If you think racial discrimination should be permitted, you are a racist. It's that simple.
A person's right to be a racist has to do with their freedom of conscience.
Well, so does rape, robbery, or even murder. By your logic, we shouldn't have laws prohibiting those -- after all, those laws would restrict the murderers' "right" to kill people.
Discrimination, that is simply choosing not to associate with someone for any reason
We must be speaking different versions of English. In my dictionary, discrimination is defined as "treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice". Let's not redefine words here.
while morally reprehensible in many cases, should not be legally reprehensible
In many cases? In what situations would you consider discrimination to NOT be morally reprehensible?
Freedom of conscience, which is protected by the First Amendment, is much more important than not discriminating against others.
Have you even read the first amendment? Let's reproduce it here:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Do you see "freedom of conscience" anywhere in there? Can you explain which clause of the first amendment is violated by the EOE laws? For crying out loud, you need a remedial US government class.
Please don't assume that just because I believe one thing about one issue means I am "ignorant of history" or believe something about a whole host of other issues.
Well, your philosophy is a carbon copy of the central Libertarian theme: that the rights of some individuals (rich, predominantly white individuals) outweigh the rights of everyone else. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that you are a libertarian, whether you realize it or not. Your assertion that EOE laws are unnecessary, and that discrimination will disappear by itself demonstrates complete ignorance of modern US history. My conclusions are based on your statements, not your beliefs.
Have you heard of SkypeOut? If you don't like it, SIP phones work a lot better and give you a wide choice of providers. So get something like a SIP softphone, set it up to work with a service (say, nufone.net or whichever one you like), and make phone calls. Works real well, and you can even set up an incoming toll-free number.
If you compel me to do something against my will by threatening me with jail time or fines that is non-peaceful.
Oh, ok. Looks like we are speaking slightly different versions of English. By your definition, requiring anyone to do anything is not "peaceful". Not to mention, please explain why your right to be a racist should outweigh others' right to not be discriminated against.
I don't really know if there were or not. I'm no 1950s expert.
Well, see, that's the problem with most libertarians. They are blissfully ignorant of a thing called history, and do not understand _why_ we have EOE laws, OSHA, public schooling, public roads, and so on.
However, just because something is bad doesn't mean it requires government intervention.
So we should just let the problem persist?
Society should have peacefully sorted out this problem.
Well, if society could sort it out, it wouldn't be much of a problem, would it? Society failed at sorting out this problem. Ever read a history textbook?
Government coercion, which is not a peacful solution, was employed instead.
First, it was the only remaining option. Second, in what way are the EOE laws non-peaceful, i.e. militant? I don't think a single person got injured or killed as a result of the EOE laws.
Remember, a person who is discriminated against is always free to start their own business.
Oh, really? You sure had a lot of blacks starting their own businesses in the 50s. What makes you think everyone can start their own business?
I am standing on an principle, which is the freedom to associate or not associate, as the case may be.
It's the party line. If you bothered to think about this "principle" for 5 minutes, you would realize the inherent problems.
The EOE laws are impossible to enforce anyway.
Oh, really? And what about all those million-dollar lawsuits?
So yes, discrimination is not a good thing, but denying someone their freedom to associate is yet a worse evil.
Man, what is it with libertarians? Have you ever tried using your brain instead of regurgitating the party line?
Furthermore, any company that discriminates based upon some quality of a person that is not directly related to the job is doing themselves a disservice and will ultimately reap the consequences of that.
Do you not realize that EOE laws were enacted _in response_ to widespread discrimination? There are always plenty of qualified candidates for a job, so discrimination won't really be a problem for the company. However, it is most certainly a problem for the applicant. If some companies refuse to hire, say, blacks or women, those applicants will have a narrower choice of employers. Obviously, those employers will then be able to pay them less, simply because they are not as likely to find another job. How exactly is discrimination a good thing?
Anyway, the fact that discrimination was rampant before EOE laws pretty much renders your argument invalid.
Heh, I already have this feature in my new desktop machine. Apparently, the CPU fan is PWMed by the motherboard, and it changes its speed based on the powernow clock speed. Therefore, you hear the fan revving up whenever the CPU is doing something. To be honest, it's getting to be really annoying, simply because you hear it rev up every time you, say, drag something with the mouse.
Just to clear up a few misconceptions: a company charges the highest price the consumer is willing to pay for a product. A tax bill isn't going to change that. It's not like they figure "it costs us $x to make, so let's charge $1.2*x". If they can sell something that costs them 50 cents for $50, they will certainly do that. Competition is the only thing that creates an upper bound on the price. The same thing applies with salaries -- they aren't going to pay more than they have to. In reality, they could cut their costs by 50% and keep their products just as expensive. In fact, that is a company's legal obligation to shareholders -- to maximize profits. If people are willing to pay $40 for an iPod USB cable, that's the price Apple is going to charge -- even though the cable costs maybe a dollar to make.
Isn't that exactly what the ISPs are doing, however? That's why people are complaining in the first place, is because their torrents are getting a low priority.
Unless there's something prespecified before you sign up, any sort of service-throttling should be grounds for a lawsuit!
Why do you think that? The ISP has the right to maintain the integrity of their network by, among other things, restricting or disconnecting those who abuse the network. I've dealt with about 5 ISPs, and all of them specified that servers are not permitted on residential broadband connections, and that they reserve the right to limit or discontinue service. If you use P2P, you have already broken the server clause, and the ISP can impose any restrictions they may find necessary.
Read your contract. It never says that you can use as much of the bandwidth as you want. In fact, it usually says that the provider can restrict your usage for any reason whatsoever, and that servers are not allowed. Bittorrent is an example of a high-bandwidth server, and almost all standard consumer contracts prohibit this type of usage. You should really be thankful they aren't cracking down on this a lot more.
Let's just clear something up. Wireless broadband is never going to happen on a large scale, and it will never give you significant bandwidth. There just isn't enough wireless spectrum out there to give everyone more than a megabit or so. If you think wireless poses any threat to cable or telephone companies, you are very wrong. The future will be fiber to the node and something like gigabit ethernet running to each customer. Of course, you won't get more than maybe 20 MBps for the internet service; the backbones aren't fat enough to support that. The bandwidth will be used by the provider for things like TV and other commercial stuff. There are lots of limitations as to how fast the internet can operate.
Nothing can suck up as much bandwidth as BitTorrent. FTP only taxes the downlink, which is not the congested part in the first place, and you can't max out your connection when downloading from an FTP server. All the earlier P2P apps worked on a filesharing level -- you shared some files, and others could download them from you. This was a bit nastier, but only an issue if you had lots of files other people wanted. In addition, you couldn't download the same file from more than one person, which kept the load down quite a bit. Bittorrent is a whole different animal. It's programmed specifically to utilize as much of the connection as it can. It downloads as aggressively as possible, and actively uploads as much as it can back into the network. The tracker makes it very efficient at matching up peers. The increased efficiency enables it to use up much more bandwidth than all previous filesharing apps.
I can tell you have never managed a network. The problem with bittorrent is apparent even if you share your connection with 2 roommates. It is extremely aggressive, does not respect bandwidth limits, and opens a ridiculous number of connections. I have had to resort to blocking popular bittorrent ports on my linksys router just to keep the 5MBit cable connection from choking. Once the connection is close to being saturated, _nothing_ works because too many packets are getting lost or timing out.
On an ISP scale, you _never_ want to get to the point where you are using 100% of your bandwidth, because the network will slow down to a crawl. All of your customers who play online games, have Vonage, or just browse the web will immediately start complaining, because those services simply aren't usable when the network is congested. Neither car engines nor networks are designed to run at 100% load, all the time. The exact reasons may be different, but the analogy itself is spot-on.
Man, some people just don't get why something is "expensive". Why does an iPod cost 60x more than a cassette walkman? I'm pretty sure that they make more iPods than tape players these days. Maglev requires the entire track to consist of large, powerful electromagnets. This just isn't going to be cheap, or energy efficient, irrespective of production volume. What's cheaper to make, two steel rails, or this concrete monstrosity?
Dude, stop being a fucktard, and get with the program. If the lack of gapless playback pisses you off enough to avoid getting an iPod, you seriously need to get laid and stop being such a goddamn nerd. The iPod's main advantage is that its user interface was designed by people who use a music player, not nerds who worry about playing.ogg and gapless playback and other stupid bullshit and ignore the obvious such as USABILITY. The database does many useful things, which you would only know about and appreciate if you OWNED a fucking ipod. Things like weighted playlists, volume normalization, per-song EQ settings that integrate with iTunes, support for many different playlists, song ratings, metadata, and what have you. If you want mass storage for your MP3z and warez, burn them onto a fucking DVD, for crying out loud. An iPod is a music player, not a fucking USB stick. Use it for its intended purpose. Just because you can wipe your ass with newspaper doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Anyway, I don't mean to troll, I just don't like people who diss iPods without ever having used one, just because they don't have some semi-useless, unnecessary feature. The iPod is a nearly-perfect music player already. It doesn't need gapless playback,.ogg support, an FM tuner, or any other gimmicks.
First, you can get a program that converts files from one format to another. This isn't 1994, you know. Second, why the hell are you listening to American psy-ops drivel?
Here's some news for you, buddy: you don't have to use iTunes. There are shit-tons of iPod-compatible programs that can manage a music library, such as gtkpod. Of course, they are inferior to iTunes in almost every way, but then it sounds like you have never used iTunes or even own an iPod. I don't particularly like iTunes, but it certainly doesn't force the music store on you. What's so invasive, the "iTunes Music Store" link?
And Rockbox sucks ass. I've used it on my friend's piece of shit iRiver, and it's designed by people as incompetent as iRiver themselves. Sorry for all the negativity, but I just can't comprehend why anyone would want to replace the excellent iPod interface with an ugly, clunky, poorly engineered piece of crap. Surely, it can't be the fact that it supports.ogg (which, by the way, is inferior to AAC in every way). I don't know anyone who uses.ogg, and the iPod supports plenty of other high-quality formats if you rip your CDs. It seems that most of the people that use it simply lack the ability to appreciate a well-designed product.
Sounds to me like the patent is a lot more broad than you think. Don't forget, you can't determine the breadth of a patent just by reading it, you have to actually look at the court decisions. I doubt Tivo's stock would be going up 10% if the patent was worthless and easily circumvented.
That's the part that makes it novel.
Sure, it's novel. But it's also extremely obvious.
It's extremely obvious. Any good cassette tape deck can record and play at the same time (you can monitor your recording). Guitarists have used tape delays for about 40 years now. A hard drive is a random access device, so it's rather obvious that this could be done. Furthermore, things like this were being done for decades, even with video. How do you think a TV station does live broadcasts? There is always at least half a minute of delay there.
Just because it wasn't obvious to you doesn't mean it's a nonobvious invention. It has to be nonobvious to an expert in the field. I think anyone familiar with video could predict this from a mile away.
Patents aren't there for recognizing good engineering. They exist for protecting new and nonobvious inventions. It's rather obvious that a hard drive can be used for recording and playing back video, and using it to time-shift video is an obvious application, especially given the existence of VCRs.
As for the difficulty of doing it: it's not difficult at all, and in any case this is not relevant to the patent. They didn't patent a method of using a slow hard drive to time shift video. They patented any generic tivo-like device. In fact, your MythTV box infringes that patent, as does any time-shifting application for your computer.
Bullshit. In Russia, nearly all trains are electric, and have been for the last 30 or 40 years. It is one of the largest rail networks in the world. If Russia has no problem maintaining all that infrastructure and keeping it reliable (which it is), it cannot be difficult to maintain.
As far as power losses over wires: negligible. It's more than made up by regenerative braking.
The friction from the bearings is negligible at 60+ miles per hour. The main source of losses is always aerodynamic drag, and there is not a single goddamn thing that can be done about it short of reducing the cross section (impossible) or reducing your speed. The second main source of losses is the friction between the piston and the cylinder walls in an internal combustion engine. The effects of bearing friction are second-order compared to the first two. As far as maglev trains: I don't know of a single operational maglev public transportation system anywhere in the world. There are a couple of test routes somewhere, but the technology is far too expensive and inefficient to be practical. Besides, you would use almost as much fuel as a plane if you want to go at the same speed.
You don't seem to understand how the world economy operates. First, everything revolves around dollars. The US is in a unique position -- it can just print more dollars when it needs more cash. Of course, this ability requires someone to prop up those dollars. China is doing exactly that. If China stopped stockpiling dollars, the dollar would crash, and the US would no longer be able to afford to import things (like oil).
Actually, we did an experiment in high school biology where we genetically modified E. coli bacteria with the gene for green fluorescent protein. One of the science suppliers sells a kit to do it. It's a pretty cool experiment, in fact. This would be a lot more difficult to do with a virus, so I think the grandparent's friend modified bacteria, not viruses.
The main problem with linux is X. X is large, slow, inefficient, obsolete, memory-hungry, and difficult to use. It has no place in an embedded system, and there is no good alternative. In fact, I think embedded Windows would work better in this application. The only real downside of that system would be cost, and the fact that it's controlled by Microsoft.
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Does it feel good to insult people?
If you think racial discrimination should be permitted, you are a racist. It's that simple.
A person's right to be a racist has to do with their freedom of conscience.
Well, so does rape, robbery, or even murder. By your logic, we shouldn't have laws prohibiting those -- after all, those laws would restrict the murderers' "right" to kill people.
Discrimination, that is simply choosing not to associate with someone for any reason
We must be speaking different versions of English. In my dictionary, discrimination is defined as "treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice". Let's not redefine words here.
while morally reprehensible in many cases, should not be legally reprehensible
In many cases? In what situations would you consider discrimination to NOT be morally reprehensible?
Freedom of conscience, which is protected by the First Amendment, is much more important than not discriminating against others.
Have you even read the first amendment? Let's reproduce it here:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Do you see "freedom of conscience" anywhere in there? Can you explain which clause of the first amendment is violated by the EOE laws? For crying out loud, you need a remedial US government class.
Please don't assume that just because I believe one thing about one issue means I am "ignorant of history" or believe something about a whole host of other issues.
Well, your philosophy is a carbon copy of the central Libertarian theme: that the rights of some individuals (rich, predominantly white individuals) outweigh the rights of everyone else. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that you are a libertarian, whether you realize it or not. Your assertion that EOE laws are unnecessary, and that discrimination will disappear by itself demonstrates complete ignorance of modern US history. My conclusions are based on your statements, not your beliefs.
Have you heard of SkypeOut? If you don't like it, SIP phones work a lot better and give you a wide choice of providers. So get something like a SIP softphone, set it up to work with a service (say, nufone.net or whichever one you like), and make phone calls. Works real well, and you can even set up an incoming toll-free number.
Yes. Yes we should.
So, does it feel nice to be a racist?
If you compel me to do something against my will by threatening me with jail time or fines that is non-peaceful.
Oh, ok. Looks like we are speaking slightly different versions of English. By your definition, requiring anyone to do anything is not "peaceful". Not to mention, please explain why your right to be a racist should outweigh others' right to not be discriminated against.
I don't really know if there were or not. I'm no 1950s expert.
Well, see, that's the problem with most libertarians. They are blissfully ignorant of a thing called history, and do not understand _why_ we have EOE laws, OSHA, public schooling, public roads, and so on.
Discrimination is not a good thing.
OK, I am glad we can agree on this point.
However, just because something is bad doesn't mean it requires government intervention.
So we should just let the problem persist?
Society should have peacefully sorted out this problem.
Well, if society could sort it out, it wouldn't be much of a problem, would it? Society failed at sorting out this problem. Ever read a history textbook?
Government coercion, which is not a peacful solution, was employed instead.
First, it was the only remaining option. Second, in what way are the EOE laws non-peaceful, i.e. militant? I don't think a single person got injured or killed as a result of the EOE laws.
Remember, a person who is discriminated against is always free to start their own business.
Oh, really? You sure had a lot of blacks starting their own businesses in the 50s. What makes you think everyone can start their own business?
I am standing on an principle, which is the freedom to associate or not associate, as the case may be.
It's the party line. If you bothered to think about this "principle" for 5 minutes, you would realize the inherent problems.
The EOE laws are impossible to enforce anyway.
Oh, really? And what about all those million-dollar lawsuits?
So yes, discrimination is not a good thing, but denying someone their freedom to associate is yet a worse evil.
How is it worse?
Man, what is it with libertarians? Have you ever tried using your brain instead of regurgitating the party line?
Furthermore, any company that discriminates based upon some quality of a person that is not directly related to the job is doing themselves a disservice and will ultimately reap the consequences of that.
Do you not realize that EOE laws were enacted _in response_ to widespread discrimination? There are always plenty of qualified candidates for a job, so discrimination won't really be a problem for the company. However, it is most certainly a problem for the applicant. If some companies refuse to hire, say, blacks or women, those applicants will have a narrower choice of employers. Obviously, those employers will then be able to pay them less, simply because they are not as likely to find another job. How exactly is discrimination a good thing?
Anyway, the fact that discrimination was rampant before EOE laws pretty much renders your argument invalid.
Heh, I already have this feature in my new desktop machine. Apparently, the CPU fan is PWMed by the motherboard, and it changes its speed based on the powernow clock speed. Therefore, you hear the fan revving up whenever the CPU is doing something. To be honest, it's getting to be really annoying, simply because you hear it rev up every time you, say, drag something with the mouse.
Just to clear up a few misconceptions: a company charges the highest price the consumer is willing to pay for a product. A tax bill isn't going to change that. It's not like they figure "it costs us $x to make, so let's charge $1.2*x". If they can sell something that costs them 50 cents for $50, they will certainly do that. Competition is the only thing that creates an upper bound on the price. The same thing applies with salaries -- they aren't going to pay more than they have to. In reality, they could cut their costs by 50% and keep their products just as expensive. In fact, that is a company's legal obligation to shareholders -- to maximize profits. If people are willing to pay $40 for an iPod USB cable, that's the price Apple is going to charge -- even though the cable costs maybe a dollar to make.
Isn't that exactly what the ISPs are doing, however? That's why people are complaining in the first place, is because their torrents are getting a low priority.
Unless there's something prespecified before you sign up, any sort of service-throttling should be grounds for a lawsuit!
Why do you think that? The ISP has the right to maintain the integrity of their network by, among other things, restricting or disconnecting those who abuse the network. I've dealt with about 5 ISPs, and all of them specified that servers are not permitted on residential broadband connections, and that they reserve the right to limit or discontinue service. If you use P2P, you have already broken the server clause, and the ISP can impose any restrictions they may find necessary.
Read your contract. It never says that you can use as much of the bandwidth as you want. In fact, it usually says that the provider can restrict your usage for any reason whatsoever, and that servers are not allowed. Bittorrent is an example of a high-bandwidth server, and almost all standard consumer contracts prohibit this type of usage. You should really be thankful they aren't cracking down on this a lot more.
Let's just clear something up. Wireless broadband is never going to happen on a large scale, and it will never give you significant bandwidth. There just isn't enough wireless spectrum out there to give everyone more than a megabit or so. If you think wireless poses any threat to cable or telephone companies, you are very wrong. The future will be fiber to the node and something like gigabit ethernet running to each customer. Of course, you won't get more than maybe 20 MBps for the internet service; the backbones aren't fat enough to support that. The bandwidth will be used by the provider for things like TV and other commercial stuff. There are lots of limitations as to how fast the internet can operate.
Nothing can suck up as much bandwidth as BitTorrent. FTP only taxes the downlink, which is not the congested part in the first place, and you can't max out your connection when downloading from an FTP server. All the earlier P2P apps worked on a filesharing level -- you shared some files, and others could download them from you. This was a bit nastier, but only an issue if you had lots of files other people wanted. In addition, you couldn't download the same file from more than one person, which kept the load down quite a bit. Bittorrent is a whole different animal. It's programmed specifically to utilize as much of the connection as it can. It downloads as aggressively as possible, and actively uploads as much as it can back into the network. The tracker makes it very efficient at matching up peers. The increased efficiency enables it to use up much more bandwidth than all previous filesharing apps.
I can tell you have never managed a network. The problem with bittorrent is apparent even if you share your connection with 2 roommates. It is extremely aggressive, does not respect bandwidth limits, and opens a ridiculous number of connections. I have had to resort to blocking popular bittorrent ports on my linksys router just to keep the 5MBit cable connection from choking. Once the connection is close to being saturated, _nothing_ works because too many packets are getting lost or timing out.
On an ISP scale, you _never_ want to get to the point where you are using 100% of your bandwidth, because the network will slow down to a crawl. All of your customers who play online games, have Vonage, or just browse the web will immediately start complaining, because those services simply aren't usable when the network is congested. Neither car engines nor networks are designed to run at 100% load, all the time. The exact reasons may be different, but the analogy itself is spot-on.
Man, some people just don't get why something is "expensive". Why does an iPod cost 60x more than a cassette walkman? I'm pretty sure that they make more iPods than tape players these days. Maglev requires the entire track to consist of large, powerful electromagnets. This just isn't going to be cheap, or energy efficient, irrespective of production volume. What's cheaper to make, two steel rails, or this concrete monstrosity?
Dude, stop being a fucktard, and get with the program. If the lack of gapless playback pisses you off enough to avoid getting an iPod, you seriously need to get laid and stop being such a goddamn nerd. The iPod's main advantage is that its user interface was designed by people who use a music player, not nerds who worry about playing .ogg and gapless playback and other stupid bullshit and ignore the obvious such as USABILITY. The database does many useful things, which you would only know about and appreciate if you OWNED a fucking ipod. Things like weighted playlists, volume normalization, per-song EQ settings that integrate with iTunes, support for many different playlists, song ratings, metadata, and what have you. If you want mass storage for your MP3z and warez, burn them onto a fucking DVD, for crying out loud. An iPod is a music player, not a fucking USB stick. Use it for its intended purpose. Just because you can wipe your ass with newspaper doesn't mean it's a good idea.
.ogg support, an FM tuner, or any other gimmicks.
Anyway, I don't mean to troll, I just don't like people who diss iPods without ever having used one, just because they don't have some semi-useless, unnecessary feature. The iPod is a nearly-perfect music player already. It doesn't need gapless playback,
First, you can get a program that converts files from one format to another. This isn't 1994, you know. Second, why the hell are you listening to American psy-ops drivel?
Here's some news for you, buddy: you don't have to use iTunes. There are shit-tons of iPod-compatible programs that can manage a music library, such as gtkpod. Of course, they are inferior to iTunes in almost every way, but then it sounds like you have never used iTunes or even own an iPod. I don't particularly like iTunes, but it certainly doesn't force the music store on you. What's so invasive, the "iTunes Music Store" link?
.ogg (which, by the way, is inferior to AAC in every way). I don't know anyone who uses .ogg, and the iPod supports plenty of other high-quality formats if you rip your CDs. It seems that most of the people that use it simply lack the ability to appreciate a well-designed product.
And Rockbox sucks ass. I've used it on my friend's piece of shit iRiver, and it's designed by people as incompetent as iRiver themselves. Sorry for all the negativity, but I just can't comprehend why anyone would want to replace the excellent iPod interface with an ugly, clunky, poorly engineered piece of crap. Surely, it can't be the fact that it supports
Sounds to me like the patent is a lot more broad than you think. Don't forget, you can't determine the breadth of a patent just by reading it, you have to actually look at the court decisions. I doubt Tivo's stock would be going up 10% if the patent was worthless and easily circumvented.
That's the part that makes it novel.
Sure, it's novel. But it's also extremely obvious.
It's extremely obvious. Any good cassette tape deck can record and play at the same time (you can monitor your recording). Guitarists have used tape delays for about 40 years now. A hard drive is a random access device, so it's rather obvious that this could be done. Furthermore, things like this were being done for decades, even with video. How do you think a TV station does live broadcasts? There is always at least half a minute of delay there.
Just because it wasn't obvious to you doesn't mean it's a nonobvious invention. It has to be nonobvious to an expert in the field. I think anyone familiar with video could predict this from a mile away.
Patents aren't there for recognizing good engineering. They exist for protecting new and nonobvious inventions. It's rather obvious that a hard drive can be used for recording and playing back video, and using it to time-shift video is an obvious application, especially given the existence of VCRs.
As for the difficulty of doing it: it's not difficult at all, and in any case this is not relevant to the patent. They didn't patent a method of using a slow hard drive to time shift video. They patented any generic tivo-like device. In fact, your MythTV box infringes that patent, as does any time-shifting application for your computer.
Bullshit. In Russia, nearly all trains are electric, and have been for the last 30 or 40 years. It is one of the largest rail networks in the world. If Russia has no problem maintaining all that infrastructure and keeping it reliable (which it is), it cannot be difficult to maintain.
As far as power losses over wires: negligible. It's more than made up by regenerative braking.
The friction from the bearings is negligible at 60+ miles per hour. The main source of losses is always aerodynamic drag, and there is not a single goddamn thing that can be done about it short of reducing the cross section (impossible) or reducing your speed. The second main source of losses is the friction between the piston and the cylinder walls in an internal combustion engine. The effects of bearing friction are second-order compared to the first two. As far as maglev trains: I don't know of a single operational maglev public transportation system anywhere in the world. There are a couple of test routes somewhere, but the technology is far too expensive and inefficient to be practical. Besides, you would use almost as much fuel as a plane if you want to go at the same speed.
You don't seem to understand how the world economy operates. First, everything revolves around dollars. The US is in a unique position -- it can just print more dollars when it needs more cash. Of course, this ability requires someone to prop up those dollars. China is doing exactly that. If China stopped stockpiling dollars, the dollar would crash, and the US would no longer be able to afford to import things (like oil).
Actually, we did an experiment in high school biology where we genetically modified E. coli bacteria with the gene for green fluorescent protein. One of the science suppliers sells a kit to do it. It's a pretty cool experiment, in fact. This would be a lot more difficult to do with a virus, so I think the grandparent's friend modified bacteria, not viruses.
The main problem with linux is X. X is large, slow, inefficient, obsolete, memory-hungry, and difficult to use. It has no place in an embedded system, and there is no good alternative. In fact, I think embedded Windows would work better in this application. The only real downside of that system would be cost, and the fact that it's controlled by Microsoft.