If you want to be a scientist, I really don't think you're going to be led away from that by a sociology degree.

I did a test tube shaking, microscope squinting, bug hunting degree and if someone had tried to recruit me to sociology, I would have thought they were retarded. Incidentally, 80% of my class were women. In the mid-80s.

Engineering was, I noted, overwhelmingly male. I think that has something to do with the beer drinking requirements.

You should pop on over to a 'Clarity Clarence' meme generator with that one.

Until you read that Saddam et al were trying to weaponize camel pox. That virus was chosen because it was assumed that the local (middle eastern) population would have been exposed and thus largely immune to it. Never know, they might have been able to get it to work.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/bw/program.htm

Or $30 from Apple. At least it'll fit the bloody socket. I could understand if the mini DP end was iffy, but the VGA..?

Apple's PowerBook 1400 had a removable book cover style lid so you could put in pretty pictures etc. A company called Keep It Simple Systems made a solar panel that slipped right in. (TidBITS article here). Here's a quote from MacFormat magazine describing it (source):

The PowerCover is especially neat because it fits into the BookCover slot on PowerBook 1400s, so you can leave it on more or less permanently. This will extend the battery life by around 35% (the PowerCover is, after all, a bit smaller than the Mercury II). KISS claims you can expect its products to give you up to 20 years of free energy. An extreme example of these devices’ usefulness is that of Ralph Harvey, a research scientist who uses a solar charger on his PowerBook in the Antarctic where power’s clearly at a premium. [...]

A couple of people have died as a result of cheap knock-off chargers so what you think Apple may be implying -- "third-party hardware is real junk compared to ours" -- is probably on the money.

As for me, I tried to save a few dollars on a mini display port to VGA cable. Result: the VGA plug's shield is just a little too big for the VGA port it's meant to go into. It fits into some others a little better, but there's no getting around the fact that it's not-quite-right. Yep, a VGA plug - the type that's been around for 30 years. Some company has managed to screw that up.

Live and learn.

They are not incompatible alternatives that can't exist together. My iMac has an SDXC card slot, four USB 3 ports, two Thunderbolt ports (one's connected to another monitor) and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

The MacBook Pro I just bought (refurb) has a Gigabit Ethernet port, FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps), two USB 3 ports, 1 Thunderbolt port and an SDXC card slot.

In my country, we would then have a Royal Commission into wells, with broad terms of reference, headed by an eminent QC or ex-judge and who would report to Parliament in 3 years.

"?Hardware failure" was my first thought, too. It's done well, but everything decays eventually. Maybe it has reached its 'eventually' point.

Well, it is hard to have "sheep" and "Romance" in the same sentence. Unless you're from New Zealand.

Australian here (four times as many sheep as people) .
The only hoggett I know is this guy.

While micro HDMI and mini VGA might not be proprietary, if you expect to plug them into anyone else's displays and you aren't carrying an adapter cable, you're going to be disappointed. Samsung should have put in a Thunderbolt port and sold adapters.

Love it. That belongs on a t-shirt.

Lightworks has some happy customers. (Windows, Linux). It is free-ish, but there is a cost associated with the use of some codecs.
iMovie (Mac) and Windows Movie Maker are also available.

These should fill the need for "casual video production", or the "want to try editing a video or two but have no idea if you're going to be good enough that it will be worth spending money on video editing software" scenario. Given that the free version of WeVideo drops a watermark on any exports, someone who just wants to have a go at this stuff could alternatively download a trial version of Premiere Elements, FCP X or something from Corel if they want a more professional system that won't watermark their videos.

In addition, some video cameras come with rudimentary video editing software.

Others may be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software

I think we're all going to be amateur videographers/photographers/indie musicians looking to break into the pro market.