First, yes Apple is keeping to the requirement with the micro-USB adapter, but since no-one will be carrying it around, the iPhone 5 users will not get the advantage of just using a friends charger(especially now that their friend needs to have a Lightning-charger instead of the quite ubiquitous 30-pin).

One link to refute your point on digital video:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link
Uncompressend 1080i. Yup.

"...and could even be used in military applications."

The naiveté is overwhelming. Military applications, if even remotely plausible, would be the first to get this technology, not high-tech baby monitors.

I thought there were lots of talks about this after the movie came out, and the definite answer was that it was impossible because DNA does not preserve that long, no matter how nicely that mosquito was encapsulated in amber.

Actually, there is a difference. A bank will give you a loan and expect you to pay it back with a certain interest rate. When you've paid that back, you just have to pay your other costs, rest of your income goes into your pocket. With a record label you're forever stuck with only getting a small cut, and sometimes they even withhold a part of this to cover costs they think belong to the artist.
This is different. I don't think anyone would ever take a loan from a bank that demands that 90% of all future income from the investment go straight to the bank.

Also, the bank hopes to see you succeed(for obvious reasons), but can't really impact your success, and would be indifferent of your success if you went to another bank. Record labels on the other hand will try to block independent artists from breaking into the mainstream radio playlists(RIAA labels probably tolerate eachother though), unless they can force/convince you to sign, because you're their competition.

They NAILED the IPO, and neither undersold the stock(like LinkedIN did) and lose money that way nor did they value it too high and scare off any potential investors. I'm surprised and impressed.

Sure, for the guys holding the stock at FB it's a letdown, but the company nailed it.

I'm guessing with proper tuning, you'll get exactly the kind of performance you want.
They are raising the efficiency at which the engine burns gasoline. This can be used to propel a commuter car to same speeds with same acceleration, but using less fuel.
Or, increasing the amount of power you get out of a certain engine size, since the power is constrained by the amount of air-fuel mixture you can burn, which then depends on RPM/engine volume and possible use of turbos/superchargers.
So if you suddenly improve the amount of energy you get out of the same amount of fuel, it's not a bad thing.

Being filmed in 48fps and having a draw rate of 60fps on something filmed in 24fps is VERY different!

I find it more important what date it's on than what month.
"When is your party?"
"On the 9th".
It's understood that it's the upcoming 9th. Just like it's understood that it's this year. Unless we need to specify.
"9th of May"
or even
"9th of May, 2013"

The American equivalent would be:
"In April", which basically a useless bit of information for an event taking place on one night. Sure it's covers longer events "The roadworks will be done in May" or when you're not bothered to give specifics. "Eh, in April?"

All in all this all depends on how much detail is needed. "When does your flight arrive?"
For some, the answer "around midnight" will suffice, but some need to know "Twenty past midnight".
And as such, the point that the spoken language should control the order of the date/month/year setup is ridiculous.
Logic > Language

But if Americans can't pay enough attention to grasp the information in the sentence "9th of May" because of the word order, who am I to judge?

If the tablet is bought from a retailer outside of the injunction area, no one can touch them, since the injunction covers SELLING, not buying. Mind you, this injunction covered all of EU except The Netherlands(IIRC), so the Germans would only have to shop from a Dutch webshop to go around it.

Car analogy time. Well, not an analogy, but a real life example.

A Cadillac CTS-V Coupé costs between 65,000-70,000USD depending on what goodies you pick out. In the UK, the same car will net you 70,000-73,000 GBP.
At today's rate, that's 110,000-120,000USD. Almost TWICE the going price in the US.

Things to take into consideration are the UK VAT of 20%, and whatever anti-pollution taxes are put on such a high performance car. But double up?

Compare this to how the price tag on European cars is the same or lower in the US, but in USD compared to EUR.

This is ridiculous. I know many people who stopped downloading illegally when they got iTunes or Spotify or any of the way more handy ways of getting music to their computer. Downloading music from p2p-networks has been relegated to the secondary tier, behind movies and TV-shows(which aren't $0.99). Where is this kind of piracy the most common? In countries with later or no access to say American TV shows or films. HULU works quite well in the US, so there is little incentive to download TV-shows there. But in Europe, it's a free-for-all. The second a new episode of House or something drops, tens of thousands of Europeans, South Americans, Asians or whatever grab onto it, and off we go. Same with theatrical releases of films, and then DVDs. Delays in the releases sets the stage for a huge surge in interest to download a movie. Some movies even come out on DVD in the US before it's released in theaters in Europe. How's that going to improve things?
Oh how I'd love to have a HULU-like service here, even for a buck or buck-fiddy a pop. But no. Either wait a year or two for the shows to air here(Finland), and also pay TV-licence because then I would have to get a digital receiver, OR watch it 10 minutes from now.
Big props to Voddler for actually trying to bring a proper film and TV streaming service to the European masses. No doubt there'll be a delay between availability, but it's something!

As for buying music, I started buying music once I found play.com, where instead of 18€ per disc I'm paying between 5 and 10€ for most. Holy cow, going from buying NO CDs at price 18€ to buying 30-odd CDs in the last 3 years when priced at half. Guess what boys and girls, the music industry's revenues from me have increased by a factor of unlimited!
Same with DVDs. Before online shopping and reasonable prices, I had maybe a dozen. I've tripled that number since then. And I keep going back for more, since now it feels like "hey, 2 CD's and a DVD for 19€, good value" instead of "15€ for a CD? I don't like this music THAT much".