Not at all.

That is not a problem, its a paradigm shift.

The musicians who are making a living are doing it by performing music, instead of by selling recordings of music.

Recordings can be infinitely copied for very little cost (once the original is created). The market recognizes this even if the industry does not. Thus selling recordings is no longer profitable. Performances are so much more than a recording, and a recording of a performance falls far short of the experience. The market recognizes this as well, and thus performers get paid, recordings get copied, and artists who want to make a living do it by performing.

What was the saying? "Soap Box... Ballot Box... Ammo Box."

You are using the Soap Box now. In some countries, the Pirate Party is gaining headway (Australia even has rumors of trying to elect Julian Assange to parliament) that would be the Ballot Box in use. For examples of the Ammo Box try a search for "Arab Spring".

The world is changing. Fighting is going on. Some of us are just at different stages of the fight.

Microsoft Research does some pretty cool stuff...

The preferred method is to call (or email) google and ask for free access for your project. Or you could apply to the summer of code project and see if you can get google to pay you.

In the real world what matters is whether you can find the right answer quickly, not whether you pulled it out of your ass, out of a book, or off google. The ability to get it done right and move on to whatever crisis is next is what counts.

Best comment of the day.

1. Range is increasing with every generation, and is already sufficient for 90% of daily needs.
2. Recharge time is also improving steadily, and is more a matter of infrastructure for convenience than time required. Recharge overnight at home, recharge during the day at the office, recharge while shopping, etc.
3 & 4. No clue - but I assume there are engineers working on solutions. Let them.

Charge at home overnight, charge at the office, you should have a mostly full charge when beginning either leg of your commute.

Range will be effected by terrain -it is no matter your fuel source.

Batteries need to be replaced when they get old, oil needs to be changed, tires need to be replaced... its a fact: maintenance needs to be done.

The answer to these concerns is to rent a car for longer trips. I see Hertz has rental cars as low as $14 /day for some sort of econobox. I think my last multi-state driving vacation was about $150 for a week in a mercedes c240 (thanks to a free upgrade coupon).

Electric cars or hybrids do not have to be perfect. They need to be good enough for daily use - we use diesel rigs (18 wheelers) for hauling big loads, and dont say that because a honda civic cant haul the same load every day it isnt a viable commuter car. Different solutions for different problems.

There is no reason to have pedestrians and motor vehicles sharing the same space.

Use an overpass/underpass design to keep the cars away from where the pedestrians are. Designate actual bike paths, separate from walkways or motorways.

In areas with large amounts of foot traffic, such as downtown/shopping/dining districts put in car parks a block or two away, and allow only foot traffic -except for designated cargo loading access points (aka alleyways).

In a way, it is obvious...

if old version has a problem
and new version doesn't have (this particular) problem

then solution = buy the new version.

If it was the current release that was buggy, I would say they should put developers on a fix... If it is a flaw in an older version, that doesn't exist in the new version, then telling the customers to buy the current version is perfectly acceptable.

If they were already in development on the new version when they found out about a flaw in the current version... then its a decision about how much developer time it will cost to create a fix for the old (current) version and whether that time could be put to better use working on the new version. I deal with those kind of questions all the time at work myself. They are not easy.