I think you'll find that definitely is the case because the people who approve these billboards will have nothing to do with the Ministry of Transport.

Not sure about the UK but in many countries including Australia most of the billboards are privately owned and only need approval from the council to be put up, after that the owner can advertise what they like and are only bound by the advertising standards code (erm... so no hardcore).

A bigger issue I have are with advertisements on buses. Unlike the billboard owners these guys definitely have a vested interest in road safety yet tend to big bright ads with scantily clad ladies or small text. Its a shame Google Glass didn't take off, I would like adblock+ for real life.

Even then, you've still got weak links in the chain.

Because banks charge per terminal, a lot of smaller chains/franchises use a generic terminals some software sitting on a PC out back so they can have multiple physical terminals presented to the customer but only one software terminal presented to the bank.

PC EFTPOS is one of the more popular ones I've seen in Australia and it is not unusual to see it sitting on the same PC that staff use to check their personal mail and cat videos.

Having installed and serviced POS terminal I've been convinced that cash is orders of magnitude safer despite the risks of losing it or getting mugged (TBH, if you're that clumsy that you'll lose cash, you'll lose your card just as easily).

Are you going to pay for a custom built, fully audited single use OS, or a general purpose OS repurposed to use as a POS terminal.

All the store managers picked the latter as the stores that used the former went out of business because the average punter does not value security (or worse yet, thinks the banks will protect them).

Having dealt with POS terminals, there's a good reason I never use my card at a store.

Erm, the motivation is easy money. The same thing Uber is promising.

I haven't been to Kampala, but I've seen the same thing in SE Asia, in fact it gets worse there. unlicensed taxi drivers tend to form gangs, create turf and fight over their territory. Thailand is a good example. In Bangkok where taxis are regulated they are cheap, easy to find, safe and reliable if you dont feel like using Bangkok's good public transport, a trip from the city centre to BKK airport (35 KM) is a mere 400 baht. In Phuket where there are no taxi regulations taxi and tuk tuk drivers refuse to turn on less than 200 baht. So you'll take the bus then I hear you say, well good luck with that, whenever the government of Phuket gets it in their head to set up a municipal bus service (baht bus) the drivers are stopped, dragged out of their buses and beaten by the taxi mafia.

Dont take my word for it, google "Phuket taxi mafia", "Tuk Tuk mafia" or even just "taxi mafia" (the first google result should be for Phuket).

There are many examples of this, such as what happened when South Africa deregulated their taxi industry.

We have taxi regulations for a good reason, sure I'll be the first to admit they aren't perfect, but having lived in places with the alternative, the worst protectionist policies are better than that.

You need to go and live where there are no taxi regulations before saying anything like that.

I've lived in several of these places. Taxis always ended up in the hands of criminal gangs, territories were enforced and fought over and it was at the point where the government couldn't do anything about it even if they wanted to. Case in point, Phuket's taxi mafia, you may want to note the heavily regulated taxis in Bangkok are a lot cheaper and a lot less violent.

What security issues are you talking about?

He's talking about the vauge and nebulous threat that has never been quantified, let alone observed but he needs to believe in to justify his own beliefs.

That statement is vague enough

The statement is clear enough to state that yes, yes he is wrong.

I bet you believe in UX too.

Why does it matter what colour a hammer is? What function does the colour have?

A hammer is the same basic shape it has been in for millennia. A flat sided lump of metal attached to a handle. Even the claw hammer is over 500 years old and looks very similar to a modern claw hammer.

The biggest innovation in hammers in the last 100 odd years was switching from wooden handles and leather wraps to plastics and polymers. Even then, this is a slow evolution rather than a radical change and was mainly done to save costs and did not in any way alter the function of the hammer.

Metro is like redesigning a hammer to have the head in the middle of the handle. Its change for changes sake and ends up being less usable than the old design. However people like you will advertise it as "Hammer 2.0" or the "iBanger" and claim it's magically superior despite all evidence to the contrary.

I can assure you, Metro is not all of "simple, clean, aesthetically pleasing, intuitive, and functional" ... it's anything but, in fact unless you're doing fairly trivial tasks on a tablet.

This, a thousand times this.

The first thing I do with metro on a desktop is replace it with one of the many start menu alternatives. Metro is an interface I dont want on a phone, let alone a workstation. However I cant do this on servers as no IT organisation will permit it.

I press the windows icon to have something replace my entire screen. That is stupid as it completely breaks my concentration on my current task (and I dont log into servers just to stuff around), beyond this if you try clicking on down button it only flips between the metro screen and the programs screen, you have to press escape to get out of it.

Microsoft has slowly been fucking up a very usable GUI since Windows XP. The first thing I do on any new Windows 7 or Server 2008 box is to set the Taskbar buttons to "never combine". I never have so many applications open that I need them to be combined. Ironically, Apple and their bollocks User Experience pseudo-science are to blame for this.

So, are you a rapper, Dubstepper or Techno-er?

A few people with or capable of getting PHDs will join the armed forces for the challenge or career opportunities, this does not mean most who join the army are PHD candidates. In fact I'd say the average Rifleman/General Infantry recruit is quite the opposite.

Why would any other armed force, regular or otherwise be any different. You want to attract highly skilled people for highly skilled work, you need grunts for grunt work and there is a lot of grunt work to be done.

The only real difference is that in the west, joining the army is seen as a good move for a kid with limited prospects (meaning he didn't do too well in school) where as its an act of desperation to join al queda (meaning there was no high school to do well in and even digging ditches is a highly controlled and nepotist market).

Slow cooker != pressure cooker.

A slow cooker takes 6 hours to cook, a pressure cooker takes 30 minutes.

What you've got to remember is that the Qu'ran is selectively quoted out of context deliberately by people who have an irrational hate of Muslims. They do this because often the context doesn't support their point.

If you selectively quoted the bible, it looks just as bad. Zechariah 12:3 for example tells Christians to kill false prophets, Leviticus made it clear it's OK to keep slaves, then there is the well known example of Ezekiel 25:17 (think pulp fiction). In fact the entire story of Ezekiel 25 is pretty violent and advocates killing an entire people, the thing is, I know this is a story, a work of fiction the same as verses in the Qu'ran are poems built in the same manner. If you take individual parts of Ezekiel 25 it sounds like commands from god to kill the Ammonites, but in context its part of a story.

It's a case of "figures dont lie, but liars figure".

Erm, pretty much.

Almost all Christians ignore things like Leviticus on slaves, by the same token almost all Muslims dont take "kill the unbeliever" literally.

This. I know this argument borderlines on "no true scotsman" but you can argue that a lot of the people who join Islamic terrorist groups are proper Muslims. A lot wont follow the same tenants as are proselytised by the likes of ISIS, certainly this is the case with most western recruits. Then again, the tenants of groups like ISIS hardly represent the majority of Muslims.

This cannot be understated.

Well you can cross Australia off that list, there's no way ASIO is that competent.

They say that the CIA gets its bad news from CNN, ASIO gets its bad news from Slashdot.

iiNet/Internode/Westnet/etc are the last service-oriented consumer ISP in the marketplace

+1 to everything you've said.

There's a reason I'm still with iinet ADSL despite being able to get Telstra cable to my house. After the TPG deal I'm thinking I might just jump ship.

Then again, I'm the kiss of death for ISP's. A few months after I joined Westnet, they were acquired by iinet, a few months after joining Internode they were acquired by iinet, a few weeks after joining iinet the TPG acquisition was announced. I wonder who's big enough to buy Telstra.