Can adb start my android device that shows up as "offline"?
I only encountered device shown via ADB as offline in two cases:


Device not authorized (ADB security features)
No proper udev rules setup


As the first case is most likely not your problem as these security features were not implemented in android when you asked this question. Your problem is most likely that you dont have proper udev rules.

You can fix this temporary bei starting adb on your computer as root:

adb kill-server; sudo $(which adb) start-server

or permanently by adding proper udev rules for your desired device vendor:

See https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/UDEV for a collection of well-known vendors. if your vendor is not part of this you can add it by yourself. Plug the device via USB to your computer and check the output of: lsusb get the right vendorID of your device and add it to the udev rules file.

Also useful: http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html