Speedtest sites don't tell the whole story, especially at higher speeds...
Some of the speedtest sites are only on 100mbit themselves, even those on gigabit are usually sharing the bandwidth at their end... And then there's peering, the interconnect between your isp and the speedtest site might not have 1gbit of free capacity at the time your testing. The end devices (or the software running on them) might also not be up to the 1gbps rate - lots of cheaper gigabit nics can't handle wire speed, long or bad cabling, flash based speedtest apps etc.

I've had a box with 1gbps in a data centre for a few years now, and i can quite happily pull 1gbps doing torrent downloads and from some linux mirror sites, but i get a lot less from speedtest sites and many things download a lot slower because the other end or something in between can't handle it.

You need to test a variety of different things, and at different times of the day...

That's very true, and doesn't just apply to unix based systems... You should not be connecting a system to a public network unless you fully understand and control it, and windows is actually much worse in this regard because its massively more complicated than any unix.

Anybody with sufficient technical knowledge can fake an email to pass a casual user, but most people don't have that knowledge...

Just doing a spoofed SMTP transaction won't change the source ip that the message originates from, which will fail things like SPF checks and likely get flagged as spam (i.e. the recipient may never even see it)... And then there's things like S/MIME and PGP.

Faking a letter on the other hand may require a little effort as you describe, but anyone can do that... It's not really a lot of effort, doesn't require any specialist skills and would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to prove it was fake.

You were lucky to get an unsubsidised n95... I had a carrier branded one which was horrendously unstable so the point of being unusable, some features were disabled (like the SIP client) and battery life was terrible.
Debranding it and putting the stock nokia firmware on and it was much better.

Development of Concorde basically stopped...
There was a second generation Concorde under development (http://www.concordesst.com/concordeb.html) which would have improved fuel economy, increased range and decreased noise.
Had development continued then there would have been many other improvements by now too, especially if there had been competing supersonic airliners to spur development.

And companies should locate their workplaces somewhere that people can afford to park (or provide free parking), and somewhere which is within a short distance of affordable housing, and not in the same place as large number of other businesses. They should also make working hours more flexible, and encourage home working.
All of these things would save the employees time and money, and improve working conditions.

Some public transport is sufficiently dangerous that you'd not want to advertise that you have an expensive device like a laptop...
Some people suffer from motion sickness which becomes MUCH worse if you're trying to read something.
Often you don't get a seat and have to stand, it's difficult to use a laptop while standing.

For me, using public transport is dead time. When driving i'm concentrating on the act of driving, which at least keeps my mind occupied, when sitting/standing on a train i'm doing absolutely nothing.

And centralized business districts are the biggest cause of travel problems... Thousands of people converging on the same place at the same time, all forms of transit get ridiculously congested and painful to use.
If things were more spread out, both in location and working times then most people could have a short and not too unpleasant journey to work.

With cheaper fuel we can go back to concorde, while loading and unloading wouldn't be any fast the actual flight time would be significantly less.

Some people get travel sickness, which is usually much worse if you're not facing in the direction of travel... Rear facing seats would be terrible.
Also, there are rear facing seats available in business class on some airlines.

Exactly, if you block things then employees will find ways round it...
I went to a company that blocked "software download sites", so the users couldn't download things like firefox from mozilla.com etc, so they found alternative sites where they could download firefox - and these sites contained malware infested versions instead of legitimate firefox.

People these days have portable devices, you can allow them to take breaks using an isolated wifi network and their own portable devices...

The average corporate desktop is extremely vulnerable to attacks from websites (against the browser, the plugins, other applications etc), and trying to defend against such attacks is a huge pain and/or huge cost.

It's actually less of a concern than it is with small vendor closed source...
There have been a few small software vendors where the company owner or core developer was killed, which then resulted not only in the ceasing of development, but also in the source code either being lost or tied up in legal disputes for years.

For something that's open and has user interest, it can be forked and development can be continued by someone else...

This is often a big problem... A lot of businesses want to have offices in certain areas, which are generally the areas where other businesses are based... You end up with dense commercial zones, where residential properties are very scarce, very expensive and very small usually with no gardens.
You also end up with massive congestion on all travel routes at specific times (i.e. travel conditions that would be illegal for transporting livestock), and wasteful over capacity at other times.

Moving closer to work may then be impractically expensive, or result in a significantly inferior residence. The alternative being a long, uncomfortable and expensive commute.

Home working is part of the answer, but spreading out locations and working hours would go a long way to improving conditions and efficiency.

Well your example shows that working environment matters a whole lot, and it's different for everyone.

A small apartment is not good, you really need a separate room with somewhere comfortable to sit. Then there should be very few or no distractions at home, but you also have the convenience of somewhere to go and relax when you need a break, and an ample supply of food/drink etc.

If you want a lack of distractions, a typical open plan office is a terrible environment because there are usually many distractions. For some tasks, being able to go into a room alone and close the door is very helpful.

Depending on what you're doing, having people around you to collaborate with may be beneficial, or may be a distraction.

A comfortable environment is an absolute must, if you are feeling uncomfortable you will be irritable and not work well. You need somewhere comfortable to sit and a tolerable climate.

It's all down to the individual, the job and the company... What works well for one person doing a particular job may be terrible for someone else or a different job. Similarly if your office environment is nicer than the working environment you can provide for yourself at home then home working is a poor choice, but the same can also be true in reverse.