I live in apartments in the Seattle area - in fact, I'm a few miles out from the Microsoft campus. We get people who don't use the ILEC or incumbent cable co, the latter whose name sounds like "bombast" - because they're cheapskates ,so they filch off of others' open wifi.

This includes the front office. Which they used for sharing, and that includes file sharing - which poses a risk, in this day and age, for cancelling all internet service for the front office, something they rely on.

Personally, I need to have a notice eating at my mail like I need a hole in my head. It might push security by the openness, but I don't need to be spending too long setting this stuff up - I have homework.

Gonna reinforce here.

PEX tubing for your plumbing is pretty damn cool, and pretty cheap. No worries at all about pipe corrosion if you have funky water, and they tend not to burst. Moreover, the right kind of box can set your valves for all fixtures in one central location. The bad news, however, is that you can't just cut the valve if you're on the commode and the commode suddenly springs a leak on the intake.

As for hardline networking, just do it. Have a wifi spot for guests and laptops, but for desktop boxes, well, wifi never really made sense to me - and besides, it's hard to beat the reliability of a copper CAT6E line, or fiber, or....

Perhaps this is going to be ready when the IPv6 flag day is?

Seems that atty4kids has gone to 404 land. Interesting, that.

So what would this do to the ability to recycle the materials? A general rule is that recyclers want you to clean glass (rightly so, as ketchup turns to pretty much carbon at the 2000 deg F required to melt glass, thus spoiling the recyc batch), but what would this do under intense heat?

I used to work for Speakeasy.

That last 10% is generally considered to be transactional overhead. Speed testers don't tend to count that. Your best advice is to either live with the 300 kb/s missing, demand a 10% discount for that overhead (which will likely be unsuccessful, because that top speed is NOT guaranteed and it will most likely say as much in the TOS), or find a provider that will provide that max speed limit at all times.

Good luck.

On Wikipedia, there's a saying: "don't stuff beans in your nose". It's an admonishment to not tell somebody not to do something that shouldn't be done; somebody's liable to do it. Not sure if this truly bears relevance, but....

I'm talking US mail. Snail mail. Like "write a well-written letter and put it in an envelope and apply address and postage and dust off the mailbox and use it for outbound mail" mail.

If you're feeling that persistent, send them one copy of the same letter per day, for ten days, or until you get a response. Which ever comes first. Make it clear in your letter that you'll do this until you get an answer, expect delays in cessation, blah blah blah. Doesn't need to be more than one per day, because if you send two, they all arrive at once. And don't send on Sunday or holidays, they'll get two on arrival. Short version: annoy them to the point of response, not to the point of anger.

Don't care. I don't use Apple. Android does what I want the way I want. If Apple's iOS did it, I'd buy it. The end.

If your electronics are lasting less than three years, you're buying shite electronics. I carry a Nexus One - it's lasted two years because I don't get it wet and take care of it, and despite a few drops on concrete here and there, has operated wonderfully for two years - the only reason I would upgrade at this point is to get a newer version of Android.

There are a few agencies.

Better Business Bureau has a small amount of clout, but is a membership agency; moreover, membership is not compulsory. There are other mmebership agencies that do similar things for its members, that are proprietary to certain functions: Automobile Association of America (AAA, or "Triple A") does things along the lines of hotels, mechanics, that sort of thing, that are held to certain standards (members join for roadside assistance benefits and discounts, among other things; businesses join for promotional reasons as a sort of franchise). Thing is, though, that's about all I know about. Other organizations exist such as EFF and ACLU, but those are more for protection of Internet rights and general civil rights, respectively, and are more concerned with government action.

In the governments, you have your attorney generals, your consumer protection bureaus, and then you have courts, be they small claim (typically less than US$5000, some variance), or courts that oversee larger judgement cases.

Overall, that's kind of how it works in the US. I wish we had a non-gov agency that did things like thi, though.

Hmm... how would one go about forming one?