Wow... psychology was so much easier to understand when it was called phrenology.

I completely agree that the Japanese have demonstrated themselves as the great borrowers. The Chinese show a similar trend but to a much lesser degree.

I still don't see any evidence presented that this is true in this particular case though. I am sure that suicide is probably a more acceptable answer to losses of honor in China or anywhere in the East than in the West. They have entirely different concepts in regards to how to value life or death than we do.

I think the most succinct statement of this difference is that the Western approach to life is to conquer it by hitting it hard (hunter approach) and the Eastern approach is to endure (farmer approach).

Having said all that, can you provide any data on what sort of factor honor-based suicide is in present-day China or are you extrapolating from other known data?

Hmm... China sounds very different from Japan after all, doesn't it.

Did you have some point you were making or just demonstrating your knowledge?

Well, then we can't really know much about anything about this. This guy may have actually have been murdered the security personnel and it was made to look like a suicide and that most reported suicides are actually covers for murders in China.

This story may all be made up just to tarnish Apple's reputation. What sort of fact checking is it possible to do on stories that come out of China?

One thing that I will point out is that it is interesting that the words we use for ritual suicide after a loss of shame, 'seppuku', is a Japanese word and goes back to a samurai tradition. To my knowledge, there never were Chinese samurai.

This concept of committing suicide after a loss of face continues to remain a Japanese concept in my eyes, not a Chinese one.

The biggest problem that I think you are experiencing is that you seem to have an expectation that mandated requirements in a governmental sphere are completely sane and workable. I am trying to see how I can phrase this without just making a sweeping generalization about the inefficiency and beauracracy that is attached to things run by the state. In general, I would say that the primary reason for this is that, in the public sphere, it is easier to attempt to solve a problem (real or imagined) by taking another thing on top of the pile rather sorting through issues and finding the actual root cause and resolving that.

So, having said that, don't expect all policies to make sense while working for DoD. If you are fine with that, just do what you are told as best you can with plenty of CYOA. If you are not fine with it, don't try to fight it. Go work elsewhere.

According to Wikipedia, Japan had a 34.8 male suicides per 100,000 people in 1999 with 13.2 for females. China had 13.0 with slightly more female suicides (14.8).

To me, those numbers back up the statement regarding loss of face and seppuku as being much more of a predominant factor in Japanese culture.

Having said that, certain countries double Japan's suicide rate in males. The top three are Lithuania (68.1), Belarus (63.3) and Russia (58.1). I suspect suicides there are not honor related.

Sure... you could say the same about any country though. Chinese history is the longest recorded record on Earth.

However, China was split apart at one point by Western powers and they tend to take such things in stride.

Japan became isolationist and only allowed Europeans on their land fairly recently.

Thier culture may have similar roots but recent application and emphasis has been very different.

I always equated that more with Japanese culture than Chinese.

Many states have laws that allow police or other such officials to drop off someone showing signs of insanity to a psychiatric facility. In California, this is referred to as a 5150 after the section of the penal code containing it. They can make the assertation that this needs to be done off of second hand reports, not first hand observation. Once the person is committed, he can be deemed to not be sane enough himself to make decisions regarding his own need for treatment and be subjected to electric shock therapy, psychotropic drugs, etc. I have heard of family members getting people committed using these methods. Of course, it is illegal to give false reports to spur a 5150 but who trusts a nut to report things accurately and who trusts a medical facility to not take a patient that will be paid for from state funds.

This is much more of an issue in other countries which it can be used as a way for the state to make dissidents disappear, such as Cold War Russia.

However, I can't look at the Homeland Security Act and shudder at how similar of an abuse that was for a state directed and controlled method for suspending someone's civil liberties with an accusation.

I am actually surprised that something like this came out of China. Perhaps their populace is starting to question and speak out about their level of freedom.

Quoted from The Declaration of Independance:

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

I am not sure what viewpoint you are responding to.

I definitely wasn't talking about facism overthrowing a government.

I also don't think facism was the result of the events inspired by this declaration.

against an irate populace is something that is one of the main pillars of our constitution.

The Declaration of Independance and the Right to Bear Arms were both very much about this. Basically, the Bill of Rights as a whole was meant to shore up the rights of the populace to defend itself against an abusive government.

It is very interesting to see that the Internet has changed the battlefield enough to level it in certain areas. Really since the mechanization of warfare, no populace could really effectively stand up to the military might of a state.

At one point does punishment by confinement become anything but a bad idea that is just going to make people even less anti-social?

I've heard great things about the use of jail as a form of rehabilitation... insane asylums, too.

These seems to stem from the same train of thought.

I think we can both agree that Tom Allensworth was a fool.

I sent an email to my tech with a link to the story. What he had was no where near a backup solution, only fail-over at best.

I do agree with your general guildlines, especially the often not thought of need for two copies of the data ready for more immediate recover. What do you do when your own backup procedures invalidate a single copy?

I agree with most everything you say but there are a few factors that you are not addressing, most of them centering around cost and benefit analysis.

1) How much data is there?
2) How critical is it (e.g. what are the costs of replacing the data or in-operation due to lack of data)?
3) Recovery costs - Do offsite backups actually fit into a disaster recovery plan that works for your company? Can you replace your production network and hardware quickly?

The thing I was reacting to are statements like 'a backup is only a good backup if it is on tape' and shipping tapes to an offset is easy and cost effective backup solution.

These are not feasible statements to make if you are responsible for backing up databases that are anything over a few hundred GBs. I don't even know if there are tapes fast enough to backup that up in a single hour.

A good backup solution is tailored to meet the needs of the environment. There are indeed very general guidelines and best practices to follow but you can't treat everything like it is mission-critical finance data for a global bank.