When I was a kid, I used to enjoy watching TV detective shows like "Mannix" or the "Rockford Files". One of my favorite recurring themes in such shows was the Car Chase. Usually the hero would be driving down the road in his 1970's Boss Mustang 'Cuda Firebird heading to some secret safe house where his beleaguered client was hiding. Invariably, he would look in the rear view mirror a few times and spot a pair of sideburn-sporting miscreants filling the front seat of a Caprice Cutlass deVille just a few cars back. With a smart rearward flick of the spindly chrome-plated floor lever, the hero would shift down two notches from "D" to "1" and mash the throttle, allowing the TV viewer to enjoy the spectacle of bias-ply-shod American iron, each equipped with the optional Conestoga Wagon Handling Group, slew and heave through intersections, scattering bell-bottomed pedestrians in crosswalks. In just a minute, the bad guys would lose all of their hubcaps as well as the hero.

Today? Well, alloy wheels make hubcap-shedding a thing of the past, and instead of overextending their Toyota Prius trying to keep up with Jim Rockford's VW Jetta TDI, the bad guys merely have to wait until Rockford syncs his iPhone again, then steal his laptop. Gotta love progress: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/04/21/iphone.tracker.explainer/index.html?hpt=C1