huh? what? web sites are redirecting?

(ok, RDR is not that good, but it helps, and I'm sure as this becomes even more prevalent, people will work around it)

Keep in mind, this being a DARPA program, the MNP is going to be largely R&D and POC activities. Once it gets past this stage, that is when you are talking real money.

Seconded. Loved my Okidata 600e, lasted almost 15 years. And to top it off, the toner was something on the order of $20 a cartridge, for about 5000 pages. Cheap, reliable, compact (for the time), fast (for the time), supported PS, PCL5...only needed ethernet and it would have be perfect.

But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again.

I might if I knew that after someone took it, a magical copy remained in its place. And I definitely would if everyone did this, so that cars were essentially shared, I definitely would.
It would be pretty cool...relatively few original cars would multiply many times until everyone had a car. Then, undoubtedly, some would tinker with cars they got at little to no cost, whether for fun, or because of special needs or tastes. Hopefully they would produce better, faster, higher mileage, more luxurious cars...which would then multiply since people would like them better. Eventually there would be a great variety, each catering to individual tastes, and constantly improving too. Some people would almost certainly band together to support particularly complex tinkering, or even wholesale re-creation, where the more casual tinkerers couldn't support, and their needs were great enough. Soon...flying cars, submarine cars, space cars! Yeah...this would be a pretty cool universe to live in.

Fortran has all sorts of what we would now consider artificial limitations and restrictions on its syntax that make writing even simple programs a lot less simple and intuitive. For example, line length limitations, special columns, short & special variables names, etc. I'd rather not spend time teaching/learning (especially non-standard) syntax and more time on the concepts while encouraging good stylistic conventions (use commenting, readable variable/function names, etc). I found Pascal a much better first language. Not to mention that many of these programs using FORTRAN are arcane, dated in their teaching concepts, and force FORTRAN despite students who often already know many other languages.

Cause somebody once told me that would be all I ever need.

I have been making the same argument for years (as a mathematician with a penchant for voting theory). Unfortunately, this is way over the head of most people (despite actually being based on very simple concepts and math), whereas a national popular vote has a very strong appeal due to inherent biases towards simpler and easier to understand solutions.