Or maybe they want to ape Macs. The problem with that is given a choice between pretend-MacOS and real MacOS, people will choose the real one.

Found that out years ago. Got my HDHomerun box, put it on the wi-fi, and no worky. The "54 Mb/s" wi-fi couldn't do 12 Mb/s (or whatever 1080p over-the-air channel puts out) sustained through a wall.

Theoretically speaking, sure, just like you said.

But in this case, land is far less cheap today (no Native Americans to take it from, for starters). Railways were the enabling technology upon which the US was built then, now they hyperthingie just gets people from A to B - no freight, nothing radically new added to the transportation options already available. It would be a great make-work project, except there are millions of much better such projects available - crumbling bridges, for instance.

And really, is this a viable future technology, let alone a "futuristic" one?

The cheapest way to move people intercity is steel wheel on steel rail. Any transport expert worth his salt should know that. Why, in Japan, Europe, and China, they're already moving people at over 200 mph average. Today.

But if you can ignore practical considerations (like "visionary" businessmen can do) because the people (read governments) are willing to let you externalize costs such as land, hazard insurance, accident clean-up costs, etc. then sure, hyper-my-loop away.

The drugs are expensive because of the patents on them that allow big pharma to monopolize them. In this case, the people who develop the genes will then be poached by big pharma, or will form their own company, or the university will sell the patents to an IP shop, which will leave us exactly where we were before. But we will have glowing rabbits.

So spare me the homilies about poor people and drugs, and just say "shiny glowing rabbits!!! FTW!!!"

Ah, come on! They don't need to disappear them! With a population of 550, the rest of the country is probably heavily subsiding their post office, sheriff, the road that lets them even exist. In other words, the purse strings. They probably think they're out there, pioneers in the wilderness, and such BS.

I look forward to innovations in elder care and access as the Google bigwigs age. How about family care? Do these guys wish to marry, procreate?

They're all NSA-compliant, but looks like T-Mo is doing its own snooping before getting the spooks into the loop (highest time to first byte).

I can see all of these problems being addressed if there is demand, especially with the kinds of money train-plane will involve.

For example, people want to move fast and on schedule - so use the bus as a feeder from downtown, suburban, or whatever areas are far away from the rail station. Drive the bus onto the train - you don't need Greyhound-style 45' buses, just Sprinters or something lighter. Once the train in under-way, passengers and leave the bus and use restrooms, pantry cars, etc. on the train. As for waiting for other buses, the train can carry a few buses, and me mostly regular passenger rail cars, so it isn't waiting on many buses. Can this really be worse than the flight delays these days?

Truck to train has been going on for decades. A more feasible approach is to have buses that can be driven on to, or hooked up to trains. It wouldn't cover the kinds of distances planes can, but it would happen a lot sooner.

Which comes first, the lithium-xxx battery that will last 7 days, or the plane-train?

If I buy a store brand potato chip all the time, and they give me a coupon for say, Frito Lays, I'm not like "hey, invasion of privacy", but more like "hmmm, only 25 c more for Frito, I'll try it, maybe I'll like it."

Sometimes a coupon is just a coupon.

AC units for data centers can be ordered with economizers, which will vent outside air in when there's enough cooling potential. They will filter it, etc.

Interestingly enough, these units have to be freeze-rated also.

Like with Swartz, this is the prosecutors Christmas-treeing up the charges, to psych and make it too expensive for the defendants; and make them settle - for money, some jail time, whatever. That way they can chalk one up in the win column, which looks pretty good when they run for office. I'm assuming the defendant here was white, because if he were black, I'd expect to see charges for tax evasion, aiding offshore combatants, and possession of skills with intention to use for mass destruction of capitalism.

I don't "need" to "prove" anything. I stated an opinion, based upon what I put out there, and based upon what you choose to google for and read, you can choose to believe it, or not.

And yes, pigs make for much better subjects. But you see, pigs can't be tailored or bread as fast as mice. And that is what determines what they use, not what is most suitable.Here's a long but interesting article about this.
      http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/naked_mole_rats_can_they_help_us_cure_cancer_.html

Animal testing is inhumane, but it is also mostly bogus. They immuno-suppressed the f out of these animals, right? So they'll easily develop cancers and other diseases, right? Yeah, so what relevance does that animal have to humans? Zilch. It is accepted that mice testing is simply something to get out of the way, something to get funding for ('cause all that the funders - like the NIH in the US - recognize is testing on mice). They get it out of the way, so they can get to human trials, and that's where you find out what works for humans and what doesn't.