I like this. Sounds like you work with a handful of people with managable egos who don't feel threatened by one anothers' skill / competence. I personally would count myself lucky to have this environment as this is the exception to the rule for most workplaces.
As a seasoned engineer, I could not agree more with the justifications you provide.
As a business owner who's customers are actively engaged with my staff who need servers and resources to be available during the day when, you know, my CUSTOMERS are awake, your recommendation for outage windows would be completely ignored.
You schedule outages around the people who pay the bills, not the people who don't.
Just my $0.02, but it seems to me that if the site is akin to a book as you say, wouldn't the behavior you're suggesting doesn't make sense (TOC, chapter, TOC, chapter) work for a technical reference? The successive pages are certainly quite brief but in a way, isn't it a technical reference?
Any plans for an Android version? Disappointed that I can't check this app out. (Or at least an Android sign up page so I'm not missed when I forget about it in the next 20 minutes.)
I have a question from the article that I hope someone here can answer... What's the difference between simple encryption and the "strong" encryption Snowden was insisting on? Truecrypt volumes?
In a sanitized or controlled scenario, this makes sense. Passion and emotion, however, are impossible to strip from opinions in the context of the Snowden revelations that started all of this. Having the scab ripped off the NSA has altered the perspective of entire generations. Frankly I think the students handled themselves remarkably well.
Again, we are not the police and not a court of law. Authorities can and do require access to customer data from time to time in a way justified by local law; we comply with the law in those cases.
Really?! And what are you suggesting your principled stance is going to be when they shove a law in your face that violates and contradicts another law or an edict or the US Constitution you grew up believing was sacrosanct?
The problem is that they make any law they want to make, then keep it secret. Then they enforce the law they just made, forcing you into a position where you either have to give them the middle finger or subject your business to the possibility of being shut down - legally. Should you decide you want to challenge the enforcement of a law you believe is illegal, on behalf of one of your customers, you can't tell the press, you can't have an open proceeding in view of public scrutiny, and you can't inform your customer of the challenge. When the ruling eventually comes down (from a court who's sworn to as much secrecy as the agency you were fighting), you aren't even allowed to share that with anyone either.
I applaud what you probably believe is a line in the sand. But we can't even get to the real debate of privacy until we are allowed to challenge the very instruments that lay claim to authority over us... in public. It's that simple.
> The moment any non-US citizen is using a service provided by an US company, he is giving up any right to due process, privacy and data security (as far as this service is concerned). Which is risky and short-sighted to say the least.
I realize this is a crappy response, but the only solution is to not use the services of countries whose laws do not explicitly protect you. As a US citizen, I refuse to use any services that can avoid that are provided by China for this very reason. (aside from the fact that I can't read Chinese.)
But... it's really, really important you understand something else here... The rights and protections you are correctly suggesting are NOT granted to you because of the limited scope and application of our Constitution, are the exact same rights and protections of mine, as a US citizen, that are currently being violated. Were I a citizen of another country, I would be just as, if not more, incensed about what has been claimed about the privacy rights of my data recently. But imagine what it's like to have grown up in a country where the guarantee of these rights is so ingrained in our minds that they are barely (almost NEVER) questioned, to find out that they are being violated at will and without the legal right to challenge or even the right to know what those violations are.
I can not even begin to articulate to you the degree of uncontainable rage I and many, many people I know have regarding what is going on right now. I can't recall a single time in my entire life, which is not an insignificant number, that I have been more angry or concerned about anything. NOT F!*&%$ ONCE!
I hear the point. Seriously I do. But the Constitution the US is bound by is not an agreement between the US government and citizens of the world. It's an agreement between the US government and the citizens for whom it claims jurisdiction. It's scope and application is not only limited, but intentionally and wisely limited. Were it not, we would be imperial Britain and we all know how that worked out.
> I don't understand how this argument that the constitution of a country (which represents its highest thoughts and ideals) can be applied selectively (i.e., only to citizens). If the thoughts contained therein regarding the rights of human beings are indeed 'True', then surely they should apply to all human beings?
You'll get little argument from most 'Mericans for your statement that these rights are human rights. The argument you will get is the rationality of transference. The difference between the OP and any American is citizenship and history.
US citizens of today are beneficiary to a Constitution that was crafted and bled for, over 200 years ago, with nasty war for our independence and claim to self governance. I didn't fight this battle. My father didn't fight this battle. Neither did his father. But one of the dumb-luck results of not only being born in the US to American citizens, are the benefits bestowed upon me by the war that was fought for the benefit of future generations (i.e. ME).
Now... this is going to sound really pointed and "f* y", but there's no other way to say it. Those 200+ year old men and women didn't fight this war for people in other countries, they did it for their own sons, daughters, and many generations that would come.
I agree! Those rights that were fought for should be universal human rights for every single person on the planet. But that's why you have to fight whatever government collects your taxes for those very rights on your own.
One of the items I'm going to be most interested in from your service (when the time comes for you guys to start working on it) will be the TOS and/or practices you put in place.
I've been a ViprVPN customer before. I had a question or perhaps it was an issue I called them about and the person I was communicating with told me what VPN server I last connected to and when I connected. Sure, to do any kind of troubleshooting, this would have been necessary and important information. But I was concerned enough about the unsolicited disclosure that I cancelled the service immediately.
DuckDuckGo can claim a reasonably high interest in protecting my privacy because they simply do not collect data that the big search engine does. Collecting and storing this data would make them a target for undisclosed, unchallengeable, and unwarranted surveillance. This has enormous appeal to me.
Having said that, have you guys discussed (loosely) what data you will be collecting?
There are 3 platforms I care about, Windows, Android, and Linux.
For the last 2 weeks I've been taking actions that attempt to pull-back my public footprint and re-exert control over my privacy (admittedly illusory) to a point where I feel more comfortable. One of the biggest "oh crap" moments was when I realized my phone is powered by software derived from a Google product.
Windows desktop should be straight forward enough to connect.
Personal Linux server farm with services that are open to the general Internet, but for outbound traffic not related to something I serve, my servers are at the mercy of the security of the feed I have.
As far as how close it has to be to an exit, I'm completely indifferent. There are trade-offs that I'm willing to accept (in some cases, extreme) as I record over 20 years of habitual internet behavior.
