Trying to understand limitations of Web Edition tools

On top of that, what IP can I use without time/tether limitations? It seems that I can't do any of the tutorials provided with the BeMicro SDK because everything is part of a licensed Mega function... The EPCS Flash Controller and JTAG UARTs can't be used without a license!?!?! Really?

How is a hobbiest/student ever supposed to do something cool with FPGAs when the companies selling them want to make bank on the software tools? The reason I purchased the Altera BeMicro in the first place was because Xilinx tools are obviously expensive. I thought Altera's lineup offered free embedded soft cores and everything needed to at least get started in this.

This sucks because I want to get away from using dedicated uC's tied to separate FPGAs. Ideally, the uC would be ON the FPGA and not next to it. But how can anyone apart from a company do this in an economical way that makes sense?

I'd be so much better off just using an NXP LPC1343 with a small Xilinx Spartan-3E for my project.

Side note: Does anyone want to buy a lightly used BeMicro SDK? I just got it today and probably can't get any use out of it.

Don't you guys have enough money? Can't you make your cash selling silicon and not by gouging engineers for their tools?