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I enjoy kids, but when I sit down and figure out the math, I don't like them enough to risk my retirement (or early retirement). This is the driving force behind making sure what kind of people I get involved with and ensuring that protection is always a necessary precaution. There are also a lot of other things I would like, in life, but am not willing to risk a couple hundred grand or more on for the limited return that comes with it.

If I were a multi-millionaire, it would be a simple thing to accept (well, no it wouldn't - lack of sleep, diapers, screaming, babysitting, teen years, mooches, layabouts, etc). Not being a multi-millionaire, it is an easy decision -- just like deciding not to buy a yacht is an easy decision.

I just feel bad for my parents. The burden of raising three children has made it a difficult life of sacrifice and less reward or stability. One, likely, without even any promise of affording a retirement as they now approach that age. This won't be a burden I shoulder, however. As most parents desire for their children to have more successful lives than they had, I will be saving myself that burden. (But let's be frank, I'll probably die very young from shitty health anyway, so it isn't like there's a long retirement to contend with anyway!).

Exactly. People who work for minimum wage for a prolonged period of time don't have the foresight or fortitude to do any such thing and just pump them out like pez.

God damn.

I read "male for perspective" in the same mindset as "banana for size comparison".

I've had enough internet, this week.

Better to be smug about being child free than smug about being burdened with children that you can barely tolerate and can't afford.

Kind of like all those "smug" people who rub it in everyone's faces that they didn't get 0 percent down mortgages that they could never afford and therefore didn't go into financial ruin due to poor decision making. The audacity of such people!

This is what really disturbed me about Sarah Palin playing the whole "look what a saint I am, caring for a child with downs/autism/whatever it was!". Despite the fact that she was a "saint" for caring for *her own damn kid*, the fact was that she had him when she was like 40. The risk at 30 is something like 1:1200. At 35 and later, it goes to 1:30 and so on.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for people not having children when their lives aren't together, they don't know who they are, and they are not financially capable without the aid of the rest of us coming to their rescue -- but that doesn't negate the risks you assume in waiting too long, either. And, really, it won't hurt anything if you just don't have any at all. The planet isn't exactly hurting for human resources.

No. In a few decades (at best), I'll be dead. What do I give a shit if my "genetic material" is left behind? I'LL BE DEAD.

If you really want to leave something behind, go murder a few thousand people and guarantee a spot in history books. Or help some people. . . but frankly, you're better killing them. Everyone remembers Manson after a few murders, but almost nobody remembers Borlaug after a billion and counting lives credited to his work.

Christ, what male wants children and decades long financial burdens that badly?

Of course I'm not.

But seriously, am I the only one who doesn't give a shit?

Look, don't code. Don't encourage your kids or students to code. It'll make those who do more valuable. Do mechanics worry about everyone on the planet knowing how to fix their car? Do carpenters spend countless hours navel-gazing about bringing carpentry to school children and girls and the average CEO? Do HVAC specialists?

Do whatever the hell you want to do. The fewer who want to code, the better for the negotiating power and leverage of coders and technologists going into the future.

It has been at least suspected that smoking caused cancer for about one hundred years, now.
It has been widely known, including the Surgeons General warning, for at least fifty years.

I am long past the point of having any concern for people who can't kick the smoking habit or are ill from it (other than simple human sympathy for anyone suffering, of course). Unless you are at least 70 years old, today, there is no excuse for you to have any real smoking problems. You know it is going to kill you, today. You knew it would kill you, when you started. We are almost to the point where anyone with even the slightest "well, I didn't know back then" excuse for smoking is dead.

Anyway, this is sad news. I know that Nimoy is in his 80s. I know he has lived a full life. However, I have been dreading his passing. As many people my age likely have, I've a mental list of older guys whose passing I'm sure to be alive for and who are going to really gut me. He's one of the guys on that list.

It's painfully clear that whoever holds the reigns at Slashdot these days just wants it to become another Engadget/Gizmodo/whatever. Just dump the existence community, revamp your site, and get on with the 78 cell phone news stories per day and native-advertising.

I wish we could all correlate these stores, in some way, to actual companies. I don't deny that this awkwardness exists, but in twenty years working among a lot of women (and various nationalities, sexual orientations, and trans*) I have only heard of two negative stories from one close female friend in the late 90s and never witnessed any sort of this behavior. As just a completely rough guess, I would say a quarter or even a third of my colleagues are female. Their gender is never relevant. it is never made relevant. Their advise, contribution, and insight is never questioned because of their gender. They are at every level of the ladder from front desk secretary to security to janitorial to customer service to tech support to sales engineer to engineering and development to research to helpdesk to IT to human resources to management to CFO.

I'm not dismissing that it is a concern in some areas of the industry, perhaps. I'm not dismissing the fact that certainly some individuals have individual experiences that impact them (though I don't think those experiences can be said to certainly be constant for everyone). I'm just saying that I've been an adult working with adults in an industry where they all act like adults and it is difficult for me to get a real picture of where these places are in the tech industry that jobs are being denied based on gender, educations are being denied, promotions are being denied, or people with something to contribute are being told to shut up or ignored or something. Are these all young people in startups with no experience acting like its still a frat-house and sorority or something? I mean, a woman coder in (in my experience in this industry) would be about as much a curiosity to myself or anyone I work with as a coffee pot in the break room.

So you're posting to slashdot from the grave.

I'll admit, we've all probably known the girls who go to college and use it as a "find my future husband" utility and then never actually do anything with their education or career as soon as they graduate, marry the guy they met in college, and have kids -- but they're hardly representative of the whole and I've *CERTAINLY* never heard of, say, girls attending the local linux group to score some hot rich sugar daddies.

I'm going to play the safe bet and assume your comment was sarcastic.

So you want your daughter to be a tech blogger that quotes press releases from the latest cell phones and tablets and throws out occasional tech tips or howtos for a living? Regardless of gender, the whole gizmodo/engadget type of profession doesn't really qualify as a STEM career in my mind. It's like saying that someone assigned to reporting on local crime for the local paper is in the law enforcement career.

If people really need role models (I don't really know why they do, but okay), then maybe someone like Jeri Ellsworth would be a more compelling one? Someone who doesn't make her living regurgitating current tech news and subjects for a crappy blog or youtube videos, but actually -- you know -- makes stuff. Using a strong engineering and mathematical and science background to do so.