With a not-100%-accurate replication mechanism for the software. And a high generation rate. ROTM*!

*(this *does* *not* meant Rolling On The Mat)

Am wanting very much. Will be controlling robot legions with über-l33t nanotech mind powers.

A little more seriously, I really want a neuro-link to the Internet whenever I get near a Wi-Fi hotspot or unsecured wireless router. The possibilities are truly endless.

...welcome our new microscopic, energy-scavenging overlords.

For god sake don't tell "Wacky" Jacqui about this

These could certainly beat RFID chips, the current generation of which are remotely readable and clonable and therefore insecure. Once they can get one of these to be implantable and securely able to receive, decrypt, manipulate, sign and return an encrypted token, then we have a technology many organisations, governments and banks would require employees, travellers, prisoners, those on parole and account holders to have inside them at all times if enough people don't resist it. By enough people I don't just mean the usual few bleeding heart civil liberty activists and intelligentsia suspects whom the banks and government decision makers can generally afford to ignore. But in this case the question as to "why would enough people care strongly enough to prevent it ?" has an unusual answer:

If you take the Book of Revelation at face value, you won't be able to buy or sell without such an implant, and Christians won't be able to accept one without rejecting our faith. Reading more between the lines, maybe it's the fact that more than a few people will take this warning at face value and would be willing to fight it at great personal cost if needs be, that will prevent this from ever becoming a politically realistic option, in countries with a Christian culture where the ideas of democracy and civil rights have been developed. Forwarned is forarmed, but how, other than by unbelievable coincidence, could an ageing St John living on the Greek island of Patmos over 1900 years ago, by seeing strange and apocalyptic visions, have known anything about this specific possibility either to predict or to help prevent it ?

Reasons for the choice of the flame icon should be obvious !

How very Diamond Age...

I do like the potential medical applications of this, though

How can they obtain energy from body heat while being _inside_ the body?

To get useful work from thermal energy one would need a temperature differential, surely?

"but how, other than by unbelievable coincidence, could an ageing St John living on the Greek island of Patmos over 1900 years ago, by seeing strange and apocalyptic visions, have known anything about this specific possibility either to predict or to help prevent it ?"

You are right it is a coincidence, and there are no beasts involved at all.

Revelation does not describe this specific possibility at all, it is purposefully vague enough to match quite a few possibilities in the minds of those who can't think clearly for themselves, from a rubber stamp or branded mark to a chip. It's very similar to the people visiting psychics and thinking the psychic can tell them stuff that "only I could have known". Watch Derren Brown, it is all about direction and suggestion - the target fills in the blanks themselves.

Thank God for free thought.

I'm wondering if these INTEL folks have any connection to the BOTTLED WATER INDUSTRY. They both seem intent on the same future: A world "Littered" with man made crap, and now SPYING Man Made Crap.

Why not make every Plastic Bottle of Water a little SPY? Make the thing report back to the GODS at NESTLE when anyone, anywhere attempts to refill the bottle with water.

Then it could make the bottle explode into tiny pieces all over the planet, each one a NEW LITTLE SPY accomplishing BOTH GOALS IN ONE.

Touché !

Meanwhile back at CIA & NSA HQ, the intelligence being stored on their systems not only surpasses the intelligence of these agencies a trillion-fold but also eclipses any failings ever shown before by these fools with so much information to support any judgmental dogma they decide to perpetrate on their unsuspecting society.

I can only vaguely agree with at most a third of what you write, specifically the vowels. Didn't your doctor tell you to stop smoking grass? Taking the Book of Revelations "at face value" is sheer folly. I don't think even St. Augustine would do that. :-)