If the sheet music was legally purchased, then there's no reason the teacher can't play the song on the piano in the classroom. Usually, when such sheet music is purchased, the price includes such a license. I remember from grade- and high-school band that the charts we used were specifically licensed for our use (including performance).

I suspect the real issue is that the sheet music is being photocopied and handed out -- and that's the copyright violation.

Those of us who drink actual Scotch Whisky order it neat, meaning, no mixers or dilution.

I'm into IPAs, myself. I find lagers to be basically undrinkable.

Actually, cows that graze on pasture/grasslands taste much better than those that are force-fed corn and other grains.

Ugh, JD is the whiskey of choice amongst high-school and college students who have no taste. Hint: if you need a mixer for your booze (jack and coke?) then your booze is no good.

My preferred potable solvents need to be of legal age, and single.

The problem with that article is that Coburn is a fucking idiot.

I realize that they're a national chain, too, but we ALWAYS go to our local Ace Hardware store first for supplies for our endless home-repair projects. We go to Lowe's or the Despot only if Ace doesn't have what we need.

EAGLE's user interface sucks. Its library manager is worthless. The schematics look like crap and generating a BOM from them is painful. Its layout editor is dismal and is really only good for two-layer toy designs, which take forever to do because of the UI.

But as for alternatives, there is no usable schematic/layout package that doesn't cost the three to five grand or so necessary to get into PADS or Altium Designer.

I suppose the hobbyists (that's how that word is spelled) flock to it because they can get a free toy version. I wouldn't spend the thousand dollars CADSOFT wants for the full-up version of EAGLE, as it just ain't worth it.

The open-source alternatives are crap, too: gEDA is a mess. KICAD crashes too much. Neither can handle any layouts that require design rules more complicated than trace width and space.

But thanks for asking.

EAGLE is utter crap.

EXACTLY.

The main reason to glue an FPGA to a hard-core processor is that your application-specific logic can be right next to the processor, rather than in a separate device. The FPGA/Atom device, when installed in an OEM's product, will very likely NOT be user-programmable, as it's married to the underlying hardware (PCB and other external devices).

Actel supports Cortex-M1, too.

And my God, the tools SUCK.

I humbly submit that if the Arduino included access to the AVR's debug facilities, the hobbyists would be very happy indeed. "Why doesn't this work as I expect? I dunno, lemme fire up the debugger and step through the code as it executes and see where it fails."

My gripe, which you missed, was that a proper debug interface would be a great benefit for the newbie/hobbyist who is the likely end user of these things.

I said nothing about "doing it in an FPGA" (btw, I do FPGA design for a living, and don't get me started on embedding micros in FPGAs). I also never called you a moron :)

I like the idea of Arduino, just not its implementation.