But the whole front half of the airplane on most airlines (LCCs excepted) has power outlets. That includes premium economy and a bunch of regular economy.
You don't need brand new gear though: A used Nikon D2x or D300 on a good lens will produce results as good as most pros would get with film back in the day. Those bodies even drive all the old (cheap) Nikkor AF lenses. Total cost for a body and a couple of high quality AF zooms will run you less than $500 on eBay.
If you want to get really cheap, pick up a D1 for $35, a refurbished 55-200 VR for $100, and maybe a 2x teleconverter for $20.
There's a lot more to a micro controller than the CPU. Intel's Micro controller offerings have traditionally had weak timer and ADC peripherals.
Edit:
Just glanced through the user guide [0]. The timers are pretty basic.
The general purpose one timers only count down, and don't have capture/compare logic (lame!). It does not appear that the timer end state (all 0's) can do anything other than interrupt the CPU (like triggering the ADC, toggling the state of an IO, or capturing the state of a comparator or IO).
The watchdog only seems to have a single clock source (CPU clock), with no backup like in the MSP430 series. So you can probably get stuck in a low power mode, and there's no protection if the clock source rolls over and dies. There's an interrupt-then-reset mode, which is nice, I guess.
The real-time clock is nothing that can't be implemented in lightweight software using a general purpose counter on, e.g., MSP430.
The ADC is a bright spot. The channel sequence table appears to allow channels to be sampled in arbitrary order, and a multiply-adder can apply calibration constants to the raw conversion before the data leaves the peripheral.
It's $85 for 5 years, and realistically, yes, most of that money just goes to line the pockets of the politically connected. On the other hand, you can pretty consistently go from curb to club in 5 minutes, and you bypass the nude-o-scope.
I'm all for standing up for principle, but this one is already lost. TSA doesn't care if 10 ppm of the traveling population opt out. Google "managed inclusion" if you want to understand why organizing an opt-out protest on Thanksgiving (or generally encourage people to opt out) won't change anything.
> There's a significant background check involved which, I suspect, does more to enhance security than some millimeter wave scanner in the security line.
No, there isn't.
I walked into the interview booth on a whim one day, when my flight arrived early. They were booked solid, but someone had missed their time, so they slotted me in. My "extensive" background check was completed and KTN issued in less than 24 hours. They may run some sort of cursory criminal records check, but any such check is automated and too fast to be called "extensive."
Edit: I should add that I do not have (and have never had) any sort of security clearance, but people who do tell me that the process for the lowest level of "real" security clearance takes many months and costs many thousands of dollars.
The Nexus program in Canada, for example, involves among other things an extensive interview and background check by the opposing country (for example, as a Canadian, the US performs my check).
That or you can just listen for tire noise. Even electic cars are quite loud above 25 mph, or so, so it only really becomes a problem at stop lights. Even then, the distinctive power supply whine will let youn that a hybrid or electric is behind you.
Agreed about tire noise and whine, but the problem is level of ambient noise, and habit. If you have an IC car nearby, even idling, the electric one will be virtually silent.
On #1, it actually is a problem. Look at the range of the fuel cell cars that have been released or announced. None of them have even as much range as a Tesla Model S (and they cost more...).
It also presents a problem for refueling. There is no reason to expect a hydrogen car to refill any faster than a natural gas car (and plenty of reasons to think it will take longer to get the same amount of range). If you aren't familiar with natural gas cars, take a look at the Edmonds's long term review of the Honda Civic NX.
Frankly, I don't see how hydrogen cars are going to compete with electrics in terms of range, performance or refuuling time. Who is going to buy them? And we are subsidizing the hydrogen infrastructure, why exactly?
