I mentioned in my post that I assumed this was so and that a bluetooth ear piece would be required.

I think you are being a little closed/small minded about this. You are limiting the domain to historical uses of watches when these are capable of far more.

In my opinion a technology's true value (after the hype cycle has stabilised) is defined by its utility, cosmetic appeal and price. (there are probably others but they are less important)

You have artificially limited it to one of those (appeal) and I think this is unfair - especially considering most people no longer wear watches.
Having said that I personally stopped wearing a watch because I realised I had my phone on me 24/7 and it was no longer necessary. If my watch meant I no longer needed my phone on my person (say in my bag or car instead) this would be a big cosmetic bonus in my opinion. A watch on the wrist is far more appealing than having a bulge in your pocket. (that's what she said?)
It should be noted that utility and cosmetic appeal are in direct conflict in this product. The smaller and nice looking the watch, the less utility it is likely to have and vice versa.

Price is a big turn off at the moment. They are FAR too expensive for what they are. For elitists this may increase appeal but for most this will not. One assumes that like most things this will decrease sharply in time so this will improve over time.

My opinion is that utility will make or break these.
For example: if I can get to a point where all I need available is the watch and perhaps a bluetooth headset then they have a very solid product IMHO.
My phone (I assume the watch cannot replace these entirely) can be in my bag or car or tucked away. A glance at my watch (even when driving) tells me if I have msgs, who is calling, etc without having to take my phone out. Those annoying car mounts become unnecessary except for GPS.
And that is just core phone utility without going into the other more niche features or the addition future tech.

I am not saying they are a guaranteed success but I AM saying that they could be the reason people start wearing watches in the future again. :)

Farcical bureaucratic process resulting in the same outcome at more expense in 3....2...1.....

Nope - not in the way you mean.

If action was taken right now, with current technology, we could make a meaningful long term impact. The fact that this will not happen is due to lack of will, not lack of ability.

Now when being pessimistic, people refer to the above as "unavoidable". But this is quite obviously the wrong word since it could be.

PS: Now realise in my morning haze I combined your post and the very different one above into one mega post and replied to that as if it was a single post.

The irony of this mistake is rather awesome though: since my posts are about combining different wars together and treating them as a single war.

Regardless, I apologise to you the grandparent of this post.

The great grand parent of this post can kiss my as. ;)

Your inability to assume anything else is due to intellectual deficiencies and bias rather than logical means.

The wars mentioned may or may not be wars - they certainly meet my definitions and I would call them that.

  My point was that gaggling together a bunch of minor wars in different countries which started for different (vaguely related) reasons is not enough to make a war.

The "Cold War" was not a war. It was a period of hostility between super powers. That is all.

And as such was not a war...

Also the cold war was not really a war...right guys?...because hostile diplomatic relations is not actually a war?

People above appear to have forgotten this.

Perhaps because they come from the society that brought us the "war on"(TM) drugs, terrorism, obesity, aids, jesus, christmas, immigration, gays and a whole host of other things that are in no way at all wars.

This too, but also marketing, the corporate/profit-driven approach and other concerns apart from teaching and research.

To answer the question: "At a time when tuition prices are rising faster than ever, why are we skimping on the most fundamental aspect of college?"
Because you allowed your (entire) education system to be run by people who do not have education as the foremost priority.

The issues with other parts of the education system are of a different nature (e.g. they are run as a cost centre) but the fundamental problem is the same.

This WAS going to happen and would have but unfortunately Microsoft killed it.

Very roughly speaking from memory and summarising a great deal of history to a few paragraphs:

During the "browser wars" (they were actually the "internet platform wars") M$ decided that the next new monopoly for them had to be the browser. They were highly successful in this and crushed many competitors even though they had a substandard product. Mostly this was because they had a monopoly on desktops and IE was the default and most people were too new/inept to look to an alternative.
Netscape gave them a good run for their money early on (and had a FAR superior product) but was ultimately crushed due to the anti-competitive nature of the competition.

Later on it became apparent that the browser was become a programming platform. The emergence over time of the java applet, javascript and flash showed that the browser was capable of running apps inside a sandbox - theoretically without having to download an exe and all the virus problems associated with that (although IE would show time and again in spectacular fashion that they were not capable of delivering this).
A host of competitors (open or otherwise) came up and of course M$ was pushing its own proprietary solutions which would only work on IE. They also "supported to death" any of the competitors - pretending to support the cross platform standard but in a way that forced them to become single platform. (There was a famous anti-trust court cases over the java version of this.) In addition the core web standards such as HTML and CSS were also corrupted by MS's implementation.
This all led to a staggering number websites and apps that only ran on IE and left implementers struggling to support disparate "standards". The only reason any of this was possible was, you guessed it, people sitting with the default/standard browser and had a desktop monopoly.
In amongst this you had flash trying its proprietary take over by side stepping the whole issue with some success, the search engine wars, various browsers and lately the google suite of products. A lot of money and effort went into fighting this war but in the end it was a pointless and fruitless war.

In war there are always innocent casualties and the effects of this are still present within the web standards you see today: although they are much better than they were. This is the main reason why we don't have the killer internet platform we should - proprietary interests undermined any and all standards.

This post sounds very anti microsoft and it is, but this here is the core of why MS is and should be considered "evil" - at least for the google definition. You may disagree but I lived through this in both a private and professional capacity.

I know what I saw...

What is funny is that your entire electoral system has been so corrupted by the duopoly of parties even the voting system itself is rigged to only allow two parties to compete. And few here seem to see that as the REAL problem - rather than this sideshow.
People are left arguing about the anal details of how the dem/rep candidates should be allowed to maintain their duopoly (like they have a say in how it works) as if it makes any real difference.

Truly amazing...

I believe I was using Socratic irony. :)

From my perspective "this" is nothing different to what has occurred over all of human history. This is not an American thing, this is a human thing.

The rich and powerful wanting to be more so and using death, destruction, threats and violence to achieve this. With every new age come new tools that are used to achieve the very same aims with even greater ferocity and/or efficiency and/or mass effect.

When has it ever been different?

Was that during the cold war/vietnam pray tell?

Or the bit in between with the war on drugs and desert storm.

What is this "old USA" you speak of?

I am failing to see what has changed except the technology...

I am actually being serious here...

Every major evolution of technology comes with its superstitious Luddite-style objections. This current thread on "souls" is pleasantly amusing in a "advanced species looking on primitives" sort of way. Although this discussion is rather premature since we are very far away from teleporting anything substantial let alone an entire human being.

I would just love for you to list your citations on the existence of and what comprises the "soul". Perhaps then expand upon why said research enables you to form such substantive sounding arguments and conclusions about why you would or would not do something based on your apparent extensive knowledge of this all important yet ethereal entity.

Because from where I am sitting this entire thread smacks of quackery and medieval-sounding superstition - albeit dressed up with a veneer of rational sounding thought processes.

Your naive belief that the government has that right as some sort of natural law is rather pathetic.

They don't, you are just a well trained drone.