us); (C) in late 2002 and early 2003, memories of 9/11 were still raw; (D) Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians (and let's not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait); (E) it was unclear to what extent Hussein had made any progress on building -- or buying -- nuclear weapons; (F) the downside of a false negative on that issue was considerable; and (G) hindsight is 20-20, and there are always Monday-morning quarterbacks around who are certain they could have done better.
- Touche 13y agoSorry, but tempered reasoning like this is not acceptable in the maximalist society we have today. You must be absolutely certain about every issue and realize that those who disagree are evil, intentionally so, full-stop.
- joeblau 13y agoThat escalated quickly! This is a pretty strong digital political attacks to be lobbied against a tech company. I'm curious to see what response Dropbox will have.
- Grue3 13y agoOh boy, yet another idiotic witch hunt. I'm sure the author uses only software written exclusively by people with purest intentions.
- dkhenry 13y agoWell I thought it would take longer for activists to start targeting companies in the wake of the Mozilla issue. I am actually surprised to see this happen so quickly. Its good to know that I am free to excersize my rights unless I want a job in the tech sector in which case I am required to conform to the social worldview of a selection of internet activists.
- vdaniuk 13y agoIs it a human right to approve torture, work towards starting a war and helping installing mass surveillance? I might have missed the U.N. meeting protecting those "rights".
- dzink 13y agoA board member does not decide on features or dig into your account to look for your political preferences. I can think of a dozen reasons why they would have invited her and all of them would be good for the company and good for users: - advise on security matters and help keep the NSA out of my files. - get government business for Dropbox thus maybe reducing bureaucracy for citizens and small business owners alike in this country and others. - help the company navigate Washington in a lot of ways My imagination is poor on the subject, but I think if a company gets a politically savvy partner who was chief diplomat in the most powerful country in the world for a while it is for the benefit of the company and it's users.
- joshstrange 13y ago>> advise on security matters and help keep the NSA out of my files What about her past makes you think she would have this position? I'd argue if the options are "Help protect your data from the NSA" or "Hand over your data to the NSA" that she would be much more in favor of giving your data to the NSA.
- talmand 13y agoWhat about her past makes you think she would have this position?
- joshstrange 13y agoRice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say [0] >> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended Bush's actions, telling "Fox News Sunday" the president had authorized the National Security Agency "to collect information on a limited number of people with connections to al Qaeda." >> ... >> Asked why the president authorized skipping the FISA court, Rice said the war on terrorism was a "different type of war" that gives the commander in chief "additional authorities." [1] >> Wolf Blitzer Interview with Condoleezza Rice on Domestic Wiretap Controversy [2] [0] http://rawstory.com/news/2005/After_domestic_spying_reports_U.S._spying_1227.html http://rawstory.com/news/2005/After_domestic_spying_reports_... [1] http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/18/bush.nsa/ http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/18/bush.nsa/ [2] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/26/sitroom.03.html http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/26/sitroom.03.ht...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- valarauca1 13y agoLucky business has an even more effective system. If you like a company/its product pay for it. If not don't. I'm voting with my wallet.
- joshstrange 13y agoI agree and I'd argue that voting with your wallet is just about the only form of voting politicians listen to as well...
- fredgrott 13y agoOkay lets describe this with satire.. How Many of you Voted for Bush Sr? If you did you are just as guilty as dropbox.. Oh please...
- dragonwriter 13y ago> How Many of you Voted for Bush Sr? What does Bush Sr. have to do with this?
- pdpi 13y agoI feel that at this point we might to coin the verb "to eich", meaning "to shitstorm a company into forcing a high-ranking manager to resign".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pdpi 13y agoYeah, precisely. I don't like her either, but I think the appropriate reaction here is "Huh, I guess I'd better keep my eyes peeled because Dropbox might change the way it does things", rather than "OMG it's Condi Rice! Jump ship! NOW!"
- mkr-hn 13y agoThe word is protest. It's a valid and useful form of speech. Not everyone wanted him out of a job. I don't even think that was the majority opinion. I only wanted to know that the new CEO's values lined up with the values of the company if I was going to continue using and supporting the company's products.
- netcan 13y agoI'm not American, so this is a little removed for me. In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have. What bother me here is not Condoleezza Rice specifically. Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country's sins and there are no "clean" administrations. Complicity is the price of admission and they all pay. What does bother me is what this is a symptom of. Lets be honest about why board members are selected. Ex politicians wield political and corporate influence and a board seat is a way of renting that influence. At best its an elite club, at worst it's outright corruption but its always on that scale. I guess that if pressed they would say that they bring experience and competence. That's as nonsensical as a large corporation justifying their political donations as an innocent, democratic expression of political preference. It's hard to say with a straight face. Having ex politicians on a board is such a public display of stink. It's like when a politician who spends his entire life as a "civil servant" is obviously and publicly living a billionaire lifestyle with yhahts, mansions & private jets. They don't even bother to launder that dirty money. It's just displayed filth and all.
- jshen 13y agoThe bush administration asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. This is not equivalent to any average administration as you implied.
- bmj 13y agoAnd the current, Democratic, administration hasn't exactly rolled back many of these changes, right? My point isn't to criticize the Obama administration, but rather ask: if Hillary Clinton was asked to serve on the board of $your_favorite_service, would you consider dropping that service?
- talmand 13y agoHasn't exactly rolled back? In some cases they were expanded, including to the point of shoot first and ask questions later. As for your hypothetical, since she's apparently going to run for President and would have a decent shot at winning, I wouldn't hold my breath.
- whizzkid 13y agoThis is like being in the same boat with someone that caused a massive amount of people's life. Maybe that person has nothing against to you, or harmed you, and she can even be a the perfect captain for the boat. But personally, If i have the option of another boat to board on, I would rather not be on the same one with her.
- tambourine_man 13y agoThe only real alternative is building your own. I have, it was fun and it mostly works. But suggesting that Box.com, Microsoft or Google are more trustworthy is misleading.
- up_and_up 13y agoSeems like an extremely odd selection to me as well as politically charged.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- edtechdev 13y agoI've been looking for an excuse to finally copy over my stuff from dropbox to google drive, thanks, I was too lazy to bother with it before :)
- joshdance 13y agoI was hoping this would be a site that would review and compare cloud storage alternatives.
- cruise02 13y agoThat might be even more convincing! :)
- caiob 13y agoI call this internet bullying. I'm most def not gonna stop using a product just because I don't agree with the ideas of one person in the team. This makes me wonder if Google, Microsoft, Box or even Amazon aren't behind this kinda message; y'know trying to make it viral and stuff...
- efficientarch 13y agoI think it's the historic actions of the person rather than their ideas that are bothering people. But I can't speak for them, of course.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sugarfactory 13y agoYou shouldn't use any of the alternatives listed here either. Because none of those supports encryption. All the cloud storage services which do not provide encryption are unexceptionally evil. Because given the easiness of implementing an encryption feature, not to implement it means the administrators of a service are willing to see users' files.
- acconrad 13y agoIf we collectively invested 1/10th of this passion towards real problems (like boycotting mega banks for the billions they stole during the financial crisis) instead of whether or not my free hard drive is advised by a ex-high-ranking politician, we'd be getting a lot more done.
- sealthedeal 13y agoTheres no such thing as bad press.
- mattmaroon 13y agoI love how it says it's not because she was a member of the Bush Administration and not partisan, then goes on to list a bunch of things she did as a member of the Bush Administration.
- JackFr 13y agoConsider that when acting under uncertainty, intelligent, informed people of good will can examine the same set of facts and reach different conclusions. It has become an article of faith that the Bush administration acted in bad faith about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while all that really has ever been shown is that they were tragically, woefully and extraordinarily wrong. How intelligent, well educated people be so wrong, unless they were secretly evil? Groupthink for one, and in particular a failure to consider alternatives because of assumption of bad faith on the part of those who disagree with them. I really don't care one way or another whether Condi is on the board of Dropbox or not, and I applaud you for refusing to do business with a company you believe is immoral. But I would be surprised (pleasantly) if this was a standard you were applying consistently, thoughtfully and evenly.
- efectomendi 13y agoWhat he said
- Touche 13y agoThe problem we have with our society today is that we gravitate towards absolute positions on every contentious issue. When you are absolutely certain about something it is a small leap to then believe that those who disagree are doing so maliciously. To fix this we have to find a way to reward tempered opinions. The absolutism in our society is becoming stronger over time and it's further dividing us.
- icebraining 13y agoIf the action is destructive, and the person hasn't regretted it, does it become acceptable just because s/he has done it with the best of intentions? On the contrary: "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience". If anything, it's even more dangerous to trust in someone who believed and continues to believe in what they were doing, than in someone who did it maliciously but has since truly regretted it.
- 13y ago
- hawkharris 13y agoThe Chevron example came out of left-field. While the other sections focused on actions or positions that Rice had taken, the Chevron anecdote would have us believe that Rice is an unethical person simply because she had a relationship with the company. This is one of many unfair generalizations about energy companies. In reality, Chevron is one of the greatest contributors to alternative energy research. Without it and ExxonMobil, there wouldn't have been half as much progress toward sustainable power.
- _dark_matter_ 13y agoWell this is blatantly ignoring the anti-alternative energy contributions they've given. Although their own research may have contributed that much, the possible government funded research if they had not lobbied against it would have been that much more.[1] They've deliberately stifled research that would directly contribute to non-oil based energies. I mean, just imagine if the subsidies and tax cuts the oil companies get went instead to alternative energy research. We would be decades ahead of where we are now. Look at this 2008 article from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html. [1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-07-02/renewable-fuels-oil-congress/55987052/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-07...
- CamperBob2 13y agoAgreed, the Chevron section didn't belong on the page and weakens it substantially.
- davexunit 13y agoFinally people realize that Dropbox is unethical. They've been denying your computing freedom for years now, but it took hiring Condoleezza Rice for people to start to catch on. Replace dropbox with ownCloud. http://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/
- dhimes 13y agoI was looking at their site for a while and I really have no idea what they sell. I'm sure it's just a communication issue, but it seems kind of weird. Like I have to register to find out that I will get a client for free but pay $10K/month for the enterprise software or something. How do they make money? Apparently you use your own server so you must buy the code?
- davexunit 13y agoownCloud is free software licensed under the AGPL. This means that you can run the software on one of your own machines or find a hosting provider. The company behind ownCloud offers enterprise installations, which is probably what confused you. Personally, I haven't gotten around to self-hosting yet and use a small free account at https://owndrive.com/ https://owndrive.com/ Hope this helps.
- sparkie 13y agoownCloud is free/open source software - you have no obligation to use ownCloud's servers or pay them anything - you can download both the client and server source code, host the server on your own machine, and connect to that with the client. ownCloud run a business where they can host a copy of the server software for you, if you don't have your own machine or a usable connection - but there's no requirement to use that - you could spin up an instance in Amazon's cloud or elsewhere too.
- taivare 13y agoIm going to'Dropbox'before I ever pick it up !
- hueving 13y agoCan someone explain to me how being involved with Chevron is unethical?
- stephengillie 13y agoI was expecting to see this response for their lacking reaction to Heartbleed, not to having Rice join their board...
- microtherion 13y agoFor me, it's the combination of the two events that is disturbing. Dropbox was discovered to be vulnerable to an exploit that may have been planted to facilitate government surveillance, and around the same time, Dropbox brings on board one of the architects of the current government surveillance overreach.
- higherpurpose 13y agoWhat a brain-dead decision by Dropbox. I can't believe they actually thought of this themselves and decided what a great idea it would be to have someone like Condoleezza Rice on the board. For some reason I expected a little more from a YC star.
- BaronVonAwesome 13y agoYou sir, are a real social warrior. Let that self righteous outrage flow.
- cschmidt 13y agoHer 9 page CV is here: http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/staff_cv/CV%20_Rice_April_2013.pdf http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/sta... From that she is currently on the corporate boards of KiOR, C3 Energy, and Makena Capital. She previously was on the boards of Schwab, Chevron, Transamerica, and HP.
- stevehawk 13y agoI have full faith that that website is the dumbest thing I will have read this month.
- cjoh 13y agoWhile I wish people took more moral stances like this, I feel like it's nonsensical to worry about Condi Rice, and worry more about the broken incentives around the financial system that Dropbox is headed for. Goldman Sachs is a substantial investor in Dropbox. Where were the cries to drop dropbox then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies Or the ideology "fiduciary responsibility" for public companies, which involve companies like Google and Apple hoarding money offshore and using sophisticated accounting tricks to avoid paying taxes? I'd like to see more of our "I AM OUTRAGED" efforts be aimed more towards the systems that cause our problems than the people who arise from them.
- vdaniuk 13y agoReally, isn't this the case that a lot of people are constantly outraged about goldman sachs, current state of affairs in the valley and perverted incentives of the start-up ecosystem?
- cm-t 13y agoI linked this thread to /r/ubuntu since they might be concerned with the shutdown of Ubuntu One: http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/22p14s/if_you_are_leaving_ubuntu_one_for_dropbox_i_saw/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/22p14s/if_you_are_le...
- davidkellis 13y agoWhy is this on HN? This is just a political powder keg. Anyone who agrees with the article will upvote it and any comment supporting it. Anyone who disagrees with the article will downvote it and any comment opposing it. The only "benefit" to this post is that the publicity given to the grievance (whether real or imagined) will sway Dropbox leadership to drop Condi. Whether that's a good thing or not for Dropbox as a business is not even considered. The content of the article has no real benefit to anyone.
- captainmojo 13y agoPowder keg or not, a Privacy concern would certainly influence my decision of whether or not to use their APIs in my software, especially on behalf of consumers. They've been trying to attract developers to their API, and they just lost my interest.
- davidkellis 13y agoI don't see the privacy concern. Is the fear that Condi is going to persuade Dropbox leadership to open the doors to govt. snooping?
- captainmojo 13y agoI don't fear that, so much as that she would facilitate it or fail to act to prevent it. I don't care about most of the content of the OP's page, but I'm not really willing to give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making sure I'm the only one with access to my data. As MichaelGG points out, maybe I was wrong to assume that my data was safe in the first place. In either case, yes, Dropbox and its APIs are no longer on my radar.
- MichaelGG 13y agoIt's also nonsensical. Dropbox deliberately and directly lied about customer security before. Anyone trusting them for private data was out-of-touch. They chose to build a system that easily allows for digging through customer data.
- mantrax4 13y agoInternet outrage - one the most promising resources of the 21st century. It's cheap, it's renewable, and the Internet is producing more of it than we can handle. If we could figure out how to power engines with Internet outrage, we'd solve all of our world's problems. Right now it's mostly producing angry tweets and protest pages, but I'm sure if we work together we'll figure it out, eventually. Until then, keep the outrage coming! I believe in outrage!
- buckbova 13y agoThe internet outrage machine is highly inefficient and produces considerable less energy than put into it.
- dangayle 13y agoBut Guido van Rossum works for Dropbox, are we supposed to not support Guido? These witch hunts hurt a lot of people, much more than the single figurehead that everyone get all up in arms over.
- vdaniuk 13y agoI would really like Guido to quit dropbox. I can't imagine meeting the person responsible for numerous atrocities near the cooler and having a small talk about the weather, then returning to my workplace to continue business as usual. edit: Guido is BDFL, it is expected of him to uphold professional and ethical standarts of the community, so this is directly related.
- amcnett 13y ago"Figurehead" doesn't exactly apply in this case given her role specifically entailed the orchestration, coordination, and authorization of unconscionable (at worst) and morally repugnant (at best) acts.
- geekymartian 13y agohttp://www.wikihow.com/Uninstall-Dropbox-from-a-Mac http://www.wikihow.com/Uninstall-Dropbox-from-a-Mac
- pvnick 13y agoI'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with most of the opposition to Condi Rice wrt the illegal war, warrantless wiretaps, torture, etc. On the other hand, I threw a hissy fit over the opposition to Eich based on his beliefs. I'm not sure how I can oppose Rice while standing up for Eich without inconsistency. Anybody else feel conflicted and have some insight? I'm still probably going to cancel my Dropbox membership simply because I have free 100gigs google drive that I got when I bought my chromebook [1] and this gives me a great excuse to transfer over and save some money. But I don't know that I can go on the same kind of crusade for which I faulted the Eich lynch mob. [1] Free 100 gigs google drive when you buy a chromebook, which if you install crouton makes for a cheap, decently powerful linux machine (great deal!). I recommend the hp chromebook 14 with 4 gigs ram since it comes with free 200mb 4G tmobile internet every month for life.
- JasonFruit 13y agoIf you cancel your Dropbox membership now, you will affect their measurements as though you're doing it in response to this kerfuffle. I'm in exactly the same position you are — I've found a better service, so I'm backing up my Dropbox stuff to it and letting Dropbox idle until this blows over. I don't want to encourage political and moral witch-hunts in tech (or other) companies.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- silvertonia 13y agoI think you misunderstood. It sounds like he's keeping his DropBox account active for a while until this blows over, then will actually cut it off.
- nollidge 13y agoSo you're participating in the "witch-hunt", you just don't want it to seem like you are?
- loupeabody 13y agoI find the explicit images of war and torture very distasteful. Especially alongside a goofy illustration of Condoleezza's head in the Dropbox logo. There are certainly more appropriate ways to communicate your message besides FUD.
- Crito 13y ago> I find the explicit images of war and torture very distasteful. Really? You find the images distasteful, rather than what the images represent? You should be far more distressed by war and torture themselves than depictions of them. Sort out your priorities.
- loupeabody 13y agoI suppose if you interpret my words literally, you're correct. Sorry if I was unclear, but I meant that the presence of war and torture images (which in turn themselves automatically represent something, which is in this case, actual war and torture) is grossly out of proportion to the message being presented in the parent link. Out of proportion, that is, to the very mundane event of someone becoming one of Dropbox's board of directors. There's an implication here that Dr. Rice, by being a board member, will guide Dropbox into committing acts of war and torture. This implication is most strongly suggested by the presence of those images. I could make a webpage which looped a video montage of people being beaten and murdered by police officers and upon it superimpose the message "DON'T ARGUE WITH POLICEMEN". Certainly there are more civil and dignified ways to convince people to not argue with police officers?
- camus2 13y agowell here is more images for you ( NSFW ) http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/03/rape-iraqi-women-us-forces-weapon-war-photos-and-data-emerge http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/03/rape-iraqi-women... so what's the FUD is all about again?
- vvpan 13y agoThis article reminded me - why aren't the people from Bush administration in prison?
- whistlerbrk 13y agoOh please. Every American here, myself included, started the war in Iraq and helped pass the Patriot Act by electing these buffoons and not throwing them out of office. The fault is within ourselves.
- cpt1138 13y agoAnd how do you suggest throwing them out of office?
- paulhauggis 13y agoWhy does it seem like all of these campaigns are against right-leaning people? if this is the kind of tactics you need to use to win, I hope you never win.
- mason240 13y agoLooks like we are living a new age of McCarthyism.
- CamperBob2 13y agoExcept McCarthy was seeking to destroy numerous people who had done nothing wrong. Other than that, yeah, it's the same.
- macinjosh 13y agoHindsight is 20/20. At the time I'm sure many people believed those targeted by McCarthy had done things wrong.
- ozh 13y ago3 words: not gonna happen.
- microjesus 13y agoSo as a vocal, technically proficient and wealthy segment; we are now basically a lobby group. Minus third party funding, hidden agendas and three piece suits. I love this. I think that using our significant influence to form an opinion followed by digital exertion of will is simply of mirror of formal politics. Game on.
- jcolemorr11 13y agoMaybe I'm the only one who's thinking like this but... ...It's just Dropbox. "But she access to ALL THE THINGS!" I highly doubt Dropbox will intentionally jeopardize the meat of their business model. And again. It's just Dropbox. Not the golden keys to nuclear warfare or even a tech mover and shaker like Google. What I want to know is why a highly educated, over qualified, former leader of the country is joining a cloud storage company. Her skill set could be leveraged so much better elsewhere. It's just...what the hell. That's what's confusing me. Not her wielding political influence to rename my file extensions to .nsa or .chevy.
- rubysucks 13y agoDropbox dropped for me and my startup. Thank you for this article. I am a programmer with a political science degree, so this one really hit home for me.
- atmosx 13y agoJust did actually. Was it easier that I originally thought. I was about to start using 'Google drive' but I'll try handle my staff off-line first, then see how this plays out. There are things I don't mind keeping online, Google drive comes handy because I work with 2 macs and a chromebook. But I will take some time and review my options before proceeding. Here are some hints for others looking for another service: * Wuala: Servers in Switzerland, owned by Lacy, iPhone/Android/Mobile Windows clients ready. * SpiderOak: Everything should be encrypted (servers in the US though). Don't know about mobile integration but I guess it's there * Google Cloud: Nice if you don't mind Google having your files. * OwnCloud: For to be considered secure, you need a VPS (~100 USD/year) + OpenSSL certificate + time to set-it-up and manage the VPS. Has mobile clients. I'm closer to Google Cloud for the time being..
- mentaat 13y agoexcept for the ratpack feature which is pretty badass, google drive is a more compelling product from price to features.
- infra178 13y ago> This is not an issue of partisanship. That's exactly what it is.
- bsaul 13y agoThis post is wrong on so many level it's not even fun... Instead of denouncing the fact that a corporate has to hire political figures for their influence ( upon whom ?) it's a never ending list of clichés about good politician ( like obama letting the syrian people die, i suppose ?) vs bad politicians ( the world would have been such a better place with saddamn hussein !) from the point of view of a 5 year old. Grow up a bit, please.
- macinjosh 13y agoI thought Silicon Valley was dying for more women and minorities to join their ranks! Rice is both so shouldn't we all be elated?! Oh, she's a Republican? Fuck her.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoHow about she has a questionable approach to privacy and Dropbox is an application where privacy is key?
- pbreit 13y agoHow about, she's in a remarkable position to help Dropbox become the leading provider with respect to privacy?
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoShe could join Amnesty and be in a remarkable position to campaign against torture but her history suggest that isn't something she is remotely likely to do. Similarly her history suggest that she is not a proponent of individual privacy where it conflicts with the perceived need of the state so I'm not sure why you think it's something she'd do now.
- usingpond 13y agoHoly shit, are you implying that everything in the post about direct complicity in wiretapping, war crimes, lying to the American public, killing of civilians, and torture is just being another Republican? Because that's the only way your post would make any kind of sense without being a clear-cut textbook strawman.
- jader201 13y agoI see shades of gray all over the present and future of this thread. Pretty sure if there were ever an appropriate thread for enabling pending comments [1], it is this one. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304
- CamperBob2 13y agoThe link to http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/bush-adviser-rice-gave-ok-waterboard/ http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/bush-adviser-rice... is broken on the page. There's no contact link to the drop-dropbox.com admins, so maybe they'll see it here...
- gesman 13y agoIf one's major business depends on DropBox's righteousness and nobility - then these points become more or less valid. For millions of others who use it just to backup stuff - what matters much more is the cost of the service rather then the resume of board members. It's good for everyone to stir the waters though to show that the world at large is not sleeping any more.
- BetterLateThan 13y ago1. Uninstalled. 2. In 2014, every business faces the choice to either quit businessing or collaborate with the government. This choice will soon trickle to individuals, if Rome, Germany and the USSR are any reference.
- mschuster91 13y agoRecommend Google Drive and MS OneDrive? As if those two were any better. Google mines your data and MS sleeps with the NSA.
- mentaat 13y agogoogle "mines" your data with your permission and lets you opt out of almost everything (e.g incognito mode) and take all your data out of google if you want (e.g google takeout). and at no point is your data sold to advertisers. you are just matched to an ad and what the advertiser sees is anonymous stats like "12% of the people who clicked on the ad were men from united states" and not "harry smith who lives in blah blah and whose email is blah@blah.com and who is 28 years gold and lives at blah blah and watches a lot of porn clicked on your ad" you can use lots of google services without ever logging in e.g chrome, youtube, search, maps etc. even android os can be run without even a trace of google services if you want.
- mcherm 13y agoAttacking companies for working with leaders who happen to have a conservative political viewpoint is simply unacceptable. For goodness sake, Condoleezza Rice was the US Secretary of State! There are a substantial number of people who found her to be an excellent leader -- including at least 2/3 of the US Senate. I am quite liberal, but I do not believe in blacklisting people because of their political beliefs. At one point, this country blacklisted "Communists" because of their beliefs -- it was not enforced directly by the government, but the blacklisting was nevertheless quite real. Let us not recreate that sad chapter in our history with "Conservatives" replacing the "Communists".
- insuffi 13y agoThis has nothing to do with political beliefs or a conservative background. You can be a conservative in all possible ways and still uphold moral principles. The last time I checked morality does not include lying, undermining human rights, waging foreign wars.
- mcherm 13y agoIn the Brendan Eich case (and yes, I know that's not the same as Ms. Rice) his only objectionable actions were to contribute a small amount to a political campaign and to not publicly repudiate that donation. That case was 100% about political beliefs. In the case of Condoleezza Rice, there are plenty of actions to object to including undermining human rights and helping to wage wars. By all means, prosecute Ms. Rice for violations of human rights and then ban her from the board as a convicted felon. I wouldn't even mind an outcry against her participation on Dropbox's board because of her stance on government surveillance of data storage companies. But to me, an outcry against her for war crimes smells of overdone politics. That being said... I don't mind any person choosing to boycott a company for any reason they choose (including association with Ms. Rice). What I object to is a hue and cry that effectively blacklists her (and others) for their political beliefs.
- insuffi 13y agoLike I said below, this has nothing to do with her political beliefs. It has to do with actions she was directly involved in. Describe what her political beliefs are and why people are objecting to them(and why they shouldn't object, as per your opinion), if you're so sure of your position. But you can't mention the words "war", "human rights", "surveillance". This leaves you with just the theoretical definition of her political beliefs.
- exodust 13y agoIt's not enough reason to drop dropbox. I'd need a more serious reason, like if the service deleted all my data. BTW, I recommend Keepass in combination with dropbox for a good reliable password manager. The file is encrypted before sent to dropbox, so Rice won't be able to snoop in your passwords.... Or will she? ;-)
- elwell 13y agoIt should be noted that her consulting firm [0] has been advising Dropbox for the last year. [0] - http://www.ricehadleygates.com/ http://www.ricehadleygates.com/
- aridiculous 13y agoJust had a look at their website. It's like a dream team of awful people.
- hrish2006 13y agoBit torrent sync!
- it_learnses 13y agoThese are exciting times! Companies and their leaders are actually being held accountable directly by the people for their unethical, immoral behaviours by diverting their business elsewhere. It's amazing to know that so many in the tech industry care about these issues.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vdaniuk 13y agoYeah, approving torture is a "good faith decision", right.
- bagels 13y agoI read through the whole site... where are the instructions on deleting a Dropbox account? Not that it was very hard, but the link is non obvious in the Dropbox account settings, spent a couple more minutes than I'd like. For those interested, this is a link from the support page: https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete
- speeder 13y agoThanks! As someone that is from a country that suffered from US meddling, and someone that was very critical of Condolezza Rice even before the actual war on Iraq started because of her role back then, I had to delete my account, I don't even bothered to make a backup, I just deleted it.
- mkr-hn 13y agoThis seems like a prime candidate for being moderated off the front page, but it's still at #1.
- general_failure 13y agoWhy what's wrong with it?
- mkr-hn 13y agoEvery link on the Mozilla thing was demoted. What the mod said about doing it seemed very reasonable, but I can't recall the details at the moment.
- orochi235 13y agoI can't help but notice that whoever is behind this campaign found it necessary to give attribution to the people who produced the images on the page, and provided helpful links to Dropbox's CEO's social media accounts, but didn't bother to sign his own name to the cause. That's the very definition of gutless.
- ewams 13y agohttps://AlwaySyncd.com https://AlwaySyncd.com
- diestl 13y agoI just switched to Google Drive, it's cheaper as well.
- VMG 13y agoI'd use it also if there was a Linux client.
- donnfelker 13y ago"Its not about who you know, its about who knows you."
- don_draper 13y agoWhat's a good sync solution for 1Password that doesn't use Dropbox?
- jkelsey 13y agoiCloud is the other featured cloud provider that AgileBits proclaims on their website, although I wouldn't recommend it. Not a knock against Apple, but I prefer to diversify my technology and not get locked-in into any one service. I just switched back to 1Password from LastPass, and I'm just syncing between my iPhone and my MacBook (my only computer ATM) using wi-fi sync, and backing up my 1Password data on my MacBook to tarsnap. I've seen someone else say they sync their 1Password data using BitTorrent. Haven't tried it myself, but that seems interesting.
- api 13y agoFunny the reaction of so many against this. If it's okay to vote by ballot, why is it not okay to vote by dollar? They're your dollars. It's perfectly fine to choose not to give them to companies that do things or whose leadership holds views you disagree with. Dollars are far more powerful mechanisms of voting than ballots IMHO. Imagine if everyone investigated the leadership of companies they did business with and refused to buy from companies whose leadership supported unnecessary war, discrimination, etc.? If indeed it is corporate leadership that really leads the country, then corporate leadership might be a more important target for change than governmental leadership.
- Rofu2000 13y agoI approve of any thought process that allows me to narrow down the amount of awesome cloud services out there to choose from. Making choices is really hard for me. Also, I prefer ethical reasons because it makes me feel warm at night.
- ewindisch 13y agoThe fact is that the IC (Intelligence Community) has infiltrated most companies of strategic intelligence value. That's not really up for debate. However, it's also clandestine and presumably against the foreknowledge of the infiltrated companies. While as user, these actions are concerning, it's understandable that infiltrated companies may not be willing divulging their customer's data. While it's easy to point fingers, I'm willing to look beyond a certain amount of corporate ignorance stemming from a pre-Snowden world. In a post-Snowden world, continued ignorance of embedded security assets in the corporate infrastructure is no longer acceptable. I say this with some hesitation, as I'm friends with several such assets and wish no ill will toward them as individuals. Yet, it cannot be ignored that companies should be expected to limit their trust of those whom have sworn oaths in conflict with their corporate interests, especially when their actions have spoken louder than their words. Condolezza Rice has repeatedly shown that her interests lie too close to the agenda of the Intelligence Community and are at conflict with the expectations of security and privacy that I expect of a service such as Dropbox. This is what I told Dropbox when I deleted my account.
- joyeuse6701 13y agoHah, you know, back in the day, when people had a problem with a political action it usually ended up in a serious sacrifice e.g. seppuku, self-immolation, revolt, crucifixion... guillotines, assasinations. Nowadays one can disagree vehemently with a leader just as before, but simply stop using a service related to them to help with some passive aggressive need of absolution from the shame you somehow internalized! Grand. Absolutely. Grand. I mean, sure if you have an issue with the deaths this woman is tied to...DEATHS, you know, for emphasis, you'd think that that would have been the last straw, that you would have given up your citizenship and moved elsewhere in at least some sign of protest against the U.S. Government as a Service. But no, this...this is the last straw, because now you can 'fight' her on your terms that won't hurt you too bad, show the world your 'mettle'. The sacrifice is symbolic enough you can tell your friends about it, but not so much that it actually hurts you, which really isn't a sacrifice at all. All you can do here is express an opinion, and change your money flow, which really doesn't alter anything, you've stalemated the battle, but the war is still lost.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fennecfoxen 13y agoAllow me to quote (gay rights activist) Andrew Sullivan, via The Economist, over the Eich issue. I think it mostly applies here -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/04/toleration-dilemmas http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/04/to... "The ability to work alongside or for people with whom we have a deep political disagreement is not a minor issue in a liberal society. It is a core foundation of toleration. We either develop the ability to tolerate those with whom we deeply disagree, or liberal society is basically impossible. Civil conversation becomes culture war; arguments and reason cede to emotion and anger." Also available at above link: select quotations from John Locke. -- Postscript. Oh, of course I'm going to be modded down for this. Civil conversation has been replaced with culture war. Well, maybe not culture war, but a close analogue. :P
- kutenai 13y agoThis is the best post yet. The rest are just biased dribble.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- quaunaut 13y ago> Postscript. Oh, of course I'm going to be modded down for this. Civil conversation has been replaced with culture war. Well, maybe not culture war, but a close analogue. :P Lets not get into that. However, to your point: This is one of those areas where I'm forced to wonder just how strongly everyone felt. Did I like Eich representing me, as an open source contributor? No, certainly not. Did I feel that strongly about it? No, not really. I wasn't going to boycott anything, I wasn't going to speak out against Mozilla. I'd be mildly disappointed he was their choice, then I would move on. I sincerely have to wonder how many others would have felt the same if not worked into a lather.
- caycep 13y agoOne could argue she was the temporizing influence in that administration...without her, Cheney and co would have had unchecked free reign...
- sidcool 13y agoI appreciate your feelings towards the matter, but I don't support your action. An open letter to Drew Houston would have been enough. It's a corporation, we cannot force it to do something we want to. Boycotting them is not a good option.
- vdaniuk 13y agoWhy it is not a good option to boycott them? I'd say this is a great option to putting pressure on a corporation.
- sidcool 13y agoIt's almost like Socialism, where a populist sentiment is tried to be shoved down the throats of the corporations. I don't use dropbox, but I for sure appreciate their creative genius. It's their prerogative to appoint anyone they wish. You might say it's your privilege to boycott, but then mass boycott is like mob mentality.
- elwell 13y agoJust curious; what services would you not abandon if say, Bashar Al-Assad were to join the board? I thought maybe GMail for me, but then I decided maybe there aren't any services I wouldn't leave.
- Mindless2112 13y agoFirst Mozilla for Brenden Eich and now Dropbox for Condoleezza Rice -- is this what Hacker News is now? a tool for the Internet lynch mob? Disgusting. "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me." [1] Some will say "But Dropbox/Condoleezza Rice is no victim here! They're just reaping the results of their actions." But that's exactly the point, isn't it: it's all fair until the Internet mob turns on you for something you've done that they don't approve of. I'm not saying I approve of Condoleezza Rice being on the Board at Dropbox, but using HN for this sort of activism disgusts me. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_....
- mike_hearn 13y agoIn this case, "them coming" just means a consumer boycott, at worst. It is in absolutely no way comparable to goons dragging people off to death chambers and you demean this debate by implying it is.
- Mindless2112 13y agoThe death chambers may be missing, but the goons are definitely there. Feel free to tell Brendan Eich that it was a consumer boycott, at worst.
- buzaga41 13y agoNobody is forcing you or anyone to agree with this, nobody is coming for anyone, it's just a statement and a call for whoever agrees to join and make the statement louder. You can absolute ignore it! This right-wing victimization syndrome trips me out.
- cmiles74 13y agoTo my mind, the most relevant issue here is that someone asked Rice something along the lines of "Should we illegally wiretap these people" and Rice then said "Yes." It seems clear that she believes the government, law enforcement, etc. should have access to whatever data they feel that they need. With her on the board of Dropbox, it seems reasonable to fear that she'll err on the side of providing data to government and law enforcement rather than fighting to keep Dropbox data private. This alone strikes me as a good reason to want her off the board and, consequently, to move to another product. I don't see this as being a direct parallel to the issues around Eich and Mozilla. In that situation, many people didn't feel that his personal beliefs and personal behavior would materially effect the quality of Firefox or it's feature set. In this case, it seems we're talking about almost the opposite situation: wondering how a person's past professional behavior and views they publicly held while in their past professional roles might effect their decisions in their new business role.
- mac1175 13y agoThere should have been some warning on this link. That picture of that grieving (I assume) father was too much. I get the point the author is trying to make but it didn't have to be an /r/wtf subreddit.
- glisom 13y agoEich donated $1,000 to a campaign he agreed with. Rice helped run part of the country you are lucky enough to live in. Get over yourselves. I bet everyone of you would work at Dropbox or Mozilla in an instance, even if they were prominent figures in the company.
- news_to_me 13y agoI disagree with product boycotts in general, including this one. It means we're "voting with dollars", which means people with more dollars have more votes.
- ptbello 13y agoJust delete your account already instead of tweeting empty promises https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete Reason: Other Care to elaborate: Condoleezza Rice
- mentaat 13y agodone
- avenger123 13y agoI am sure this has been brought up already. Why would a company that can store people's potentially most sensitive documents want to bring someone on board that directly or indirectly was a part of shaping the NSA programs? That boggles my mind. How does the conversation go in this situation? "Hey, we don't leak your information but guess what, we just brought someone on our board that fully believes taking a peek at your documents is A OK and was involved with making sure the government could take a look." That to me is a bit mind boggling.
- taksintik 13y agoVery troubling hire. Very bad pr move by Dropbox. I relly don'why they would choose such a polarizing person.
- capitalisthakr 13y agoMoney. Just a guess.
- rjohnk 13y agoWhy is this? Because she was a part of the Bush administration? Because she is a Republican and we should hate Republicans? I mean, come on, isn't Al Gore on Apple's Board? He's no saint! No. This is not an issue of partisanship." They then proceed to bring mostly partisan viewpoints to the table. This is usually what those on the left do (yes, yes, I know, not all). Set things up as non-partisan and then proceed partisan attacks. We have A) Iraq War was wrong B) Torture and Bush lacky C)Warrant-less wiretaps D) BIG SCARY OIL Let us back up and acknowledge that Congress okayed much of this, so any member at the time who is now a board member of any company should also be tarred and feathered. You have the right to disagree with dropbox, but come on, drop the "this isn't partisan" partisan arguments.
- jokoon 13y agodropbox is not a good product, and will never be. so I'm not concerned. tech unsavvy people use those kinds of products, and that's how you spy on so many people. I'm not surprised, and I don't care, because most people don't really care to understand the implications of technology and the implications it can have, and that's exactly how you rule over uneducated smartphone and computer users.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- captainmojo 13y agoI don't feel this site goes far enough. As someone who values privacy, I feel I've already been slighted with this decision, and I don't plan on forgiving Dropbox for it if they change their mind. I'm cancelling my paid subscription this weekend.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoI'm not even going to ask you guys to stop with the angry villager thing. Almost a thousand of you upvoted it, you must be enjoying yourselves. But I will ask that you take this off HN. All kinds of people in the world. They do all kinds of things and hold all kinds of opinions. I don't want to visit HN each morning and find the top item is the result of the latest googling and angry mob. Go get a room or something. It's not only that it's not interesting, it's actively non-productive. Every minute you spend with this is a minute you could be doing something better with your life -- the current person of outrage has nothing to do with anything. Trust me, there'll be a new one next week. Just get a room. Take it somewhere else. Please.
- mkr-hn 13y agoI'm half with you on this. People can choose software based on their needs and values, and they should be free to encourage others to do so. It's perfectly valid to make a campaign like this. But HN has proven itself uniquely incapable of discussing political matters without making a mess of itself, so it doesn't fit here.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoI deeply support people's right to talk about these things, boycott, and so on. I'm even in favor of talking about moral issues here. As technologists, we bear a lot of the blame for many bad things that go on in the world. Too many times we like to feel like we're somehow above the fray. My problem from a system standpoint is that we're starting to see a trend of engineering these things. Person X joins tech company. They get googled -- or they're just controversial. Then I got the top 3 spots of my HN feed full of Person X. If it happened once a year it'd be one thing, but I'm feeling like this is going to be a new trend for us, and frankly, that's bullshit. The goal here isn't to have a conversation, it's to form up into little groups and go to war with each other. It's manipulative. Nobody is going to read this thread and suddenly decide "you know, maybe I was wrong about that Iraq war decision all along" We're in cable news land, where we just want drama. Today was the first time I actually felt that HN actively didn't want me here. That's not the community I joined.
- amcnett 13y agoAll this time I thought the line item reading "roll my own dropbox clone with a raspberry pi or something" on my Someday Maybe Projects list might always stay buried low on the stank rank. Then this news broke. My personal digital exodus has commenced. Best not to wait until she conveys the authorization of Dropbox's administration to submit user data and activity in a privacy-flouting fashion. "The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture," she replied. "So that's -- and by the way, I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency . . .By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-trounstine/stanford-anti-war-protest_b_195364.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-trounstine/stanford-anti-...
- macca321 13y agoYou can always spin up http://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/ - it sets up a WebDAV thingy, and there is an android photo sync app.
- grandalf 13y agoI am also fairly disappointed by this news. Rice was complicit in the Bush administration's war crimes and crimes against humanity. She also led the propaganda effort to dehumanize the Iraqi people in the minds of intellectuals. It's a very strange feeling of disappointment... as if something precious, Silicon Valley innovation, talent, success, can somehow not succeed without the blessing/involvement/connections of government officials. This definitely makes me question the ethics of Dropbox as a company. This is not about politics at all, war crimes are clearly defined. FWIW Obama has also committed many and I'd be equally disappointed if he or one of his top warmongers was added to the Dropbox board.
- twcooper 13y agoBasically, the argument is to Drop Dropbox because Condi was a part of the Bush administration and is a Republican.
- dfa0 13y agoVote with your bits[and dollars] if you disagree. Nerd rage alone is fruitless without tangible follow-thru.
- macca321 13y agoBoom. Downgraded my account to free. Now I have 8 months to accept OneDrive into my life. It feels quite empowering to have the ability to protest the Iraq war with my wallet, more so than not voting Labour did.
- ep103 13y agoBittorrent share is actually an amazing dropbox replacement, and actually has a number of really good privacy implementations built in from the start. I'd highly recommend it, if anyone sees this comment.
- ep103 13y agoBittorrent sync is actually an amazing dropbox replacement, and actually has a number of really good privacy implementations built in from the start. I'd highly recommend it, if anyone sees this comment.
- pjreddie 13y agoBittorrent Sync is an amazing product, I'd recommend switching even if you don't have political issues with dropbox. I use it to keep work files in sync between 3 different computers as well as to backup 100s of GBs of pictures, something that would cost a non-trivial amount to do with cloud providers.
- huntleydavis 13y agoI think it's safe to say that when a tech company reaches a certain size, especially ones that have a substantial amount of user data, it's impossible to be politically neutral on the war on data. If a company doesn't outright say where there position lies, it will come out in the leadership actions that are taken. I agree with this opposition against Dropbox because a company like Dropbox has to adamantly say, both with words and actions, that they are in favor of data privacy. Without this strong declaration, I can't do anything but assume that their integrity in regards to data privacy is weak or that they are outright in favor of exposing sensitive data in exchange for powerful partnerships.
- payapp 13y agoDrew@dropboox - bad move...
- knightofmars 13y agoI'm a little suspicious about this whole thing. I want to know who authored this website. Otherwise I hate to say it but I have to assume it is a hit-piece produced by "Box.com" to get people to leave Dropbox.
- estebanrules 13y agoI'm floored by this news, and extremely disappointed with Dropbox. From the beginning I have been a huge proponent of Dropbox. I was lucky enough to get a free 50 GB account, and I use it for probably 30+ daily automated tasks. I will absolutely not be using Dropbox for any reason whatsoever if she remains on the board...I'm going to wait a week and see if they remove her and if not, bye bye.
- MrBlue 13y agosudo apt-get remove dropbox; rm -rvf ~/.dropbox ~/.dropbox-dist done!
- mkr-hn 13y agoWhat about the files on Dropbox's servers?
- sebastialonso 13y ago>Why is this? Because she was a part of the Bush administration? Because she is a Republican and we should hate Republicans? I mean, come on, isn't Al Gore on Apple's Board? He's no saint! >No. This is not an issue of partisanship. Okay, let's read on then... 3 of the 4 reasons OP explained are directly linked with her being a part of the Bush Administration. I do believe having Ms. Rice on board is a bad idea. But please don't say one say one thing ("it's not because she was a part of the Bush administration") and then do other ("IT IS because she was a part of the Bush administration"). Bad way to get people behind you, and makes you look painfully unserious.
- fnimick 13y agoIt's not because she was part of the Bush Administration, but what she did while she was there. There's a difference.
- ixmatus 13y agoI'm moving over to BtSync ASAP; I really wish there was a Tarsnap like service but synced my data across multiple devices :( I can only really use it for backups...
- gress 13y agoThis is a great way to express political opinion in a capitalist society where the ballot box is ineffectual. I hope we see more of it.
- peeze 13y agoI thought this was going to be about Heartbleed...darn.
- mbeattie 13y ago"HEY HERE ARE SOME NON-PARTISAN REASONS TO NOT LIKE CONDI: partisan reason number 1 partisan reason number 2 reason 3 is valid partisan reason number 4"
- micahroberson 13y agoAside from personal views, I question why Dropbox would make a move like this knowing that there would some backlash at the very minimum. There are other people out there that would make just as good of a board member without the potential that Condi has for stirring up discontent. If they didn't anticipate this or consider the ramifications of adding Condi, then the execs behind the decision need some help.
- grellas 13y agoThink about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world. In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they view the world generally. Startup culture thirty years ago had a decidedly American flavor. Today, it does not because the world is big and diverse and because entrepreneurs today who do startups come from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds. Surely, those who come from such divergent backgrounds hold differing political and religious views. Some are conservative, others liberal, still others apolitical. Some are theists, others atheists. The variations are many but one thing is certain: not all people think alike on political, religious, or social topics. These are issues that inherently will divide. What happens, then, when people attempt to set political, social, or religious tests as criteria for who can hold important positions in a business organization? Well, it gets about as ugly as it can get, just as such tests proved ugly when used historically by, say, Christians to exclude Jews from holding important positions in society or to punish atheists for not holding to some prescribed creed. One might say, "this is different" because we are not holding to an arbitrary creed but rather to fundamental principles that ought to govern all humanity. Well, that is precisely how those who sought to impose thought control in other eras rationalized their conduct. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party" is a question that destroyed many careers as the blacklists proliferated back in the 1950s. That was indeed a repulsive set of events by which many innocent persons were hurt and today our national conscience wishes it could take back the damage done to them. So why is this any different? It is easy enough to whip oneself up into a lather over Ms. Rice’s policies if one disagrees with them but what about the half of America (or whatever significant percentage) that does not. And why should this be relevant to board service? Politics, religion, and social worldviews divide people and have no place as limiting tests in a business environment. Scolding and finger-wagging was bad enough coming from a first-grade teacher trying to promote sanctimonious values back in the 1950s. Do we really want a counterpart agenda now setting rules for who can be a founder, who can be an investor, who can be a director, who can be a CEO, or who can otherwise take a prominent role in the startup world? The answer should be an emphatic no. Principle is more important here than a particular outcome. What happens with Ms. Rice is not the issue here. What matters is upholding the abiding principle (precious in a free society) that people can hold divergent views on such topics as politics, religion, and society without being punished for their views in a business context. People can and ought to be able to unite to form great companies without having to compare notes on how they voted in the last election or some similar matter having nothing whatever to do with whether someone can add value to the venture. This is central to startup culture. Let us not lose sight of something so basic.
- araftery 13y ago> No. This is not an issue of partisanship. Yes it is. Nearly every reason on there is partisan. Say what you want about "trustworthiness" and the fact that having an "untrustworthy" person on a cloud service provider's board is worrisome. Frankly, it's not. Even if Rice were untrustworthy, I don't think my data would be in any danger. If you're going to make complaints on partisan grounds, at least don't veil them as some kind of assessment of character.
- Shivetya 13y agoWholly disagree. However I am always amazed how much effort so many here put into trying to take offense, show their claimed offense, instead of acting when similar if not worse is coming from the current administration. Really guys, grow the fuck up. We do not know all the facts that Rice and others in her position had let alone the options available. We did however have our time back them to rail against them yet the same railing against her are fawning over the drone assassin we have in office now. So honest, take your fake angst, your damnable wannabe clique and shove it. You do nothing with the evil at your door today only to jump on the train of least resistance. Oh, its easy to pillory Rice, Bush, or any of those evil Republicans, but damn if you stand up to those in power now. At least Snowden did, he has done more than the rest of this site will ever do.
- jmnicolas 13y agoI just closed my DropBox account with the reason "Condoleezza Rice". I want those people to know there are consequences to their actions. Now if I was rational about it and it was as easy as living without DropBox, I would stop using Microsoft softwares.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wambotron 13y agoI don't care if people are of a different belief system than I am as long as they don't directly lead to the deaths of thousands of people. I think the Eich situation was crazy for sure, but I didn't boycott Mozilla (.. although I don't really use anything from them to begin with). I did delete dropbox, however. I don't want anything to do with Rice.
- detcader 13y agoDon't you mean a human litmus test?
- Daishiman 13y agoI really, really fail to see the problem with this. We live in a world where income inequality has been growing for the past 40 years, where people in power of the economic institutions grow closer and close to the power of political institutions, and where the common citizen is unable to take any sort of action to voice their opinion on significant matters. Over half of the US population was in disagreement with the Iraq war, not to mention the absolute majority of its allies and the rest of the world. It is about as unanimous a disagreement on a military conflict as it gets, which ended in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Did you forget that this woman fabricated evidence? That she openly lied to its people to get this on? There is a difference between voting for plain "political disagreement" and for considering that the person in question, in another era, would have unquestionably been tried as a war criminal. What kind of simplistic argument are you trying to bring about where all political action is equally important?
- thesis 13y agoI've kind of been waiting for a reason to switch to Google Drive because of (mainly) price and a few other factors. While not the main reason, this is the tip of the iceberg.
- kayoone 13y agoHow Dropbox could possibly not expect a shitstorm like this is beyond me.
- ajsharp 13y agoWhat makes you say they didn't? They probably just don't care.
- scottydelta 13y agoWell I have been planning to host my own dropbox like service on my own server for myself and I think now is the high time that I do!! Bye bye Dropbox!!
- VikingCoder 13y agoWho's next on their Board of Directors, Linda Tripp?
- dmourati 13y agoPol Pot?
- boston1999 13y agoPolitics aside, I don't see what she can contribute to a technology company like Dropbox!
- smsm42 13y agoGovernment connections -> contracts -> profit.
- homulilly 13y agoDropbox has made it pretty clear in the past that security and privacy isn't a major priority for them and this appointment makes it even more obvious. That said, any US company doesn't have much choice when it comes to handing over information so I don't know how big of an impact this will have in practice.
- cpt1138 13y agoRice brings Enterprise and Government contracts. In terms of Dropbox's valuation, I don't really see consumer dollars justifying any business model they have. Just look to Palantir if you want to see an example of a service that does very well with no consumer dollars at all.
- mikeash 13y agoHere are some things I've "learned" from the comments in this thread: 1. Public discussion and encouraging people to vote with their wallet does not belong in a civil society. 2. Nonviolent grassroots campaigns are anti-democratic. 3. It's OK to do terrible things as long as you had good intentions. Seriously, are you guys all completely insane? The quality of these comments is just amazingly bad. It goes beyond the standard "internet bad" comments full of trolling and bad reasoning, and over the edge into "actively ridiculous". I'm sure there are good arguments to be made against this but they aren't being made here. Please think about what you're about to write makes any kind of sense before you comment. Edit: if I were more conspiracy minded, I'd be wondering if the Brendan Eich affair was deliberately created as a weak example to create a wedge and discredit the whole idea of attacking companies based on the politics of their high-level people. It certainly strikes me as unlikely that there would be so many negative comments towards this if the Eich business hadn't first put so many people in that mood.
- ebiester 13y agoWithin the progressive community, and other activist communities from all sides (in and out of the US), there is a line of thinking that individuals should actively seek to do business with companies that share their values, use neutral companies when avoidable, and endure discomfort before using products of companies actively doing evil. I think that before we can discuss the "hypocrisy" of this versus Mozilla, or of the merit of such protests, we should first ask ourselves whether we agree with the above statement as part of our core values. After that, we can discuss what actions line up within the three categories, and if the actions of the company are equivalent to the actions of the leadership. To me, the Iraq issue is important, but it is not as important to me as my right to be a first class citizen of this society. My friends who work on the issue would have a different perspective. Thus, to me, this is a warning indicator that Dropbox may not align with my values, and is worth investigating, but isn't worth making a quick decision. That said, I felt the same way about Mozilla. Many of the comments that I've seen here are indirectly addressing this issue, but I think this is a value proposition that we each have to make within ourselves first.
- pbreit 13y agoAt first, this Democrat thought this was a joke. I'm prepared to believe it still might be a show of how ridiculous this line of thinking is. Rice is a huge "get" for Dropbox who I think has a good chance to be a significant asset for Dropbox once all this dust blows over. Rice has demonstrated time and again that she works for her team. In this case, that could mean making Dropbox the strongest, securest offering in the market. She is bright, well-connected and effective. Hardly anyone is mentioning her tenure at Stanford which is obviously a big plus for the company. I don't see strong parallels to the Mozilla case. Different role, different company, different subject.
- havaze 13y agoThis is insane. All that's done here is seeking a scapegoat that can be hold responsible for everything. This is nonsense, the American people are responsible for the decisions of the very same people they voted for, and nobody else. She never has held a democratically elected office you say? That doesn't matter either, the system which allowed this to happen was. Now I'm not saying dropping dropbox is an unreasonable decision, privacy concerns come to mind, but what's one of the options the article suggests as replacement? Ah yes Microsoft, one of the most "evil" companies in existence. So we trade one evil for another, but wait there is more! What's about the companies that made you mobile phone, clothing, car and the other thousand things you use in your daily life? Well, if you finished checking every single one of them, and dropping products from the "evil" ones then please send me an email with a list of goodies that can be considered ethical. Or wait, you'll not have a computer any more at this point.
- crazy1van 13y agoMy thoughts as I read this article: "She helped start the Iraq War" Ok, that was a costly war with a lousy outcome. "She was involved in the creation of the Bush administration's torture program" Ok, torture and no due process seems pretty antithetical to a free society. "Rice not only supports warrantless wiretaps, she authorized several" Ok, I like the 4th amendment and that weakened it even more. "Rice was on the Board of Directors at Chevron" Omg, what did Chevron do on the same order as torture and warrantless wiretapping??? Oh, turns out nothing. Or at least this article offers no evidence. Kinda weakens the whole argument.
- sfk 13y agoComparing this voicing of disapproval to Mc Carthyism is completely disingenuous, and I'm surprised that you do not know better. In the 1950s it was the government who harassed innocent citizens. You cannot escape the government, because it has absolute power. What we are seeing here on the other hand is a peaceful protest of free citizens exercising their right to free speech.
- KhalilK 13y agoThere's a broken reference in the site: <a href="www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/bush-adviser-rice-gave-ok-waterboard/">lied about the extent to which she was involved</a> Fix: Add http:// http:// to the link.
- Ryel 13y agoIt sounds like Dropbox is giving the middle finger to everyday consumers and this is simply a move to get Dropbox on every government machine.
- avani 13y agoI'm not about to read through 600 comments to find out if someone has already asked, so apologies in advance, but what is the state of viable dropbox alternatives right now? Through their college promotions and puzzle hunts, I have ~20GB of free storage there (afaik in perpetuity). Is there anything comparable?
- mkr-hn 13y agoI've used Copy for a while. I wrote a post on it comparing features with Dropbox: http://mkronline.com/2013/09/25/dropbox-vs-copy-a-comparison-of-features-and-benefits/ http://mkronline.com/2013/09/25/dropbox-vs-copy-a-comparison...
- beggi 13y agoI dropped Dropbox about a year ago, after realizing I only used it for backups. Although a nice feature in idea I actually never accessed my files on other computers, so I dropped Dropbox and switched to Arq backups. I recommend it for anyone with the same dilemma.
- Zelphyr 13y agoFor those comparing this to the ouster of Brendan Eich: It seems to me there is a distinction in that he, despite his ignorant views, was able to keep them separate from his work. Making this country less free and more war-like (e.g.; less safe) WAS her work and she did it all too well. Her ties to the NSA alone are serious cause for concern. Do we really want someone in a position of power at a place that stores massive amounts of (supposedly) private user data? I already removed 99.9% of my data from Dropbox after the NSA revelations with the assumption that the latter had access regardless of whether Dropbox was complicit. I assumed they weren't. With former Secretary Rice on the board I now assume Dropbox will become complicit and so I will delete my account altogether.
- brudgers 13y agoThe most positive aspect of Rice's appointment is that it is a clear signal as to how DropBox is likely to act when evaluating claims that a particular course of action will affect the United State's national security interests as those interests have been defined in recent years. It expresses that DropBox's operations are likely to be in accord with a particular interpretation of American patriotism. Whether one as an American agrees with that interpretation of American patriotism or holds an orthogonal view, or whether a non-American sees that interpretation as right or not, individuals will now be able to make an informed choice about if, when, and how they use DropBox. There should be no wishful thinking, DropBox has declared itself part of the American military-industrial complex. Such honesty is refreshing irrespective of my opinion regarding the nature of patriotism or what constitutes superior forms of its expression.
- nextstep 13y agoOk, I agree with most of this. What is the best Dropbox alternative?
- alecco 13y agoDropbox board and CEO decided this was a good move. They know it will alienate the original userbase, the tech savy, the first movers. In exchange they'll access old money, the old school corporations and government agencies. They decided to screw the current userbase for a new userbase. It's over, just get over it. The maximum you can do now is refuse to use Dropbox. It's sad how tech is getting to a cycle of befriend-and-switch on the community. This will surely make people more cynical and will make it much harder for upcoming startups. This is the highest cost we'll pay about this new trend.
- AznHisoka 13y agoexactly. I dun even understand the love affair ppl have with DropBox. It's just a cute GUI over FTP.
- jalfresi 13y ago(With apologies to Zed Shaw, I am just using him as a high profile example) Zed Shaw can be an asshole. But that guy can sure sling code, and I'll eat up anything he programs. Hire him as CEO of a large public company? Now we have a problem... Brendan Eich actively opposes gay marriage. But he programs at Netscape and invents Javascript. Love the guys work. Hire him as CEO? Now we have a problem... Hopefully this shows that the responsibilities at different levels within a business have differing impacts on society. So what if Zed Shaw is an asshole as a software developer? At that level he lacks the political clout to negatively impact society on such a large scale. We can then see that his short temper and sometimes vicious (and often hilarious) barbs are confined in reach. But what if he was President of the United States, sat in a room with Putin, discussing the Ukrane situation? Diplomacy may suffer. This is why I had a problem with Eich as CEO of Mozilla. His backwards political views would have the political clout and mechanisms to negatively impact society. As for Rice being appointed to Dropbox? I simply do not trust someone who has been shown to lie for political ends, to the point of invasion of a soverign nation and promote, participate in and endorse war crimes. I require COMPLETE TRUST in any data storage provider I use and as such deleted my dropbox account.
- dinduks 13y agoI find it surprising that people are so desperate they beg the Dropbox company and still want to use the software after this. 1) You CAN live without Dropbox. There are alternatives (I personally use BTSync, which is great). 2) You shouldn't NOT be using an American service that holds and versions your data in first place. It is not new that all these services are wiretrapped, or at least easily accessible by the gov (not mentioning they sell/use your privacy to make money). 3) They won't kick out such an "extremely brilliant and accomplished individual". 4) Even if she gets kicked or leaves, this is yet another reason to not trust them, since they're blind/careless enough to hire her.
- mattbeck 13y agoLOL. I was just hilariously accused of being a racist for tweeting the #dropdropbox hash tag.
- frik 13y agoWow the HN anti flamewar algo (as someone mentioned)... As Dropbox is a YC alumi it puts also a bad light on HN.
- chrisBob 13y agoIf you really don't like dropbox you won't tell people to quit. You will tell them to get free accounts and: dd if=/dev/random of=~/Dropbox/junkFile bs=1024 count=1000000 Adjusting the count according to the account size (obviously). If you do it again a few minutes later they will even help you out and store both copies!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jon_black 13y agoI'm tempted to write nothing more than the following quote: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi But of course, Ms. Rice would probably have said the same thing about the reasons why she made the decisions she did. We are all struggling with the same thing. I want/expect/believe the following, and here is my excuse/reason/proof of it. I find it hard to be open minded when so many are driven by their dirty ideals - myself included.
- VuongN 13y agoIf you find yourself needing to use Dropbox (or other cloud providers) for one reason or another, I would humbly suggest giving us a try: https://www.ncryptedcloud.com/ https://www.ncryptedcloud.com/. We try to remedy the situation by allowing what cloud storage providers do best: syncing & sharing of data and we secure them. Having the data without the correct key render the data useless to any prying eyes.
- dbg31415 13y agoWorked at Firefox... should work at Dropbox, right?
- Houshalter 13y agoThis is incredibly childish HN. First the guy from firefox and now this. Politics is the Mind-Killer. http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/
- bogwog 13y agoThe only thing this article said which I agreed with was the wiretapping part. The other stuff: torture, Chevron, the war in Iraq, etc had nothing to do with Dropbox
- msoad 13y agoI'm from Middle East. I can't be the one who make Ms. Rice richer and happier. Goodbye Dropbox.
- mkhalil 13y agoI am happy to hear more people understanding the notion that every dollar you spend is a vote. No matter what one may believe, being ignorant to the fact that business and politics have a lot to do with each other does not make you innocent. Spend your dollars responsibly. In fact, I'd even go as far to say that the way people spend their money can impact their government/politics/society in a much more drastic way than voting in the booths. Rice was a war monger. She broke many laws-including international laws which we tend to throw out of the way when it comes to us-that were put in to protect us, the people. You think politicians don't choose their which business they invest in based on politics of people involved think again. We need to change the way we spend our real vote, money, if we want real reform in our society. We need to show our influence and have politicians think again before passing the next SOPA act, or invading our privacy.
- morgante 13y agoI wholeheartedly agree with this cause, but think the framing is terrible. It's clouding the picture by making things political when they don't need to be. Rice's support of the Iraq war does not matter. Dropbox will not be starting wars or having anything to do with them, besides possibly getting lucrative DoD contracts. Rice's position on torture does not matter. Dropbox has no reason or likelihood of torture. Rice's involvement with Chevron does not matter. If anything, this is evidence that she might be an okay choice. The only thing which matters is her position on warrantless wiretapping. It's not political. I'm just not comfortable having someone make key privacy decisions who, on the record, doesn't believe in my right to privacy. Even if (bizarrely) you think mass surveillance might be acceptable, you should oppose Rice being on the board. Our system works best when there's an adversarial relationship between actors—when the government comes knocking, corporations will at least ask a couple questions about why, even just to verify this is a legitimate government request. Having someone who designed, and firmly believes in, the surveillance state on BOTH sides of the table destroys that. So, yes, drop Dropbox.
- newsreader 13y agoDropbox deciding to employ Condoleezza Rice is not reason enough for me to drop Dropbox; sorry. I will continue to use Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and whatever else is out there.
- jliptzin 13y agoI've been meaning to switch to Google Drive for a while now, this is a nice catalyst to actually get me to do it.
- p0nce 13y agoHubiC is 25 free gigs.
- krick 13y agoI don't know who author of that mentions by saying "we", but I somehow don't feel I should respond to his call. I don't even really know who is that woman he is speaking about, I don't know about politics, I don't want to know. I can't even recall without googling who's running Dropbox right now and I surely don't know (I wonder if I could!) if they are good or bad people. I know Dropbox. Dropbox is a service that does something valuable to me. So, why should I be concerned? I could be concerned if author explained me why and how is that Dropbox does something "bad". If it'd show that it will hurt customers or dolphins or whatever. I surely would be concerned if it'd show that there's no way we can trust Dropbox anymore because of that. But if it would be so I don't think I should trust them anyway, because, you know, Condoleezza Rice doesn't fall from the sky right in the directors chair usually, she's invited first. They are already connected somehow. But manifesting some organization (that does something useful, which rarely the manifesting ones do) because of some woman-who-supported-war (or man-who-is-against-gay-marriages, for that sake) is sitting the hight chair in it is stupid. I don't think I could use anything if I protested about every company having some personality I disagree with in its owners/directors list (however their names may be somewhat less known than "Condoleezza Rice"). And if you want to hurt that Rice specifically for some reason — too bad, but I don't think that's big problem for her. I believe she has money to avoid dying of starvation anyway already.
- shittyanalogy 13y agoJust remember; Dropbox is convenient, and with that convenience come Condoleezza Rice having possession of your data.
- rodolphoarruda 13y agoThat picture of a dead girl is really disturbing. The link should have some sort of warning for graphic content.
- sys32768 13y agoSafe to assume the persons behind the 900+ comments here approve of the political views and actions of the Hacker News owners and staff? Dang, I guess I do!
- rpowers 13y agoNo. This is not a trend I wish to support. Turning private business decisions into politicized movements is not cool.
- lohankin 13y agoIf I open a thread "Drop HN", will it be published here? The site did more than enough during the last week to promote hate and intolerance. What do you think?
- johnpowell 13y agoOn 20 March 2003 I was a student studying accounting at Portland State University. By the end of the night I tried to block the Burnside bridge and the cops beat the shit out of me on the south-side steps for protesting the war..
- jqm 13y agoI just deleted my Dropbox account. It was a free account anyway. I found it contained about GB of files I hadn't accessed in a couple of years. Then I realized.... What a wise move on the part of Dropbox to bring Rice on board. They probably will free up a few Petabytes of space from non-paying geeks:)