Well, that's what you and I think.

You should spend Thanksgiving with my ex-family. A typical Thanksgiving involved a debriefing about how my brother and I would go to hell if I we believed the differences in interpretation that my grandparents believed.

You get folks who believe themselves linguistic Biblical scholars. You get arguments based on whether that appearance of "is" comes from this Aramaic word or was later inserted by some monk by accident.

People get very serious about this and very emotional. I suppose that's what happens when one's been convinved that they'll go to hell and burn forever based on some nit-picky interpretation of the etymology of some word or whatever. Imagine meeting someone who can walk you through an argument that their god is mad at us because we don't practice racially-based slavery any more!

(From what I remember, it has something to do with how caucasians are the lost tribe of Isreal [insert scriptual evidence I never cared enough to memorize here] and because some guy got smashed drunk once in a tent and passed out without any clothes on.)

I don't know what the solution is. By the FSM, the country I live in will be a 3rd world country in 50 years because when the going gets rough, the tough turn to superstition, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Going way off topic here, but it was pretty harmful to me.

It's at best a cosmetic procedure. The troubling thing is that we perform this cosmetic procedure on patients who have no ability to report problems during healing. When something goes wrong, the patient has no way of knowing what's normal or not. I'm not the only person who went through a big chunk of their life thinking that something abnormal and utterly wrong was just a normal part of being a man. Hell, I didn't even know it had been done to me until I had already taken drastic measures to correct the physically painful problem I had that I had thought was a completely normal part of being a man.

And maybe it really is. I don't know. My doctor said that my female mind might have been interpreting something that should have felt pleasurable as intolerable pain. I'm not sure I entirely buy that. Despite the help he provided me, his idea of gender transition was Rocky Horror Picture Show. I've never heard another account like mine from another trans woman, and side effects that aren't cosmetic or don't revolve around sexual pleasure later in life simply aren't studied, so there's no evidence to support or refute his claim.

I feel sorry for my ex-parents. If they had just kept their hands off my dick, they might have had the grandkids they wanted so much. Well, shit happened, and now they'll never have grandkids.

"Mutilation" or not, the ethics are apalling. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the primary reason we do this to infants is to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases. How much sex does the typical infant have?

There's the UTI argument, but that barely holds any water. UTI is a routine condition that infants develop, and female infants have a higher rate of UTI. The way I see it, why can't we just accept that maybe male infants in their intact state just have a little higher rate of incidence of UTI than female infants? Why don't we research cosmetic surgeries to perform on female infants to bring their rate of incidence of UTI down in line with the rate of incidence for circumcised male infants?

If the evidence is to be believed, then it would be more ethical to perform the procedure on a child after 24 months. The foreskin is not fully developed until then, and many side effects such as skin bridges could be completely avoided if the procedure were performed after the foreskin had fully developed. It would also allow a better opportunity to administer local anesthesia, since any kind of anestesia is risky to perform on a newborn.

I don't see any kind of rationality surrounding the issue like what I proposed above. I mean, for FSM's sake, it's a cosmetic procedure at best. Nobody seriously believes that it's more effective at preventing transmission of STDs than a condom! Well, unless you're a victim of this practice in rural Africa. They do, and the results have been tragic. Relying on circumcision to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS/GRID and other STDs has led to widespread infection there. Clearly, circumcision is ineffective at controlling infection, regardless of the percentage point here or there that the AAP reported.

All I can figure is that the point of performing it on newborns is so that the patient never knows that he is missing a body part that is design to protect the glans from external irritation. The patient might protest and advocate against the practice if he were to be aware that before the body part was amputated, there was no pain or irritation, and afterwards there was. The patient might report more complications instead of beliving those complications are simply a part of being a man, and the rate of incidence recorded would probably increase.

Iirc the AAP currently reports that 1/500 circumcisions have complications. How much higher would that be if we preformed this procedure on 4 or 5 year olds the same way we wait until a child is about that age before removing their wisdom teeth? I don't know, and by performing this procedure on infants who come into consciousness never knowing what it's like to be intact with a foreskin protecting the glans from irritation, it's impossible to know.

Based on that, I believe we can call it a "mutilation" and even a form of child abuse. The fact is that if it were simply a procedure such as removing wisdom teeth that was based on medical wisdom, we would wait until the patient were old enough to report problems that would indicate follow-up care. It's a pet peeve of mine that anti-circumcision groups ("intactivists") throw around arguments based on some kind of sexual pleasure or somesuch. I would be happy just knowing life without genital pain.

In Windows, win+R for the run box, win+D to go to the desktop, win+E for my computer. There are a few others, but those are the ones I use most frequently.

In Linux, it's much more useful. I have it set up as a 3rd level shift. I hacked together an XKB map that gives me greek letters; punctuation such as em and en dashes, typographical quotes, proper ellipsis, less than/greater than or equal to, etc; and arrows plus times and divide on my numpad. Combined with remapping capslock to the compose key, it makes for a versatile keyboard layout.

If one wanted, one could also map say some of the F keys (F1-F12) to things like volume up/down, play next track, pause, calculator, run, etc with 3rd level shift, but I haven't bothered.

On the topic of keyboards themselves, I'm loving my Unicomp black buckling spring USB keyboard. The trackball is wonky, though, and as far as I can tell the extra two mouse buttons are mystery buttons that do nothing (no middle click!), so I'd recommend skipping that to anyone who wants a decent 5 lb USB klacker. The thing in indestructable, and the tactile feedback from the buckling springs makes it a pleasure to type on, improving both speed and accuracy.

It has everything to do with those decisions. You make the point about the SSD, which is a good one (though to Apple's credit, the SSD looks like it's actually proprietary, but able to be replaced); you have to pay $100 for 16 more lousy gigabytes of flash memory in an iPhone because of decisions like these.

The point of making that statement wasn't to imply that Apple is wrong because every other manufacturer uses modular components. Obviously that isn't the case. We all know manufacturers have to balance quality, cost, and time when bringing products to market. The point is, it's irresponsible to bring products to market that will not be supportable long-term. Part of supportability is using modular, repairable components that are built to last. As iFixit would say, repair is freedom. Modular components are a large part of repairability. Here's a counter-example: at a LUG a couple years ago I met one of the ZaReason guys, who partially disassembled one of their laptops. I don't remember exactly which components were modular, but it was quite modular for a laptop! Here's another counter-example. Modular designs can happen. It is a choice not to do it.

The fact that you won't be able to find a replacement battery 3 years from now illustrates this point. This is wrong and irresponsible and should not be tolerated. There are significant cost externalities in terms of waste products that the world is paying for due to these decisions. Companies make products that are difficult or impossible to service, and/or utilize planned obsolescence to ensure out-of-warranty replacement, because they know it will lead to more future sales when those components fail. The only difference with Apple is that their products cost more.

Thanks for the reply.

Where can I meet this mythical womyn-born-womyn? I've observed what I've observed first-hand.

Hell, I've had girls (plural! multiple!) that my ex-boyfriend have dated that have offered to cook and clean for me if I'd let them move in! Every time I've said hell no, just move in if that's what you want to do. These womyn-born-womyn need higher aspirations. One who wanted to be an engineer before she learned she could dance on a pole and make good money just like her own Mother (I do have respect for the athleticism involved, but little else) I tried as best I could to tell to forget the cooking and cleaning and focus on taking classes. Well, last I heard about her, she had become a Mother, sights still set on retirement around 35. How can I blame her? Maybe I'd do the same things if I had been born with my reproductive system on the inside and had the opportunities and privileges that came with that.

Hell, I'd be happy if I even knew what life with intact genitals was like. You can't tell me womyn-born-womyn aren't privileged when it's illegal and gets us jerking our knees like there's no tomorrow at the suggestion of even poking a clitoris with a pin, but there's no recourse for all the physical pain circumcision left me with and there's no recourse for the discomfort I still suffer even after HRT eliminated the excrutiating pain that had me planning suicide.

There really are people who act as white knights and I know no better term for them outside of perhaps pro-feminist chauvenists or maybe just bigots. They believe that womyn-born-womyn are utterly blameless perpetual victims. That's an attitude that should be held in contempt, because it is at utter odds with gender equality. I mean, I'm a short person (fortunately for me given my other circumstances). No matter whether I have estrogen or testosterone in my system, most women are taller and objectively stronger than me.

Additionally, I've realized that the term "womyn-born-womyn" wasn't quite as well known as I had hoped. That term doesn't come from 4chan (unless somebody there picked up on the same hypocrisies that led me to start using it). It comes straight from the feminist movement. Feminists are extremely threatened by trans women (once one understands feminism is a religion and has nothing to do with gender equality, this is easy to account for), so they invented a term based on the term "womyn" to shame trans women with. It strikes me as a kind of no true Scotsman thing. After all, feminists who refer to themselves as womyn-born-womyn as a way of degrading and marginalizing trans women haven't had their genitals inspected Crocodile Dundee style. How else could anyone possibly know that the speaker herself never had a period or couldn't have children or had any number of other health conditions that would make her any different from this spiritual femaleness that we're supposed to believe is superior because it has a period and it can have children. Hell, if I wanted, after I get bottom surgery or otherwise if I were very careful, I probably could actually invade a feminist group, present myself as a womyn-born-womyn, and pull it off. I'm not a lesbian, so other "womyn-born-womyn" would have no reason to inspect my genitals. That feminists would draw a distinction and slander an entire group of people---trans women---based on the honesty of the individuals in that group by disclosing their past when discussing matters of gender, to me is utterly contemptable.

Then there's womyn-born-womyn who have manly features. You've seen one or two and so have I. I always wonder how often they're accused of being trans by a feminist while using a changing room or bathroom. They're not trans because they were assigned the female gender at birth and persumably have a period and can grow children inside themselves. The term womyn-born-womyn only, in an optimistic sense, implies the first one of those criteria. Every single other criterion based on objective fact or biological evidence is invalid next to the fortune of having been assigned the female gender on a piece of paper at birth. Even cases of botched circumcision resulting in genital amputation and raising the child as female (which never works, btw, too much of a statistical disparity I assume between being born trans and having a grusomely botched circumcision---if that had happened to me, my circumcision being botched just enough to be assigned the female gender at birth, I would have had a very happy life and probably never would have gone into IT) would qualify that child for the status of womyn-born-womyn in feminism despite having XY genetics and completely normal male anatomy at birth right up until botched circumcision.

I will be working on evidence shortly. The next time this comes up on /., it would probably be good to be less ranty and present evidence of why feminism is completely off its rocker when it comes to womyn-born-womyn (cis women) and IT careers.

Either that or I'll be pleasantly surprised to learn I'm wrong and have merely had bad experience after bad experience after bad experience after bad experience. I doubt that, though. It's more likely that it really is time to knock womyn-born-womyn down a few notches.

I believe in gender equality, not female hegemony, and sure as fuck not hegemony of individuals merely lucky enough to be assigned a gender on paper at birth.

I replaced nearly all incandescent bulbs in my house with bulbs similar to these from Lowe's the first few months after I bought it a few years ago. They cost a little under $3 per bulb, so you're off by an order of magnitude there.

They turn on instantly, and it wasn't difficult to get used to the color difference. Anymore, the color quality of incandescent looks odd to me.

My only real gripe is that when I started using CFLs, I learned that the equivalency rating to incandescents in power consumption just isn't right. A 13 watt CFL looks a hell of a lot dimmer than a 60 watt incandescent. Maybe it's just me. I've found 18 watt CFLs to be acceptable replacements for 60 watt incandescents.

You have a valid point about dimmers. That would be one application I'd probably keep incandescents for, but I don't have any dimmers in my house. If I were looking to purchase one, I'd seriously consider a CFL dimmer, but I haven't looked into how much more the upfront cost is.

That being said I don't need the federal government to get me to make decisions that will reduce my power bill, and I find it appalling that the federal government apparently has the power to prohibit the production of a product that does no more harm than eat a little over 3x as much power as a competing product.

What governments should be doing if they want to engage in market manipulation is subsidizing installation of solar panels for roofs. That would probably be more productive than forcing everyone who wants to keeps their incandescents to moving to a bulb that they're not happy with. Hell, it'd probably help the economy, too.

Another thing governments can do is investigate what we would need to build new fission power plants and move away from coal and natural gas. Perhaps some kind of anti-NIMBY legislation and some real critical thinking about how we safely build and operate fission reactors without allowing greed and bean counters from creating disasters.

A third alternative is stopping this nonsense with corn ethanol and promoting biodiesel. Petrolchemicals may be the best way to store energy, corn ethanol is not the best petrochemicals to use for that purpose, and maybe plants are the best way to harvest energy from the sun.

We're consuming energy at an increasing rate as a species, and we're only going to need more and more. That isn't a bad thing. The bad thing is being dependent on fossil fuels. Those are only renewable on scales measured in millions of years, which isn't of much utility to human progress.

Forcing people to use a bulb that, judging by comments here, even the thought of using causes visceral rage will probably be no more than a drop in the bucket compared the above.

At the end of the day, it's your power bill. It's not like you're somehow using incandescants and only being charged for the power consumption of CFLs. Hell, I'd bet certain individuals who seem to be physically incapable of turning a light off once they've left a room would see more of a savings from doing that than switching to CFLs.

Except for the problem that being a single parent is 100% an individual choice for individuals born with their reproductive systems on the inside.

Why would somebody choose to have children they can't afford? Perhaps it's because we have so many entitlement systems that having a child guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, and perhaps another factor is how much we privilege Mothers.