Absolutely. Do you really want to be wasting company resources tracking down bugs that could easily have been found by the compiler in a statically typed language?

I've never really been a fan of dynamically typed languages. What exactly is the point? To save a few seconds on declaring the type of a variable? You may save a few seconds, but most time tends to be spent debugging code, not writing code. You end up saving seconds in the writing stage and losing hours in the debugging stage. If you really need a variable to be able to change types, many statically typed languages have some kind of built-in variant/object type that can do exactly that if you really need it.

It was the usual mission creep. Initially they stressed that the DNA database was only for serious offences such as rape. Yet within a few years they were keeping the DNA of arrested protesters even if no charges were brought. This is why you have to defend against the initial small moves that encroach upon your freedoms. If you don't make a stand initially, mission creep will get you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Ezphg9gjM

Indeed, giving someone your credit card details so that they can then make a withdrawal is a broken model from the start. The paypal solution where you push money makes far more sense. Given the amount of online fraud, I have always been surprised that Banks haven't pushed their own Paypal-style solution.

"Next, any civilian casualties resulting from our "invasion" was purely accidental."

I suppose it depends on how you define accidental. For example in the siege, bombardment and assault on Falluja, it was a certainty that civilian casualties would be significant. The siege was largely revenge for the killing of four armed Blackwater mercenaries (the term Private Military Contractor does not feature in the Geneva conventions). When you attack a city the size of Fallujah to avenge the deaths of four men, use 2000lb bombs and howitzers and kill many civilians in the process, can you really call the civilian deaths accidental?

In fact, it was largely footage of civilian casualties in the hospital that stopped the first attempted attack on Falluja in April 2004, which is why the hospital was seized immediately in the second assault in November. The Red Cross reported that refugees had witnessed the use of cluster bombs and white Phosphorus.

"You'll also notice that the US military does not hide behind human shields made of women and children."

This is a charge commonly levelled against enemy forces. It's a good way of demonizing them. Whenever enemy forces are entrenched in a city, you can accused them of hiding behind civilians. If US forces ever have to defend a US city against an invading enemy, you can be sure the same accusations will be made against them.

We need to start fighting back with our own acronyms. How about ROCTA (Reduction of Copyright Term Act)?

It's always seemed to me like some confused attempt to make complex things simpler by writing them in laborious English. e.g. Integrating this function is proving to be quite hard. Perhaps the whole process of integration would be easier if we wrote "Integrate" rather than using that confusing stretched out S symbol.

I'd prefer some light Head Mounted Display that offered a full field of view and good resolution. We haven't even managed that yet (at least not in any affordable way). I've been waiting for a decent HMD for over 20 years and we still aren't close. I remember getting particularly excited about the Virtual Retinal Display in the late 90s. Basically low power lasers being fired into your eyes, but the great thing is that the focus of the pixels can be varied, so you have to refocus on things in a normal way rather than the usual infinite focus trick. Yet again though, lots of virtual reality promises, but no delivery.

There are plenty of HMD's around of course, but they all have tiny FOVs and often terrible resolution too. They all seem to use the same trick when selling them. They think of a large screen size, say 80 inches, which sounds impressive. Then they just work out the distance at which the pathetic FOV is equivalent to the impressive sounding screen size. Typically, if you adjust their stated distance to 2 feet, like your eye-monitor distance, it turns out to be equivalent to a 14 inch monitor.

The death may not be intended, but you can't call it an accident. Typically, that sort of crime is considered to be manslaughter. As soon as you assault someone, particularly with a weapon like a truncheon, you know you run the risk of killing them. That's why the police should only use that kind of force when their own lives are at risk. To use it against an unarmed, non-threatening individual is criminal. Sadly the police get away with such assaults on a daily basis.

Well he's right isn't he? You can't side-load apps. You have to use the app store which consists of Apple-approved apps.

I haven't bought a PC for some years. Is that because my smart-phone does the PC's job? No, it's because my PC doesn't need replacing. It's fast enough. In fact I don't even own a smart-phone.

It's not that mobiles are taking over, it's that PC's have been fast enough for some time. The only time the slowness of my PC has shown up has been with games, and that is frequently solved by just buying a new graphics card.

99% of consumers may mostly be able to do what they want 99% of the time with their locked-down overpriced mobile phones, but what happens when they do need a PC? There's nearly always something you need a PC for a some point.

I like Libre Office, but the Base part of it is not so good. I've been waiting for a good OSS replacement for Access for a long time.

The assaults on peaceful protesters surely are important. When you are pepper-sprayed for no reason or have your head slammed into a car for no reason, you don't need a "victim mentality". You are a victim.

If it was such a pathetically small number of people, why did the Police feel the need to use such force?

I should imagine the media in the US are much the same as the UK when it comes to the police. They do not like criticizing them unless someone dies. Even if there is plenty of footage of police hitting unarmed peaceful protesters it will just be reported as "Police Scuffled with Protesters".