Thank you for the reply. I assume you mean T-Com part of Deutsche Telekom, which was Privatized. As Part of the deal there was a law that any other ISP or Phone Carrier can lease lines up to the home for the same fair conditions anywhere in Germnay. That means if DSL is possible then you can get other from any other ISP. I don't know your address of course but i looked up for restaurant addresses in Baden Baden on google maps and just picked the first one and used the address (Holland Hotel Sophienpark GmbH, Sophienstraße 14 with Phone # 07221 3560) to look up availability for Arcor (one of many cheap ISPs, see http://arcor.de/ right on the fron page to the lower right) for which i had to five the street Address (Sophienstraße 14) and Area code of the Phone Number (07221). It stated that it is available at 6Mbit/s for 29.90 a month. After that i went to 1&1 (dsl.1und1.de) and check availability there for the same address, it says that the 16Mbit/s line is available for 24.90/Month for that address.

You are right though in that the actual speed might be a lot less, this is usually true if you live in an older home that does not have twisted pair wiring but only parallel wiring (the twisting cancels noise, without it the signals of other surrounding lines get mixed in). Simply if you live in a 100 year old house (not uncommon in germany) it probably also has 100 year old phone wiring.

In any case, if you can get inet from any provider you can get it from all of them. Whoever told you otherwise was lying (wouldn't be surprised if t-com lied to you, they are not a very good company, sort of like AT&T ;-)

My Parents live in the US (Missouri), i live in Germany.
They pay more then i do, they only have one choice for broadband (SBC Global which is now AT&T) and their download speed is slower then my upload speed. And i don't mean 'stated', i mean actual.
They have 768kbit/s down stated and they do get that but they pay around $45/month. In Germany i pay 29.90 euro for 32Mbit/s stated of which i actually get 3.9MByte/s sustained so 31.2Mbit/s actual and 2Mbit/s upstream stated of which i get like 220kbyte/s so 1.8Mbit/s).

My brother lives in mountain view (near google) and used to live in menlo park. On both occasions he had only two choices (dsl and cable form one provider each).
Each was horribly slow and very expensive. And this is in the F*ING HEART OF SILICON VALLY!!!. At least now in mountain view he gets free google wifi (which he uses exclusively, thank you google!).

In Germany i have 8 different DSL providers, all tying to outbid each other (this is in a small rural town with maybe like 5000 inhabitants). Unfortunately with DSL the max they can provide is 16Mbit/s over twisted pair, that's why i went with cable, which for the speed is just as cheap and way cheaper then anything i ever saw in the US. Sure i heard of things like 'Fiber to the premises' but in the areas my parents, my brothers and i lived it was never even considered, and in the last 10 years the price of 'broadband' was actually raised 2x. Each time my parents would cancel or threaten to cancel to get the 'new user' prices again which would be what they payed before. But it's not really much of a choice, if they want broad band they have to pay what AT&T asks.

This article is either total BS or somehow every place i know in the US has been miraculously spared of any type of competition leaving horrible service, horrible speeds for extravagant prices.
Does anybody in the US have something like 32Mbit/s (uncapped) $40/moth? If so, where do you live and what is your ISP?

Well if you just want to READ pdf files (not print them) then i would suggest just loading them in Google Docs.
You don't need any plugins for that (no Flash etc) as each page is simply converted to an image server side. I would think that this is secure.

In any case i always disable all file format plugins in FireFox. It actually happened a few days ago that i was suddenly asked to save a PDF file even though i didn't click on any link, on examining adblock i found a hidden iframe that apparently tried to load what i am very certain was a malicious pdf in the background.

by itself. If you share content that is copyrighted in your country, to which you do not have appropriate distribution rights for that country, then you MIGHT be doing something illegal.

When i download my favorite Linux distro via BitTorrent i am NOT doing something illegal. Having used a File Sharing program does not mean i have ever used it for any illegal purpose.
136 people admitted using file sharing software, they did NOT admit to using it for illegal purposes!

Why have we allowed the assumption that File Sharing = Illegal to become so commonplace?
I am outraged this is not the first point of contention for this study.

i think it would be bad anyway if the companies whose primary business is selling fossil fuel also controlled a large chunk of the renewable energy market.
I mean can you say 'conflict of interests'?

Leave it to the little guys that are better (specialized/core business) at it anyway.
And at least now we truly know where they stand.

most other countries have a higher broadband adoption ratio with better speeds
and lower prices, so if the majority of the people living in the US without
broadband don't want cheaper/better performing internet then something must
be really really wrong.

I would be guessing the lack of competition, throttling, being treated like dirt
and then spending a (comparatively) huge amount of money for the privilege
has probably scared those people off.