I completely understand what you are saying and you are mostly correct. I shoot in manual because I am used to it and I want to make the decision between shutter speed and aperture. Is that overkill? Perhaps, but I do believe you should be able to shoot in manual mode and be comfortable doing so. When you are shooting, use whatever mode you are comfortable with and you may never, or only rarely need to shoot in manual. It is purely a choice but a good photographer should know how.

The flash should be in M mode and start with your camera in Manual, this is the most basic configuration and the flash should fire.

Welcome to the horrible world of video on DSLRs. This is why many filmmakers use very high end lenses and all manual focus lenses.

Absolutely disagree with you on this. No automatic mode is going to know how I want something to look. Anytime the camera is trying to determine what IT thinks is the right exposure there is a risk that it will not do what I am intending it to do.

That being said, for the VAST majority of shots, the automatic modes are absolutely appropriate and learning manual mode is only for when you are not getting what you want from the camera.

Not a clue, probably trying to keep the sales of the 1.0 going.

I could do a show on that topic, but David would not be participating in it.

If it is too dark without flash, then use flash. Otherwise you will need to increase your ISO speed.

There will be a small learning curve but your processing time improvements will be huge.

1 meter = 3.28 Feet

Unfortunately, no it doesn't. That's why shooting video gets very confusing. My Canon 7D maxes out at 30fps but I can set the shutter speed to 1/500th but I am still only shooting at 30fps but at a faster shutter speed each frame is exposed for a shorter period of time.