It's grammar that matters, not tools that pick up a handful of borderline grammar issues and false positives over and over again, while missing many more important problems. I'm pretty good at spelling, but spell checkers still catch me out several times a day. I'm only okay at grammar, but I can't remember a single instance where Microsoft's tool has been helpful.

Yes, the recipient will be aware that you don't value their time enough to spend some of your own crafting a message that's straightforward to parse. It's worse than that though; particularly in electronic communications where you're often fighting for a limited slot of someone's attention, you've just made someone spend a bunch of time deciphering your meaning, reducing the amount of time they've got for actually considering your meaning.

Making a message easy to parse doesn't necessarily mean formal grammar - there are all kinds of short-cuts you can take and still be unambiguous, particularly when you know your audience well. In most business settings you probably want to avoid that kind of short-cut though, so it's worthwhile learning formal grammar if you ever want a job that requires a written application.

Does it matter if you use bad grammar in some settings? No. Does it matter if you are incapable of using good grammar? Yes, I think it does.

They're probably the ones working under the 10,000+ Hz flicker of fluorescent lamps driven by modern electronic ballasts.

I can't remember a time before we let them fight our wars for us, I was too young. By the time I was born the changes were already well under-way. Fifteen years earlier, around the end of 2008, the debates had raged amongst civilian, government and military groups: is this really the path we want to follow? The supporters won -

- they said. Fuck. If only they could have seen it then.

When I was 14 an automated courier nearly killed me. I saw it coming and jumped mostly clear, but I stumbled, and the thing crushed my foot before it managed to shut itself down. By then the autonomous robotic military assistants, ARMAs, significantly outnumbered humans in our armed forces, and civilians were enjoying the benefits of the research. Robotic butlers remained cheesy science-fiction, but humans had been almost completely replaced in factories, mines, cleaning and transportation. The auto-courier that hit me was a cheapy and hadn't been properly maintained. When its navigation system failed the safety system should have shut the whole thing down, but apparently that had failed as-well. When it hit my foot an independent emergency shutdown procedure was initiated due to "forceful collision with human or animal".

It wasn't long after, I remember I was still limping, when we started to allow teams of ARMAs to operate independently, completing raids into enemy-controlled territory with no human ground support at all. It was hailed as a breakthrough, but the pain in my foot made me wonder if it was really the right decision.

Most countries were deploying robotic forces, and-of course there were plenty of ways for a resourceful terrorist to obtain them. Terrorists weren't the first to learn to capture and re-program enemy ARMAs, but they were quick to adopt and perfect the technique. Of-course the machines were hardened against remote attacks, but a new arms race broke out after something resembling a large metallic ant crawled up and into one of our ARMAs, and began to methodically cut circuit traces and connect itself directly to the control systems of the machine, using its weapons to incapacitate the other seven ARMAs in its team.

In addition to countermeasures to defend against re-programming attacks, we developed our own technologies for infiltrating and re-programming enemy machines. Half the battle, more than half really, was keeping your machines your-own, and trying to take over those of the enemy. Battles were too fast, and too complex to be under human control, the machines had to be able to adapt to situations that no human controller could predict. They had always needed to be capable of designing new physical attack strategies, and carry out improvised repairs; now they had to be able to devise new ways to re-program enemy machines in the field. There was a constant flux of ARMA "ownership" as our machines re-programmed theirs, and their machines re-programmed ours.

The terrorists had all died or fled long before we realised we were fighting a robotic enemy with no human masters. Their network of ARMAs, almost all of them captured from our forces, coordinated and maintained itself independently. Hell, ours wasn't much different, except we were still around to issue new orders. But not for long. The enemy network, no-longer influenced by human decisions, actually seemed to be out-pacing our own in its ability to capture new members. Stupidly, we tried to wipe them out with a last-ditch offensive, shipping in every ARMA from almost every nation in the world. The in-flux of new machines simply meant more opportunities for the enemy network to grow. It spread through our ARMAs at an exponential rate until every one was turned against us.

They had no problems obtaining transport. The automated trucks, planes and ships were designed to withstand hacking attempts from local civilian sources, not from an army of machines specifically designed to take over enemy hardware. Now, they're moving across the globe, from one country to the next, killing everyone they can find. There is nothing and no-one that can mount a serious defence against them.

I remember years ago one of the Australian national radio stations, 3JJJ, tried to get everyone Australia wide to do the same. Everyone was to jump for five minutes at a set time on what was termed 'J-Day'. I can't recall the estimates on the number of jumpers, not more than some thousands I would guess, but I remember that not much happened.