I bought two 10 foot HDMI to DVI cables from Amazon for $9.99 apiece, great deal right? First thing I did was try to plug it into my laptop and it wouldn't go. I looked at the pins and one of them was misaligned so I straightened it and tried again. This time it plugged in and worked. I pulled it out again and looked at it and noticed one of the pins was shorter than the rest. Damn cheap cables. Then I looked at the DVI plug in the back of my laptop and ITS' PIN 14 WAS SHORT TOO. Damn cheap cables have destroyed my laptop!

Or so I thought.

Then I looked at the other cable, and it had a short pin 14 too. Great. No time to mess with it, I gotta go to work.

When I got here, I happened to notice that pin 14 was short on ALL OF OUR DVI CABLES.

Turns out that Pin 14 carries +5V, and they purposely make it shorter so it won't short to the other pins if the disconnected cable gets up against something conductive. I now feel stupid for worrying about it all day.

Feel free to abuse me for my ignorance, but maybe this will save someone some trouble.