It's actually pretty different -- square is a simpler, passive device that essentially uses the mic and a tape head (remember those!) to read out the magnetic stripe on the card. This is actually much more sophisticated, since it harvests enough power from the audio signal to power simple sensors and a microcontroller, as well as giving you two-way communication. Also, it's not iphone-specific -- there are billions of cheap devices that you can now target with the same hardware; from this point of view the advantages are similar to the square.

There are actually several implementations of IPv6 for very low power, embedded devices. Arch Rock (www.archrock.com) has developed a commercial implementation. At Berkeley, we've developed open-source hardware (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~prabal/projects/epic/) and software (ttp://smote.cs.berkeley.edu:8000/tracenv/wiki/b6loWPAN) for low power IPv6 networking. Both the Arch Rock and Berkeley stacks support robust multi-hop IPv6 routing to support a large number of devices.

I'm far from a Paultard, but the argument in favor of the Gold standard is that it enforces a boundary on how much money the government can have circulating around. Just like gold can't be produced out of thin air, neither can a tangibly-linked currency.

The best way to do things, of course, would be to have a government which spent within its means without the use of an external, arbitrary limit.