You really think that with Saddam it was even remotely possible, under severe sanctions and no WMD, that he could have caused more deaths and cost more than the Iraq war started by W?

Instead of "containment" and no threat really besides the starving of kids in Iraq, we borrowed money from China to make Iran stronger. Do you like how that turned out?

One helluva mistake. But my mind was made up years ago. Its called war mongering by hook and crook, with the ends justifying the means. Scott Ritter may be a pedophile, but read what he said before the war. He was right on the money - there was no WMD and it was obvious to everyone who had been there. So W lied - there is no doubt about that to me.

This article by a USA general in 1935 makes me skeptical of your argument:

http://www.ratical.org/ratvill...

People are judged on their credit reports and criminal history, why should using her past history in government to predict future behavior be any different? In this case that means questionable behavior on private data, as she has shown in the past. if its legal then anything goes and the ends justifies the means. And yes, I don't want to associate with people like that.

She is a very high profile lightning rod - unlike most board of directors - and hiring her shows very poor judgement, rightly or wrongly, on Dropbox's part. I expect they will go the way of MySpace. Therefore I'd be making a poor choice imho on betting on their future.

Have a nice evening!

Um, the war is what we are talking about and it and most people now think it was a mistake. Bush owns that legacy. There would have been no Obama and Affordable health care act without it, so you can thank the Iraq war supporters for that. And it was Bush who signed the law. I'm a libertarian and I was against all that from day one.

And the stock market was lower when he left than when he came in - the only president in history to accomplish that. The crash at the end of his term was do to his "ownership society" and hostile actions to regulation, and that will be his legacy too.

Your knowledge, respectfully, on these matters are on shaky ground.

Google for "Rice approved CIA waterboarding" . In her memoir she states " ''I do not regret the decisions we made. I would never have engaged in - or encouraged the President to undertake - activities that I thought to be illegal.''

Alright then, I guess she was never bothered by mere moral questions, so I hesitate to give her my data.

Also, Human Rights Watch has higher numbers than 3. How many were tortured by Jordan, Egypt etc under extraordinary rendition may never be known.

Google is not perfect and the lesser of two evils is still evil. However, it is possible to opt out of most of the privacy invading data collection. There are legal challenges to them on privacy and that is a good thing. There are other options besides Google too if you are so inclined.

You seem happy that we borrowed money from China to make Iran stronger, but the 90% who supported the war at the time is smarter now.

The Iraq war is estimated to have already cost over $1 trillion, and will likely cost $3 trillion when the vets are taken care of over their lifetime.

The increase of debt so far under Obama is around 6.5 trillion. I expect it to drop as the economy improves, but that is admittedly speculation.

Bush increased the debt by about 5 trillion in his two terms.

Use whatever reasonable sources you like for these numbers.

The more important issue is that over 100K Iraqis died, with 4486 US soldiers dead and 32,223 wounded. And for what? We now have another dictator and Badgad is #1 on the most violent city list. There were no WMD so I fail to see what we really gained that was worth the costs in blood and treasure.

There is a difference, at least in appearance, from have your poster girl as some one who thinks water boarding is a nifty idea.

And Google is suing the NSA, rather than announcing that a former National Security Advisor who was part of the problem, is now controlling your data. So instead of fighting the governments worst practices, the actions of Dropbox suggest that the NSA raiding your data is just fine by them.

I am well aware that Google will hand over to the NSA whatever they have to per USA law. And the USA government is one of their biggest check writers. But I doubt they think handing over data in violation of the 4th amendment is a good business practice. And if you are not a USA citizen or an expat, you have no standing at all - not nice for the rest of the world.

Rather, the NSA is likely causing them to lose business overall. Google's lawsuits may be just for show, but like I said, appearances matter. Would you trust RSA at this point?

Have great day likewise!

More like "ankle grabbing" for the lovers of the NSA and water boarding. Going back as far as Napoleon, torture was already dismissed as ineffective, so its sad to me that some people are glad to regress a few centuries. And the "everybody does it" theme neglects that few others countries, ie none, have 30,000 employees and a $10 billion a year budget.

I'm switching to Google Drive since their theme of "do no evil" is still intact enough to avoid high publicity idiocy like politicising their business. Why the fuck do these companies think their political agenda is a part of their business plan? Part of this idiocy alone is a good reason to switch.

I've programmed professionally in both the USA as an American in the 90's, and in Brazil for about 6 years until I started doing remote contracting for US companies. I contributed modestly to open source in both countries.

In Brazil it was pretty eye opening to see how the programming market is pretty much 90% paid by the government in one form or another. Truly private companies are few, even fewer are smaller startups. In the USA I didn't even know anyone employed by the government as a programmer - I guess because I didn't live in Virginia or Maryland (Pentagon and NSA). And in Brazil for white collar work, its jobs for life as its mostly impossible to get fired - there's very little turn over.

I mention this because while I worked with Brazilian programmers that were often great - I suspect because in Brazil you mostly need a degree for a job so the bar is higher - but its about as far from USA style libertarian culture as you can get. One quick example: There is a 60% VAT on imported computers and anything electronic, in effect about double the USA retail price on Chinese imports. There would be a revolution in most world countries if that was tried there.

Brazil has greatness in many ways - its where I live happily. But there is nothing libertarian about it currently or trending that way. I say that as someone who often votes and supports USA libertarian candidates.

You do realize when you say, "I suspect" , you might have been spun with marketing voodoo? Without double blind tests I still call BS.

I also claim BS on your digital vs analogue tape argument, there are double blind tests that show a difference. As I said I don't use tape because its a PITA. This one isn't double blind but its easy enough to tell the difference in this example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgH99wyRoVc

To my ears recording to tape sounds way better, even if ironically it ends in a WAV file. I can tell instantly. However, the maintenance isn't worth it to me, tape is a PITA.

I also claim BS on anyone claiming recording above 44KHZ/16 bit, ie WAV, is somehow better. There is no double blind test confirming that, its all marketing voodoo. I have listened to and witnessed countless blind shootouts and the result is the same, people who work in the industry can' t tell the difference.

Oops, posted anonymously.

In front of the gear side by side, anybody could pass a double blind test. On a pancake modern mix, maybe not.

I own 2 digital synths and 6 analogue synths, The digital synths imho are good at sampling instruments like pianos. A recorded real piano vs a digital piano is close. Digital synths like the Virus are all over modern music.

However, in person a grand piano sounds vastly different than a digital piano. My Moog Voyager won't sound anything like my Virus in my home studio, for one thing its rocking the walls even at low volume. On a modern "loudness war" mix though, it often has more than 24 tracks and is using a limiter to pancake the sound so its low-fi anyways. I get fatigued quick and might not even hear the synth parts enough to tell, The new Black Sabbath album is a good example of a pancake mix - everything is the same level throughout the songs - loud!

I play more than record and since I'm the one listening to it everyday, I vastly prefer analogue sound. Like a lot of guitarists I also prefer analogue effects. ymmv.

I emigrated from the USA to Brazil and come from an opposite angle. The USA has the ACLU, EFF, and a few politicians on both sides of the isle who care about liberty and its growing. Political blogs are uncensored. Corrupt politicians often go to jail, like 4 of the last 6 governors of Illinois for example. State ballot initiatives in many cases side step politicians. Judges are often elected, and there is a mostly consistent due process.

Brazil and elsewhere, despite its greatness, not so much. Everyday on TV there are corrupt politicians but none ever go to jail. There are censorship boundaries and no liberty pressure groups or politicians really. IMHO it really is a case where every else is worse in terms of justice and liberty.

Actually his dead grandfather is the eternal president still, they keep the country together by cult worship of him, "cleanest race" and blood purity propaganda, and the worst death camps on earth for the last 50 years such as Camp 14, where children are born as slaves for life under "three generations of punishment" .

Its unfortunate that these Nuclear and Chemical weapons headlines obscure the human rights violations. Currently there is a UN commission investigating NK for crimes against humanity. After reading "Escape from Camp 14" I was completely appalled that these death camps exist even today, and according to satellite images are expanding.

I haven't replied to "why not linux" topic in so long, because it really doesn't matter anymore. Linux is everywhere and people don't even know it.

Office imho is likely to become mostly obsolete, much like the desktop. I don't even bother with libre office and just use google docs. The desktop and Office will probably always be around for the minority who can't live without it. Anyways doc creation is headed for the cloud as a free feature for most people.

Drawing programs are a dime a dozen, and Gimp is an also ran.

That may have been true 10 years ago, and yes I was daily user then and still am. However, I seriously haven't had anything else but plug and play printing via usb for at least 5 years. I've only used hp printers, and have had drivers pre-installed every time. HP seems to have done well here.

This has been in the cloud for 10 years and is more so every day. Much like the desktop, how many need more is a small minority.

Sharepoint is in the cloud, works fine on Linux and firefox - I use it daily.

I have yet to find a file in 10 years that mplayer cannot play. Seriously. That must be one of the most flexible players on any system anywhere.

OSX is based on Unix, Samba has never let me down.

I've seen the argument made before and it doesn't make sense to me. I suggest having root separation and such a wide variety of distros make narrow targets. I have seen server worms from Java, but that's not a Linux only problem.

https://www2.bancobrasil.com.br/aapf/login.jsp?url=relacionamento/mcib.jsp

Site doesn't work in the latest opera. Works in the latest FF if you delete the default iceTea jvm and "ln" the latest jdk.