He started with a $200 complete package that included a 1.3 Duron and an MSI MB. For $185 dollars, I got a socket 754 AMD64 3000 cpu and an Asus pci-e MB with built in Nvidia video (which isn't too bad but waiting for the 7600GT to get below $150 which is getting very close). I added 1 GB I had left over from my upgrade (in all fairness that would be another ~$60. So, for roughly $250 he has a machine about 10x faster then the previous one.
That's colorful math you've got there: $200 PC plus $250 worth of upgrades = $250.
In addition to a PC for each kid, it looks like you are running TWO "file servers" for pretty much no other reason than to justify not throwing away your kids' old hardware after a couple years. If you simply bought your kids new PC's instead of making them live on the puny drives that came with their DX2/66 systems, they would have plenty enough storage space that you would not need to waste all that electricity on running a 24/7 Linux lab.
Then again, maybe you find having a room full of computers in your house with no designated users to be kinda cool. I get that. I had a Linux server once, mainly for Apache, but also for a few other things... until I realized that everything I was doing with it could be done as a background task on my new Mac, and that meant one less machine to administrate.
Throughout the late 80s all of the 90s, and well into this century, every single time I've wanted to upgrade a PC CPU to keep up with the game market on an older system, I needed to buy a new motherboard for the CPU I wanted.
Every
Single
Goddamn
Time.
I finally gave up in the lie of how PC's are so much more "upgradable" than Macs.
I was, however, able to drop a G4 500 into my G3 350 tower once, and the price was reasonable. Not great, but reasonable, considering how many other ways I had that particular G3 tricked out. It was the one time in my entire life that it made financial sense to drop a new CPU into an old computer for the sake of a speed boost.
In every other situation, I've found it to be a much better deal to simply sell whatever I was using and buy (or build) a complete new system.
No mini-PCI slots either (as far as I know), but who uses those anyway?
There are a lot of wifi cards that plug into mini-PCI slots, IIRC.
Yes, but every Mac, going back years, has an internal card bay specifically for Wi-Fi, complete with a built-in antenna in the laptop case itself. Also, all the current ones already have Wi-Fi built in (as well as Bluetooth).
So Wi-Fi is not a reason for needing mini-PCI on the Mac. At all.
Whoever modded you down "Troll" has obviously not heard of sarcasm.
Anyway. The difference between Mac OS X and XP can be summarized thus:
Every time a potential breach of OS X security is discovered, it's front-page headline news on Slashdot.
If a new actual virus or worm comes along for Windows, making it ever more sure that you still can't even put a new Windows box online to download patches until after the patches you need are already installed... it's business as usual.
Windows users concerned about they penis size go on chanting "B B B But that's only because the Mac is less popular, so nobody bothers to write malware for it. Wait until the Mac gets more popular, then you'll be in a world of hurt!!!1!"
Whatever. The Mac is probably never going to see double-digit market share, and even if it does, it's still vastly more secure than Windows is, and you all know it. So there's no need to worry about such a scenario ever happening.
So I use Macs.
If the market dominance of Windows has anything to do with Macs being relatively free of haX0r attention, then I just gotta say to all you stubborn Windows users out there:
What's incredibly short-sighted about this bill is that the Internet is not, and never was, intended to be a tool for one-way information gathering. Plenty of such tools already exist. The value of the Internet is a direct result of the fact that it is a means of two-way communication.
MySpace gets used for a lot of frivolous blogs and teen flirting, but it's silly the way it's being scapegoated. Just as with AOL chat a few years ago, the bogeyman of a Creepy Old Guy wanting to run off with your teenager keeps getting trotted out, but the vast majority of statuatory rape cases are going on in homes, with family members or close friends of the family.
Where's the crack-down on a dad's 40-year old drinking buddy slipping upstairs to visit his daughter during a back-yard BBQ? That's the *real* teen abuse problem.
For the most part, there are no "strangers in the bushes" to worry about, and the way to guard against such rare cases is to teach your teen some sense.
Look, princess: The grown-up who wants to hook up with you at a motel is not "cool". If he was "cool" he could find women his own age to sleep with. He's a LOSER, and you should stay away from him. Now, have fun chatting with your pals on MySpace, but remember that I have a profile on your Friends list, and will check in from time to time. There will be consequences for misbehavior.
This bill would do absolutely nothing to protect children. Irresponsible kids and their adult predators will simply move to a different medium to hook up, such as text messaging on cell phone networks. I'd like to think that those behind this bill are simply ignorant of that fact. If you live in Michael Fitzpatrick's Congressional district, please write to him and explain that fact.
Yes, it's true that the PC industry has come around to the non-use of screws. (A policy, I would maintain, that came about as a direct result of keeping up with Apple, who dazzled people with their easy-open G3 tower back in the day.)
However, most of the PCs I've owned, up to and including the one I own now, closes the case with screws.
And hey, the mini doesn't use screws either. Just bend a few plastic clips out of the way, and it's wide open.
If you're not familar with the hardware, go to the Apple store and see for yourself what it looks like.
Or better yet, ask actual Mac owners, who have actually made upgrades to their Macs yet still enjoyed full coverage on the rest of their Macs. I'm one of them. I upgraded both the memory and the hard drive on my mini. Zero problems carting it up to a "Genius Bar" and getting supported.
Never stick a putty knife into a computer. I can't believe someone would even suggest such a thing.
The magical special tool which most Certified Apple Repair techs use to open the Mac mini is (drum roll) a bevelled putty knife. It's perfect for the job. Have you actually seen a Mac mini in person? Ever?
That link does not back up your claim. It just sayd that the warranty doesn't cover the shit that you, yourself, break while trying to upgrade it. That's true of pretty much any hardware warranty.
Don't believe me? Snap off the clips that secure the RAM on your Dell motherboard and call them to fix it for you.
Your insistance on not giving up your privacy (evidenced in several other responses to my post) indicates that you are currently laboring under the delusion that you ever really HAD privacy.
Before we can even begin to have a conversation about how much privacy people may or may not have a right to expect... You're going to have to get over this fantasy that you have any privacy to lose.
The ammendment restricting search and seizure is all about protecting your PROPERTY from being invated. The fact that this restriction makes it easier for you keep your extremely freakish pr0n collection hidden behind the shoe rack of your closet is just an added bonus.
At no extra cost, Apple could have made the Mini serviceable without tools. It might not be difficult, but Apple intentionally didn't make it easy.
More than half of the PCs I've owned in my life required tools to open.
I reject your claim that "Apple intentionally didn't make it easy" to open, because I own one and can tell you first hand, that it's incredibly fucking easy to open. A small child could do it.
You slide a putty knife in on one side to bend back a few of the clips, pull it open a little bit. Do the same on the other side. Then just swing it open.
It opens in less than a third of the time it takes to open a typical cheap ATX case that's screwed shut.
Why is it clipped like that? Bacause Apple's priority with the mini case design was size and air flow, not simplicity of popping it open.
But you still didn't answer my question: Why is it that otherwise "1337 hardware haX0rs" seem to be so terrified of slipping the top off from this simple and inexpensive computer???
The other Macs really are difficult to upgrade. Just take a stroll into an Apple store, pick up a Mac Mini and see if you can tell how to even open the case.
What is the deal with this fear of the Mac mini?
Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.
"Woah! d00d, I heard a rumor on Slashdot that Apple might void your warranty if you even add memory to it! Better just put it up on a pedistal and never even look directly at it, or it might a'splode! I'll call a Certified tech to get this keyboard plugged in."
You are making some very large assumptions about what I have said. You seem to think that because I am talking about the complexities of moral relativism, I am defending the Chinese. I am not, and I don't understand how you could think that I am.
Perhaps because this is a discussion about what the Chinese government is doing.
Why bring up moral relativism in such a discussion, if not to diminish the moral outrage against what is clearly an evil regime?
Today, those who are saying anything at all are discussing the collection of CDR's. Essentially pre-processed billing information. But three months ago, it was "no domestic survelliance of any kind" and six months before that it was a "very limited program affecting, at most, a few thousand calls" and only then if one end was overseas and a known terrorist was involved. Before that, nothing but silence. The trend is clear.
That's not even slightly true. NSA CDR monitoring has been publically known about since 1999, when a lawsuit was filed over it in California.
Futhermore, it's been one of the worst-kept secrets in American history. My Poli-Sci prof (in a small midwestern state college) cited tons of documentation about warrentless NSA observation of overseas calls back in the late 80's, and nobody from the government was stepping up to deny that it was happening.
Most moral issues are loaded issues, so it's hard to find neutral examples. Let's look at speaking distance. In some cultures it is rude to stand too far apart, in others it is rude to stand too close together.
What does mores of politeness in different cultures have to do with the Chinese government murdering people for practicing a fringe religion and surpressing speech which criticizes them for it!?
I'm not evaluating them "from a Western perspective." I'm evaluating them from a basic standard of Natural Law.
They are not close-talkers. They are tyrants and murderers and worse. Nit-picking about cultural context is just silly. By the moral standards of any sane person, what they are doing is flat-out evil.
Even if the government had a recording of every overseas call I ever made, along with complete biographies of everybody I talked to, AND a list of my favorite internet pr0n sites, they'd still have less information about me than amazon.com already does.
Privacy is an illusion. Get over it, or move to a 12x12 shack in Montana.
But there is another type of revolution, like the industrial revolution or the sexual revolution. Such revolutions are often only recognized in hindsight, since they take decades to complete. And this may very well happen with free software in general.
Are you seriously suggesting that the sexual revolution was something people were not aware of as it was going on???
Also, I wouldn't say that it was a revolution that "completed." It "died" in the 1980s, thanks to the rapid spread of AIDS and other lethal STDs. The rise of the Internet was the final nail in the coffin, as it allowed people to safely get their rocks off in the safety of their own solitude with the aid of an exponentially expanding library of free and/or easilly accessible porn.
Everybody is very open about there sexuality in the 21st Century, but just as was the case in school locker rooms back in the day: Those who talk about it the most are the ones who are not getting any.
Ah, nothing like screwing up an HTML tag in the middle of a good discussion. This is why Slashdot needs and "Edit" button.
My comment above was a response to this remark:
Ah, I very much agree. But then, I probably understand "practical value to... society and the individual" to mean about the same thing as do you--which is that the application of such a position sustains them (both society and individual), and is the surest guarantee that they will grow and prosper. And to say that this is better than the alternative relies, again, on a subjective judgment of permanence as preferable to transience, doesn't it?
The utterly silly thing about making such an argument is that Chinese censorship and oppression is based entirely on the government's efforts to insure their own "permanence" by what they believe is the surest method available.
So even by the Eastern values you seem to think are paramount here, they are still in the wrong.
But it misses the mark to criticize China's government for encouraging freedoms in ways that look to us like repression; things need to be seen in context to be understood, and it's all too common here in the West for people to offer opinions on Chinese freedoms incompletely informed by the context of Chinese culture.
Any way you look at it, making over 2800 completely peaceful and harmless Falun Gong members die in prison (so far) is oppression, cultural context be damned.
I'm not Falun Gong, or even Buddhist... I have no dog in this hunt, save for a fact that my religious beliefs and personal philosophy do not completely align with the society I'm living in, and I thank GOD that I'm not living in a country, like China, where that sort of non-conformity could get me killed by a government of tyrants.
Except most things that have to do with morality are not relative at all. There are several points that pretty much everybody can agree with:
1. Killing people is usually a very bad thing to do. 2. Stealing, also not good. 3. Deception, also on the list. etc.
Where people differ is the opinion of when an exception is acceptible or even needed.
Some people might think it's perfectly okay to kill an unborn child in the final trimester, but it's not okay to execute a convicted serial killer. Others might feel just the opposite way, that capital punishment is fine and dandy, but late-term abortion is not.
Both groups, however, believe that killing other people is a moral violation. They only differ on their opinions of when such a violation is justified.
In many respects, citizens of China are freer than citizens of, say, the U.K. or the U.S., especially--and I can tell you this from personal experience--if you're starting a small business or trying to do your taxes.
Yes, but if you are going to practice an unpopular religion, you're far better off doing so in a Western Country. It's been about 13 years since the US last committed wholesale slaughter of a minority cult, and there's still some debate about who is ultimately responsible for the destruction.
Meanwhile, China has managed to mulch through almost 3000 members (and counting) of one of their minority cults over the past seven years (and ongoing).
Apart from Germany not putting up with scientologists, and a couple of gun-toting cults being intruded upon on in the US, Western nations are extremely committed to religious freedom and tollerence. The biggest debates on the issue usually have to do with resolving conflicting religious intrests (one student's right to gather some friends to pray on campus vs. another student's right not to have to deal with organized relion intruding on their institution of learning), and not on whether people have the right to believe as they wish.
There's a difference between somebody sacrificing themselves for a perceived greater good (whatever greater good it was that your father's first wife thought she was striving for) and filling your car with exhaust because you're depressed over not getting in to the school you wanted to attend.
Japan has a major suicide problem on their hands right now, and even those few old-fashioned Shintoists who still think killing yourself is kinda cool are starting to see that.
A Chinese scholar could paraphrase Confucius to assert that there exists no fundamental reason to promote, say, monogamy. And good luck convincing him otherwise, at least with an argument derived from Western principles.
As a Westerner, I would agree with him.
But the thing about this East vs. West argument you keep going back to is that it implies that neither system of thought has anything to learn from the other.
Free Speech is a value worth holding up and defending, whether you've been exposed to post-enlightenment French thinkers or not. Explaining this your hypothetical Chinese scholar is as simple as sitting him down and reading Voltaire to him. The "rightness" of allowing the free exchange of ideas might not become immediately obvious to somebody who derives their concept of morality from different axioms, but the practical value to both society and the individual of such a position should become immediately clear, if he is at all capable of reason.
Slashdot Mirror
In the US, we have living rooms and dens where all our media needs are meet. Have you been in a typical Japanese house?
This is why private karaoke rooms are such a hit there. If you want to get eight people together, doing so at somebody's house is out of the question.
He started with a $200 complete package that included a 1.3 Duron and an MSI MB. For $185 dollars, I got a socket 754 AMD64 3000 cpu and an Asus pci-e MB with built in Nvidia video (which isn't too bad but waiting for the 7600GT to get below $150 which is getting very close). I added 1 GB I had left over from my upgrade (in all fairness that would be another ~$60. So, for roughly $250 he has a machine about 10x faster then the previous one.
That's colorful math you've got there: $200 PC plus $250 worth of upgrades = $250.
In addition to a PC for each kid, it looks like you are running TWO "file servers" for pretty much no other reason than to justify not throwing away your kids' old hardware after a couple years. If you simply bought your kids new PC's instead of making them live on the puny drives that came with their DX2/66 systems, they would have plenty enough storage space that you would not need to waste all that electricity on running a 24/7 Linux lab.
Then again, maybe you find having a room full of computers in your house with no designated users to be kinda cool. I get that. I had a Linux server once, mainly for Apache, but also for a few other things... until I realized that everything I was doing with it could be done as a background task on my new Mac, and that meant one less machine to administrate.
Throughout the late 80s all of the 90s, and well into this century, every single time I've wanted to upgrade a PC CPU to keep up with the game market on an older system, I needed to buy a new motherboard for the CPU I wanted.
Every
Single
Goddamn
Time.
I finally gave up in the lie of how PC's are so much more "upgradable" than Macs.
I was, however, able to drop a G4 500 into my G3 350 tower once, and the price was reasonable. Not great, but reasonable, considering how many other ways I had that particular G3 tricked out. It was the one time in my entire life that it made financial sense to drop a new CPU into an old computer for the sake of a speed boost.
In every other situation, I've found it to be a much better deal to simply sell whatever I was using and buy (or build) a complete new system.
No mini-PCI slots either (as far as I know), but who uses those anyway?
There are a lot of wifi cards that plug into mini-PCI slots, IIRC.
Yes, but every Mac, going back years, has an internal card bay specifically for Wi-Fi, complete with a built-in antenna in the laptop case itself. Also, all the current ones already have Wi-Fi built in (as well as Bluetooth).
So Wi-Fi is not a reason for needing mini-PCI on the Mac. At all.
Whoever modded you down "Troll" has obviously not heard of sarcasm.
Anyway. The difference between Mac OS X and XP can be summarized thus:
Every time a potential breach of OS X security is discovered, it's front-page headline news on Slashdot.
If a new actual virus or worm comes along for Windows, making it ever more sure that you still can't even put a new Windows box online to download patches until after the patches you need are already installed... it's business as usual.
Windows users concerned about they penis size go on chanting "B B B But that's only because the Mac is less popular, so nobody bothers to write malware for it. Wait until the Mac gets more popular, then you'll be in a world of hurt!!!1!"
Whatever. The Mac is probably never going to see double-digit market share, and even if it does, it's still vastly more secure than Windows is, and you all know it. So there's no need to worry about such a scenario ever happening.
So I use Macs.
If the market dominance of Windows has anything to do with Macs being relatively free of haX0r attention, then I just gotta say to all you stubborn Windows users out there:
Hey man, thanks for taking one for the team.
What's incredibly short-sighted about this bill is that the Internet is not, and never was, intended to be a tool for one-way information gathering. Plenty of such tools already exist. The value of the Internet is a direct result of the fact that it is a means of two-way communication.
MySpace gets used for a lot of frivolous blogs and teen flirting, but it's silly the way it's being scapegoated. Just as with AOL chat a few years ago, the bogeyman of a Creepy Old Guy wanting to run off with your teenager keeps getting trotted out, but the vast majority of statuatory rape cases are going on in homes, with family members or close friends of the family.
Where's the crack-down on a dad's 40-year old drinking buddy slipping upstairs to visit his daughter during a back-yard BBQ? That's the *real* teen abuse problem.
For the most part, there are no "strangers in the bushes" to worry about, and the way to guard against such rare cases is to teach your teen some sense.
Look, princess: The grown-up who wants to hook up with you at a motel is not "cool". If he was "cool" he could find women his own age to sleep with. He's a LOSER, and you should stay away from him. Now, have fun chatting with your pals on MySpace, but remember that I have a profile on your Friends list, and will check in from time to time. There will be consequences for misbehavior.
This bill would do absolutely nothing to protect children. Irresponsible kids and their adult predators will simply move to a different medium to hook up, such as text messaging on cell phone networks. I'd like to think that those behind this bill are simply ignorant of that fact. If you live in Michael Fitzpatrick's Congressional district, please write to him and explain that fact.
Yes, it's true that the PC industry has come around to the non-use of screws. (A policy, I would maintain, that came about as a direct result of keeping up with Apple, who dazzled people with their easy-open G3 tower back in the day.)
However, most of the PCs I've owned, up to and including the one I own now, closes the case with screws.
And hey, the mini doesn't use screws either. Just bend a few plastic clips out of the way, and it's wide open.
Holy crap, that's a lot of FUD you're spreading.
If you're not familar with the hardware, go to the Apple store and see for yourself what it looks like.
Or better yet, ask actual Mac owners, who have actually made upgrades to their Macs yet still enjoyed full coverage on the rest of their Macs. I'm one of them. I upgraded both the memory and the hard drive on my mini. Zero problems carting it up to a "Genius Bar" and getting supported.
Never stick a putty knife into a computer. I can't believe someone would even suggest such a thing.
The magical special tool which most Certified Apple Repair techs use to open the Mac mini is (drum roll) a bevelled putty knife. It's perfect for the job. Have you actually seen a Mac mini in person? Ever?
Upgrading your Mac yourself does void your warrenty. See for yourself on the Apple website: http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/hardware.html
That link does not back up your claim. It just sayd that the warranty doesn't cover the shit that you, yourself, break while trying to upgrade it. That's true of pretty much any hardware warranty.
Don't believe me? Snap off the clips that secure the RAM on your Dell motherboard and call them to fix it for you.
Your insistance on not giving up your privacy (evidenced in several other responses to my post) indicates that you are currently laboring under the delusion that you ever really HAD privacy.
Before we can even begin to have a conversation about how much privacy people may or may not have a right to expect... You're going to have to get over this fantasy that you have any privacy to lose.
The ammendment restricting search and seizure is all about protecting your PROPERTY from being invated. The fact that this restriction makes it easier for you keep your extremely freakish pr0n collection hidden behind the shoe rack of your closet is just an added bonus.
At no extra cost, Apple could have made the Mini serviceable without tools. It might not be difficult, but Apple intentionally didn't make it easy.
More than half of the PCs I've owned in my life required tools to open.
I reject your claim that "Apple intentionally didn't make it easy" to open, because I own one and can tell you first hand, that it's incredibly fucking easy to open. A small child could do it.
You slide a putty knife in on one side to bend back a few of the clips, pull it open a little bit. Do the same on the other side. Then just swing it open.
It opens in less than a third of the time it takes to open a typical cheap ATX case that's screwed shut.
Why is it clipped like that? Bacause Apple's priority with the mini case design was size and air flow, not simplicity of popping it open.
But you still didn't answer my question: Why is it that otherwise "1337 hardware haX0rs" seem to be so terrified of slipping the top off from this simple and inexpensive computer???
The other Macs really are difficult to upgrade. Just take a stroll into an Apple store, pick up a Mac Mini and see if you can tell how to even open the case.
What is the deal with this fear of the Mac mini?
Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.
"Woah! d00d, I heard a rumor on Slashdot that Apple might void your warranty if you even add memory to it! Better just put it up on a pedistal and never even look directly at it, or it might a'splode! I'll call a Certified tech to get this keyboard plugged in."
All I can do is shake my head in disgust.
You are making some very large assumptions about what I have said. You seem to think that because I am talking about the complexities of moral relativism, I am defending the Chinese. I am not, and I don't understand how you could think that I am.
Perhaps because this is a discussion about what the Chinese government is doing.
Why bring up moral relativism in such a discussion, if not to diminish the moral outrage against what is clearly an evil regime?
Today, those who are saying anything at all are discussing the collection of CDR's. Essentially pre-processed billing information. But three months ago, it was "no domestic survelliance of any kind" and six months before that it was a "very limited program affecting, at most, a few thousand calls" and only then if one end was overseas and a known terrorist was involved. Before that, nothing but silence. The trend is clear.
That's not even slightly true. NSA CDR monitoring has been publically known about since 1999, when a lawsuit was filed over it in California.
Futhermore, it's been one of the worst-kept secrets in American history. My Poli-Sci prof (in a small midwestern state college) cited tons of documentation about warrentless NSA observation of overseas calls back in the late 80's, and nobody from the government was stepping up to deny that it was happening.
Most moral issues are loaded issues, so it's hard to find neutral examples. Let's look at speaking distance. In some cultures it is rude to stand too far apart, in others it is rude to stand too close together.
What does mores of politeness in different cultures have to do with the Chinese government murdering people for practicing a fringe religion and surpressing speech which criticizes them for it!?
I'm not evaluating them "from a Western perspective." I'm evaluating them from a basic standard of Natural Law.
They are not close-talkers. They are tyrants and murderers and worse. Nit-picking about cultural context is just silly. By the moral standards of any sane person, what they are doing is flat-out evil.
Pfft.
It's call data. BFD.
Even if the government had a recording of every overseas call I ever made, along with complete biographies of everybody I talked to, AND a list of my favorite internet pr0n sites, they'd still have less information about me than amazon.com already does.
Privacy is an illusion. Get over it, or move to a 12x12 shack in Montana.
Yes, I also thought it was nice of him to announce at the beginning of his post that reading the rest of it would be a waste of time.
But there is another type of revolution, like the industrial revolution or the sexual revolution. Such revolutions are often only recognized in hindsight, since they take decades to complete. And this may very well happen with free software in general.
Are you seriously suggesting that the sexual revolution was something people were not aware of as it was going on???
Also, I wouldn't say that it was a revolution that "completed." It "died" in the 1980s, thanks to the rapid spread of AIDS and other lethal STDs. The rise of the Internet was the final nail in the coffin, as it allowed people to safely get their rocks off in the safety of their own solitude with the aid of an exponentially expanding library of free and/or easilly accessible porn.
Everybody is very open about there sexuality in the 21st Century, but just as was the case in school locker rooms back in the day: Those who talk about it the most are the ones who are not getting any.
Ah, nothing like screwing up an HTML tag in the middle of a good discussion. This is why Slashdot needs and "Edit" button.
... society and the individual" to mean about the same thing as do you--which is that the application of such a position sustains them (both society and individual), and is the surest guarantee that they will grow and prosper. And to say that this is better than the alternative relies, again, on a subjective judgment of permanence as preferable to transience, doesn't it?
My comment above was a response to this remark:
Ah, I very much agree. But then, I probably understand "practical value to
The utterly silly thing about making such an argument is that Chinese censorship and oppression is based entirely on the government's efforts to insure their own "permanence" by what they believe is the surest method available.
So even by the Eastern values you seem to think are paramount here, they are still in the wrong.
But it misses the mark to criticize China's government for encouraging freedoms in ways that look to us like repression; things need to be seen in context to be understood, and it's all too common here in the West for people to offer opinions on Chinese freedoms incompletely informed by the context of Chinese culture.
Any way you look at it, making over 2800 completely peaceful and harmless Falun Gong members die in prison (so far) is oppression, cultural context be damned.
I'm not Falun Gong, or even Buddhist... I have no dog in this hunt, save for a fact that my religious beliefs and personal philosophy do not completely align with the society I'm living in, and I thank GOD that I'm not living in a country, like China, where that sort of non-conformity could get me killed by a government of tyrants.
Except most things that have to do with morality are not relative at all. There are several points that pretty much everybody can agree with:
1. Killing people is usually a very bad thing to do.
2. Stealing, also not good.
3. Deception, also on the list.
etc.
Where people differ is the opinion of when an exception is acceptible or even needed.
Some people might think it's perfectly okay to kill an unborn child in the final trimester, but it's not okay to execute a convicted serial killer. Others might feel just the opposite way, that capital punishment is fine and dandy, but late-term abortion is not.
Both groups, however, believe that killing other people is a moral violation. They only differ on their opinions of when such a violation is justified.
In many respects, citizens of China are freer than citizens of, say, the U.K. or the U.S., especially--and I can tell you this from personal experience--if you're starting a small business or trying to do your taxes.
Yes, but if you are going to practice an unpopular religion, you're far better off doing so in a Western Country. It's been about 13 years since the US last committed wholesale slaughter of a minority cult, and there's still some debate about who is ultimately responsible for the destruction.
Meanwhile, China has managed to mulch through almost 3000 members (and counting) of one of their minority cults over the past seven years (and ongoing).
Apart from Germany not putting up with scientologists, and a couple of gun-toting cults being intruded upon on in the US, Western nations are extremely committed to religious freedom and tollerence. The biggest debates on the issue usually have to do with resolving conflicting religious intrests (one student's right to gather some friends to pray on campus vs. another student's right not to have to deal with organized relion intruding on their institution of learning), and not on whether people have the right to believe as they wish.
And as for modding down: my Reason Modifier is set at +3 for trolls and flamebait. I would hate to miss some fo the funniest posts.
Damn, that's a good idea.
Excuse me while I go do the same.
There's a difference between somebody sacrificing themselves for a perceived greater good (whatever greater good it was that your father's first wife thought she was striving for) and filling your car with exhaust because you're depressed over not getting in to the school you wanted to attend.
Japan has a major suicide problem on their hands right now, and even those few old-fashioned Shintoists who still think killing yourself is kinda cool are starting to see that.
A Chinese scholar could paraphrase Confucius to assert that there exists no fundamental reason to promote, say, monogamy. And good luck convincing him otherwise, at least with an argument derived from Western principles.
As a Westerner, I would agree with him.
But the thing about this East vs. West argument you keep going back to is that it implies that neither system of thought has anything to learn from the other.
Free Speech is a value worth holding up and defending, whether you've been exposed to post-enlightenment French thinkers or not. Explaining this your hypothetical Chinese scholar is as simple as sitting him down and reading Voltaire to him. The "rightness" of allowing the free exchange of ideas might not become immediately obvious to somebody who derives their concept of morality from different axioms, but the practical value to both society and the individual of such a position should become immediately clear, if he is at all capable of reason.