You can just go Yelena your Mizulina, you filthy Vitaly Milonov.

Mass drivers do not propose to shoot a bullet into space - they are conceived as a launch assist mechanism. You still need propellant, just a whole lot less of it.

This is similar to the idea of using catapults to launch civilian aircraft (sorry for treehugger link, original Economist article is down).

Actually the whole idea behind Volkswagen was that it was "der Volkswagen", or "the people's car", i.e. the original beetle. It was the Nazis' plan to provide a car to everyone who saved 5 Reichsmark per week but in the end, only 630 were built before and during WWII and went to either Nazi functionaries or the German armed forces. Also known as the "KdF-Wagen", for "Kraft durch Freude", the Nazi fun-and-games social program.

Hardly a people's car.

Out of curiosity, why aren't mass drivers feasible for this sort of thing? You could build one up a mountainside near the equator - something like Mt. Chimborazo (6200+ meters) and drastically reduce the amount of fuel needed to get anything into space. By making the thing several kilometers long, you'd also massively lower the material strains on any craft (you probably still couldn't send humans up, but you'd have far less limits on how sensitive your cargo could be.)

The slingshot sounds like an extremely limited tool - you'd still need a high degree of complexity for things like guidance systems and engines, because of drag you probably couldn't launch anything right into space without at least a partial boost. A mass driver would only get your cargo up to equivalent speeds once it got to the "muzzle", which would ideally be located at very high altitudes with thin air...

The issue most people have is not with the idea of consolidated mail boxes in principle (although there are legitimate logistical issues - vandalism, distance, weather, and mobility of certain mail recipients for example.)

The outrage stems from the fact that the USPS should be capable of continuing home delivery, but is not able to due to incompetent funding restrictions placed on it by Congress.

It should also be mentioned that most of those issues were caused by factors beyond the control of Carter and his administration (eg. the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis had their roots in the 1956 Iranian coup, stagflation was a global phenomenon which in the US was largely the result of the Nixon shock).

Then there's the whole October Surprise topic; even without going into wingnut conspiracy mode, there's some things in there to make anyone go "hmm".

Arguably, Carter ushered in a lot of improvements - Camp David, the departments of energy and education, a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets despite massive cold war tensions.

And last but not least, I can't see anyone arguing about the fact that the guy has (and had) integrity - which is saying a lot in a President.

It's not just Americans (I'm not), and it's not "the world itself" that we're worrying about controlling the Internet.

What we're worried about is undemocratic, opaque bodies that would do an ever worse job than the US. The US is a decidedly less worse controller of the Internet than the UN or any of its arms.

I absolutely disagree.

First, a democracy consisting to a large degree of undemocratic participants is not a democracy.

Second, no, a medium that relies on the free exchange of information should NOT be controlled by a democracy, which is as subject to the polemic whims of a tyranny of the masses as a totalitarian system is subject to the dogma of its ruling elite. It should, in fact, be structured in such a way that nobody controls the whole thing, period.

Fully distributed root servers would be a good start.

A water gun full of cyanide, mycotoxin, liquefied vegemite, whatever horrible stuff you can think of, is good for more than one shot.

You've seen Carrie Fisher lately, right?

You're assuming there will be only one pirate. If I were to make an ebook available, under the parent poster's idea I'd check to see whether there are others out there already, and then run the diff.

Display a prominent notice saying "we block cell phone service". The same as how facilities in Europe that use CCTV cameras must display a notice. Problem solved.

Every end-user computing product on the market today borrowed significantly from earlier innovators, who in turn often borrowed heavily from others before them.

My point about Apple is that they were not technologically revolutionary, but were the first to truly crack the mass market. And yes, I include Palm in this - I was a long term Palm user, starting with the Palm Pro - the Nokia Communicator, the Newton, and many others. The iPad is important because it's essentially commoditized the tablet.

There'll be other, better products and manufacturers. Android's a start. So is Surface, so is BB10. Their and iPad's successors will, however, be accepted because of the massive appeal of iPad. That's all.

That's a condemnation of Apple's methods, not of the tablet format itself.

The iPad was not technologically revolutionary - but it is hugely significant in that it's ingrained the idea of tablet computing in the mind of the average user vastly more than any product before it. It's essentially set the stage for Android and others to follow on.

They are tremendously useful for stargazing - e.g. green laser collimators are fantastic tools for pointing out celestial objects or aiming a telescope.

Also, long-distance cat annoying.