We know Google sniffed the data it sniffed because they reported themselves for doing it.

If you think about this technically, there is absolutely zero useful info one could get from such data (other than using it as a source for randomness and even then...).

All these stories do is punish a company for self-reporting a perceived privacy concern - one which they quickly addressed.

Bit of a FUDish comment. This code comes with a licence from Sun^WOracle that grants all the needed patent rights to use and redistribute the code.

Exactly! Where's the "comment must be added to article" button?

Just email your thoughts on copyright to someone who sounds foreign. The NSA will forward it to them.

You really think the BBC is _never_ a truth factory? :)

[citation needed].

Cetacea derives from the Latin for 'whale'. Its extant 2 branches are called "toothed whales" and "baleen whales", i.e. each branch is a class of whale and the encompassing order is therefore 'whales', so far as any living animal is concerned. Dolphins and porpoises come under "toothed whales", and are thus whales.

The poster you're replying to is either ignorant, or using some extremely non-mainstream zoological classification. Dolphins are one of the cetacea, the order of whales.

Cetacea is the order of *whales*. "Cetacea" derives from the greek for whale! So if porpoises and dolphins are cetacea, they are whales.

There are 2 branches within the order of whales, the toothed whales and the baleen whales. Toothed whales include porpoises, dolphins, etc. The baleen whales are the filter feeders, with baleen combs instead of teeth, such as the right whale, blue whale, humpback, etc.

Orcas are delphinidae, which *are* a part of the cetacean order. So they are very much technically whales, and it is quite correct to call them that.

Toothed whales are whales. That there are 2 branches in the whale family doesn't make one 'true' or the other 'false'.

Orcas are members of the dolphin family (delphinidae) of toothed whales (odontoceti), which means they belong to the order of whales (cetacea). I.e. orcas most definitely are whales. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcinus_orca).

Marriage is a civil institution that relates primarily to property. The US gov't has only been involved in marriage for a few hundred years because the US gov't has only existed for a few hundred years.

Yes churches and religious groups kept marriage records and performed ceremonies. "The state" has evolved over time and for quite a bit of it religious groups were part of the state. That had some flaws - go read some European history.

Marriage as a civil institution serves some very concrete situations. It handles various situations that arise for couples in terms of property rights, inheritance rights, child custody, immigration, criminal law, taxes, pensions, etc. There are problems that crop up for couples that are more complicated than if they came up (if they could come up) for individuals.

Laws relating to marriage are designed to address those situations. To provide couples with reasonable expectations that they can plan on and to simplify people's lives in terms of their interactions with the state.

The laws relating to marriage are generally there to make people's lives run more smoothly and therefore often get overlooked. But at times they crop up and when couples (both or individually) avail of them they understand the benefit those laws provide.

Gay couples can already get married in religious services in all 50 states. The debate about the religious institution of marriage is a debate each religious group can work through. Eventually all of them will recognise same sex marriage but that's up to their individual congregations so generally the point is moot for most of us.

This civil institution of marriage (it's like Java - it's a VM, it's a language, it's a beverage, it's an island!) is the issue that all citizens should be concerned about and it should respect the rights of each citizen and weigh the various concerns. You being "offended" is way lower on the scale than gay citizens having legal protections for their relationships just as straight citizens do.

This is plainly clear. And in the future - the not very distant future I might add - those who don't understand that will be viewed by decent society as hateful, anti-social bigots. Everyone's free to be a hateful, anti-social bigot, but the rest of us are also free to call that out and to shun such people. Everyone has a right to their opinion and to speak their mind. No one has a right to avoid the social consequences of doing so.

PDFs very much can be searchable, and cut & paste-able, etc.