That's the problem right there. Vendor lock-in. While everyone else was moving to MMC or SD card, sony insisted on using their own format memory card for their own devices. Which would not be a problem, except that they were much more expensive (~2x IIRC) than generic media. Also you couldn't use your Sony memory stick in anything else; an SD card doesn't have that problem.

As an electronics engineer/embedded software/FPGA developer, I agree that the Mac sucks for most of those things. For hardware design, unfortunately Windows is the only game in town, unless you spend some serious coin on high-end UNIX workstations and software to match. Even then Orcad or Altium designer would be more than adequate for most designers. For embedded software, I prefer Linux as a dev platform. Mostly because I use custom Makefiles and a bash shell to do most of my coding, so when on Windows I have to revert to cygwin. The main advantage of using windows for embedded stuff is that there are usually installers for toolchains available, which means that I can run a consistent toolchain across multiple machines/developers, and archive the toolchain with the code when releasing. For FPGA development, Linux and windows are equivalent these days, with both the major vendors offering Linux versions of their software alongside the windows ones. They also both offer free (gratis, not libre) versions of their software for both platforms these days, too (no more running Altera QUartus under WINE...). Unfortunately OSX is nowhere on the radar for any of this stuff, although I admit to using my macbook pro for embedded dev, although the crippled command-line tools are a hindrance on occasion (example: sed not accepting \t in a replace command). When it comes to the creative arts, though, the mac is without peer IMO. Horses for courses I guess...

During the recent flooding, my suburb was cutoff from the rest of Brisbane. About half of my suburb lost power during the disaster, including my house, so I used my 3G-enabled ipad to access the internet to keep informed. The battery on that lasted several hours, until the phone towers started losing *their* battery backup, and the internet became intermittent (depending on where you were in the suburb).

Well, if your "worldwide" is restricted to the Americas and Japan you might have a point. However, almost all of the rest of the world is 240V AC (or 240V AC Compatible): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weltkarte_der_Netzspannungen_und_Netzfrequenzen.svg

Can anyone who went to LCA this year tell me where it's going to be held next year?

I have a tray of 100 ATMega8L microcontrollers, so without even bothering to count I already have 'too many' (although personally I'd consider it 'just right', but that's a whole other thread).

What, like they do at gas stations?

That sounds like a great idea! I have an unused new-ish but low end nokia sitting in the drawer that would be ideal for this use.

No, you're supposed to use someone else's low-end discard.

The 4th of July would normally not mean much. Except that, ironically, it's my wedding anniversary.

Or that other software house that released 3.0, 3.10, 3.11, 95, NT, 98, 2000 (oops, version numbers not 2k compliant), XP, 2003, vista, 7. Make up your mind people. Version numbers, years or names. Pick one, please. Your inconsistency does not reflect well.

I'm Australian, so US Independence day would normally not mean much to me. However, in my case it also happens to be my wedding anniversary...

I absolutely hate and detest keyboards with the home and end keys hidden like those ones - the EDA software I use uses home and end for navigation around the layout, so I am lost with them in any other place than the regular 'AT' layout.

I personally have a stockpile of 5 or 6 of these, plus another complete set of keycaps. I love my Model M.