Being on slashdot I should not be surprised. But it seems to me that many comment (and of course the article) are missing the point.
It is not only about teaching some IT skills to un educated children.
If OLPC succeeds (and even if I'm not optimistic, I certainly hope it will), those children will have access to renewable information, school manuals (which are very hard to get to them now, exepensive, seldomly up to date, and fragile) and a communication mean.
The implications are quite revolutionary, and even threatening for many governements.
OLPC is not about teaching programming, it is about setting up an information infrastructure.
The potential of progress if this succeeds is so enormous that I think it may be the greatest threat for the project.
I think that China will simply wait a few decades and recover Taiwan without a full scale invasion (after all Taiwan is mostly worth its infrastructure that would probably be destroyed in case of an invasion).
But even if PRC invaded Taiwan, I bet that the whole world would just stare. We would be doing some protest at the UN, setting up some export restriction, and have some symbolic fleet patrol Pacific ocean to show that... we care. Then we would slowly come back to the usual level of relationships. Then Taiwan would become something like HongKong and slowly be assimilated.
China economy has become too big for occidental economies for us to risk a war against them, and the reverse is also true.
Whatever happens, I don't believe that Taiwan will forever stay separated from the continent, and more likely both systems will slowly converge enougth to merge. After all both share the revendication to be The China.
Anyway protection of Taiwan is a very specific thing that I can't see any big country entering a "world scale war" for. Taiwanese are mostly on their own, it's Real Politic. Expecting anything else is just sweet dreaming.
I think you're missing a point. All nuclear weapons are not equal, all targets are not equal.
Countries with decade of experience with those devices can build very efficient warheads, most of the other don't. Most "proliferating" nuclear countries are building A bombs whose effect are far more limited and for which precision against hardened targets would matter.
But, against immobile, well known targets, they would probably use precalculated trajectories, corrected through inertial systems, that may provide good enough positionning without any satellite help.
Anyway GPS positionning is becomming commodity, like roads and railways. Those also facilitate potential invading forces or terrorists work, but nobody would argue to have them disabled.
I think it is called "progress" but I may jus be a dreamer.
I'm very surprised by the military orientation of the answers.
GPS, if invented for military use, has seen its civilian use become so important that it probably surpass any war usage.
I can understand that being in war US guys would think to army first, but I expected Slashdot people to much more see the scientific and technological opportunities openned by an increase in precision and features of a positionning system.
By the way, the odds of the USA beeing in war with Russia, India or China are really low. Those countries are much likely to be engaged in limited conflicts with smaller neighbours, than in a large scale confrontation that nobody desire. And even if such an unlikely event happened, none of those country can match US power and particulary ICBM capacity, with or without Gallileo (even if some guys on/. seem to have an obsession about the PLA beeing the world most powerfull army).
Most likely US pressures regarding Galileo have been more oriented against smaller countries that would use the system and are more likely targets.
Slashdot Mirror
Being on slashdot I should not be surprised.
But it seems to me that many comment (and of course the article) are missing the point.
It is not only about teaching some IT skills to un educated children.
If OLPC succeeds (and even if I'm not optimistic, I certainly hope it will), those children will have access to renewable information, school manuals (which are very hard to get to them now, exepensive, seldomly up to date, and fragile) and a communication mean.
The implications are quite revolutionary, and even threatening for many governements.
OLPC is not about teaching programming, it is about setting up an information infrastructure.
The potential of progress if this succeeds is so enormous that I think it may be the greatest threat for the project.
I strongly disagree.
... we care. Then we would slowly come back to the usual level of relationships. Then Taiwan would become something like HongKong and slowly be assimilated.
I think that China will simply wait a few decades and recover Taiwan without a full scale invasion (after all Taiwan is mostly worth its infrastructure that would probably be destroyed in case of an invasion).
But even if PRC invaded Taiwan, I bet that the whole world would just stare. We would be doing some protest at the UN, setting up some export restriction, and have some symbolic fleet patrol Pacific ocean to show that
China economy has become too big for occidental economies for us to risk a war against them, and the reverse is also true.
Whatever happens, I don't believe that Taiwan will forever stay separated from the continent, and more likely both systems will slowly converge enougth to merge. After all both share the revendication to be The China.
Anyway protection of Taiwan is a very specific thing that I can't see any big country entering a "world scale war" for. Taiwanese are mostly on their own, it's Real Politic. Expecting anything else is just sweet dreaming.
I think you're missing a point.
All nuclear weapons are not equal, all targets are not equal.
Countries with decade of experience with those devices can build very efficient warheads, most of the other don't.
Most "proliferating" nuclear countries are building A bombs whose effect are far more limited and for which precision against hardened targets would matter.
But, against immobile, well known targets, they would probably use precalculated trajectories, corrected through inertial systems, that may provide good enough positionning without any satellite help.
Anyway GPS positionning is becomming commodity, like roads and railways.
Those also facilitate potential invading forces or terrorists work, but nobody would argue to have them disabled.
I think it is called "progress" but I may jus be a dreamer.
In international law, "shooting" a satellite is an act of war, like sinking a boat or invading a country.
I'm sure US would consider twice before doing anything like that.
Sadly we are moving quickly to a militarisation of space, and those questions will probably become more common in the next years.
I'm very surprised by the military orientation of the answers.
/. seem to have an obsession about the PLA beeing the world most powerfull army).
GPS, if invented for military use, has seen its civilian use become so important that it probably surpass any war usage.
I can understand that being in war US guys would think to army first, but I expected Slashdot people to much more see the scientific and technological opportunities openned by an increase in precision and features of a positionning system.
By the way, the odds of the USA beeing in war with Russia, India or China are really low.
Those countries are much likely to be engaged in limited conflicts with smaller neighbours, than in a large scale confrontation that nobody desire.
And even if such an unlikely event happened, none of those country can match US power and particulary ICBM capacity, with or without Gallileo (even if some guys on
Most likely US pressures regarding Galileo have been more oriented against smaller countries that would use the system and are more likely targets.