The problem with legislation of this sort is that the fines imposed are ludicrously small compared to the revenue of the companies being fined.

If I were fined for, say, exceeding the speed limit at the same ratio to my income as most fines imposed on companies, then the fine would be something like $0.05. Hardly a disincentive at all.

I don't love Microsoft, but kudos to them for branching out creatively in an effort to shore up their sagging fortunes.

Microsoft just announced record Q4 earnings a few weeks ago of over $17B. How, by any stretch of the phrase, are their fortunes "sagging"? I wish my own personal fortunes were sagging as badly.

"It's closer to $6k per kW in my next of the woods (that's why I paid), but I'm sure you can find a company to do it for $5k. I went with a company that had done some installations in my neighborhood, though, and had a pretty good reputation."

That's close to what mine cost ($80K for 12.5 KW). Even in summer with all 3 air conditioners running, my electric meter is still running backwards. Even it winter it's usually generating more power than we're using, expect on dark overcast or rainy days.

"There is no consistency, and that alone can give rise to errors"

If you think we're inconsistent, take a look at the bloody Brits.

They use cm and meters for length, except on the roads, where they still use miles (and MPH).

They use grams and kg for weights, except for people, where they use stone.

It's a bloody mess.

G00head: What company do you work for? I want to make sure I never apply for a job there.

"Sorry for being such a nitpicker. Actually, if the quasar that lit up the cloud died about 200.000 years ago, "

If the quasar died 200,000 years ago, how would we know this? If the quasar is 650 million LYs from Earth, wouldn't the evidence of its death take 650 million years to reach us?

Of course, as soon as Sony brings this to market, some other company, or group of companies, will unveil a competing product incompatible with Sony's, starting yet another format war. Too bad these guys can't just work together and agree on a common format and save us all time, money, and having to deal with dead formats (e.g. HD-DVD).

Fusion is relatively easy to achieve on a small scale. What's extremely hard to achieve, judged on the efforts of various organizations over the past 60 years, is fusion that produces more power than it consumes.

As the old saying goes: "Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6".

Yet another example showing that the Islamic world is still in the Dark Ages that most of the rest of the world emerged from sometime in the 13th century.

Oh, I forgot to mention that David May, the creator of the XMOS chip, is also the creator of Occam, the language mentioned in TFA.

"I'm somewhat familiar with the Propeller. Parallelizes quite well up to eight simultaneous tasks. Nineth? Well, turn back around and back to hell."

In that case take a look at the XMOS chips. Each core supports eight hardware threads and there are 1, 2, and 4 core versions available. Each core runs at 400 MHz. With the 4-core chip, you have 32 hardware threads to work with. Need more? No problem, just add more chips and connect them using the built-in Links hardware. XMOS sells a development board that has 16 of the 4-core chips for a total of 512 hardware threads.

The development tools (IDE, compiler, debugger) for Windows, Linux, and OS X are free downloads from the XMOS site. XMOS has added parallel processing capabilities to C (calling it XC), but the development tools also support C, C++, and assembly. JTAG units are US$50, which is quite reasonable.

Check it out: www.xmos.com www.xcore.com

Disclaimer: I have no relationship with XMOS except as a satisfied customer.

In the U.S. there are three general electronics magazines:

Circuit Cellar
Nuts & Volts
Elektor

Of these, Circuit Cellar is the more advanced and covers topics that are probably over the head of most beginners, but it's still worth a read in any case.

Elektor will be familiar to European readers as it's been published in multiple language versions over there for decades. The U.S. edition dates from the beginning of 2009 and contains the same editorial content as the UK edition. The construction articles in Elektor are quite well done and are look very professional. Elektor recently bought Circuit Cellar, but haven't changed the focus of that magazine (yet). Whether they do in the future remains to be seen.

Nuts & Volts is geared more toward hobbyists and beginners, but it's still good for all levels (at least some of it). It has several long-running columns devoted to the Arduino, the PICAXE, and (starting recently) the Parallax Propeller.

Another good option is Everyday Practical Electronics, which is published in the UK and sold by major U.S. chain bookstores.

Although not strictly devoted to electronics, Servo Magazine (published by the same people who publish Nuts & Volts) does cover the electronics aspects of robotics. There is some overlap with Nuts & Volts, but not a lot.

Don't bother with any DIY chemistry research at home. As far as the authorities are concerned, anyone doing this is either a terrorist or operating a drug lab.

"Do as I say don't do as I do, some politicians outside of Argentina also have that attitude ;-)"

In my experience, that's what all politicians do. As do the cops. They set bad examples for the rest of us.