a time machine, a fourth-dimensional pocket, a dokodemo door ... of course, talking about the distance future...

South Bronx Parasite, baby!

I was actually lucky enough to have been on a fiber-optic trial (through Telus) for Telephone, Internet and Digital cable when I was much younger (I think it was in 1998); at the time you could get 15Mb/s bi-directional internet through them. Telus believed (at the time) that they could eventually pay back the massive per-house up-front cost if they were allowed to offer services along the line to meet everyone's communication needs because the physical fiber optic cable is a one time cost; hypothetically speaking they could eventually offer 1 Gb/s internet on the same cable 10 years from now.

What eventually killed their plans was the CRTC pulled their cable TV licence; at the time many people claimed that it was a highly political move as a 'certain' local cable company heavily 'supported' the federal Liberal party who was in power at the time and Telus entering the cable industry would impact their monopoly.

Anyways ...

Fiber Optic is an amazing technology but requires a massive upfront cost and I expect that a company would need to have a very diverse buisness plan in order to recover the costs.

 Yeah, I actually love the Laser TVs. I actually think the new LCDs look as good as the plasmas. But the new lasers will be amazing. Half the cost, half the weight, and damn near infinate size ability. (When they come out they wont be cheaper than LCD or Plasma)

I'd still love to get some real broadband, I live in the 33% of the American population who can't get it. :(

Yeah, fiber optics are a far off dream for most Americans at this point...a bunch of them still don't have broadband...the country's just too big for a decent fiber optics system.

Firbe optics will be very cool, my dad can apparently get 100mb/s broadband at his work, which is damn annoying cos he like at some big hub thing, where the firbe optic splits up to spread throughout the country, but it's annoying its gonna take ages for normal people to get it.

I think mobile TV will be pretty big, especially as the EU has agreed on a format (rather than risk a format war) that will be standard for all of Europe, un fortunately as it is some time before analog signals are switched of here in the UK, they're having trouble finding the bandwidth.

Also, a nearby cinema has just got a projector that can display 4000x2000 resolution, so I think after 1080p, that we'll see more increases in resolution, but I definately think that over the next 3 years HD TV will be big especially when they come to within ~25% of SD TV prices.

Want fiberoptic internet?
Check here, its only $30/month.
http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/packages+and+prices/packages+and+prices.htm

Want HD cable enabled by fiberoptics to go with that shiny new HDTV and PS3? Verizon has what you need, and not too expensive at all:

http://www22.verizon.com/content/fiostv/packages+and+prices/packages+and+prices.htm

"Verizon FiOS Internet service is not available for your home."

Thank you for shattering my hopes and dreams

hah. 

 But in all seriousness not all parasitic worms are harmful.  Some just happily live in your intestines, eat your poo, and don't try to attach to the intestinal walls and tear stuff up.  The FDA is even investigating some of these worms in a stage 2 trial to test whether they would be a useful treatment for Chron's disease.  Actually, my dad told me about this, and the article that he showed me said that the FDA is fast-tracking this treatment, not making it wait in line like all the others so that it can be tested sooner, because the trials shown thus far have shown a lot of promise for people with chron's.