Given that the convoy depends on wireless communication, I wonder about its susceptibility to intentional jamming and hijacking.

Silly is subjective.

I agree. She's a *science fiction author*; coming up with crazy ideas is her job.

Although if she were actually Empress of the Universe, why is she allowing people to fight wars? :P Or if it's her troops fighting a rebellion or something, what would stop the rebellion from altering the chips, hiding their babies so they aren't chipped so that they can be part of a long war, etc?

Wait, so it's legitimate to use a watch to show off your wealth, but it's illegitimate yo use it to show off your geekiness?

Wearing things for style is perfectly fine, but if you're going to wear for style it should actually be your style, not your conception of society's conception of what the most "glamorous" style is.

Some of us aren't stuck on anything; I have a pay-as-you-go T-Mobile plan, pay about $100 a year for the relatively few calls I make. Texts are $0.10 per I think, so I certainly don't use texts the way I might use some sort of instant messenger service.

I'm not claiming to be the norm by any means, but I do exist. :D

Except that it's the financial service provider taking the hit. Sounds like the world is regulating itself to me.

Are you sure you want to use that comparison? After all, rape does directly come from the Latin word meaning "steal"...

I was reacting to the phrase "We have much, much, much larger problems to worry about", which of course can be said about most things involving IP, the Internet, etc.

And hopefully you saw the part where I agreed with you. :)

I don't think the argument "we shouldn't deal with this problem because there are worse problems in the world" is very effective. There are 300 million people in America; we can multitask, worry about more than one problem at a time.

Personally, copying music isn't a huge problem for *me* because even if copyright for music vanished tomorrow, at the very worst the RIAA companies would collapse. People would still write and perform music, as amateurs do now, and people (including major companies) would still find ways to make money off of music. Plus we'd still have a half-century of recorded music to enjoy, much more than anyone could take in in a lifetime.

Now I'm not at all proposing that we abolish copyright, and I would certainly feel bad for the underlings who work at RIAA companies who might lose their jobs in the wake of such an event. But the music industry is tiny, economically speaking (didn't I read somewhere that Google could simply buy the music divisions of the 5 RIAA companies with the cash they have lying around?) In short, since this is the *worst-case scenario*, and since rampant piracy is far from being the worst-case scenario, then you're right: this really is not a big problem for society.

Thoughts?

Given that (1) the pre-Civil Rights period had Jim Crow laws that actively promoted segregation and (2) the economic disparity between whites and blacks saw its greatest decrease in the 1950s, before any legislation, the idea that the Civil Rights act was what changed everything is rather suspect.