There have been a small handful of truly major revolutions in the history of medicine (aseptic surgery, vaccines, antibiotics) and clinical genome sequencing will be such a revolution.

Clinical medicine is useful and all, but not great basic science.

Many Americans don't even accept evolution or global warming yet.

No germane to the point.

Pretending that where we are is the furthest we'll ever get is not constructive and not correct.

A curve which approaches a line asymptotically will make its big progress early (taking t as the horizontal axis) and small gains afterward. It will still get closer, but not in a way that makes a big change. It's a reasonable hypothesis that science will approach the maximum possible knowledge of the world in the same fashion.

There is a limit on how much human beings will ever be able to observe, and how much human beings will be ever to able to calculate. (If we blow it and ruin our spaceship and die off in the next century or two, which is quite possible, we may be close to that limit already.) If science is not approaching this maximum possible knowledge, it's a failure; if it is approaching this maximum possible knowledge, then there is less and less left to possibly know. The amount of possible knowledge is not infinite.

No. She didn't win a lawsuit.

She filed a lawsuit, "a case where two or more people disagree and one or more of the parties take the case to a court for resolution", an "attempt to gain an end by legal process; a process instituted in a court of law for the recovery of a right or claim". She got what she wanted. How is that not winning a lawsuit?

The actual Kozinski ruling suggests that actors HAVE a copyright in the final work despite decades of copyright law to the contrary.

That's sensible. A film actor is a co-creator of a work; if musicians covering a song have a copyright interest in a sound recording, it is inconsistent for film actors playing a scripted role to not have a copyright interest in a video recording.

This could finally establish the principle that people have a copyright interest in photographs of them in any but the most mundane situations; that's a principle that could resolve issues around "revenge porn" and around people getting upset around photos of them being posted on social media without their consent (see the hostility around Google Glass).

How do use mycomputer.mydomain.example on afraid.org where mydomain.example is a domain I own, without advertising the domain on their system?
The "stealth" option is not available for free.

I'm aware of JUICE and wish them well. I wish I had thought of Rosetta and would have given ESA credit for that one in my original post. I was also aware of Cassini-Huygens but finessed that by saying only NASA had "launched" outer planet missions. So let me apologize for not giving the Europeans full credit for what they have done/are planning, caveated with a big, "It's about time!". Europe has had an economy larger than that of the US for a while now, and always bigger than Russia's -- why have they been such slackers in space exploration? Obviously, the cold war competition between the USA and the Soviets gave space exploration its initial kick, but I'm still disappointed that Europe and Japan didn't come along stronger over the last 30 years. And since the late 90's there hasn't been any cold war space race, but the US planetary program has been as strong as ever. Any Europeans or Japanese want to weigh in? Is it that without the national pride/competition thing the US and Russians had, space just isn't considered worth the Euros and Yen?

How do I I use the noip service to manage hosts in my domain, where the domain DNS is not managed by noip?

Let's say that the DNS server for mydomain.example is my registrar, who does not support dynamic DNS
and I want mycomputer.mydomain.example to be dynamically managed by noip.

I could not find this option on noip's web site.

It's the amount a willing buyer and a willing seller will agree on if neither is under any external constraint (such as rent controls).

There is no such thing as "if neither is under any external constraint".

The very nature of "property" is that it is an external constraint created and enforced by the state. It's the state saying to the "owner", "Here is a piece of paper that says you own this thing. If anyone uses it without your consent, we will send men with guns to stop them," thus placing a constraint on everyone else.

but the rider for giving a simple speech includes such gems as "If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it."

Way to take something out of context. To paraphrase what RMS is saying there: "I'd rather crash at a friendly person's house than stay at a hotel. But I'm allergic to cats, and dogs sometimes freak me out. Parrots are really cool though, and I'd love to visit a house with a parrot. But don't buy a parrot just to impress me, because having a parrot is a big deal, a big commitment, and if you do it wrong that's cruel. And meeting a sad parrot would not be fun."

A large part of what you're referring to as a "rider" is more of a list of hospitality considerations. It's socially awkward, sure, but it would take a really gifted person to maintain the sort of speaking schedule he does without writing up some advance care and feeding instructions.

"Why don't the US ask Russia which one they're going to, and beg for a lift"
One reason might be that the Russians have never (that is - not ever, not even once, not even attempted) launched a mission to the outer planets, neither have the Europeans; only the USA has shown the capability, several times over, starting in 1972 with Pioneer 10 and most recently Juno to Jupiter in 2011.
The US has plenty of unmanned launch capability and does it all the time with Atlas's and Delta's and Falcons. The US has a temporary lapse in human capable launch vehicles and spacecraft which is unfortunate, but that is being remedied on multiple fronts and to extrapolate that to, "the US should ask Russia for help to the outer planets" shows a complete ignorance of the history and state of outer planet exploration.

Couldn't a machine exist like you that did the exact same things you'd do but wasn't conscious at all?

I don't think so, no. An organism that monitors and predicts its own state and the states of the members of its social group has a competitive advantage. When that process is complex enough, looping back to monitor and predict the process of monitoring and predicting -- and monitoring and predicting the process of monitoring and predicting the process of monitoring and predicting, and so on -- we call it consciousness. A machine that wasn't conscious wouldn't be monitoring and predicting its own state and the states of its social group in that complex, looping fashion, and so wouldn't do the exact same things.

I don't know if the pope has any faith at all or just plays the part in order to keep his cushy job.

So you think that the spam was initiated by Google and not by one of the many sites you went to to learn about this plastic?

Linux doesn't make your dick bigger.

No, and thank goodness for that -- why mess with perfection?

GNU/Linux and Android systems do, however, make your freedom bigger -- not perfectly so, but contrasted with the freedom-shrinking offerings from MS and Apple, Linux is a clear win.

And, more relevantly, on a tech site (this is still one, right?), we ought to expect people -- especially those who ask loaded questions -- to know that Linux is a kernel and is common to both GNU/Linux and Android systems (as well as a few other rarer OSes).

Q: How do you call a person that doesn't believe in witches?
A: A bachelor.

The problem is that generally, in the absence of any other agreement, the photographer owns the copyright to the image and can give that image to whatever site he or she chooses.

And that's the heart of the problem. We need to recognize that interesting photographs of people should be seen by default as a collaboration between the photographer and the subject, and ought not to be publishable without the subject's consent.

My life is an ongoing creative work, and photographs of me are derivatives of that work. A photo of me walking down a public street dressed normally might well fall under fair use, but not so for a photo for which I pose deliberately in all my creative awesomeness.