I'm pretty much with you on this; I wouldn't ever carry a bare phone or one with just a silicone bumper in a front pocket let alone a back pants pocket. But I also feel to some extent that this is a "mobile" device and it should be designed with a certain ruggedness in mind, especially considering the retail replacement cost.

That case is only about $17 US and I wouldn't trust a case that cheap; the Otterbox Defender case I use on my iPhone 4s was something like $35 and it's been great; the Defender for the 6 / 6 Plus is probably going to be between $60-$75 but it's well worth it to protect your $600 plus dollar phone.

I see so many problems with the world and very little being done to work those problems out; one of the biggest (in my opinion) being the energy crisis and the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. What the world needs is clean, cheap energy i.e. hydrogen fusion or something similar. You see articles in the science news every once in a while but many of them turn out to be frauds or nothing ever comes of them.

"Of course, the promise is to keep all products supported as they are" so many big company's say that to help smooth over any objections to the purchase but those promises are seldom kept. To quote one of my favorite movies, what's the community to do after the fact use the "Liar, liar pants on fire defense".

It may depend on the state, consumer protection is much better in some states than others i.e. "void where prohibited". So parts of Comcast's boiler plate TOS may not be enforceable in some states. But in my opinion this kind of strong arm behavior is reprehensible and limits on what services a person is able to run on his connection should not be legal. Although I would say that if one person was doing something with his or her connection that used so much bandwidth that everyone in the neighborhood was being negatively impacted then something would have to be done.

Hmmmmm.... interesting, I'm not sure if I saw it before or after the 1980 restoration and it was just hung from the ceiling at the time (in the gift shop if I remember) but if it was after I don't know what the restorer did to it but it looked like it was about to fall apart. I remember seeing pictures in the "Making of Star Trek" book where it was on a floor mounted stand like you say, it's never occurred to me that it wasn't designed to withstand being suspended by wires.

I saw it there around 1980, probably before the first restoration. It was great to see it but it was pretty dirty and didn't look very well kept. I hope this new guy takes good care of it.

Yeah, black bagged and disappeared is probably whats going to happen.

If they are overcharging you or miss-measuring, this could be a consumer protection issue and possibly your State Attorney General or possibly the U.S. Attorney's office could help you. But you're going to have an uphill battle all the way, just like Slashdoters roll their eye's every time a judge makes a crazy ruling in technology related cases that's clearly wrong because they don't have a good grasp of the technology involved you're going to be speaking a foreign language to these people and you're going to have a very hard time getting them to understand the issue i.e. "What's DD-wrt?" or even "What's a router?".

I'm willing to give anything a try but none of my friends or customers who have Verizon service use DSL and have FIOS instead. I can probably find and disable the router and wireless part of the Verizon Actiontec but my question is, if I do that will the channel guides still work on the houses cable boxes? The Verizon people made it seem that if the Actiontec were not the router on the network then the channel guides and DVR's wouldn't work right.

I can't control what provider my friends and customers choose, only advise them of the pitfalls associated with Verizon and their equipment; the reality is that Verizon's marketing machine convinces people that they're getting a good deal when in fact it's probably the same as Comcast and you're stuck using Verizon's equipment. Of course if you have a business and don't use Verizon's TV service then you can use your own router but if you're a residential user you're out of luck.

I've never understood why the Verizon cable boxes / dvrs channel guides won't work with third party routers and only with those Verizon branded Actiontec routers and I've never been able to get a straight answer to that question from them either.

I don't like those combination modem / routers very much either and I always suggest that Comcast people get just a modem and their own router; but can someone please tell me what to do with people who have Verizon? Those Actiontec modem / routers / wireless combo are just awful and port forwarding doesn't seem to work properly on the ones I've worked with but Verizon says that if you don't use their equipment and you have their TV service then the channel guide on the cable boxes won't work, so how do any of you overcome that problem?

I build them for friends and relatives who want quality equipment.

For myself, about every two to three years.

There is just way too much potential for legalized drugs to go sideways and in a serious way. Ferry operators, crane operators or any heavy equipment, train operators, pilots, your investment manager, or any person in a critical position where one wrong mistake could cause lots of deaths or financial loss i.e. crash the stock market. Would you really want someone who's high or jonesing for their next fix piloting the ferry you're on or operating the crane that's lifting an I-Beam at the construction site you happen to walk by on the way to work?

I can't speak to all breeds but there have been many recorded cases of dogs guarding their owners dead body's without any signs that the animal ate any part of the owner and it took animal control to take the dog away because it wouldn't allow anyone to come close.

My dogs have always been incredibly sensitive to my feelings, if I'm down they'd come over and lay their head on my foot or lap or go get their ball and throw it at me as if to say "Come on buddy, lets have some fun". I've never heard of a dog eating their dead owner, so I doubt that very much.