Yes, it is. Marriage itself is a governmental invention -- it's a special kind of incorporation that required governmental approval. That makes it the government's business (not the federal government, but the government nonetheless).

I personally believe that the government should do away with the concept of marriage entirely. Replace it with an overt kind of incorporation that has no connection to the idea of love, family, etc. and can be entered into by anybody. It would be incredibly useful for all kinds of situations, and would preserve the legal aspects of marriage for those who want to marry. It would also put "marriage" back to where it should be -- a matter of the local culture (religion, etc.) the people who want get married are a part of.

That's just as creepy.

I think that's totally fair. There are tons and tons of laws that are unjust or that can be used in unjust ways. It's fair (and essential) to criticize anyone who abuses these faults. People and companies should behave in ways that are ethical, not just in ways that are legally permissible. Criticizing them for unethical behavior is fair game.

All the more reason that Google should simply stop doing business in Germany at all.

Your carrier can already disable the phone part -- which they do when you report it stolen. The only things left to be done are location and wiping, which is now a feature in all smartphones.

Again, it depends on which encryption you're using. Here's a nice article about the weaknesses in the stock Android crypt as of last year: http://www.securityweek.com/de...

Fair enough -- the web made everything that I hated about the software industry much worse!

Depends on the encryption software. I do know that a lot of it is breakable, some easily and some with moderate effort, so stealing info off of those phones is completely doable.

There's no need for Samsung to do it -- this capability is already in every Android phone that uses Google Apps. It's enabled by default, although users can disable it. You can even disable the two things independently of each other: phone location and phone wiping.

I, for one, would absolutely object to this capability being included if I didn't know about it or I couldn't disable it. I don't want my carrier -- or anybody else -- to be able to locate my phone and disable it. The inclusion of this ability with no way to turn it off would prevent me from buying the phone.

I thought the reason was that the law required them to have these things.

Not me. I'd save the 5 grand.

The very LAST thing I want is my car to get automatic software updates. It's bad enough that my computers and devices want to do this so badly, not to mention the insanity of ordinary software doing it. At least in all those cases, I can (and do) easily stop them.

That's a good point. Are there other predictions? Because that one has been falsified, repeatedly, for a very long time. Now it's up to creationists to modify their model to account for that, and make a new prediction.

Yes, it is. Evolution makes testable predictions. That's really all that's required. Creationism isn't science because it doesn't make testable predictions.

You're talking about something else now. Lots of models for reality are not science -- namely, every religious belief on the planet.

Not really. Creationism doesn't lie within the realm of science, so science cannot make any meaningful comment about it, pro or con. It can only say "that's not science".

It would be useful for illustrating what makes something not a scientific theory, though.

No, I'll argue that you're paying for a product (the music). If you're paying someone to monitor, you're paying for a service. If this were DIY, you'd be Doing It Yourself rather than paying someone else to do it. But your example does clue me in to the source of our disagreement -- we're talking about different levels of abstraction. For me, the whole point of DIY is to not be reliant on someone for the thing.

My real point is that if Verizon was marketing this as a DIY thing, then there's no mystery as to why it failed. They were offering a service where they "do" for a crowd who wants to do it for themselves.