Also, to address the license/patent issues, Dart is provided under a BSD-like license and includes a patent grant.

Dart was submitted for ECMA standardization early this year and is now ECMA-408.
[Disclaimer: I work on the Dart team]

To allow for the widest possible cross-browser app compatibility today. Dart currently support all modern browsers (back to IE9) - forcing users to use Chrome would divide the web, which is the last thing we want to do. That said, we're working on getting the VM into Chrome, but really that comes down to an added performance boost. We expect most developers will target JS to ensure cross-browser compatibility. It's entirely possible (encouraged, even) to deploy both.

The good news is that you can write and debug purely in Dart and test in Dartium (Chromium + DartVM) with no compile step today. The dart2js step is a deployment step. Obviously, you'd want to do the usual testing of the final compiled output in a few browsers just like you'd do with a JS app today, but for development you can live entirely in Dart.

There's really no possible satisfying answer to that question without knowing the reasons for the hypothetical future loss of interest/support on Google's part. One could ask similar questions about any language with equally unsatisfying answers.

The project is open source and headed for ECMA standardization - both of those are both very positive from the point of view of future continuity. The best anyone can answer is that if such a situation ever should come to pass, the project is in the best possible position to have the community/someone else pick up the torch. If that's not satisfying enough, then waiting and watching is perhaps the best strategy.

It's started the process of ECMA standardization.

Dart team member here. The Dart project, like Chromium, is being run as a fully open source project accepting patches from Googlers and non-Googlers alike. We've also begun the ECMA Standardization process, meaning that like JavaScript we'll have a open standard that anyone can implement to. In terms of Dart users, here's a list of some. Hope that answers your questions!

The fact that Facebook and Apple are Google's competitors in certain markets -- namely advertising and mobile eco-system -- doesn't diminish his point that a walled-garden, unsearchable web (Facebook) is a poor substitute for what we had 10 years ago, and that a walled-garden mobile eco-system that ties you to a single hardware vendor (Apple) is similarly no good. Google+ posts are searchable on Bing or any other search engine and if you don't link your Samsung Galaxy SII, you can replace it with an HTC Rezound or a Motorola Razr Maxx without losing your apps or data.

You haven't addressed the points he makes about Facebook and Apple, nor his concern about governments imposing restrictions on use of the internet and surveillance legislation that affects internet users' privacy. Stating that Facebook and Apple are competitors isn't insightful - it's obvious, and it doesn't invalidate his argument.

Easy fix. Upper-right corner of the search results: click "hide personal results" (the globe icon). If you want to get rid of them permanently: settings drop-down, "Do not use personal results" radio button.

Not to mention they don't cover the fact that while the 3G was updated, the updates (particularly iOS4) left it barely useable. Tap camera... wait 30s... shutter opens. Tap Maps... wait 1 min... maps crashes. Tap it again... another crash... phone starting to heat up now. At first I thought it was faulty hardware, but my wife's had essentially the same problems.

On further digging I call bullshit. Let's see a valid citation that claims sale of used games is illegal.

Here are some showing it isn't:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/22924/used-game-sales-upheld-in-japan/ [2002]

Online shopping for used games:
http://www.suruga-ya.jp/game.html

Used games flourish in Japan:
http://www.hudsonent.com/user/feature.php?f=IT_CAME_FROM_JAPAN__Used_Games_Market&feature_id=%99%A4%A7%AA%96%A5

Can't be bothered to look it up, but if it is illegal, it certainly doesn't stop any of the shops near my place from selling them... and you don't often see people openly flouting even minor laws here.

Having grown up on the West Coast of Canada, and lived in California and 5 years in Japan... this earthquake was barely even noticeable in Montreal, despite co-workers panicking. Potted plant balanced on my cubicle wall still sitting there. A lot of overreaction in a region not used to earthquakes.

Names, phone numbers, email and snail-mail addresses:
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E

is what we Canadians call it... eh :P