I sincerely hope that, when the flight crew put the battery in the lavatory, that it did not make contact with water!! That said - it is important that people understand that airport check-in staff ask you to confirm that there are no "dangerous" items packed in your baggage (whether it be hold baggage, or cabin baggage). A lot of the dangers are not always "obvious" - for example, Braun used to sell curling brushes and tongs (not sure if they still do) that were filled with butane gas. If in doubt - declare it.

I'm so poor, I don't even have a penny!! Can I enter a photo of an IOU instead??

As much as it annoys the hell out of me when folk take "selfies" on their smartphones, I laughed out loud at the look on the guy's face when he was told that a shot was taken on the other guy's iPhone - the photo he half-praised!!

It's just a guess - but, I'm guessing "Carla" won't be posting that photo on MATCH.COM!!

I find it ironic that a pig appears in shot - this one's probably got a pilot's licence!!

If the base cost of the drive was cheaper to import to UK instead of Hungary (assuming parity on import duty) then of course the drive would be, but my guess is that these drives are leaving an assembly plant (likely to be in the Far East) via one of the large integrators, such as DHL, UPS, TNT, etc. As regular clients of these courier companies, they would have negotiated a very good discount for their traffic. Given also that these 3 carriers all have their European Hubs based in Europe (TNT is Liege, DHL, Liege and (I believe) Dusseldorf) it is cheaper to linehaul by truck to Hungary than it would be to pay the more expensive airport landing fees that the UK applies. Even if these carriers moved their freight to the UK via the ferry ports, they have the ferry operators' costs to factor in as well.

The main "killer" is the ever-expanding EU, where there is no such thing as "harmonisation"! Today, I took receipt of a WD Passport external hard-drive that was shipped from a warehouse in Hungary. Since WD are an American company, I'd imagine that they researched where to base their European operations at the cheapest cost, and Hungary was the answer. I'm not sure of the VAT levels in Hungary, but you can safely bet your mortgage that it's a damned-sight less than UK! Due to the "free circulation" issues, this means that the Hungarian government gains (for example) 14-15% VAT, and upon delivery to the UK, the Chancellor gets ZILCH! As for Online Purchase Tax - we have it (of sorts), but it is more commonly known as Import Duty (when the goods enter a Member State from outside the EU), but none of this money is filtered down to pay towards what Gamka's suggesting. Our Politico's are too busy burying their collective noses in the trough to be bothered with the people that actually make this country what it is - the working man (and woman)!!

John - from what I understand of your musing, you are basically asking if a camera can be hacked, or not. I'd say (at the moment) it's not possible, as there would have to be that connectivity to the internet in order to "plant" rogue software/images. If I was a hacker, I'd be more likely to write a program that surrepticiously embeds an image onto a digital card, such as an sd card. That image could then have code written to it that, upon insertion to the camera, it further embeds that image in the flash ram (if that's the part of the pcb that temporarily stores photos). As this would be done on an "ad-hoc" basis, I don't see it being worth a "script-kiddy's" time doing that on a one-to-one basis. I think their m.o. is mass infection, so such a scenario would have to infect a whole range of digital cameras, from Nikon through to Pentax, from "point and shots" through to DSLR's. Having said that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone's already written such code for mass infection of smartphones in that way.

I'd have thought Home Contents insurance would only cover for loss/damage within the confines of the home (although some policies may permit a camera to be covered for a specified time period out of doors - holiday cover, for example). As Ken suggested, check your Home Contents insurance to establish what it covers, and any restrictions on the coverage of the policy.

Welcome, Gavin!

You live in a beautiful part of the world, with lots of photo opportunities such as Penang, The PETRONAS Towers in KUL, the exotic wildlife and flowers, and let's not forget the pretty Malaysian girls too!!

Don't worry about your broken English and grammar - I'm sure we will all understand you.

Looking forward to seeing some of your photos too!!!

Enjoy the site too!!