Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/rice.html

by sfk • 12 years ago

523 173 12 years ago

www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu

ionfish• 12 years ago

Here is the cartoon Knuth refers to.

http://www.danzigercartoons.com/archive/cmp/2002/danziger141...

JasonFruit• 12 years ago

Is there a point to the piano name? I know that Bösendorfer is a high-end piano maker, but it looks like Danziger has altered it to Boshendorfer, or Buchendorfer, or something like that. Intentional, or just a mistake?

EDIT: I'm an idiot. It's "Bushendorfer".

broken• 12 years ago

[2002]

MBCook• 12 years ago

[2002]

jgemedina• 12 years ago

and she's a dropbox board member!

boondox• 12 years ago

It doesn't get any clearer than that...

wging• 12 years ago

Seems to be down; here's a mirror:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070712113441/http://www-cs-fac...

not_paul_graham• 12 years ago

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

mark212• 12 years ago

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

zhaphod• 12 years ago

People who beat drums of war have so many dollars stuffed in their ears that they can't hear the cries of people killed by bombs and bullets.

kelvin0• 12 years ago

A bit more polish on that sentence could make it in a poetic gem. Seriously.

NotOscarWilde3• 12 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

thenmar• 12 years ago

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

NotOscarWilde3• 12 years ago

You can't just say "this one thing your doing isn't going to make a radical paradigm shifting difference, so you should just sit around until someone drops one of those in your lap."

You're presenting a false dichotomy.

If I am concerned with how my government handles privacy, shouldn't I take it up with the government? If I am concerned with how my goverment tortures and murders people, shouldn't I take it up with the goverment?

I understand people like Ms. Rice are hard to prosecute because most of the government data that would serve as evidence are kept secret for a long time, if not forever. Isn't that just another point which you should take up with the government? Bullying some private citizen because you can't sue him through legal means seems hardly fair.

hindsightbias2• 12 years ago

solves nothing

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

promise before elections

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

NotOscarWilde3• 12 years ago

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

You do realize this opinion aims to punish somebody because people can't touch her using the judicial system, right?

mbillie1• 12 years ago

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

I think NotOscarWilde is making a more general point about American politics here. There were many things Bush (and every other president in my lifetime) promised and failed to deliver on: lowering the debt, funding Pell grants, etc.

splat• 12 years ago

Bush actually campaigned on a "humble foreign policy" in the 2000 election. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_presidential_cam...

waps2• 12 years ago

Have we learned nothing from the Mozilla incident ? Liberals do not forget. Liberals do not forgive. Not even the liberals donating against gay marriage themselves [1].

This happens when people get power and feel confident. Perfect ideological adherence is a basic condition, hurting and damaging valuable people the order of the day [2].

And what makes people attackable by these liberals ? Because Obama kills babies in their sleep using robots paid by taking 50% of your paycheck. That does not seem to damage him.

And, it doesn't really matter what the answer to that question is, I'll hate people even more if I ever do find out I think.

Enjoy it while it lasts, guys. Because it won't last.

[1] http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/04/08/okcupid-ceo-once... [2] http://www.bitstampede.com/2014/04/06/standing-strong-and-st...

prohisto• 12 years ago

That's why I don't trust her, she strikes me as strongly colluding and justifying. We cannot trust at least Bush Jr and every person involved in Obama's Administration. It's hard to believe that we did worse than Bush.

That said, I am immediately investigating getting rid of dropbox.

wreegab• 12 years ago

I believe channeling energy to make Ms. Rice leave Dropbox solves nothing

To me, your reasoning reads as "accountability solves nothing".

Boycotting Dropbox because of Ms. Rice empowers people to bring symbolic accountability on powerful individuals who have been shielded from being held properly accountable for their actions. So many examples of individuals threatened with decades in jail for really not much, while powerful elites are shielded against being held fully accountable for their roles in infinitely worst.

deveac2• 12 years ago

The parties on both sides of the Rice/Dropbox debate have good arguments: Ms. Rice has been a very important representative of a US administration that caused a lot of people to die in Iraq and elsewhere;*

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

wonderzombie3• 12 years ago

other (non-bullied) politicians

Is this how people are co-opting the term "bullied" now? To describe criticism of prominent people in public life? C'mon. Condoleeza Rice served in two presidential administrations. She is not some ingenue who accidentally stumbled into the spotlight.

m52go5• 12 years ago

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

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

Tloewald2• 12 years ago

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

fennecfoxen• 12 years ago

They wanted a board member with international experience, as they hope to expand internationally. Including, as TechCrunch put it, to "deal with foreign governments that have blocked its use".

waps2• 12 years ago

What's the upside for any external management appointment ? A large investment, that's what.

rmc• 12 years ago

Connections?

forgotAgain• 12 years ago

Gravitas. If they want to move into the enterprise and international markets they need to have someone that will give mega-company CEO's a sense of comfort. At that level decisions aren't made based on technology. They're made on personal relationships.

bsder• 12 years ago

Connections to megacorps.

izendejas• 12 years ago

Right. I can't help to think, also, that not long ago Houston was one of several important CEOs who met with Obama over the NSA's warrantless wiretapping.

It's important to look out after your stakeholders, but am really in awe of how they didn't seem to anticipate there would be backlash with this decision and that's what I'd call into question.

gcb0• 12 years ago

Remember that another thing the bush admin did was get in bed with bankers.

She surely have goldman sachs and many others in her pocket.

It is a very smart 'hire' just before an IPO. they just overlooked that the internet would not take the war and wiretap part lightly. They should have just gave her tons of shares as a investor and consultant, and not made her position that publicly.

deveac2• 12 years ago

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

sitkack6• 12 years ago

Especially since dropbox has ALL of your files in the clear. They dedupe then encrypt (or claim to encrypt).

Not only do they have all of your files in the clear, they know every other person using dropbox that has the same files regardless of where they got them. Deduping is also Total Document Tracking.

dmix3• 12 years ago

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

The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent.

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

Sir_Cmpwn4• 12 years ago

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

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

azth4• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity, who is your VPS provider?

Tloewald2• 12 years ago

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

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

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

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

res0nat0r4• 12 years ago

Wikileaks violated the AWS TOS by publishing classified material in violation of US law.

res0nat0r4• 12 years ago

I believe this and Eich are easy targets (soft targets if we want to keep with the war theme) for people to go after.

Seeing the internet mob rally behind this and Eich remind me that these are easy targets for people to pick because it doesn't require much work (internet slacktivisim at work).

It would be more enlightening if someone would research all of the board members of many well known SV companies whos names none of us know, and post all of their political donations and leanings we might not all get along with, then we can see how picky we are in our outrage. Board members of Apple and Tesla donating to groups overseas who violate human rights? How about Apple supporting Foxconn, where is the boycott in that?

Eich and Rice are just being picked because it is easy to change your Facebook picture to protest, throw together a quick .com, or if you are really motivated write a petition on whitehouse.gov to show your outrage, vs. real actual sleuthing to determine if you agree with said Big Corp.

Unfortunately the latter takes much more work and that isn't in the general interest of those of us clicking +1 to show our "outrage"...

dmix3• 12 years ago

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

gress• 12 years ago

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that if you want to change something big, it's a good idea to start out with achievable steps and build up from there.

As to 'Apple supporting Foxconn' - Apple have done more to improve working conditions at Foxconn than any other organization. If you want to boycott someone, it should be all of the other Foxconn customers who are doing nothing.

wonderzombie3• 12 years ago

...which are all rational ways for people to optimize their time. And lo, it works sometimes.

So what you're really saying is that even though this is a fairly well-optimized use of people's time and effort, it's illegitimate because people aren't sweating for it. This is HN— if you leveled a similar complaint at a CEO, startup, or corporation, you'd be criticized for implying they're lazy rather than rational.

Don't get me wrong; I don't love slacktivism, either. I suspect it has an opportunity cost. I tentatively agree that it's a proxy for more substantive protest. However, I submit that this is because people don't otherwise feel empowered. If you believe any sort of activism is low percentage, then why not choose the route that is the least amount of effort?

bendoernberg• 12 years ago

Better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled.

IanDrake• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure "inconsistently principled" == "consistently unprincipled".

vinhboy• 12 years ago

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

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

001sky3• 12 years ago

Better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled.

That's some Jim Crow logic right there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

Or perhaps its just psychopathy:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10737827/Psychopath...

Joeboy• 12 years ago

I think the difference is, people have been calling for boycotts of Amazon for various reasons for years, and it's never made any difference to anything. They are too entrenched. I guess people are buoyed by the success of the anti-Eich campaign and think, perhaps correctly, that it might actually be practically possible to pressure Dropbox into dropping Rice.

yid• 12 years ago

Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet and in the press (especially on the Daily Show)

Her actions are hated; she's been on the Daily Show at least once and had a pretty decent conversation with Jon Stewart.

thesimpsons10223• 12 years ago

I can guarantee that poster has never watched the daily show and just assumes it's liberal propaganda.

crystaln• 12 years ago

It's quite simple.

Rice and Eich are not directly useful and their dismissal would have no effect on the protestors, so there is almost zero sacrifice. There is no sacrifice necessary on behalf of the protestors.

Dropping AWS on the other hand could be difficult and expensive for many, so protesting AWS requires either hypocrisy or sacrifice.

thirsteh• 12 years ago

While I personally think Eich shouldn't have been CEO, you sum up Internet protests nicely: People will scream and moan, but only a fraction of those people would continue to do so if it required they actually do anything--even something as simple as moderate physical exertion.

pedrocr2• 12 years ago

Rice and Eich are not directly useful and their dismissal would have no effect on the protestors, so there is almost zero sacrifice. There is no sacrifice necessary on behalf of the protestors.

And yet getting them fired has the impact of dissuading similar behavior. If you're a protestor why wouldn't you go for the low-hanging no-cost some-benefit moves?

Dropping AWS on the other hand could be difficult and expensive for many, so protesting AWS requires either hypocrisy or sacrifice.

So the protestors have prioritized lower cost moves over higher cost moves. Sounds rational.

sheri• 12 years ago

And your point is what? That demonstrating outrage here is in some way invalid since similar outrage was not demonstrated in every other similar situation? Do I have no moral authority to speak up in this situation if I have not before?

Maybe we should boycott Amazon. Not boycotting Dropbox because we didn't do the same for Amazon doesn't get us anywhere.

powera• 12 years ago

Yes. Selectively demonstrating a ridiculous amount of outrage at the hate target of the day is absurd. The fact that you couldn't possibly do it in every similar situation shows why it is absurd.

dmix3• 12 years ago

The system Condaleeza represents is still active and is heavily entrenched. This campaign may be a good start, but its going to take much more than that to change anything -- and that requires a strong moral consistency than extends well beyond participating in an occasional mob.

Amazon is actively supporting infrastructure to an agency that supports torture. Condaleeza isn't even in power any more. It's not that you shouldn't boycott Dropbox, it's that you are probably not really doing anything as a result of not doing it when it matters. The thing that created Condaleeza is still moving full steam ahead.

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

It's a pretty popular anti-activism stance, yeah. Unless you're an ascetic hermit who makes your own toilet paper, you're not allowed to protest anything without being labeled a hypocrite.

And of course if you do become an ascetic hermit, then you're just a crazy hippie.

grifpete2• 12 years ago

I think C Rice is an disturbing figure because she appears to be a contradiction. Nobody expects much of figures such as Rumsfeld or Chaney - they come across as ruthless unprincipled technocrats who are prepared to do some extraordinary dangerous things in pursuit of their ideological convictions. But CR is obviously highly intelligent and somehow more relatable. Which makes her actions feel like a betrayal. Hence the highly emotive reaction to her apologetics. One senses she should and indeed must know better.

rjzzleep• 12 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

avenger123• 12 years ago

The CIA is a big massive blob that represents thousands of people. Rice is an individual. Much easier to critique.

r00fus• 12 years ago

Rice is a public figure that helped sell the Iraq War by lying.

She's done some pretty slimy stuff and essentially admitted to it, so that's why she's easy to target.

sfk• 12 years ago

Politicians should be held to extremely high moral standards, hence the outrage.

If you read the link you'll see that Knuth himself only wrote two letters to government officials. Most people do not have time to become full time activists, so a certain degree of inconsistency seems inevitable.

detokaal• 12 years ago

This is a cover up to hide the real motivation: she is a woman and black, and none of you want her involved in a tech company. Disguise this all you want as opposition to the war or Bush or whatever. It is really opposition to her gender and race. This is how you do in silicon valley where blacks and women are considered token employees hire to look good. So make up stuff about her and move her out. Now you have your high-tech lynching hiding behind phony moral outrage.

scelerat• 12 years ago

Got any evidence for this claim? That people are really opposed to her because ~"she's black and a woman" and not because she helped start a war that killed thousands, predicated on lies and misinformation?

jdeisenberg• 12 years ago

Had Dropbox put former Vice President Dick Cheney (male, white) on the board, I suspect the firestorm of controversy would be far, far greater. As for "make up stuff about her," her comments regarding the Iraq war are on the record and are not fabricated.

dec0dedab0de• 12 years ago

I would have expected the same outrage if it were Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld

samstave2• 12 years ago

This is the lamest, most ignorant comment I have ever read on HN.

m52go5• 12 years ago

For the record, I'm not asking for Condi to step down or be removed. It would be hypocritical of me to do so--I openly criticized people on HN for asking Eich to step down.

From a pure business perspective: I just think it's a bonehead move on Dropbox's part, as other people could have brought similar value with less reputational damage.

Views on gay marriage have NOTHING to do with running Mozilla. Views on data security+privacy have EVERYTHING to do with leading Dropbox.

thesimpsons10223• 12 years ago

why do you care about seeming hypocritical? do what you feel is right. in the words of Emerson: " A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. "

pedrocr2• 12 years ago

This is an instance of "but someone else also does horrible things". That may very well be true but isn't really an argument for why the "horrible thing" we're discussing at the moment isn't horrible.

There's a great article by a journalist explaining this phenomenon (my google-fu is weak today). He discusses how every time he reports on "X country has done atrocity Y" he gets replies of "but why aren't you covering country Z which is also horrible?".

If the standard for being able to protest anything is that you must do full due-diligence and protest all similar things then no one would ever be able to protest anything.

stephencanon• 12 years ago

Inconsistency or hypocrisy doesn’t make someone wrong. Should people be outraged about more things? Maybe. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t justified in being outraged about any one thing.

camus2• 12 years ago

It does when there is an elephant in the room. It's like people complaining about these evil 1% rich while benefiting from quasi slave labor from China when buying all their cheap stuff...

brlewis• 12 years ago

CIA: Amazon's customer

Rice: Dropbox's board member

I don't think "pitchfork mobs" would object to Rice merely being a customer, even if she stored documents for objectionable purposes.

notahacker• 12 years ago

This is my view, more or less (though one could legitimately argue that bidding to build one's first ever private datacentre for the CIA is a much closer relationship than simply not preventing the CIA from having AWS accounts). Selecting a board member whose most relevant achievements are circumventing security legislation and browbeating foreign governments (she's undoubtedly extremely smart but she's not been appointed for investment or engineering insights) says a lot more about a company than whose cash they'll accept.

That said, the many calls to boycott Amazon were perfectly reasonable too.

samstave2• 12 years ago

isn't really about upholding some strong high-moral consistency that we all have.

YES, it actually is!

The issue is that Rice is a known, singular, actual person wh was directly responsible for the war, death and corrupt profiteering by the defense industry.

Whereas, its much more difficult to connect an actual individual with something like "amazon building a data center" (Yes, you can hate on Bezos - but he did not start a war killing thousands of people on trump up pretense AND get caught actually lying about said pretense)

Condi is a war criminal.

eik3_de• 12 years ago

AFAIK dropbox uses ec2 and s3, so dropping dropbox is a double win

iambother• 12 years ago

>>>The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent.

Just because the mob is all pitchfork'ed and ready doesn't mean it isn't its own victim to the trap of considering the world black and white.

There really are no absolutes. We're all using machines built for us by slaves. But at least we are communicating on how this enslavement can end. Would you end the show just because you think the last 15 minutes are 'a forgone conclusion'? Hang in here for this argument, and you may discover that the world is not black and white.

Ms. Rice is hated because of the things she allowed to occur as a part of her lifestyle. She is a cog in what many consider to be a highly destructive, death machine.

High-moral consistency is one thing; on the other end of this conversation is a father, laying dying in the ditch, watching the bits of their kids fade into the dirt. Condaleeze Rice is responsible for a fuck of a lot of that.

espeed• 12 years ago

I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent.

You can't fight them all. Choose your battles wisely.

   Any fool can criticize, complain, condemn,
   and most fools do. Picking your battles
   is impressive and fighting them fairly
   is essential. —Dale Carnegie

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

So what's your point? Our only options are to either abandon all hope of change, or secede from the world and join a hippie commune?

Nobody has the energy or resources to fight all possible battles at once. All we can do is try to pick the ones that we hope will provide the most benefit, most efficiently.

scarmig• 12 years ago

I hate these maximalist "unless you do X and Y and Z, you have no right to criticize ANYTHING, because I say so, so shut the fuck up" ideas. It's startlingly close to the USSR's "and you lynch negroes" response to any criticism of its policies by the USA: it brings up an irrelevancy, and it's made in bad faith. The only way to escape it would be to detach entirely from the system.

Would you have criticized MLK for only choosing convenient, media-visible targets for his protests? Hell, he ignored so many places, and even stayed in hotels that were segregated. What a fucking hypocrite.

Cesar Chavez? Loser: he only called for people to boycott some agricultural interests. Sure, anyone can give up grapes, but anyone who does that is worse than contemptible--they should have given up all food that's harvested in exploitative conditions!

Mother Teresa? Lame. She only helped people in India. What about people in Namibia?

Lech Walesa? He seemed so myopically focused on government in Poland. It wasn't even the worst communist country! If he were really freedom focused, he'd have left Eastern Europe to try to overthrow the Khmer Rouge.

Your criticism amounts to an incredibly lazy attempt to sidestep the issue. Condi Rice is a war criminal. Second only to Cheney, she is the person most responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people. She broke numerous laws; authorized illegal torture; and engaged in illegal violations of Americans' rights. In a just world, she'd be brought before a jury, convicted, and put behind bars for life.

You have no right to criticize me for trying to reduce how implicated I am in one of the most evil acts of the 21st century.

And if you disagree, well, I can name a thousand other forums for you to post your comment in before you come here to Hacker News. Otherwise you're just being wildly inconsistent and deeply morally corrupt.

chc• 12 years ago

I hate political posts on Hacker News because they lead to petty, histrionic bickering like this.

What is intellectually gratifying about mean-spirited sarcasm like:

You have no right to criticize me for trying to reduce how implicated I am in one of the most evil acts of the 21st century.
And if you disagree, well, I can name a thousand other forums for you to post your comment in before you come here to Hacker News. Otherwise you're just being wildly inconsistent and deeply morally corrupt.

Political threads make people forget how to make positive contributions and instead they compete to express the most outrage. Nobody wins from that.

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

You pick your battles.

In a moral argument, finding a target who's likely sensitive to moral suasion, whose audience or market is vocal, outspoken, and rights-oriented, and in which there's a reasonable chance for success. The Mozilla-Eich situation would be a case in point.

Condaleeza Rice has certainly drawn fire previously in her career -- despite Knuth's apparent support of her while at Stanford, I'm aware of others who were glad to see her move on, though perhaps not fully realizing she could do far more harm as National Security Advisor.

pohl• 12 years ago

I have no particular standing in this debate, but I've decided that terms like "pitchfork mobs", "witch hunts", and "bullies" in the context of this issue are far too close to Godwin territory for my taste.

Has there been actual violence that I haven't seen covered in the news? All I've seen are consumers engaging in online discourse about ceasing use of a service.

I don't mind reading the contrary opinions, too, but I'd really like to read some that can explain their case without the hyperbole.

PeterWhittaker• 12 years ago

The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent.

THIS.

raheemm• 12 years ago

DK's letter is from 2002. Which makes it even more admirable.

mbesto• 12 years ago

Curious - should we be crucifying Stanford as well?

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/users/condi

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Why not? UCB caught quite a bit of flak over John Yoo. If a med school were to employ one of the psychologists who helped design torture at Gitmo I wouldn't expect that to remain quiet.

gretful• 12 years ago

I wonder how many people here will feel the same about, for instance, Rahm in Chicago, or others of Obama's circle of friends, when they begin moving into private business? Will they be held to the same standards?

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Silicon Valley and the Military Industrial Complex need to see other people. It was a pretty hot relationship for a while, but the MIC turned out to be kind of a creeper. They put a camera in the shower, and lied about it. That's not healthy.

mathattack3• 12 years ago

It may help to put 2002 in the title, as this relates to the war in Iraq rather than Dropbox. (It's still interesting, and worth an upvote!)

When people go after her, I wonder, "What about Kissinger?" He was part of a lot of cold hard decisions in tough times on the world. That said, I would enjoy his counsel if I wanted to get involved in China. Similar with her, though her expertise may be more in Russia.

My (non-expert) observation is she was pushed and marginalized by the hawks. And although the war sounds bad now, the country was very much for it back then.

sitkack6• 12 years ago

Kissinger is widely and wildly despised. East Timor, Cambodia and extending the Vietnam war by years is his bullshit legacy. If someone can reincarnated before they die, then Kissinger => Condoleeza

mathattack3• 12 years ago

Yes - this is my point. He is despised, but still is knowledgable, and I'd listen to him about China.

Granted this is about tapping specific knowledge. I would never hire someone with a morality deficit as an employee. (And maybe it would be dangerous to have one as the CEO's boss)

edw519• 12 years ago

You lost me at almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation.

Why is it that people who know so much about one thing feel compelled to open their big mouths about something else they clearly know so little about?

probably_wrong• 12 years ago

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

Pxtl• 12 years ago

Anybody who holds a simple one-sided opinion on Israel/Palestine is wrong, full-stop.

Criticizing US government officials for their excessive support of Israel is reasonable. Blanketing all of Israel's various incursions into Palestinian territory as "unjustifiable" is bad for the discussion and makes an otherwise-reasonable person look extremist.

binarytrees• 12 years ago

Must be a zionist :)

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

In 2002 Israel was killing Palestinians with tanks instead of with hunger and blockades.

mschuster91• 12 years ago

"that almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation"... I wonder why that one hasn't been called out yet. Where are the Israel fanatics?

_bfhp• 12 years ago

I've seen a lot of comments here pontificate about being above "political litmus tests." Torture is political? Death on mass scale is political now? Wiretapping is political? Violation of international law is a political stance? Noam Chomsky thanks you for proving his points for him.

sitkack6• 12 years ago

"Politics" is a hobby that can only be done in private between 5:39 and 5:43.

pavelrub3• 12 years ago

I don't understand what people are admiring here. This "letter" is nothing more than a meaningless rant by a person whose field of expertise has nothing to do with politics, economy, international relations or terrorism. Donald Knuth is a great computer scientist, but hearing him talking about international politics is like hearing any other random person on the street.

Also: "...and that almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation".

Seriously?

Let the downvotes begin.

koevet3• 12 years ago

What do you find unserious in that statement about Israel?

pavelrub3• 12 years ago

Just that regardless of your political inclinations, you need to be extremely ignorant of the complexity of the situation in the Middle East to be able to make such clear cut statements about what's justifiable and what's not.

Disclaimer: I live in Israel.

jebblue• 12 years ago

> P.S. This is the second time in my life that I have written a letter to a U.S. government official. The first time was during the Vietnam war.

I wonder if he wrote it to Lyndon B. Johnson asking why he started the war in the first place or perhaps querying how much involvement he had in the Kennedy assassination.

rhspeer• 12 years ago

down for me, this is the google cached version for the lazy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

atmosx• 12 years ago

Knuth never stops to amaze me. I didn't study CS, so to me he is one of those places that I probably never go. But still gaze with admiration and a little bit of terror.

Cached copy here[1].

[1] http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.google.com/searc...

supergeek133• 12 years ago

I can't really handle this... Is this what we've become? So short sighted?

I know few who didn't want to blow up the entire middle east after 9/11, right, wrong, or indifferent. I'm also fairly sure government was relatively in agreement about the war when it started.

Unless you hold EVERYONE in the current administration, and everyone in government in general for the past 20 years regardless of party to the same standard, stop it here.

Torture? OK. Hasn't stopped. Stealing of information? Hasn't stopped. Didn't start with them, if you don't believe that, you're ignorant. Just obvious evidence of it starts here.

In the end, do you think that DropBox leadership didn't think about this? I hope they did, and were prepared for it.

I'm rambling a bit, but some of the anger here I guarantee won't be directed equally.

mtimjones• 12 years ago

Why not talk about Obama's war in Afghanistan, or increasing tensions with Russia, or abuse of spying? Way more relevant than a 12 year old letter...

shmerl3• 12 years ago

almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation

Stopped reading since there, since it sounds like a usual blind rant and not anything to do with reality or reason. The moment conflict in Israel kicks in, many otherwise reasonable people lose common sense (it can go in either direction about the sides of the conflict IMHO). Not sure why it's so really.

Otherwise valid criticism is discredited by such cliche phrases which don't suit someone like Knuth.

frou_dh2• 12 years ago

No one cares about "stopped reading" pronouncements. Spare us and tell your goldfish instead.

shmerl3• 12 years ago

Do you think I care about you not caring? Not in the least. Especially if you try to tell me not to express my opinion.

rasur• 12 years ago

Not sure why it's so really.

FWIW I think it's because the debate over the occupation of Palestine usually devolves into name-calling and accusations of anti-semitism etc within the space of.. well minutes at best, usually. Many people flip their "froth at the mouth" bit pretty quickly under those circumstances, be they reasonable people or not.. and so we see little reasoned debate on the subject.

fedxc• 12 years ago

I am glad to see an American stating the following:

If we peremptorily strike country X, why shouldn't country X have a right to do the same to us, and to our children and grandchildren in future years?

FD3SA• 12 years ago

Oh, and for our friendly HN militants, who are coming out in droves to support the Iraq war:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/17/iraq.oil

Occam's razor is your friend.

sparkzilla• 12 years ago

Everyone is guilty of having opinions and actions that others do not like so let's just boycott everything and everybody and be done with it.

shrnky• 12 years ago

This whole episode reminds me that staunch liberals are no different than religious fundamentalists AFAIK. Same nature, different nurture.

Both groups hypocrisy knows no bounds.

mjolk• 12 years ago

What hypocrisy are you speaking of? Why do you feel that his questioning the motivation of war makes Knuth a "staunch liberal?"

grifpete2• 12 years ago

She has been an outspoken apologist for some pretty heinous policies. It is rational to assume she hasn't changed.

Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

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