A nice defensible storage for our critical data.

It's not defensible - not even if it came with nukes.

Besides, L. Bob Rife is going to purchase it.

Now if you are rich on the other hand, the tax would apply to all kinds of luxury expenses. Buying a ferrari? Well then you are paying 23% of the purchase price in a tax. Buying a plane? The same.

That is based on the assumption that the rich make a lot of these luxury expenses. Something tells me that if you want to stay rich, you don't; hedge funds aren't as flashy, but give far better returns. In other words, you're not going to put a dent into their income if you assume every single one of 'm lives like a soap opera millionaire.

If calling dry feet at the expense of someone's job "positive", then you are part of the problem, not the solution.

The problem is that you think the boot-maker couldn't ever get any other job than being a boot-maker, which is of course nonsense. Sisyphean tasks like that only waste money. You shuffle money around, and the net positive effect is lower than simply doing it right the first time.

McDonalds offers cheap food, and provides jobs for people who have only a highschool education. According to your logic, it is your duty to eat fast food every week so they can keep their jobs.

But by buying 10 pairs of boots, he was keeping the boot-maker in employment

Broken window fallacy alert. By not buying those 10 pairs of boots, the $50 would've been spent on Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler's sausages. It would've ended up in the economy anyway, and with positive results instead of wet feet and continuation of crappy manufacturing.

If everything lasted for ever, the economy would grind to a halt, as no one would need to produce anything.

No. Part of the economy as it exists now - pushing useless, flimsy crap on people who don't need it - would grind to a halt, and the time and resources could be spent on better things.

Day in, day out, several commercials tell you that you are a worthless, ugly human being, in subtle or blunt ways - unless you buy that product that'll solve all your woes. It won't, your woes will still be there, and your money is gone - and you spend it again, because that product will break down or wear out.

Whenever a way to abuse it is found, then it should be fixed.

Your idea has abeen explored in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - except zaps can be substituted with nanomachines in your bloodstream that explode.

Now, you land in prison yourself. No excuses about that you don't make mistakes - the authority that puts you there can never be trusted 100%. Mistakes are made.

A group of inmates decides that they don't like you. They'll make you crowdsurf or they form a circle around you - and a bit of throwing or pushing later, you're beyond the barrier, getting zapped. You can't go back, because they've voted you off the island.

How are the guards going to find out that you didn't move out of your own accord? Do you think they're even going to care? If all of 'm have the same attitude you have, I wouldn't count on it.

so I con't understand why all this emphasis on faster connections.

Well, it enables studio personnel to record say, 48 streams of audio at 24/192 simultaneously, directly via USB 3.0 instead of having to buy a separate MADI interface. Right now most prosumer Firewire interfaces top out at 8 in/8 out, and you can fill that up easily with just drums already. ADAT is not an option if you want to go above and beyond 48/16.

You simply directly record to RAM which flushes it all to disk at its leisure.

Pardon my naivety, but I would like to better understand how exactly the US has fallen behind.

Well, because of this: http://www.tispa.org/node/14 - the money you've been paying them has not gone into improving the network. You've got ISPs fighting any municipal initiatives with tooth and nail. You have a lack of choice between ISPs; it's either DSL or cable from 2 brands. You've fallen behind with healthy competition and innovation.

someone pointed out to him that if people are trying to steal your stuff, that means they want your stuff

More importantly: if people want to distribute your stuff without your permission, they'll do so, and if one of 'm has done it, the war is already lost. Lots of industrious pirates who'll gladly scan and clean up whatever you want - no eBook needed. Sometimes they'll even do a better job than the official ones.

eBooks make it easier, but are absolutely not necessary.

Already, there are people that have been kept frozen for 40 years

Freezing is not the problem, thawing is. Also, do these cryoprotectants work on cell level so the walls aren't punctured by ice crystals?

I'd rather have a clearer document

Clarity (or simplicity) leaves too much room for loopholes that are not in the corporation's favor.

Imagine a virtual teacher with infinite patience for those with learning disabilities. you could use this tech to tailor a learning plan for the individual without the incredibly high cost of private tutors. Done right I could see this really helping kids.

And it'd be an awful shock for those kids if they went from their safe school environment back to the real world where people don't have infinite patience.