You're absolutely right about prevention being key, and handwashing is an extremely neglected, important way to fight disease (disclaimer: of _course_ i am not any kind of doctor).

But there's nothing wrong with getting a flu shot, and it can only improve matters in the vast majority of situations. There may be circumstances where getting a shot would be unhealthy, sure.

Forcing people to get one seems like it causes other, ethical, problems, though, which I didn't mention in my post which is now modded flamebait :)

If everyone had the flu shot, there would be no more flu.

If more people have the flu shot, there will be less flu than there is now.

Install base is definitely part of it, but don't let this guy get away with the same old argument that all software is equally vulnerable given enough copies of it. Apache is extremely popular and has never had as many problems as IIS server did in the beginning. Programmers make mistakes, sure, but there's a right and a wrong way to go about designing this stuff properly from the beginning so that exploitation is minimized, or when it does happen, other factors are in place (eg file-system-level access control, memory protection, ...) to mitigate the breadth of damage that could be caused by a successful exploit.

This is "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense. Making concessions to women because they have children is something society has done for a long time. Society makes a lot of concessions for people, not just women, in all kinds of situations. You sound like the kind of person that doesn't need or want those concessions, but don't mix your own hubris with self-serving arguments about feminism, starting points and meritocracy.

People should be allowed to get help when trying to achieve their personal and professional goals. That's all this is about, and in the end, we'll all benefit.

It's hard to see someone do this to themselves. That might be why the comments are encouraging you to quit so much. I feel for you, but I also worked at help desk for 2 years and getting fired wasn't enjoyable. If you quit you might feel better about it.

They should somehow tap into phpBB. I'm already on some forums that generate more than twice this much bullshit every second :)