I've definitely seen comments like that. But most commonly I see comments like:/* status == 1 means the account is locked */ if (accStat == "ModeAlpha5" || pwdS == 'Z')...
How can he be "packaging Opensource in with Free Software", when all "Free Software" is open source? Looks to me like he's just talking about open source in general (and a few related topics). The only evidence I see that he falls into the OSS camp is that he doesn't feel compelled to mention "Free Software" when discussing open source.
Some, like myself, fall so squarely into the open source camp, that we don't consider "Free Software" a seperate group, but simply a sub-group with a political dimension that doesn't particularly interest me. Not that I hve any problem with others pursuing those politics if they like. (Except I do get a bit irked by the insistance on redefining "Free" to mean "only non-free in the ways we like").
"many people make a living selling development of Free Software" Not that many, really. Some, certainly. I've even hired people to write open source code on a few occasions. But if I'm paying, I'm going to be getting a non-GPL license.
"The GPL simply prevents others from taking your software and making it proprietary"
Which was already impossible. Nothing others do will change the fact that you still have your code and can do with it as you like. The GPL prevents others from putting your code together with other (possibly proprietary) code and making the new whole proprietary. So people like me, who (sorry) get paid to develop proprietary software, can't use GPL'd stuff. I considered using an LGPLd library once, because it was good, but still, the license dictates what I feel should be purely technical decisions (assuming I don't open all the source it links to, which I either don't want to or can't.)
So I don't use any GPL code, which means I don't contribute back to anything GPL. I do use a variety of BSD(ish) licensed code, and guess what, I pretty regularly send patches or enhancements back to the maintainer.
The fact that I have the freedom to do whatever I want with the code means I can use it in the first place. In fact I have no particular desire to lock up and hoard my enhacements. I'm much more interested in getting my patches/enhancements merged into the same tree as everyone elses.
So frankly, a BSD license will get me to give back to the community. A GPL license will prevent me from doing so; or more accurately, a GPL license will prevent me from getting paid to give back to the community.
Anyway, now I've rambled away from my main point which was: Please stop with this hogwash that the GPL prevents some sort of boogeyman from taking the software you wrote and making it proprietary. It can't be done. Proprietary means others do not have access to the source. You have the source to your software, GPLd or not, and can continue to share it how you please, no matter what the boogeyman does.
"I'm sorry, I don't want my government creating its own ISP."
So vote against it. That's not what's happening here though. In this case, your (State) government is telling my (local) government that it can't create an ISP. If you (and others in your town) don't want your town starting an ISP, fine. But if people in my town decide we should have a town ISP, who are you, that lives elsewhere in the state, to tell us we can't?
"It'll stifle competition (it's hard to compete against free)" It's easy to compete against free, you just need "better". Companies compete succesfully against lower-priced alternatives all the time. Presumably most towns aren't going to run these things themselves; there will be competition for the contracts. (Actually, most towns aren't going to run these things at all) I'm not overly concerned about stifling competition though, since there is exactly one company I can get broadband from currently, and everyone else I know has either one or zero choices. So I think it'll increase inovation by creating competition where there currently is none.
Heck, my broadband provider has already moved from the establish-monopoly phase into the leverage-monopoly-for-advantage-in-other-markets phase. (They keep jacking up the price if you don't subscribe to their cable TV service) Competition would be great.
Ahh, Lisp. So elegant. So deeply loved by it's admirers. So entirely unused outside academia.
I won't argue the merits of Lisp, because (while Lisp fans probably disagree) I think the merits of a language are largely in the eye of the beholder. But I would be curious to hear a Lisp advocates explaination for why it isn't more popular. And don't tell me the rest of the world isn't smart enough, or I'll want to know why the smartest people in the world, using the best language, have not made a bigger impact.
I've written Lisp. It's fun, it's interesting. But when I (and a lot of other people) want to get stuff done, we don't choose Lisp. Most of the people I know who do choose to write in Lisp, aren't trying to make a ship date. They're trying to think about a problem in the abstract (not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm trying to make a ship date)
So since this is slashdot, no one should correct you when you are just plain wrong? You suspect MS is using GPL'd code on the basis of some easily disprovable half-remembered evidence and no one should tell you you're full of it?
Dude, this is slashdot. Finding someone who is stupidly wrong about something and telling them so is the whole reason I come here.
It's not an "open question". They put "Mozilla Compatible" in their identification string so that pages that scanned this for "Mozilla" (because they were written for Netscape) would find it and give them the content, rather than returning a page that said it only worked with Netscape.
Before you throw wild accusations around, you ought to learn at least a little bit about the history of what you're talking about.
Traveling due east or due west would not be what I'd consider a straight line on the ground (a great circle), except on the equator. If you ever look at a map of the routes flown by airplanes across the US, they will appear (on most maps) to curve northward. The planes are actually flying the shortest path.
"You're forgetting two sources. One is the US military/Intelligence community."
Who probably don't worry about the street layout of some new development on the outskirts of Kansas City, and who won't give you their data anyway. And who almost certainly BUY US street data from the same companies we're talking about.
"The other is local states and municipalities." Who, if they have any data at all, certainly don't have high quality up to date data for the whole country in a consistant format.
"In other words, if 3 places all fall on the same straight line (around the world of course), then all three will also be in a straight line on a Mercator Projection map. For this reason, the Mercator Projection is by far the most useful for sailors and Navigators."
Just to nit-pick, if three places fall on the same straight line on the earth, they will most likely not do so in a mercator projection. A constant compass heading is a straight line on a mecator projection, which was nice for pre-information age navigators. But constant compass headings are not straight lines on the earth. Even those old-time navigators would work out a long course as a great-circle, plot it out on their mercator map, and then break it into straightline segments.
Storing the data is no problem. It's really not that big, and by Googles standards it's trivial.
Getting the data, and massaging it into whatever format they're using, now that's the issue. You can get the data for a lot of countries, and you can massage it all. But in general you get to do all that, from the business deal with someone who has the data through the loading work, seperately for every country, and each country will be roughly the same amount of work, regardless of size. So you're going to start with the country that gets you the most customers.
I deal with map data a lot, and your understanding is at least mostly wrong. USPS data blows chunks for streets; If mail dosen't get delivered there (all highways) they have no reason to care. And they never have a reason to care exactly where the street is, the mail carrier just has to be able to drive along it. The Census has better data, called TIGER, which is half decent, but they only really worry about it being up to date every ten years. For really good, up-to-date data like these services will all need, you're going to be paying big $ to one of a few companies that produce it (by examining aerial photos and even driving around to check).
The part of your understanding that is right is that if you pay, you can get pretty good data for all the roads in the US in one big consistent format and quality pile. Some other countries have good data, but you probably need to work to connect it across borders. For size of market handled by one data set, the US is king, and any US based company in their right mind would start there. Note that all of this is constantly changing, and in particular the EU may soon pass the US on the market size vs. data hassle equation.
You may feel more protected, but according to accident statistics, you're not. You can control what you drive. If you select a big truck even though you don't need the carrying capacity, you are endangering me in order to make yourself feel safer, and to feel that way incorectly to boot. In this example, the idiot is you.
Since when does having no debt make you rich? Seriously, you're classifying someone who has no money at all as rich simply because they don't have negative money?
Forget whether you're invested at 7% or not; if you have a car loan, credit card debt, and some other loans to boot, you're already stupid.
The house loan is fine though, assuming it's a 30 year fixed rate on a house that isn't much more than you need. Real estate generally at least holds its value, and you can live there.
Financial security is not exactly rocket science. Just don't spend money you don't have. If you want to retire some day, spend less than that.
" Correct me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't Kate/Kdevelop do this already?"
I have no idea, but as one of the users of the leperous shit, I can tell you that Visual Studio certainly does this already, along with everything else the article author seems to be hoping to get a few years from now.
I really don't get what the guy is thinking. XML is great if you want to make up a well defined way to structure some data. And you get all kinds of wins if you can put your data in well defined structured formats that everyone agrees about the symantics of. But, clue stick time, source code is ALREADY in a well defined, structured format everyone agrees about the symantics of. I guess if your format isn't one a lot of people have thought much about manipulating and working with XML might still be a win. Let's see, is that the case with say, C code?
"I've heard from too many people that punching out code all day at work makes them very hesitant to even touch a computer at home"
I'd agree with that, even though I love my job. I pretty much never do my own programming for fun anymore. I love programming all day at work, and I have various ideas of programs I'd like to write on the side. But somewhere between 25 and 30 I pretty much lost interest in doing coding (or anything) for more than 8 hours a day. Sometimes I miss the sheer mania of an all night coding run, but over all my life is a lot more balanced when my hobbies aren't the same things I do all day at work.
Your math is better, but the astronauts statement is still wack.
He says the chance of such an event in a hundred year period is 1 in 455. So
Chance of no event in a 100 year period : 454/455 = 98.8%
But we know no such event has occurred since, say, the rise of Australopithecus afarensis, 4 million years ago. So no such event has occurred in 40,000 such periods.
Chances of that = (454/455)^40000 = 0.6 * 10^-37 % or about 1 in 166,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0
So maybe we've just hit that jackpot so far, but I'm thinking that 1 in 455 estimate might be a tad off.
I just read you post, and then went back and read the list of software greats in the story, and you know what I noticed? I have no idea what any of their sexual orientaions are, nor can I come up with any reason why I should possibly care.
"I fully expect, as usual, to be modded down for this post."
As far as I can tell, you're entirely offtopic, so perhaps your expectations will be realized.
Hybrids like those currently on the market that use batteries to improve their efficiency make a lot of sense. But running on full electric most of the time, while still carrying a gas motor around doesn't really fly. The gas motor and all its infrastructure is pretty heavy, and weight is the enemy of range. Range is what it's all about with pure electrics; it's (IMO) the only downside worth talking about. A little battery to let you gas motor run efficiently is one thing, but when you've got enough batteries to move the car all on their own, that's a lot of weight right there; you can't really afford a gas motor you're not using.
Your idea makes more sense as two cars: an electric for the daily short-distance commute, a gas car for the weekend trip. Registration & Insurance regulations are the hurdle there though.
"Batteries do NOT provide adequate range" "Lead-acid have even worse range"
Depends on what you consider "adequate". I stipulated current pure electrics were not suitable for trips. But you can put together a lead-acid system in your garage with an 80 mile range; I'd hope an actual automaker could do better. For many families second car, that would be plenty. I'll even agree that the cars wouldn't be intercahangeable. When the other car was in the shop, that family wouldn't have a long range car. Oh woe! What will they do? Maybe whatever one-car families do when their car is in the shop, except that the two car family will still have the short-range car. Somehow it doesn't sound like a big problem to not be able to go on a road trip on the same day that your road trip car is in the shop.
"Lead isn't the nicest stuff either." So it's a good thing we can recycle it into new batteries almost perfectly, as opposed to say, any of the various unpleaseant byproducts of fossil fuel combustion.
I also agree that most people having an electric as a second car would not eleiminate the need for fosil fuels. But it would reduce it greatly. And powering cars from electricity would give us much more flexibility in how we produced the energy to begin with.
"I'm not sure why you think it can only come from waste products" I don't. I think it only makes sense when it comes from waste, because from an energy standpoint, the waste is basically free.
"We don't currently have enough crops to make all our fuel from vegie oil or alcohol" Nor does it look like we ever will. Currently non-waste based biofuel takes as much or more energy to produce than it contains.
"It does seem that bio or hydrogen are the only viable RE sources."
Bio is not viable, and hydrogen is not an energy source.
Frankly, I think it's inevitable that cars will come to be powered by electricity, whether it's stored in batteries or as hydrogen. It's possible we'll make advancements first such that these cars will have "adequate" range. Or perhaps we will revise our definition of "adequate". The rise of the fossil-fuel based car produced all sorts of changes in society and peoples expectations about their own mobility. Why shouldn't its demise (whenever that comes) do likewise?
"There is no clear way to power cars with electricity." Use the electricity to produce hydrogen. Not there yet, but not so far off. As for today, when we're stuck with batteries:
"Batteries don't provide the range" They do for most daily driving, just not for your big road trip.
"are made of nasty stuff" And for the latest fancy-schmancy battery tech, that's a problem. But boring old lead-acids are 95% recycleable.
"take too long to charge." Overnight gets you all the charge you need to commute the next day, so this is just another stating of the "can't do roadtrips" objection, which I'll grant you. But it's a very rare two-car family that couldn't have one of them be pure electric right now today.
"Cue up the biofuel ranting..." Cueing... Begin:
Biofuel is useless on any significant scale. That produced from waste products (old friolator grease, etc.) is great for those who use it, but there just isn't enough waste to use as a significant power source. Biofuel produced from crops grown for that purpose is just plain stupid. With even the most optomistic estimates, you only get out marginally more energy than you expended producing the fuel. It's not even close to a good idea, and there is no indication that it will ever get any better. The very concept should have been forgotten long ago, and the only reason it hasn't been is that US Presidential candidates know they can't get elected unless they do well in the Iowa Caucus, so there is great demand for excuses to give away tax money to Iowa. Ethanol isn't a very good excuse, but apparently it will do. Hence the only alternative energy source with any real funding is by far the least promising. The companies that make solar and wind power equiptment really need to get a clue, and put all their factories in New Hampshire. (or Iowa, but Iowa happily goes along with the ethanol scam, so screw them)
"Quite frankly, I disagree with your assertion that the society in the US is disrespectful to teachers"
Oh, we talk about how much we respect them all the time. But we don't PAY them like we respect them. As individuals, we all respect teachers, or at least claim to. As a society, we clearly do not.
But maybe you're right and we would pay teachers fin if only those lifetime politicians wouldn't screw things up. If only we could vote them out of office or something...
Slashdot Mirror
I've definitely seen comments like that. But most commonly I see comments like:
if (accStat == "ModeAlpha5" || pwdS == 'Z')
How can he be "packaging Opensource in with Free Software", when all "Free Software" is open source? Looks to me like he's just talking about open source in general (and a few related topics). The only evidence I see that he falls into the OSS camp is that he doesn't feel compelled to mention "Free Software" when discussing open source.
Some, like myself, fall so squarely into the open source camp, that we don't consider "Free Software" a seperate group, but simply a sub-group with a political dimension that doesn't particularly interest me. Not that I hve any problem with others pursuing those politics if they like. (Except I do get a bit irked by the insistance on redefining "Free" to mean "only non-free in the ways we like").
"many people make a living selling development of Free Software"
Not that many, really. Some, certainly. I've even hired people to write open source code on a few occasions. But if I'm paying, I'm going to be getting a non-GPL license.
"The GPL simply prevents others from taking your software and making it proprietary"
Which was already impossible. Nothing others do will change the fact that you still have your code and can do with it as you like. The GPL prevents others from putting your code together with other (possibly proprietary) code and making the new whole proprietary. So people like me, who (sorry) get paid to develop proprietary software, can't use GPL'd stuff. I considered using an LGPLd library once, because it was good, but still, the license dictates what I feel should be purely technical decisions (assuming I don't open all the source it links to, which I either don't want to or can't.)
So I don't use any GPL code, which means I don't contribute back to anything GPL. I do use a variety of BSD(ish) licensed code, and guess what, I pretty regularly send patches or enhancements back to the maintainer.
The fact that I have the freedom to do whatever I want with the code means I can use it in the first place. In fact I have no particular desire to lock up and hoard my enhacements. I'm much more interested in getting my patches/enhancements merged into the same tree as everyone elses.
So frankly, a BSD license will get me to give back to the community. A GPL license will prevent me from doing so; or more accurately, a GPL license will prevent me from getting paid to give back to the community.
Anyway, now I've rambled away from my main point which was: Please stop with this hogwash that the GPL prevents some sort of boogeyman from taking the software you wrote and making it proprietary. It can't be done. Proprietary means others do not have access to the source. You have the source to your software, GPLd or not, and can continue to share it how you please, no matter what the boogeyman does.
"I'm sorry, I don't want my government creating its own ISP."
So vote against it. That's not what's happening here though. In this case, your (State) government is telling my (local) government that it can't create an ISP. If you (and others in your town) don't want your town starting an ISP, fine. But if people in my town decide we should have a town ISP, who are you, that lives elsewhere in the state, to tell us we can't?
"It'll stifle competition (it's hard to compete against free)"
It's easy to compete against free, you just need "better". Companies compete succesfully against lower-priced alternatives all the time. Presumably most towns aren't going to run these things themselves; there will be competition for the contracts. (Actually, most towns aren't going to run these things at all) I'm not overly concerned about stifling competition though, since there is exactly one company I can get broadband from currently, and everyone else I know has either one or zero choices. So I think it'll increase inovation by creating competition where there currently is none.
Heck, my broadband provider has already moved from the establish-monopoly phase into the leverage-monopoly-for-advantage-in-other-markets phase. (They keep jacking up the price if you don't subscribe to their cable TV service) Competition would be great.
Ahh, Lisp. So elegant. So deeply loved by it's admirers. So entirely unused outside academia.
I won't argue the merits of Lisp, because (while Lisp fans probably disagree) I think the merits of a language are largely in the eye of the beholder. But I would be curious to hear a Lisp advocates explaination for why it isn't more popular. And don't tell me the rest of the world isn't smart enough, or I'll want to know why the smartest people in the world, using the best language, have not made a bigger impact.
I've written Lisp. It's fun, it's interesting. But when I (and a lot of other people) want to get stuff done, we don't choose Lisp. Most of the people I know who do choose to write in Lisp, aren't trying to make a ship date. They're trying to think about a problem in the abstract (not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm trying to make a ship date)
So since this is slashdot, no one should correct you when you are just plain wrong? You suspect MS is using GPL'd code on the basis of some easily disprovable half-remembered evidence and no one should tell you you're full of it?
Dude, this is slashdot. Finding someone who is stupidly wrong about something and telling them so is the whole reason I come here.
It's not an "open question". They put "Mozilla Compatible" in their identification string so that pages that scanned this for "Mozilla" (because they were written for Netscape) would find it and give them the content, rather than returning a page that said it only worked with Netscape.
Before you throw wild accusations around, you ought to learn at least a little bit about the history of what you're talking about.
Traveling due east or due west would not be what I'd consider a straight line on the ground (a great circle), except on the equator. If you ever look at a map of the routes flown by airplanes across the US, they will appear (on most maps) to curve northward. The planes are actually flying the shortest path.
"You're forgetting two sources. One is the US military/Intelligence community."
Who probably don't worry about the street layout of some new development on the outskirts of Kansas City, and who won't give you their data anyway. And who almost certainly BUY US street data from the same companies we're talking about.
"The other is local states and municipalities."
Who, if they have any data at all, certainly don't have high quality up to date data for the whole country in a consistant format.
"In other words, if 3 places all fall on the same straight line (around the world of course), then all three will also be in a straight line on a Mercator Projection map. For this reason, the Mercator Projection is by far the most useful for sailors and Navigators."
Just to nit-pick, if three places fall on the same straight line on the earth, they will most likely not do so in a mercator projection. A constant compass heading is a straight line on a mecator projection, which was nice for pre-information age navigators. But constant compass headings are not straight lines on the earth. Even those old-time navigators would work out a long course as a great-circle, plot it out on their mercator map, and then break it into straightline segments.
Storing the data is no problem. It's really not that big, and by Googles standards it's trivial.
Getting the data, and massaging it into whatever format they're using, now that's the issue. You can get the data for a lot of countries, and you can massage it all. But in general you get to do all that, from the business deal with someone who has the data through the loading work, seperately for every country, and each country will be roughly the same amount of work, regardless of size. So you're going to start with the country that gets you the most customers.
I deal with map data a lot, and your understanding is at least mostly wrong. USPS data blows chunks for streets; If mail dosen't get delivered there (all highways) they have no reason to care. And they never have a reason to care exactly where the street is, the mail carrier just has to be able to drive along it. The Census has better data, called TIGER, which is half decent, but they only really worry about it being up to date every ten years. For really good, up-to-date data like these services will all need, you're going to be paying big $ to one of a few companies that produce it (by examining aerial photos and even driving around to check).
The part of your understanding that is right is that if you pay, you can get pretty good data for all the roads in the US in one big consistent format and quality pile. Some other countries have good data, but you probably need to work to connect it across borders. For size of market handled by one data set, the US is king, and any US based company in their right mind would start there. Note that all of this is constantly changing, and in particular the EU may soon pass the US on the market size vs. data hassle equation.
It was certainly "Universal Resource Locator" when I first encountered it in mid-1993.
You may feel more protected, but according to accident statistics, you're not. You can control what you drive. If you select a big truck even though you don't need the carrying capacity, you are endangering me in order to make yourself feel safer, and to feel that way incorectly to boot. In this example, the idiot is you.
Hours to set up version control??? It takes me two mouse clicks. Get a real IDE.
Since when does having no debt make you rich? Seriously, you're classifying someone who has no money at all as rich simply because they don't have negative money?
Forget whether you're invested at 7% or not; if you have a car loan, credit card debt, and some other loans to boot, you're already stupid.
The house loan is fine though, assuming it's a 30 year fixed rate on a house that isn't much more than you need. Real estate generally at least holds its value, and you can live there.
Financial security is not exactly rocket science. Just don't spend money you don't have. If you want to retire some day, spend less than that.
" Correct me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't Kate/Kdevelop do this already?"
I have no idea, but as one of the users of the leperous shit, I can tell you that Visual Studio certainly does this already, along with everything else the article author seems to be hoping to get a few years from now.
I really don't get what the guy is thinking. XML is great if you want to make up a well defined way to structure some data. And you get all kinds of wins if you can put your data in well defined structured formats that everyone agrees about the symantics of. But, clue stick time, source code is ALREADY in a well defined, structured format everyone agrees about the symantics of. I guess if your format isn't one a lot of people have thought much about manipulating and working with XML might still be a win. Let's see, is that the case with say, C code?
"I've heard from too many people that punching out code all day at work makes them very hesitant to even touch a computer at home"
I'd agree with that, even though I love my job. I pretty much never do my own programming for fun anymore. I love programming all day at work, and I have various ideas of programs I'd like to write on the side. But somewhere between 25 and 30 I pretty much lost interest in doing coding (or anything) for more than 8 hours a day. Sometimes I miss the sheer mania of an all night coding run, but over all my life is a lot more balanced when my hobbies aren't the same things I do all day at work.
Your math is better, but the astronauts statement is still wack.
0 0
He says the chance of such an event in a hundred year period is 1 in 455. So
Chance of no event in a 100 year period : 454/455 = 98.8%
But we know no such event has occurred since, say, the rise of Australopithecus afarensis, 4 million years ago. So no such event has occurred in 40,000 such periods.
Chances of that = (454/455)^40000 = 0.6 * 10^-37 %
or about
1 in 166,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0
So maybe we've just hit that jackpot so far, but I'm thinking that 1 in 455 estimate might be a tad off.
I just read you post, and then went back and read the list of software greats in the story, and you know what I noticed? I have no idea what any of their sexual orientaions are, nor can I come up with any reason why I should possibly care.
"I fully expect, as usual, to be modded down for this post."
As far as I can tell, you're entirely offtopic, so perhaps your expectations will be realized.
Hybrids like those currently on the market that use batteries to improve their efficiency make a lot of sense. But running on full electric most of the time, while still carrying a gas motor around doesn't really fly. The gas motor and all its infrastructure is pretty heavy, and weight is the enemy of range. Range is what it's all about with pure electrics; it's (IMO) the only downside worth talking about. A little battery to let you gas motor run efficiently is one thing, but when you've got enough batteries to move the car all on their own, that's a lot of weight right there; you can't really afford a gas motor you're not using.
Your idea makes more sense as two cars: an electric for the daily short-distance commute, a gas car for the weekend trip. Registration & Insurance regulations are the hurdle there though.
"Batteries do NOT provide adequate range"
"Lead-acid have even worse range"
Depends on what you consider "adequate". I stipulated current pure electrics were not suitable for trips. But you can put together a lead-acid system in your garage with an 80 mile range; I'd hope an actual automaker could do better. For many families second car, that would be plenty. I'll even agree that the cars wouldn't be intercahangeable. When the other car was in the shop, that family wouldn't have a long range car. Oh woe! What will they do? Maybe whatever one-car families do when their car is in the shop, except that the two car family will still have the short-range car. Somehow it doesn't sound like a big problem to not be able to go on a road trip on the same day that your road trip car is in the shop.
"Lead isn't the nicest stuff either."
So it's a good thing we can recycle it into new batteries almost perfectly, as opposed to say, any of the various unpleaseant byproducts of fossil fuel combustion.
I also agree that most people having an electric as a second car would not eleiminate the need for fosil fuels. But it would reduce it greatly. And powering cars from electricity would give us much more flexibility in how we produced the energy to begin with.
"I'm not sure why you think it can only come from waste products"
I don't. I think it only makes sense when it comes from waste, because from an energy standpoint, the waste is basically free.
"We don't currently have enough crops to make all our fuel from vegie oil or alcohol"
Nor does it look like we ever will. Currently non-waste based biofuel takes as much or more energy to produce than it contains.
"It does seem that bio or hydrogen are the only viable RE sources."
Bio is not viable, and hydrogen is not an energy source.
Frankly, I think it's inevitable that cars will come to be powered by electricity, whether it's stored in batteries or as hydrogen. It's possible we'll make advancements first such that these cars will have "adequate" range. Or perhaps we will revise our definition of "adequate". The rise of the fossil-fuel based car produced all sorts of changes in society and peoples expectations about their own mobility. Why shouldn't its demise (whenever that comes) do likewise?
"There is no clear way to power cars with electricity."
Use the electricity to produce hydrogen. Not there yet, but not so far off. As for today, when we're stuck with batteries:
"Batteries don't provide the range"
They do for most daily driving, just not for your big road trip.
"are made of nasty stuff"
And for the latest fancy-schmancy battery tech, that's a problem. But boring old lead-acids are 95% recycleable.
"take too long to charge."
Overnight gets you all the charge you need to commute the next day, so this is just another stating of the "can't do roadtrips" objection, which I'll grant you. But it's a very rare two-car family that couldn't have one of them be pure electric right now today.
"Cue up the biofuel ranting..."
Cueing... Begin:
Biofuel is useless on any significant scale. That produced from waste products (old friolator grease, etc.) is great for those who use it, but there just isn't enough waste to use as a significant power source. Biofuel produced from crops grown for that purpose is just plain stupid. With even the most optomistic estimates, you only get out marginally more energy than you expended producing the fuel. It's not even close to a good idea, and there is no indication that it will ever get any better. The very concept should have been forgotten long ago, and the only reason it hasn't been is that US Presidential candidates know they can't get elected unless they do well in the Iowa Caucus, so there is great demand for excuses to give away tax money to Iowa. Ethanol isn't a very good excuse, but apparently it will do. Hence the only alternative energy source with any real funding is by far the least promising. The companies that make solar and wind power equiptment really need to get a clue, and put all their factories in New Hampshire. (or Iowa, but Iowa happily goes along with the ethanol scam, so screw them)
"I think teachers are respected, maybe not by the majority of students they are teaching, but by society as a whole."
In any job, respect==pay.
"Quite frankly, I disagree with your assertion that the society in the US is disrespectful to teachers"
Oh, we talk about how much we respect them all the time. But we don't PAY them like we respect them. As individuals, we all respect teachers, or at least claim to. As a society, we clearly do not.
But maybe you're right and we would pay teachers fin if only those lifetime politicians wouldn't screw things up. If only we could vote them out of office or something...