Lots of good talks today. From the point of view of a US engineer, it was an especially interesting day. Why? Because most of the day was taken up by representatives from each of the non-US properties talking about what they've been up to, problems they're having, and so on.
We got to hear from:
After the formal presentations were over, a group of us headed out in the rain to search for dinner. We found excellent food. And then managed to wind up in a British pub. Don't ask.
If I lived in Japan, I could have have a 26Mbit DSL connection via Yahoo! BroadBand (Y! BB). Holy crap!
What's it cost, you wonder? A bit less than my 1.5Mbit DSL or 3Mbit Cable in the US.
Think about it this way. In the 20-30 seconds it normally takes to establish a dial-up connection and get an IP address, you could have downloaded 60MB worth of data.
If you don't live close to the central office, you have to suffer with the slower DSL connections: 12Mbit, 10Mbit, or 6Mbit.
Oh, the pain...