The odds of getting the flu can be as low as 5%, so you can go 20 years without catching it on average.

Just because you've apparently never had it judging by your incorrect comments, doesn't mean you can't get it or wont get it.

Besides, why do you fear getting it? It's really not going to hurt you, but it will protect you and if you are really fortunate enough to be apparently immune to developing flu symptoms from the flu as you imply then it will still prevent you passing it on to others meaning it's still a good thing.

Increasing the range of illnesses your immune system has been trained to cope with is never a bad thing - learn about the history of the smallpox vaccine - someone noticed that milk maids were the only ones not dropping dead left and right to smallpox, this is because they'd mostly all already contracted cowpox at some point which was similar but relatively harmless compared to smallpox. Nevertheless, their bodies gaining immunity to cowpox with little illness also made them immune to smallpox which could've otherwise killed them.

So what possible benefit do you perceive from not getting the flu jab? Whether you feel you need it or not it's still beneficial to you and others either way.

You're not being forced. You're perfectly able to choose not to take the job or to quit instead of taking the test if you so choose.

Some jobs require further vetting of candidates, people working in the financial sector typically have to go through credit reference checks to ensure they're unlikely to commit fraud, people in the defence sector often have to go through national security vetting to ensure they're not a security threat, people working with children have to go through criminal records checks to ensure they've got no convictions, people driving company vehicles have to show that their driving record is clean and they're not a reckless driver.

If you don't want to go through these things, then don't go for those jobs.

As much as I hate to defend Disney, it should be well within it's right to ensure the kids are safe from employees who might fuck up and put them in danger because they have a drug problem and brought it to work. It's going to cost them dearly if such an incident does occur so why shouldn't they be able to protect themselves from someone elses problem?

So I guess you fail even basic literacy then given that you don't know what the word "had" means in the context I quoted?

Are you sure you're not a child? I thought adult illiteracy was largely solved now in the developed world, but you seem to be trying very hard to prove otherwise.

Quite how you continue to interpret "had" as anything else than what it actually means I've no idea. I you're so desperate to refuse to admit you made a stupid comment that you're now willing to completely try and redefine basic English words. I know people on Slashdot often can't admit when they're wrong, but you've taken it to a new level of absurdity. You're so desperate to avoid admitting you went completely off track, got confused and flew off the handle as a result that you're willing to instead make yourself entirely illiterate instead.

You either need psychiatric help, or basic literacy classes. Whichever it is doesn't bode well for you as a supposed grown up adult.

Sure, but it's clear they deprioritise some services and that you have to pay more to have them prioritised on their otherwise oversubscribed service which is exactly the thing net neutrality is designed to stop.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at you now trying to reframe the discussion as one about the current state of things and then trying to accuse me of not following the discussion. Here's the core discussion on Minix in the post you replied to originally:

"But had we all moved to Minix, we would probably not be hearing that much swearing by Andrew Tanenbaum or other Minix kernel maintainers compared to Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel maintainers, as with so few core lines, there is not much to maintain in the Minix kernel, and so it is easier to test and debug."

What do you think that second word means? What do you think the word "had" actually means? He's talking about precisely that alternative reality you dismiss my comment for and instead try to reframe the discussion as being about the current state of Linux.

Please, try and keep up in future before going off the rails and making a fool of yourself.

I guess the code is a complete whitewash to avoid legislation on the issue then?

The reason I say this is that I have a line with PlusNet and they most definitely do not support net neutrality. Service throttling is a stated part of what they do:

http://www.plus.net/support/br...

Whatever this code is, it clearly doesn't do what it claims to. If an ISP is intentionally slowing down certain traffic (and charging you more to have lower priority traffic increased on your line as PlusNet does - £5 for their "pro addon" which increases priority of deprioritised traffic) then this is most definitely not net neutrality whatever they say.

"so that little weasel trick merely shows your own retained childishness."

Actually no, it makes things even more embarrassing for you. Typically to retain a trait well into adulthood that could be forgiven as inexperience amongst someone young is not a good thing. Most people wouldn't be proud to still be wearing diapers at 50.

"What exactly is the point of your attempt to compare what is now two very different things as if they are equivalent?"

The point is that something being a teaching tool vs. a production worthy tool is really only dependent on the amount of effort expended on it. Linux has lots of effort expended on it because rightly or wrongly it won the battle for uptake early on. Minix can therefore be just as capable with equivalent effort poured into it, the fact it's merely used as a teaching tool has little bearing on that.

The point being that something being a teaching tool isn't a barrier to it becoming a production tool, as Linux very well proved.

"The moment you introduce variation in skill sets among the team members, agile for software breaks down."

Out of interest, why? and what particular part of agile given that it's a broad topic with lots of methodologies?

I don't see how speciality requirements causes an issue, agile doesn't remove the necessity to ensure a team is competent in having the required skillset for the task at hand.

Agile isn't magic, many things from the past are still relevant, if you don't have enough French translators to do the work your translation project is going to fail whatever the methodology being used.

Are you stupid?

I didn't say anything about Linux still being a small teaching tool and Minix not. I merely pointed out that just because something starts out as something, doesn't mean it has to always be that way with a bit of support to help it grow up.

Speaking of needing support to help grow up, shall I call your mother now or are you at least old enough to make your own way home to her?

It's called having a low tolerance for bullshit, and so no, there's nothing wrong with you.

You realise that Linux started out as a small teaching tool right? Linus himself said he started it to teach himself about operating system development.

High standards of journalistic understanding in that article I see:

"Robert and Carol Cameron and their 16-year-old son Jordan had their lives turned upside down when he was implicated as the supposed mastermind behind the attacks on Xbox and PlayStation networks which left gamers unable to play their consoles online.

Ironically, he does not even own an Xbox."

Why is that ironic? They think you need an Xbox to be able to take down Xbox Live and Playstation Network? What?

You're still failing to grasp the difference between what a published paper says, and what a scientist believes. These are two distinct things yet you're repeatedly conflating them.

"What the media states is that 97% of the climate scientists believe anthropogenic sources cause climate change, where the majority do not state it explicitly."

No, the majority do not state it explicitly in scientific papers. This says nothing about what they've stated their beliefs are elsewhere.

"Your statement is implying that those that stated no opinion really believe in it but withhold for more evidence, my statement states they didn't make a statement, it could be either way. Which position is more distorting?"

Yours is still more distorting for the aforementioned reason that it's a misleading by omission. My statement paints a balanced picture, as it provides a fuller set of information to the reader to make up their own mind, there is no omission.

But back to my original argument, and why the 97% figure can't be inherently written off is because we can still treat the papers as equivalent to a poll. We know that the papers that have expressed certainty will pretty much guarantee that their authors will fall on that side of the fence, but we don't know what the others think. If we were to ask the question "If you had to decide that either climate change is man made, or isn't man made, what would you choose?" forcing them to choose, then the 31.6% vs. 0.7% is equivalent to a poll of a large enough sample size that you'd expect the outcome to be 97.8% support vs. 2.16% deny with a margin of error for that sort of poll typically around 3%.

So saying 97% of climate scientists is quite a reasonable assertion statistically. I personally prefer to er on the side of caution and pick the lower bound when making an argument and even then give a bit more leeway, I think 90% gives ample room for statistical error whilst still making the same underlying point.

Again, this is how election polling works, this is how we know give or take a few percent what the outcomes are going to be, and yes election polling is maybe a poor example given how many fake polls there are out there (YouGov is notorious for doing polls for hire) but we're not talking about a slanted poll here that's had any kind of weighting applied, we're talking about the raw numbers being calculated directly.

So to argue against the suggestion that roughly 97% of scientist agree that climate change is man-made you need to provide a compelling argument as to why the statistical method is wrong, and why all those scientists who didn't express a view in the paper would, if asked to decide on the balance of evidence one way or the other what they believe would swing towards the not man-made camp when the vast majority of evidence swings towards the man-made camp.

Is there a good reason to believe that don't knows would turn into no it's not man-made in a drastically more prevalent fashion more so than yes it is man-made given the outcomes that we do actually know?

But this is already what is happening precisely because religion has equal protection to natural traits.

In the UK it is typically illegal to discriminate employment or provision of services based on sex or sexuality, yet religious institutions are allowed to exactly these things.

Which is why I suggested at an absolute minimum that even if you do protect religion it has to come secondary to natural traits. We should not in this day and age be allowing organisations to discriminate on sex or sexuality any more than we should on race.

But atheism isn't a religion so isn't typically as well protected anyway.

In fact, atheists are already prevented from working in some jobs, for example you can be discriminated against as a teacher seeking employment as a teacher at a Catholic school for example.

So this really flows into a further question about why religious folk should get protections over and above atheists also. You cannot for example run an atheist school and refuse a teacher employment for being religious, but you can run a religious school and refuse a teacher employment for not practicing that religion.