People said that by 2000 T1 would be the standard internet connection. That worked out well...we were still 50% dial-up last year. The difference between downloading a song and a video is almost unrecognizable. A 256 kb/sec (acceptable bit rate for even picky people) album is around 100+megs while a 1080p movie, as shown by Pirates earlier, can range up to 9 gigs.
Let's just say that the average person wants to spend $20 a month. Ten years ago, that would get you dial-up. Right now, that would get you around 1 mb/sec internet give or take a few and depending on your area.
I say it will be another ten years before any kind of downloading service could penetrate the mass market simply because the average person is extremely impatient, especially with technology, and will not put up with waiting even a few hours for something they could waltz over to the store, buy, and watch in 30 mins or so.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
