I don't want to sound insulting, but your points are great for a sci-fi story...
Look up "Simulated Annealing" and "Genetic Algorithms" if you wish. I think that's what you're trying to describe, although I don't pretend I'm a computer scientist nor that I understand those things completely.
And if you can run them awful quicker than nature, then they are all awful approximations...
Think about it, suppose we have a program that is almost on par with human intelligence. Obviously ONE such program is going to need some rather nifty hardware to run. Now imagine having a genetic algorithm that runs THOUSANDS of these programs... and running them for many generations.... I can imagine that would take some non-trivial time, super computer or not.
A practical note. "No funding" means the AI researchers get paid to do something else. And according to the horror stories of being an academic, there are pressures to perform teaching duties, pressure to get some "stuff" published, etc. Which means there would be little time left to work on this "grand AI scheme"/singularity/whatever thing.
Time is probably not the main bottleneck, it's the mental fatigue that holds things up. I don't know about you but after a days of stressful work I'd rather be at home relaxing with family/friends than to jump onto another mentally demanding project -- without pay!
> And there are many paths that lead to such a situation
For example? Darwinist evolving programs? Well that could theoretically work, but given that our brains had billions of years where we'd expect some results within decades... I don't think the odds are good for this one. Any other "paths" that you could think of?
I offer another similar but non-equivalent explanation.
Sometimes people are unconsciously affected by their environment, and what they are supposed to do. As in, if you work at a company, you somehow adopt some of its corporate culture, and adopt a mindset aligned with the company. When you're tasked to do something, and you accept the task, you subconsciously convince yourself that what you're doing is right. I'm no psychologist, but this is what I observe from my own experiences and from other people's actions.
That, and when people are strongly opposed to what you are doing, it's natural to develop a rigid stance to disregard all doubts and criticisms.
It's not exactly a good thing, but such is human nature. Sometimes its even sad... many unnecessary conflicts could have been avoided if not for this peculiarity of human nature.
not caring about what foreign governments do typically earns an "ignorant American" remark, whereas trying to change other countries gets "nosy American." Ironically there is a class of people who I'd label as "ignorant but nosy American". It's the kind of people who has little grasp of the actual situation yet has a strong opinion.
In fact I personally would welcome any "informed, genuinely helpful, nosy" foreigner to give constructive comments on how to improve things. It's just that the sheer number of "ignorant but nosy Americans" drowns out the actual helpful voices.
The catch is that, once you're really informed about the full extent of the complexity of the problems in China, you'll probably see that there are an extremely difficult to solve problems, and the initial spout of ideological zeal would probably be drowned by the plethora of practical problems.:(
What would you think if I were to advocate your fellow countrymen to kill your president/king/head-of-state, just for some "values" that outsiders would like to see implemented in your country? What would you think if I were to advocate to your fellow countrymen to kill each other for some "human values"?
If "kill" seems a bit too strong, keep in mind that revolutions in China had always been brutal. We're not Thailand, where coups could be staged without much bloodshed.
One more note, "advocating" either has a real effect or it does not. If it has a real effect (i.e. it actually incites a number of people to organize a "revolution"), then the mere fact that "the West" advocates anything can be considered "doing something". If it does not have a real effect, it's simply moral "I am holier than thou" masturbation, which then, sadly, I must have wasted all my time writing up my replies. On slashdot the latter is more probable since GFW of China is said to have blocked slashdot, but if you were to "advocate" to a group of (mainland) Chinese people, the former is not unlikely.
But perhaps I should point out that you're basically mixing two intentions as one. One is a "unselfish" intention of furthering "basic human values". I have no qualms with that as long as people are making informed and reasonable choices. The other is a "selfish" intention that the bad things in China will spread to other parts of the world. I have no qualms with that too, since as Chinese we are actually rather concerned that "bad things in the USA" will spread. (I don't mean "democratic values" or those kinds of things that the USA claims to uphold, but "imperialism" for example)
The problem I have is that (as far as I can see, I might be misinformed) people seems to put the two intentions into a single basket. For example you first mention the "unselfish" cause of "every responsible conscientious human being is responsible for ensuring the spread of the basic values that the Chinese government refuses to allow its citizenry", then at the end say "you can bet your bottom dollar the Chinese government would love nothing more than expansion, which we're not going to allow.", which seems to me more like the "selfish" reason.
I understand that people do things for both selfish and unselfish reasons, but sometimes I wonder whether people who say they're concerned about human rights (etc.) in China are as selfless as they think they are. Really, I have no problem with people claiming "China is a competitor to us and we're not allowing our competitor to get out of control", that's fine. It's the hypocrisy that makes me sick. (For example) The USA govt officially claims that they invaded Iraq to rid Saddam because he was a bad guy and all that, but we all know there are darker intentions behind the invasion. And yet even today (or maybe not so long ago?) some Americans still think that they invaded Iraq to remove the "bad guy Saddam".
Of course I'm making a rather extreme analogy since war between China and USA is probably a bit remote. But what I'm trying to saying is that before you embark on any actions to "help China improve its human rights", think whether your act is really as selfless as you thought it was, and more importantly, think whether you are similarly misguided as those simpleminded who thought the Iraq invasion was to "remove the bad guy Saddam".
Let me put it in even clearer terms. The USA government has a vested interest in keeping China's power in check. Most would obviously agree that at least the current US administration doesn't really care about human rights, even within their country. So when your government spreads the idea that "the Chinese government is a horrible, human rights abusing regime" (not that they have to say it, they never directly said that Saddam was responsible for 911 either, AFAIK, but they gave that impression) is there a possibility that they were appealing to the selfless, idealistic you, and that you were unknowingly participating in a economic/political tug of war in which you're actually a pawn?
I understand that this is a pretty serious accusation, but I'm not saying it's an absolute fact. I'm just trying to give you another perspective. And I'm saying that this is in the back of my mind, and in the back of the minds of many Chinese people when they look at you suspiciously when you claim you're trying to "help them". And if you wonder why, this is why.
Yeah it's pretty sad. But then I think it's a Darwinist thing since if you don't "learn" to "accept" the state of affairs you're going to get into deep trouble.
I put "learn" and "accept" in quotes because for what I know people are still concerned. I'll give you a bad analogy. If you have a chronic pain, you usually don't scream and yell for all your waking hours. That doesn't mean you don't feel it, and that doesn't mean you won't try to find a physician to relieve the problem.
This actually presents a philosophical/moral problem which had been troubling me for a while.
I agree that to some extent, we should care about ideologies. However, different people have different ideologies. What is the moral basis for proponents of one ideology to impose their views on people who think differently? By "impose" I don't necessarily mean anything brutal -- it could be some one sided propaganda, for example.
Most people use a tautological argument, on the lines of "My ideology says it is correct. I adhere to my ideology and therefore I am correct, and therefore I am justified in my efforts in convincing everybody in the world (through whatever means) that my ideology is correct." I don't buy that argument.
Of course the "means" in furthering your ideology matters, but we don't really agree on what is "acceptable". Obviously some people in the world apparently believe that war is necessary to protect/spread their ideology (both radical Muslims and a few people in the US White House, at least), some people are OK at economic sanctions (which although considered civil, *could* impose difficulties for less fortunate people if their livelihood is affected), some put forward one-sided arguments to hopefully convince others without them thinking too much about "the other side of the story" (I ascribe these attempts as "deceit", though it might be a too strong accusation for some), and some engage in sensible and reasonable discussion (this hopefully includes you and me).
To sum up, I'm not trying to refuting your views, simply that I wish to point out that while being consistent with your ideology is good, there could be something to think about before you go around telling people what you believe is correct. Not that I think you're wrong in doing so, just there is more food for thought than is apparent on the table.
Actually I always had these kinds of doubts about myself too.
But I can't really make out the main point of your reply.
A part of me wants to point out that your reply seems to be directed to those who are criticizing the Chinese and yet supporting their actions by buying their stuff. Well, right, but that has nothing to do with me. (and therefore you can ignore the rest of this comment)
A part of me wants to say that you're missing my point. Of course war is out of the question, but it's not only about "war" when I mentioned "sticking noses" into somebody else's business. If you're concerned with human rights in China, you're either doing this because you're a sympathetic person and concerned about the well-being of other "less fortunate" people, or you're not. My point was that if you're in the former class, then many Chinese people would like you to stay hands off.
And if you're in the latter class, then I'd like to know why you're so concerned about what's happening in China.
I mean, I see the problem with Falungung, but monsters in horror stories as a basis for rebellions?! I guess your comment has more mysticism than those fictitious monsters and probably has a better chance in "uniting rebellions";-p
Re:Mao was horrifying, do they ban him ? I guess s
on
China Bans Horror Movies
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· Score: 2, Informative
I'm not saying that censorship is right.
But a lot of mentions of the Tiananmen Square are not to inform, but to incite. I know this is hard to understand for you westerners, but if you were to remove prominent political figures from office, you might as well kill them as well. Inciting people to doubt the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not really too far away from inciting people to revolt, or at least perform a bloody coup. Unless you're Chinese you probably have no idea why this is the case, but it just is.
The reason why I'm going through the trouble of explaining this to you is that most people don't realize that trying to "educate" the Chinese people on Tiananmen Square actually hurts everybody. The Chinese authorities will get even more paranoid on the issue since those who have a vested interest in seeing the fall of the CCP usually use Tiananmen Square as a battle standard, and it's actually partially the western media's fault that the issue has become so politically sensitive that nobody in China with a right mind would mention it.
> Learning about China is all well and good, but none of that gives an excuse for select group of elites with no > legitimacy to impose total arbitrary will over others. That's the hallmark of a totalitarian regime, and that's > always wrong.
If you learnt a bit more about China, you'd know that the guys at the top are nowhere close to imposing total arbitrary will over others. There are numerous social problems that the guys at the top wish to fix, if only to reduce civil unrest, to prevent "peasant uprisings", and ultimately to secure their own jobs as China's leaders. And they're nowhere near fixing those problems, such as corruption, abuses of power by local authorities, etc, and let me tell you that unless your proposal is to divide the country into smaller, easier-to-administrate regions, democracy and all those human rights silver-bullsht doesn't work. (and if you knew a little bit about the history and culture of China you understand why that wouldn't work either)
If you're going to spend time criticizing the Chinese government, at least learn a bit more about China before proposing "solutions" to the wrong problems. And by "learn" I mean exposing yourself to all perspectives, not only what "the Falungung people says"....
Nitpick first: Hong Kong isn't a "democratic" bastion, otherwise why all the fuss about when we'll actually have universal suffrage? It is, however, supposedly a bastion for "related democratic goodies" such as free speech, right to fair trial, etc.
Well obviously I do agree that the recent events raised doubts about whether we're still that bastion, but in these few days we've seen the "recovery" process kick into place. While the HK police seems to be still thick faced and not admitting to any wrongdoings, it seems that negative press has pressured the government (at least the Department of Justice) to at least free the guy who was deemed most "innocent". I think this is actually a good sign, and it shows that the whole system works (well, sorta:-/). If you do read Chinese then this (the last paragraph) is what I mean.
As a small disclaimer I do live in HK and I was recently actively involved in some recent "anti-police" activities. So, um, I might be biased.
[ Disclaimer, I am Chinese, and I live in China. Specifically I live in Hong Kong, which may or may not be "China" in your definition. ]
I have always been perplexed by Westerners' belief that they are somehow responsible for human rights and democracy in China. I have been more perplexed at how they believe sticking their noses into another country's matters will make things better.
I don't live in Mainland China (which is the part under direct control of the CCP), so I don't claim to have authentic first hand facts. However, my proximity with mainland China is probably good enough for me to tell you what I believe is a fact: Most people in China would like to have more civil/political rights, ARE aware of abuses by their government, but nevertheless loathe any foreign attempts to meddle with the problems. Basically it's "fsck off, we'll fix the problems ourselves".
If you're asking why China has been so resistant to external pressures to human rights reforms... this is the reason. Basically nobody in China wants "Western democratic countries" to dictate their path. I'd add that the recent Iraq disaster is deemed to be a telling story of what it could be like to be "liberated" from a dictatorship.
If you think I'm misguided, and have good reasons for that, please let me know.
I would think that the sheer number of users in slashdot, and the density of tech savvy people here, would be the best breeding ground for a root server revolution.
> ideological opponent Right. Somehow I find it interesting that most people coming from the USA has a predisposition that anybody who doesn't agree with their ideology is automatically an enemy. What happened to diversity? Let me tell you that most Chinese wouldn't automatically label as an "enemy" people who doesn't agree with them.
> largest economic rival Confusing economic rivalry with military rivalry is why the USA sticks its nose in the Middle East and kills people for oil.
> Why not rip off the other guys? The KDE and GNOME guys have been doing this for years
> Rather than chase Windows, chase freakin' OS X. UI-wise, GNOME is arguably closer to OS X than to Windows, while KDE is closer to Windows than to OS X. Just look at the file manager and the file chooser.
> If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix, why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux? Hardware support, and installation issues. How many people are complaining in this very story about how they tried installing Linux and failed due to problems with hardware? While Apple only has to deal with a handful of hardware configurations, a successful Linux distribution has to deal with THOUSANDS of possible hardware configurations. Sometimes it's a miracle that they got everything right.
> IMHO there are only a few major projects that have actually *improved* on their commercial counterparts and made a *better* product. I could give counter examples. But there's really a Darwinist explanation to this phenomenon: if there's a Free (as both in speech and beer) alternative that clearly beats all commercial offerings, then there'd be no reason for anybody to buy the commercial products, and they would simply go out of business, or at least regulated to a small niche that nobody's aware of.
> For Linux On The Desktop to actually work, it needs to stop trying to be the "free alternative to Windows or Mac" and actually be a *better* alternative It depends on who you ask. For me, Linux has gotten to a point where it does everything I need better than in Windows. Note that I'm not those Linux zealots, and even around 2 years ago I'd be telling everybody that "Windows is better, unless you're a hardcore developer". But these days my stance is "If you don't have a strong dependency on any Windows specific apps, and if you're not a heavy MS Office user, you'd really want to switch".
I agree that many apps on Linux needs some improvement, particularly graphics tools, but comparing the a typical Linux distribution and "MS Windows", I'd say Linux simply wins hands down: The Linux kernel has more drivers than Windows, Nautilus beats Explorer by a huge margin, Firefox is better than IE, etc. Not to mention the vastly better command line tools in Linux, and sometimes when I'm forced to use Windows I feel as if I've been stripped off my cybernetic suit and laser gun and forced to use sticks and stones.
The most basic definition of "i" is i^2 = -1. Which means that "i" can either be "sqrt(-1)" or "-sqrt(-1)". Practically if we all agree on one of those, there won't be any problems. But if say one published paper takes "sqrt(-1)" as the imaginary unit while another takes "-sqrt(-1)" as the imaginary unit (this is as valid as the former). The results of the two papers will obviously disagree with each other since "sqrt(-1)" != "-sqrt(-1)". It's an easy fix to convert all "-sqrt(-1)" to "sqrt(-1)", but since everybody has agreed on using "i" (or "j") to denote the imaginary unit, there's no good reason to deviate from that notation and make things unnecessarily complicated.
On an unrelated note, there has been quite a turbulence here in Hong Kong which basically shattered my last hopes in a fair and just legal system. It seems that the only conclusion here is that $ is king too.
I don't know how things are in the US of A, but what the police has done here is arresting unrelated people (the guy arrested was OBVIOUSLY just a random internet guy, and OBVIOUSLY he wasn't the main perpetrator, nor even distantly related in any way. And everybody with half a brain knew that. And they still arrested him. Granted the charges (porno related charges basically) are technically within the letter of the law but the measures were drastic. No bail, awaiting trial 8 weeks. In fact actual prison time even if the charges were proved might have been less... And all that because there's a lot of $ at stake in the photos... we're still a pretty conservative place when it comes to bedroom matters, and those celebrities "lose" so much face emotionally and socially that it's quite hard to wash off all the negative press. It's not like we can have celebrities like Paris Hilton selling their sex videos....
OK this is way off topic. It's just outrageous and I'm just venting the fumes here... sorry...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to sound insulting, but your points are great for a sci-fi story...
Look up "Simulated Annealing" and "Genetic Algorithms" if you wish. I think that's what you're trying to describe, although I don't pretend I'm a computer scientist nor that I understand those things completely.
And if you can run them awful quicker than nature, then they are all awful approximations...
Think about it, suppose we have a program that is almost on par with human intelligence. Obviously ONE such program is going to need some rather nifty hardware to run. Now imagine having a genetic algorithm that runs THOUSANDS of these programs... and running them for many generations.... I can imagine that would take some non-trivial time, super computer or not.
A practical note. "No funding" means the AI researchers get paid to do something else. And according to the horror stories of being an academic, there are pressures to perform teaching duties, pressure to get some "stuff" published, etc. Which means there would be little time left to work on this "grand AI scheme"/singularity/whatever thing.
Time is probably not the main bottleneck, it's the mental fatigue that holds things up. I don't know about you but after a days of stressful work I'd rather be at home relaxing with family/friends than to jump onto another mentally demanding project -- without pay!
> And there are many paths that lead to such a situation
For example? Darwinist evolving programs? Well that could theoretically work, but given that our brains had billions of years where we'd expect some results within decades... I don't think the odds are good for this one. Any other "paths" that you could think of?
I offer another similar but non-equivalent explanation.
Sometimes people are unconsciously affected by their environment, and what they are supposed to do. As in, if you work at a company, you somehow adopt some of its corporate culture, and adopt a mindset aligned with the company. When you're tasked to do something, and you accept the task, you subconsciously convince yourself that what you're doing is right. I'm no psychologist, but this is what I observe from my own experiences and from other people's actions.
That, and when people are strongly opposed to what you are doing, it's natural to develop a rigid stance to disregard all doubts and criticisms.
It's not exactly a good thing, but such is human nature. Sometimes its even sad... many unnecessary conflicts could have been avoided if not for this peculiarity of human nature.
In fact I personally would welcome any "informed, genuinely helpful, nosy" foreigner to give constructive comments on how to improve things. It's just that the sheer number of "ignorant but nosy Americans" drowns out the actual helpful voices.
The catch is that, once you're really informed about the full extent of the complexity of the problems in China, you'll probably see that there are an extremely difficult to solve problems, and the initial spout of ideological zeal would probably be drowned by the plethora of practical problems.
What would you think if I were to advocate your fellow countrymen to kill your president/king/head-of-state, just for some "values" that outsiders would like to see implemented in your country? What would you think if I were to advocate to your fellow countrymen to kill each other for some "human values"?
If "kill" seems a bit too strong, keep in mind that revolutions in China had always been brutal. We're not Thailand, where coups could be staged without much bloodshed.
One more note, "advocating" either has a real effect or it does not. If it has a real effect (i.e. it actually incites a number of people to organize a "revolution"), then the mere fact that "the West" advocates anything can be considered "doing something". If it does not have a real effect, it's simply moral "I am holier than thou" masturbation, which then, sadly, I must have wasted all my time writing up my replies. On slashdot the latter is more probable since GFW of China is said to have blocked slashdot, but if you were to "advocate" to a group of (mainland) Chinese people, the former is not unlikely.
I understand your view.
But perhaps I should point out that you're basically mixing two intentions as one. One is a "unselfish" intention of furthering "basic human values". I have no qualms with that as long as people are making informed and reasonable choices. The other is a "selfish" intention that the bad things in China will spread to other parts of the world. I have no qualms with that too, since as Chinese we are actually rather concerned that "bad things in the USA" will spread. (I don't mean "democratic values" or those kinds of things that the USA claims to uphold, but "imperialism" for example)
The problem I have is that (as far as I can see, I might be misinformed) people seems to put the two intentions into a single basket. For example you first mention the "unselfish" cause of "every responsible conscientious human being is responsible for ensuring the spread of the basic values that the Chinese government refuses to allow its citizenry", then at the end say "you can bet your bottom dollar the Chinese government would love nothing more than expansion, which we're not going to allow.", which seems to me more like the "selfish" reason.
I understand that people do things for both selfish and unselfish reasons, but sometimes I wonder whether people who say they're concerned about human rights (etc.) in China are as selfless as they think they are. Really, I have no problem with people claiming "China is a competitor to us and we're not allowing our competitor to get out of control", that's fine. It's the hypocrisy that makes me sick. (For example) The USA govt officially claims that they invaded Iraq to rid Saddam because he was a bad guy and all that, but we all know there are darker intentions behind the invasion. And yet even today (or maybe not so long ago?) some Americans still think that they invaded Iraq to remove the "bad guy Saddam".
Of course I'm making a rather extreme analogy since war between China and USA is probably a bit remote. But what I'm trying to saying is that before you embark on any actions to "help China improve its human rights", think whether your act is really as selfless as you thought it was, and more importantly, think whether you are similarly misguided as those simpleminded who thought the Iraq invasion was to "remove the bad guy Saddam".
Let me put it in even clearer terms. The USA government has a vested interest in keeping China's power in check. Most would obviously agree that at least the current US administration doesn't really care about human rights, even within their country. So when your government spreads the idea that "the Chinese government is a horrible, human rights abusing regime" (not that they have to say it, they never directly said that Saddam was responsible for 911 either, AFAIK, but they gave that impression) is there a possibility that they were appealing to the selfless, idealistic you, and that you were unknowingly participating in a economic/political tug of war in which you're actually a pawn?
I understand that this is a pretty serious accusation, but I'm not saying it's an absolute fact. I'm just trying to give you another perspective. And I'm saying that this is in the back of my mind, and in the back of the minds of many Chinese people when they look at you suspiciously when you claim you're trying to "help them". And if you wonder why, this is why.
Yeah it's pretty sad. But then I think it's a Darwinist thing since if you don't "learn" to "accept" the state of affairs you're going to get into deep trouble.
I put "learn" and "accept" in quotes because for what I know people are still concerned. I'll give you a bad analogy. If you have a chronic pain, you usually don't scream and yell for all your waking hours. That doesn't mean you don't feel it, and that doesn't mean you won't try to find a physician to relieve the problem.
This actually presents a philosophical/moral problem which had been troubling me for a while.
I agree that to some extent, we should care about ideologies. However, different people have different ideologies. What is the moral basis for proponents of one ideology to impose their views on people who think differently? By "impose" I don't necessarily mean anything brutal -- it could be some one sided propaganda, for example.
Most people use a tautological argument, on the lines of "My ideology says it is correct. I adhere to my ideology and therefore I am correct, and therefore I am justified in my efforts in convincing everybody in the world (through whatever means) that my ideology is correct." I don't buy that argument.
Of course the "means" in furthering your ideology matters, but we don't really agree on what is "acceptable". Obviously some people in the world apparently believe that war is necessary to protect/spread their ideology (both radical Muslims and a few people in the US White House, at least), some people are OK at economic sanctions (which although considered civil, *could* impose difficulties for less fortunate people if their livelihood is affected), some put forward one-sided arguments to hopefully convince others without them thinking too much about "the other side of the story" (I ascribe these attempts as "deceit", though it might be a too strong accusation for some), and some engage in sensible and reasonable discussion (this hopefully includes you and me).
To sum up, I'm not trying to refuting your views, simply that I wish to point out that while being consistent with your ideology is good, there could be something to think about before you go around telling people what you believe is correct. Not that I think you're wrong in doing so, just there is more food for thought than is apparent on the table.
Actually I always had these kinds of doubts about myself too.
I agree with consistency.
But I can't really make out the main point of your reply.
A part of me wants to point out that your reply seems to be directed to those who are criticizing the Chinese and yet supporting their actions by buying their stuff. Well, right, but that has nothing to do with me. (and therefore you can ignore the rest of this comment)
A part of me wants to say that you're missing my point. Of course war is out of the question, but it's not only about "war" when I mentioned "sticking noses" into somebody else's business. If you're concerned with human rights in China, you're either doing this because you're a sympathetic person and concerned about the well-being of other "less fortunate" people, or you're not. My point was that if you're in the former class, then many Chinese people would like you to stay hands off.
And if you're in the latter class, then I'd like to know why you're so concerned about what's happening in China.
"Benevolent" monsters they are.
Are you serious?
;-p
I mean, I see the problem with Falungung, but monsters in horror stories as a basis for rebellions?! I guess your comment has more mysticism than those fictitious monsters and probably has a better chance in "uniting rebellions"
I'm not saying that censorship is right.
But a lot of mentions of the Tiananmen Square are not to inform, but to incite. I know this is hard to understand for you westerners, but if you were to remove prominent political figures from office, you might as well kill them as well. Inciting people to doubt the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not really too far away from inciting people to revolt, or at least perform a bloody coup. Unless you're Chinese you probably have no idea why this is the case, but it just is.
The reason why I'm going through the trouble of explaining this to you is that most people don't realize that trying to "educate" the Chinese people on Tiananmen Square actually hurts everybody. The Chinese authorities will get even more paranoid on the issue since those who have a vested interest in seeing the fall of the CCP usually use Tiananmen Square as a battle standard, and it's actually partially the western media's fault that the issue has become so politically sensitive that nobody in China with a right mind would mention it.
> Learning about China is all well and good, but none of that gives an excuse for select group of elites with no
> legitimacy to impose total arbitrary will over others. That's the hallmark of a totalitarian regime, and that's
> always wrong.
If you learnt a bit more about China, you'd know that the guys at the top are nowhere close to imposing total arbitrary will over others. There are numerous social problems that the guys at the top wish to fix, if only to reduce civil unrest, to prevent "peasant uprisings", and ultimately to secure their own jobs as China's leaders. And they're nowhere near fixing those problems, such as corruption, abuses of power by local authorities, etc, and let me tell you that unless your proposal is to divide the country into smaller, easier-to-administrate regions, democracy and all those human rights silver-bullsht doesn't work. (and if you knew a little bit about the history and culture of China you understand why that wouldn't work either)
If you're going to spend time criticizing the Chinese government, at least learn a bit more about China before proposing "solutions" to the wrong problems. And by "learn" I mean exposing yourself to all perspectives, not only what "the Falungung people says"....
Hi comrade!
:-/). If you do read Chinese then this (the last paragraph) is what I mean.
Nitpick first: Hong Kong isn't a "democratic" bastion, otherwise why all the fuss about when we'll actually have universal suffrage? It is, however, supposedly a bastion for "related democratic goodies" such as free speech, right to fair trial, etc.
Well obviously I do agree that the recent events raised doubts about whether we're still that bastion, but in these few days we've seen the "recovery" process kick into place. While the HK police seems to be still thick faced and not admitting to any wrongdoings, it seems that negative press has pressured the government (at least the Department of Justice) to at least free the guy who was deemed most "innocent". I think this is actually a good sign, and it shows that the whole system works (well, sorta
As a small disclaimer I do live in HK and I was recently actively involved in some recent "anti-police" activities. So, um, I might be biased.
[ Disclaimer, I am Chinese, and I live in China. Specifically I live in Hong Kong, which may or may not be "China" in your definition. ]
I have always been perplexed by Westerners' belief that they are somehow responsible for human rights and democracy in China. I have been more perplexed at how they believe sticking their noses into another country's matters will make things better.
I don't live in Mainland China (which is the part under direct control of the CCP), so I don't claim to have authentic first hand facts. However, my proximity with mainland China is probably good enough for me to tell you what I believe is a fact: Most people in China would like to have more civil/political rights, ARE aware of abuses by their government, but nevertheless loathe any foreign attempts to meddle with the problems. Basically it's "fsck off, we'll fix the problems ourselves".
If you're asking why China has been so resistant to external pressures to human rights reforms... this is the reason. Basically nobody in China wants "Western democratic countries" to dictate their path. I'd add that the recent Iraq disaster is deemed to be a telling story of what it could be like to be "liberated" from a dictatorship.
If you think I'm misguided, and have good reasons for that, please let me know.
I would think that the sheer number of users in slashdot, and the density of tech savvy people here, would be the best breeding ground for a root server revolution.
And I'll keep trolling.
http://slashdot.org/~sydneyfong/journal/192584
Reminds me of a joke at bash.org. Preemptive action against the "enemy" really.
> ideological opponent
Right. Somehow I find it interesting that most people coming from the USA has a predisposition that anybody who doesn't agree with their ideology is automatically an enemy. What happened to diversity? Let me tell you that most Chinese wouldn't automatically label as an "enemy" people who doesn't agree with them.
> largest economic rival
Confusing economic rivalry with military rivalry is why the USA sticks its nose in the Middle East and kills people for oil.
> Why not rip off the other guys?
The KDE and GNOME guys have been doing this for years
> Rather than chase Windows, chase freakin' OS X.
UI-wise, GNOME is arguably closer to OS X than to Windows, while KDE is closer to Windows than to OS X. Just look at the file manager and the file chooser.
> If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix, why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux?
Hardware support, and installation issues. How many people are complaining in this very story about how they tried installing Linux and failed due to problems with hardware? While Apple only has to deal with a handful of hardware configurations, a successful Linux distribution has to deal with THOUSANDS of possible hardware configurations. Sometimes it's a miracle that they got everything right.
> IMHO there are only a few major projects that have actually *improved* on their commercial counterparts and made a *better* product.
I could give counter examples. But there's really a Darwinist explanation to this phenomenon: if there's a Free (as both in speech and beer) alternative that clearly beats all commercial offerings, then there'd be no reason for anybody to buy the commercial products, and they would simply go out of business, or at least regulated to a small niche that nobody's aware of.
> For Linux On The Desktop to actually work, it needs to stop trying to be the "free alternative to Windows or Mac" and actually be a *better* alternative
It depends on who you ask. For me, Linux has gotten to a point where it does everything I need better than in Windows. Note that I'm not those Linux zealots, and even around 2 years ago I'd be telling everybody that "Windows is better, unless you're a hardcore developer". But these days my stance is "If you don't have a strong dependency on any Windows specific apps, and if you're not a heavy MS Office user, you'd really want to switch".
I agree that many apps on Linux needs some improvement, particularly graphics tools, but comparing the a typical Linux distribution and "MS Windows", I'd say Linux simply wins hands down: The Linux kernel has more drivers than Windows, Nautilus beats Explorer by a huge margin, Firefox is better than IE, etc. Not to mention the vastly better command line tools in Linux, and sometimes when I'm forced to use Windows I feel as if I've been stripped off my cybernetic suit and laser gun and forced to use sticks and stones.
Man..... talk about offtopic.
I never thought I'd see a reference to edc's photos on slashdot... (much less modded interesting)
Unless I'm mistaken, it is unsound.
The most basic definition of "i" is i^2 = -1. Which means that "i" can either be "sqrt(-1)" or "-sqrt(-1)". Practically if we all agree on one of those, there won't be any problems. But if say one published paper takes "sqrt(-1)" as the imaginary unit while another takes "-sqrt(-1)" as the imaginary unit (this is as valid as the former). The results of the two papers will obviously disagree with each other since "sqrt(-1)" != "-sqrt(-1)". It's an easy fix to convert all "-sqrt(-1)" to "sqrt(-1)", but since everybody has agreed on using "i" (or "j") to denote the imaginary unit, there's no good reason to deviate from that notation and make things unnecessarily complicated.
On an unrelated note, there has been quite a turbulence here in Hong Kong which basically shattered my last hopes in a fair and just legal system. It seems that the only conclusion here is that $ is king too.
A (rather unsatisfactory) link here http://batgwa.com/story.php?id=556 . Western media coverage has been scarce AFAIK.
I don't know how things are in the US of A, but what the police has done here is arresting unrelated people (the guy arrested was OBVIOUSLY just a random internet guy, and OBVIOUSLY he wasn't the main perpetrator, nor even distantly related in any way. And everybody with half a brain knew that. And they still arrested him. Granted the charges (porno related charges basically) are technically within the letter of the law but the measures were drastic. No bail, awaiting trial 8 weeks. In fact actual prison time even if the charges were proved might have been less... And all that because there's a lot of $ at stake in the photos... we're still a pretty conservative place when it comes to bedroom matters, and those celebrities "lose" so much face emotionally and socially that it's quite hard to wash off all the negative press. It's not like we can have celebrities like Paris Hilton selling their sex videos....
OK this is way off topic. It's just outrageous and I'm just venting the fumes here... sorry...
Well VB.NET is already drastically different from VB6. If you introduced even more incompatible changes you might as well call it.... C#?