There are a few free options available, by free I mean as in beer.

For 8 bit work, you can go with Atmel ATMega and ATTiny, using the free AVRStudio.
Theres also MPLAB IDE for PIC micros, also free.

For 16/32 bit work, you cant go past ARM. You have Eclipse and CooCox as options for free IDE's ( coocox is more integrated, and has open source hardware debuggers available that can be easily used). Both are based on GCC toolchain.

Id recommend the ARM route, as the Cortex M series is very good for the price ( esp the LPC1700 series from NXP ), and the programmer and debugging tools are cheap and non proprietary.

Im sure there are other options out there too.

If the plant is genetically engineered, can it still be called natural?

As this is Slashdot, due to your misspelling of the word 'cooperative', all points that you have raised, and all factual information given, is now incorrect. Your argument has been officially dismantled.

Welcome to Slashdot. Thanks for playing.

*rolls*

ThePeices places a Critical Hit against Bieeanda with Biting Sarcasm and Intellectual Dry Wit.

Me neither. Its inevitable considering how internet spaceships and fantasy sword and sorcery are so alike in almost every way imaginable.

Remember, CCP Games had to change the name of the game to EvE because they were about to get sued for copyright and trademark infringement for the word-for-word similarity that Dungeons and Dragons has to EvE Online. Almost every person who has ever seen these two games side by side actually cannot tell them apart, such is the similarity in evidence here.

I have an ingenious explanation which explains why nobody is screaming 'slashvertisement', *and* why this article was posted considering the mind-boggingly enormously huge number of articles compared to the userbase...

OK, want to know why? OK,get ready....this is big-sky thinking sort of stuff, and in many circles this sort of thinking may be highly controversial, but im going to put it out there, and watch what sort of reaction happens once the world is presented with this utterly incredible, stunning level of enlightened thought.....

"Its not a slashvertisement"

Now, 'whoa' I hear you cry, ' this is indeed a level of thinking that goes above mere mortals, a level of genius that makes Einstein look like G.W. Bush', and I wholeheartedly agree with you, and am humbly appreciative of your kind, kind words, but I dont do this for myself, I perform these feats of stunning intellect for the benefit of the human race itself.

Enjoy your now enlightened view on this situation.

Not really. We have defined an electron (matter) as the electron-particle that has a negative electric charge. A positron (anti-electron, antimatter) is an electron with a positive charge. Same goes for protons etc, and we know for certain that we and all the matter around us are composed of the 'matter' version.

No, because if they were equal in quantity, the left over particles would be a 50-50 mix of matter and antimatter, but this is not the case in reality.

What mercury? Ain't none in LED's.
LED's don't emit radio waves. The power supply might ( but utterly harmless levels ), but not LED's
LED's don't cause autism.

LED's don't do anything, except emit light and get a bit warm.

OP: Education. Get one.

Sad thing is you imply your willingness for planes to crash to make it easier on everyone.

So you had your feelings hurt once, therefore he should be OK with having his name hijacked and diplomatically damaging posts posted under his name.

Thats some mighty impressive logic and deductive reasoning you have used there sir.

Color me like, totally impressed dude.

Just like to confirm that I also do not get this impression from the summary.

In fact, my impression was exactly as described in TFA.

I beat Samsung to it.

I currently use my brain to control my Galaxy S3. Its uses an ingenious "series of tubes" coupled to a mind boggling number of complex electrochemical reactions within a complex neural network to control the muscle tissue that connects to the tendons that drive my fingers which directly connect to the Galaxy S3.

Samsung should stop this R&D ( why reinvent the wheel when you can licence the design for cheaper ) and simply start paying me royalties for every Smartphone and tablet they sell.

How can it kill you?

What does star trek have to do with this?

Where I live, we had this huge shallow mag 6.3 aftershock right next to the city. The cellular networks performed pretty well during the massive emergency call spike dealing with all of the dead and injured, even while dealing with the widescale infrastructure damage that had just occurred. Emergency calls were mostly available in the hours after the quake, and the two main carriers handled the load well all things considered.

We found that SMS messaging was the best method for communicating with friends and family, as voice was under heavy use at the time and best left for emergency use. SMS was good enough really, as it does not require realtime delivery.

The main telco also immediately set every payphone to allow free calling to any phone nationwide, cell or landline for weeks after, and started putting up free WiFi on the top of many payphones. ( The free WiFi is still there today )

Overall, not a bad result from the technology. Good emergency planning can and did save lives.