2) Most encryption schemes compress before encrypting. So nothing is lost there. As for de-duplication, I don't see that being a huge concern because a) even if encryption is an option most people won't use it and b) When TFA has dropbox's head honcho saying "We think of encryption beyond that as a users choice."
3) That argument doesn't really fly at all. Security is not an all or nothing thing. Different security serves different purposes and can mitigate different attacks. e.g. encrypting data client side means that if Dropbox's servers were compromised or their users database was stolen that my data is still secure.
You realise dropbox is free, right?
Basic Dropbox is, none of the other options are. And besides, why is that an excuse? If they can encrypt data as they send it, and as they store it on the cloud, why is it impossible to encrypt it on the client, or provide an API to allow a 3rd party to encrypt it? Furthermore, as it is the paid service that pays their wages, why aren't they implementing a feature that customers, particularly corporates would pay for and which would enhance their reputation for secure storage?
If you want encryption, then fine, do it yourself. You obviously know that your stuff won't be indexable or shareable so won't be calling for support or slagging Dropbox off online when you find indexing and sharing not working.
Well that's a stupid argument right there. I wonder if car companies apply it too - well if you want an airbag in your car why don't you install it yourself? Just because a single individual has the technical wherewithal to implement something doesn't excuse the company for not implementing it in the first place, particularly when it is a feature that many people want.
There's room to suggest Dropbox should offer a pay-for encrypted service. The thing is, no matter how well they do it, it'll always be vulnerable to government interference, and it'll never be fully trusted anyway. BYO means no government interference and trust *for the relatively small number of people who care* without raising the costs too much for the multitudes who don't.
No it won't. The point of a well designed client side encryption is Dropbox simply have no idea what they are storing on their servers. Government can interfere until the cows come home but Dropbox have no idea what is in those files.
Yes you'd have to warn the user that a protected folder means exactly that and there are restrictions on what you can do with it, e.g. access in some dropbox clients, web browsers, sharing to others. People will get it.
Even better, this encryption / decryption could be thrown open as a pluggable API so 3rd parties could write their own encryption protocols to whatever personal or corporate standard they desired. For transparency the aforementioned passphrase encryption could even be supplied for review.
Same goes for Skydrive, Google Drive etc. There is no excuse for not offering encryption. Not that I'm in the tinfoil hat camp to think this is to facilitate monitoring (although it does). More likely it's because these cloud storage servers use file hashing to spare themselves the bother of storing 1,000,000 copies of the same file. It still sucks though and even if the option is off by default, encryption of at least one folder should be provided.
That is of course why software tends to use Unicode is used these days. A file can unambiguously include the chars it uses and the codepages they come from. How they are stored is where an encoding comes in. UTF-8 tends to be a popular encoding of Unicode because legacy tools tend to cope with it better and the files can be a bit smaller than UTF-16 depending on the contents (amount of markup vs text).
Why do we have to use something so complicated and unreadable without certain software? Something like markdown or even LaTeX if you have smart users would be better.
A bit condescending there. "Smart users" might prefer their time to be spent more productively with a WYSIWYG word processor than learning some stupid markup language just because the file format is potentially a bit simpler.
Besides, I'm sure someone could produce an ODT to Markdown / Latex tool if they wished. Both sides are fairly well documented and open standards after all.
If you are paranoid about it you could unplug the internet cable. After all, if you're worried about what your Blu Ray disc is capable of then you should also be worried about what ALL the software on the device is capable of. e.g. the Netflix app, BBC iPlayer, PS3 games or whatever else is on there.
The bigger failing IMO was that all the software hitting the custom hardware made it increasingly difficult for the platform to support higher resolutions, pixel bit depths and stuff like virtual memory. It was left to 3rd parties to provide a solution but by that point it was already too late.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.