So what other microcontroller to which ordinary people can solder things should people be using instead of an AVR?

Check out ground penetrating radar. Also, TSA uses backscatter, which works in a similar way - it doesn't REQUIRE anything to be behind the subject, you get a clearer image if you have a plain background (where plain means uniform reflection of the frequency used). Ultrasound works some some applications, but the image is rather blurry unless you have a very expensive unit.

I don't know if either is available in an inexpensive, low resolution hobbyist version. I'd bet there are some old units, two generations behind, on ebay. Now I'm off to Google for hobbyist radar .

A tricorder which combines low-quality short- range radar, backscatter, infrared and ultrasound might be very useful - infrared would see pipes in the wall, maybe the combination of radar and ultrasound would show the studs, etc.

Some places on Earth are just as alien as anything you saw on Trek. How explored is the ocean floor?

That was written prior to October 1998, when the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was signed into law. Besides, that applies only to the underlying musical work (as embodied in sheet music and the like), not to any sound recordings thereof. Sound recordings fixed prior to 1972 are covered under state copyright until 2067.

I disagree.

I do. I carry a 10" laptop while I commute to and from work on the bus because it fits in a bag that doesn't scream "steal me" the way a full-size laptop bag does. It's a four-year-old Dell Inspiron mini 1012 with 1-core 2-thread Atom N450 CPU and 1 GB RAM that runs Xubuntu. But once its second battery pack loses its ability to hold a reasonable charge, I'm looking at replacing it with an ASUS Transformer Book (quad-core Atom, 2 GB RAM) running Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell.

Yes, some months they may produce more noon power than they use evening some months they may produce a bit less.
That only affects HOW MUCH magic free power is required for the scheme to scale. If it's perfectly balanced, resulting in a zero bill, ALL electricity must be magical free electricity, because nobody is paying anything.

On the other hand, if everyone's excess at noon is equal to half of their usage in other parts of the day, they're only getting half of their energy for free, so only half of it needs to be magic. The instant that the total produced at noon exceeds the amount used at noon, you're throwing noon energy away giving them evening energy in exchange for trash energy that's being thrown away. That's already happening sometimes in California. If you're trading something of value that has a production cost in exchange for trash, that's only sustainable through magic.

No, $99 is less than $100, but the fact that $99 is less than $100 is irrelevant. The tablet advertised as $99 is not $99 because prices in the United States are typically quoted excluding shipping and sales tax.

So that you can continue to work on the same project between the tablet-like environment and the desktop-like environment without having to bounce everything off Dropbox and eat into your monthly cap.

Depends on what kind of boat. If it's a coracle (bowl-shaped 1-person boat intended to be carried on a man's back), and it's in usable condition, I'll take it.

No musical recordings have entered the public domain due to expiration of copyright. Ever. When the U.S. Congress expanded copyright to sound recordings in 1972, it allowed existing sound recording copyright laws at the state level, some of which provide for a perpetual term, to continue for one full work-made-for-hire copyright term. This means all sound recordings produced before 1972 are under copyright in at least one U.S. state until 2067 (17 USC 301(c)). If the songs were first published on or after January 1, 1923, the songs are not in the public domain in the United States. If at least one songwriter was surviving on or after January 1, 1944, the songs are not in the public domain in the European Union.

So long as someone else on Facebook didn't already use the same burner number before it was reassigned to you. And you still have to buy a phone on which to use the burner number.

> I haven't heard anyone asking to be provided with "free" energy from the grid during hours when the sun's not shining.

That's what net metering IS - everyone puts X kWh into the grid at noon, when the sun is bright. They then use X kWh in the evening, when they are st home cooking, watching TV etc. Since their net use is zero, their electric bill is zero - free power 20 hours per day. You can see why the utilities are saying that could cause problems.

Pss - the "subsidy" the ranting bloggers talk about is this:
Oil and gas companies, like every other company in the country, don't pay taxes on money they don't make.
If you spend $100 million buying crude oil, and sell it for $110 million- you made $10 million. That's called arithmetic. The wacko blog scene, the "tinfoil hat" crazy wing of green blogosphere is suggesting that oil companies should be the only companies taxed on their revenue, rather than on profit. They call treating all companies the same a "subsidy" .

There is of course ONE industry who has paid negative $3 billion in taxes in the last six years. That'd be solar, who receives tax money rather than paying taxes. Of course, the exact numbers depend on what you count as a solar company. For example, Solyndra received half a billion dollars of your money and mine through the federal solar subsidy program. They never produced anything related to solar power though, so are they part of the solar energy, or just another scam taking advantage of the solar slush fund? The editor in chief of Nature called Nanosolar "the poster child of silicon valley solar", but they too took a half billion dollars and never produced a panel, so is that part of the solar industry, or is "the poster child" pf solar just yet another half-billion scam to send taxpayer money to Obama's friends and campaign manager?

> the construction basically demands building mountains in the plains

Hoover dam is one of our nation's largest engineering projects. It's a few hundred FEET across, just filling a pre-existing canyon. Those hundreds of feet took years, and loss of lives, to build. You're proposing to build thousands of MILES. Thousands of FEET would be a huge undertaking, thousands of miles is beyond what you see in fantasy movies. You're in talking about quadrillions of dollars, maybe a billion dollars per person. Can YOU pay $12 million/ month for your electric bill?

Warmer? I'd be impressed if they at least understand the scientific method and qualifiy their statements with confidence levels.