AS TO AMERICA'S LUNCH

I'm certainly not at the cutting edge of all this, but ever since I got my new high-speed laptop I've been able to watch great full-screen movies on demand (e.g., The Big Lebowski), documentaries (The Last Waltz), classic tv series (Frasier, Spin City, Fawlty Towers) even recent movies (The Bourne Ultimatum) for free on my computer (though a smaller image still gives a better picture). Don't know how long all that will last before the big media lawyers swarm into Japan, but a big change is here. I don't need conventional tv or satellite anymore, or to rent DVDs; much vidtech is about to fall by the wayside in large quantities, I expect. In re which, from an interesting article linked to, below the excerpt therefrom:

"The U.S. is getting its lunch eaten. As SaveTheInternet points out, they [the Japanese] get access that is often 30x faster than the U.S. As a result they are experiencing innovation -- and enjoying applications that Americans simply don't have access to."

Why Japan is Eating America's Lunch on Broadband