What with solid-state circuitry, and advances in flexible and durable display technology, it may be possible in a few years to whomp up a laptop that you could run over with a car and would still work. Solar power for the batteries. No frills. Cheap enough to crank out by the hundreds of thousands, like plastic toys. Talks to the big satellites upstairs. Maybe it can be made jamproof. Optical backup linkups to a satellite?

Now...smuggle a few hundred thousand of these into some of the nastier nations. Sneak them in on trucks. Drop them from planes. Dump them offshore and let them float to the beach. Pack them in bags of rice.

Include some basic software (software companies, smelling future customers by the millions, will climb over each other to put free software on these things). Writing software. Educational stuff. Communications...talk to the outside world. Talk to your neighbor in the next town who found a machine! Include one of those little net cameras in the package. The bad guys find your machine and burn it. Who cares? All your stuff got backed up somewhere in Nebraska. Find another box on the beach, stick in your password, and away you go again.

Man...if I was Bill Gates, I know what I'D be doing with my cash.