Yes most people on the east and west coasts have multiple options:
SOME people have options. I live in Manhattan, which means either Verizon or Time Warner owns all the infrastructure underneath me. Because of this I only really have two options for broadband. One is DSL through Verizon or through another provider which leases lines from Verizon and the other is cable through Time Warner or another provider which leases from Time Warner. And, remember, this isn't just a city on the east coast, this is the biggest, most densely populated city in the country in which two corporations control all of my broadband choices and make sure that no matter which one I choose, I will pay a premium for my service.
I actually get my DSL through Earthlink, as I've been with them forever and have had the same email address since ethernet packets were made of steam and pigeons. But I also know that I'm paying ~$40.00 a month for 3.0 Mbps, and that if there were true competition I would have a lot more choice for less money. Now, if I want to ditch my email address and go straight to Verizon I could probably pay less, but I like my email address. And, since there's no competition here my only other choice would be cable, and Time Warner is many things, but a good deal for consumers isn't one of them.
So, while I may agree with you in theory, in practice I know that corporations only give their customers a break when forced to by law.
By the way, if you want fast last mile here, your only choice is FiOS through Verizon. Their installation techs are horrible (I know someone who needed six visits just to get it working), you don't get anywhere near the speeds promised and it's very expensive.
USB 3 will do at least 200mb/s sustained.
And Vista is the fastest, easiest to use operating system ever, and 2009 is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
USB 2.0 was supposed to do 480 Mbps sustained, but you're lucky if you get 20 MB/s sustained. Given Intel's track record, I expect USB 3.0 to, maybe, be as fast as Firewire 400 for sustained transfers. There's a reason my TB backup drive is Firewire 800.
None of the follow on series have been nearly as good as the original series. They've ranged from mediocre (TNG) to downright horrible (DS9). This movie doesn't seem to be raising the bar.
What people seem to forget is that the success of the original series was a fluke. No one will ever accuse Shatner of being a good actor, but he fit the role perfectly. Additionally, Roddenberry wasn't a genius sci fi writer, but Star Trek was his baby and he shepherded it well. And the original series wasn't a success at the time it was broadcast, finding its fans only later in syndication. Despite this the various people who have been working on the news ones are all trying to recreate something which was accidental at the time.
All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin