Though I absolutely agree nothing else should be in the controlled airspace around Heathrow (or any other controlled airspace) without the full knowledge, permission, and constant monitoring of air traffic controllers, Heathrow is not the world's busiest. Heathrow serves the largest number of international airline passengers annually. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the world's busiest both in terms of passengers served and aircraft movements.

Hughes is both a visionary cleaning out dead wood and a clueless tech star, the latter because he bought TNR in the first place.

Assuming there's no legal barrier -- and there aren't many nowadays -- a new, even quixotic campaign allows the very same (mostly) donors/suckers/bribers to kick in more money to pay off the previous campaign's debts. It's a terrific racket.

I found your smartphone(s). Apple's iPhone 5s is more than decently spec'ed, and it has a 4.0 inch display. Apple's iPhone 5c is very decently spec'ed -- specifications are a bit better than the iPhone 5 -- and also has a 4.0 inch display. The Blackberry Q10 also meets or exceeds your criteria. If you insist on an Android-based device then it depends on what you mean by "decently spec'ed." Possible candidates include Asus's new Zenfone 4, Sony's Xperia M, Samsung's Galaxy Ace 3 (the Ace 4 may be a downgrade), and Huawei's Ascend Y300. I think I'd pick the Xperia M within that Android group, but your mileage may vary.

Internet Explorer 8 was the last Internet Explorer available for Windows XP. Was Microsoft tempted to ignore the security exposure until XP fell out of support? Are there other security vulnerabilities in Windows XP reported before April, 2014, that Microsoft has ignored? Will Microsoft ignore (or at least slow walk) reported security vulnerabilities in their other products as they get nearer (but not actually reach) their end of support dates?

These continuing security defects are really beyond ridiculous. Maybe regulators -- the European Commission? -- ought to be mandating that vendors fix security vulnerabilities in their products within, say, 120 days. That would extend to all products sold (refurbished, new, whatever) within the past, say, 7 years. Otherwise, the vendor will be automatically barred from selling anything unless and until their security messes are cleaned up.

Tim Cook is a major Apple shareholder, at least among individuals who own shares. He owns a fraction of the company.

The stockholders voted, and Apple's energy policy won easily.

What law would that be? Hint: There isn't one.

Considering the last 50 years, I rate Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center very highly, though a big percentage of his good work has been done after his political career ended in 1981.

I don't think anybody likes drones except perhaps the people who build them. However, I'm really upset with the idiots who even think about pointing a weapon up in the sky -- or aiming a laser, for that matter -- in a misguided attempt to fight the spread of drones. There are *people* flying overhead all the time in aircraft both small and large, and there's no way to tell which aircraft is manned and which isn't even if you want to do something stupid. There's a federal death penalty for anyone interfering with an aircraft (or "related facilities") that results in death, so this is serious stuff. I don't like it when people go duck hunting without being careful not to point their weapons anywhere near a family cruising along in their Cessna. If you want to fight the spread of drones then do it in ways that won't get people hurt or killed -- resulting in more drones, probably. Defund them, prevent them from being based in or launched from your community or state, boycott their manufacturers and affiliates, tax them heavily, make their owners/operators/manufacturers personally liable for the worst torts imaginable, and/or whatever. But for the sake of the people up in the skies, please, please don't even think about shooting at them.

In related news, and in a fitting analogy, the Observatory is recommending that a newly identified black hole be named "Zimmerman."

Mobile phones are low power, rugged, cheap, and well accepted in Zambia. I think I'd be looking at how much of the electronic medical record keeping I could push onto very basic mobile phone-based services such as SMS, MMS, voice/voice recording, and/or (for example) very lightweight Java ME applications (using MQTT probably which is free, bidirectional, low power, secure, and extremely bandwidth efficient/tolerant). Voice input, for example, is very fast -- faster than writing/typing at the point of service -- and labor is cheap to take dictation locally or remotely. A cheap camera phone can take decent pictures of body parts and what they look like. Patients with mobile phones -- many of them -- can input their own histories for registration (via a Java ME or WAP app probably), or somebody remote can call them who can then key in the history via Q&A -- even before they get to the clinic. Get an IBM "Watson" (or connect to one in the "cloud") for diagnoses. And so on. Think of how to deliver as many and as much of the business processes via mobile feature phones and (for the clinics) slightly more advanced tablets with very lightweight protocols and near-ubiquitous services. I agree with the commenters upthread: stay away from the paper if at all possible. If there is any paper, let them use the manual typewriters they already might have and then have a "scanning station" with a camera phone on a tripod sort of thing to get the paper "into the system" immediately.

As for freezer labeling, how about not labeling at all in the field? Get tubes/containers pre-marked "at the factory" with unique sequential barcodes and serial numbers, and then associate that tube with the patient electronically when the sample is collected. The technician would also jot down the patient's assigned code using a simple freezer-compatible pen/marker. Again, a simple mobile phone with a camera would be able to scan the barcode on the tube and look up the patient code (or register the patient to that tube). The code could be something as simple as the patient's mobile phone number concatenated with a couple alphanumerics: initials, date of birth, or something else. (This would depend on the cultural context of course. It should be short, unique, avoid characters that can be mixed up like 0 and O, and have a check character embedded to avoid false match errors.)

Postal banking is very common in many countries. To save the Post Office let the Post Office provide a reasonable range of basic, low fee, CFPB-approved consumer banking services at every post office: international remittances, international money orders (they have some, but bring back near-global coverage), and simple interest-bearing deposit accounts with debit/ATM cards and bill paying. Your debit card would be compatible with government benefits (e.g. SNAP), and cardholders would be strongly encouraged to include their photo on the front. Card-not-present transactions would be allowed but only with a generated one-time use virtual card number. Cards would have chips, and magstripe transactions would be limited to $200 per day unless the account holder overrides the default. Limit cash deposits and withdrawals to the postal ATM to reduce the safety risk at post offices. No loans, no overdrafts. No foreign transaction fees. Simple Roth IRAs would be available but you only get one investment choice: your age-appropriate Vanguard "target" retirement index fund (assuming Vanguard bids the lowest cost to the consumer). No business accounts, no joint accounts, but you could designate a payable on death (POD) beneficiary. Accounts would be federally insured. To avoid "too big to fail" problems there would be regional postal banks, but there would be no cross-region postal ATM fees. Regional banks would be organized something like: Atlantic Postal Bank (PA, DE, MD, WV, DC), Cactus Postal Bank (TX, NM, AZ), Dixie Postal Bank (VA, NC, SC, GA), Gulf Postal Bank (FL, AL, MS, LA), Harvest Postal Bank (MN, NE, ND, SD, IA), Lakes Postal Bank (OH, IN, IL, MI, WI), Middle Postal Bank (KY, TN, AR, MO, KS, OK), Oceanic Postal Bank (AK, HI, GU, VI, PR, AA/AE/AP, MP, AS, FM, MH, PW), Pacific Postal Bank (CA, WA, OR), Rockies Postal Bank (WY, CO, MT, UT, ID, NV), and Yankee Postal Bank (NY, NJ, and New England).

Organizations that want to run IE6 "forever" have a way to do that: a virtual machine. Their virtual machine image can be frozen and the destination IP addresses firmly locked down to access only known internal Web servers to avoid nasty malware surprises. They can set up the virtual machine to launch and run IE6 as if it were any other application running on the desktop. They can even set up shared server-based IE6 delivery farms if they wish. No problem, and life goes on.