That is, of course, for a given radiation dose, which is independent of body cross section - which is relevant in real-world scenarios. If we assume an isotropic radiation exposure profile, an average male height of 174cm, an average female height of 161 cm, and asssume an equivalent profile, then a man presents a 17% higher profile to radiation exposurediation exposure, so if a woman has a 50% higher (150%) cancer risk, then it's only 29% higher for a fixed radiation flux per square meter.

However, let's look further at this. Given the smaller size of members of a female crew, you can shrink the spacecraft occupant space by 8% on each axis, or a volumetric decrease of 26%. Mass changes are more difficult to reckon. Life support, food, water, etc is dependent on metabolism, which the article shows is dramatically lower for women in space. Fuel needs are proportional to all other mass issues. Only a few things (such as computers and scientific equipment) don't trace back to crew member size and mass. Regardless, for a given launch weight, it's clear that you can afford the mass of a significantly increased amount of radiation shielding for a female crew due to the weight savings elsewhere, probably easily more than offsetting the cancer risk.

Beyond this, the average US astronaut age is 34, an age well after when most women are done having children (assuming that they even want to have children). Given that the article states the risk is from breast, ovarian, and utirine cancer, I wouldn't be surprised if many would consider full hysterectomy for the ability to travel to Mars.

I love the fact that Mars is the only planet known to man that is solely inhabited by robots

Despite how radical that statement sounds, it's actually perfectly reasonable for a zero-G environment. They're not only dead weight, they're also in the way and make you require larger accomodations.

Even in Mars's gravity field a legless person would deal quite well, at least inside the facility (picture how easily you could get around without your legs if you suddenly were given 2.5x the arm strength, didn't have your legs weighing you down, and on top of that add in how most double amputees already have good arm strength to begin with). They should be able to "hop" with their arms all the way to a 2 1/2 meter ceiling without trouble, and the full arc would take a good two seconds to come back down. On the moon it'd be even easier. Of course, if they're legless, why would they even need such tall ceilings to begin with?

Citation so we know what you're talking about?

... they're worrying a bit about the sea-level when they put it to water.

I agree. If by "poisoning" they mean people making insolts or dispatching flying penises in Second Life or stuff like that, then it's a bill too far. But if by "poisoning" they mean launching flickering images on an epilepsy forum to try to cause seizures, "doxxing", making legitimate rape and murder threats, etc, then I think it's absolutely justified. All too often is there the assumption that what happens online doesn't warrant enforcement, even if it's something that crosses over into the real world.

Everyone has the right to free speech, but it ceases being free speech when it crosses certain bounds (shouting fire in a crowded theatre, incitement to violence, solicitation of criminal activity, etc). All of these cases are nuanced and require careful balance, but what they should not be is ignored.

" ... (who can't all afford the cost of conventional prostheses) ..."

USA - the only supposed first-world country where children have to be able to afford a prostheses.
Creepy. ... Or actually f*cking outrageous if you think about it for a minute.

I am the owner of any code I sumbit to the Linux kernel, *but* it is also considered a "derived work" of the rest of the kernel (which means, legally, I'm not the *sole* owner) and therefore the GPL applies.

The contract was non-specific on what code they were talking about - it was a blanket "you will give us a perpetual nonexclusive licence to do what we want with any IP in your ownership which you produced before, after or during your employment with us" (or words to that effect - I can't recall the exact wording).

I don't know how legal it was - as I mentioned, the company in question was already ignoring their TUPE obligations. However, legal or not, I saw no merit in signing it, so I didn't.

The GPL doesn't prevent dual-licensing code for which you are the sole owner (i.e. you wrote it, or the copyright was assinged to you; and it is not derived from anyone else's code). This even extends to commercial licences - i.e. I can write some code and release it under GPL, at the same time as selling a paid-for licence with non-GPL terms to a few people. However, when you contribute code to an existing project, it is usually considered to be a "derived work" since it almost always makes use of existing parts of that project's code - therefore the writer of contributed code would seldom be considered the sole owner, so whatever licence it is released under would need to be fully compatible with the licence used on the rest of the project. This generally precludes dual-licencing code that has been contributed to a GPLed project.

Much like other copyrighted stuff like music - if you make a song that is derived directly from someone else's song then you can't just blindly release it yourself - generally to release a derived song you need to get a licence to do so from the owner of the original song.

Sending the content of every search request to Apple? Notifying Apple if the user sets up a non-Apple email account? That's a blatant violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act unless Apple properly discloses that up front and gets the user's consent.

Apple didn't do that.

The EULA for MacOS isn't on line on Apple's own site. This matters. It violates the FTC's "clear and conspicuous" rule on disclosures. It's just like bundling spyware, which the FTC and state attorneys general have routinely hammered vendors for trying.

This puts Apple in the uncomfortable position Sony was in when they put a root kit on an audio CD.

The actual study only applies to sugar-sweetened drinks.

Exactly what I'm thinking. I respect peer-reviewed research, and take results seriously - preferably consensus positions, but on lesser researched topics, individual studies. But isn't this pretty useless without more details? Is it sugar consumption? Then diet soda doesn't count. Is it phosphate consumption? Then are all kinds of other foods also a threat? Is it caffeine? If so, then coffee is a threat and caffeine-free soda is fine. Is it other lesser ingredients, such as certain flavorants or colorants? What element in their test soda is so harmful that it has such a dramatic effect? Surely it's not all ingredients, or the act of consuming them at once...

Wrong. I said mass manufacture - you don't have to re-engineer curiosity from scratch and hand-build it every time. And if you can pay to build a super-heavy-lift vehicle, or tons of smaller (but still very large) launches to get your ~100 tonne manned Mars round trip spacecraft into orbit, then you can launch a 100x 889kg curiosity rovers.

You literally can launch about 100 mass-manufactured curiosity-sized rovers for the cost of one manned mission. The scientific bang for your buck is way, way, way higher with robots.

And FYI, if your goal is to be able to help people "live on another planet", then you absolutely should not be supporting wasting money on a trip to Mars on today's way overpriced launch systems. You should be supporting spending it on developing novel systems for orders-of-magnitude reduction of launch prices, be they scramjets, launch loops, coilguns, metastable fuels, nuclear thermal propulsion, or in general insert-your-favorite-potential-cost-reducer-here, so that it doesn't cost an impractical amount of money to send people there. (never mind that we're not even centuries away from being able to recreate a full self-sustainable tech tree on Mars.. see earlier in the thread)

I always find it funny to hear people the same alt-space fanboys complaining vitriolically about how maintaining ISS is a huge waste of money but then insisting that we set up a manned outpost that would cost orders of magnitude more to maintain ;)

Somebody watched Robot Jox too many times.

That's how it always starts. In a few years, more ads than content.

You are not the customer. You are the product.

Just reading this gives me the creeps and makes me sad.

Note: I've been a FOSS advocate since the 90ies and have used Linux since '99. It's my only OS of choice for Inet facing servers and just recently, after years of x86 Linux neglegt and OS X usage (typing this on my MB Air) have finally again bought a Linux-only computer - a refurbished Thinkpad W510, pimped out with 18GB of memory and a 256GB SSD. With Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installed. I expected it to be a tad of a step backwards.

It was.

What I saying is, that one of the very neat advantages of Apples products is the prime qualtiy integration of hard- and software. With installing Ubuntu I was back to fiddling around with NVidia drivers a la 2003, annoying non-memorised bluetooth settings, praying for my extra Logitech Mousebuttons to work (they do, thanks to manual X-configability) shoddy/broken compiz desktop acceleration and other fussing around. I'm an expert, so I very well know that I would have the same mess on a Windows system and much more so and no way to fix it. And I also do have very good reasons for moving away from Apple (walled garden, non-turing complete iOS computers/devices, etc.) but I also have to say that FOSS utility computing still being stuck with problems we had back in 2002 really depresses me at times.

Timothys post brings up all images that show what's wrong and anoying with FOSS.

I'd so whish for one vendor to say: OK, we're building expert, top-quality utility computing hardware and going fully FOSS with it - 100% HW/SW integration and all. Personally I'm whishing for a MB Air/Ultrabook like device with low-power CPU and 20+hrs of battery life, fully open-speced HW and some neat and bold features like custom non-tiling setups for the UI, special functions supported out of the box and stuff like that. ... But then again, it's 2014 with computers a dime a dozen and such a project just one successful kickstarter campaing away. Maybe I should get of my ass and start one ...?

Anyhow, I'm sick of fiddling with stuff that should be basic comodity in 2014 and having to deal with issues like the one timothy has. Just had to let that out.

My 2 cents.