And thats where the E Coli comes from.

He sounds more like a cowboy coder who couldn't give a shit about code maintenance after he moved on to something else.

The only difference between a "cowboy" coder and a "superstar" coder is that the "superstar" has better PR.

typically diesel commuter cars have only a small badge (if that) to distinguish them from the petrol versions

I take it you're from the US where diesels are uncommon.

Its quite easy to tell when a car is a petrol or diesel, you just need to listen to it. If the car sounds like a tractor, it's a diesel.

Unfortunately society has gone soft on the issue and discussion has fallen short.

It's been a proper cock up.

I can only assume you have never worked in a male dominated blue collar job, such as a mechanics workshop, garbage depot, or a building site. I did that sort of work for 15yrs before moving to a white collar job. The first thing I noticed about working in an office was how polite most people are, the boss even says please and thank you.

Same here,

I've never heard one of my work colleges described as "that useless cunt" since I left the building industry for IT despite that description being perfect for many of my work mates.

Basically there's a war on men being men.

As a white, middle class, mid 30's male, I have never seen any actual evidence of this war.

The only suggestion of its existence is from bitter old farts who seem to have the most tenuous connection to reality.

You can blame the *NCAP programs for this. The difference between an ENCAP 4 star rating and a 5 star rating are a number of warning buzzers. The Honda Accord got knocked down to 4 stars solely because it didn't have a rear seatbelt warning chime. Crash tests demonstrated that it was as safe to pedestrians and occupants as other 5 star cars.

Automatic Emergency Braking is going to become your new favourite annoying safety features in a few years as the woman who rear ended you keeps crying that the car was meant to brake for her.

Its a myth that SUV's are safer. Even though larger cars are marginally safer than smaller cars (and this is marginally), they're talking about large sedans like a Toyota Camry vs a small car like a Toyota Yaris (or things like the Aygo we dont get in Oz). SUV's have additional risk in the fact that they're so top heavy they're more likely to roll in an accident which increases the risk of head and neck injuries which are the real killer in car crashes.

A lot of Australian states have been stupidly banning novice drivers from high powered cars but research from Curtain University in Western Australia has demonstrated that high powered cars (cars in excess of 125KW per ton) not highly represented in fatal crashes, in fact the vehicle type most represented in young driver fatalities were 4x4's.

No you're not.

Like many people I also have a job, life and girlfriend, but I also play games.

But I do have one objection. Many multiplayer games are mature and tend to attract mature people. Step away from the COD and Halo twitch shooters and get into something a bit more tactical like World of Tanks or War Thunder where someone who thinks is more effective than the fastest person on the button. In fact, step away from the console and get onto PC, the PCGMR tends to attract more mature people and has a lot of communities target older gamers who run their own servers (I.E. like the TOG (The Older Gamers) clan in Australia).

the only thing new was the source engine, the game half-life 2 by it self wasnt any marvel of its time, but it had a great story and was well made, but frankly it doesnt and didnt stand up to bring in new things into game play mechanics for its time

If we pick on any single aspect of the game, there were far superior games released at the same time. There were games that looked better, games that played better and games with better stories. The problem was that these games only excelled at one thing. Half Life and Half Life 2 bought all of these factors together. It had great graphics, it had great gameplay and it had a great story all at the same time.

Above this, HL and HL2 both mastered the art of unobtrusive storytelling. The transition between playing and storytelling was so seamless you didn't even notice that you'd stopped playing and started listening, What makes it truly amazing is that they did the whole thing without a single cutscene that restricted the player (excluding the start cut scene), it was masterful direction that kept the player focused on the story when they still had free reign. 10 years on from HL2, few other games can do the same thing and still what sets the Half Life series apart.

Uber is tracking where both drivers and passengers are, and the fact that a passenger has booked with a particular driver...

And you think that is a good thing.

But if that driver decides to stop and assault you, tracking them will do nothing as it's still a he-said/she-said case in court.

OTOH, taxis in my city are fitted with CCTV cameras inside and out. In the unlikely event the footage is unavailable (the companies have never hesitated to turn it over because it gets them off the liabilty hook) it still counts in my favour.

How does telling the PSAP (public safety answering point) that cellular 911 service is out save lives? How does the PSAP tell people who can't call in that they can't call in?

It tells the local police to send out more officers on patrol, patrolling officers can be instructed to keep an eye out. Calls direct to the station will be taken more seriously.

I'm sure the local emergency services have a contingency plan for then PSAP goes down.

So you dont care how a product is made, as long as it's served to you nicely?

Well you are an Apple fanboy.

The problem is, every Uber car I've ever gotten into has been a terrible mess, unwashed and bad smelling, much like the drivers. The last one was a Pug 208 deisel that looked like it had never been cleaned since the dealer got rid of it (and it looks like the dealer got rid of by chucking it out with some food scraps). It looked, smelled and sounded like a farmyard. Compared to this where all the taxis in my city are modern clean cars, either Camry hybrids, Prius or on LPG (so they're all quiet as a whisper), cleaned daily by the taxi company, provide you with a legitimate tax receipt (I can claim a lot of my taxi journeys), pay tax, have knowledgeable drivers and above all else, aren't run by sociopathic idiots.

Uber can keep ripping off their drivers because when they get sick of it, there's a bunch of starry-eyed hopefuls right behind them ready to sell their dignity for a pittance. Eventually they'll run out of suckers and the only people working for them are the ones who have literally been banned from most other jobs though.

Neither side actually wants to implement this stuff, the only reason either party bring up these ideas and have long running inquiries is to buy the votes of independent senators on other matters, particularly those senators from the far right minority parties

Its not just parties like Family First but also factions of their own parties.

What Americans might find difficult to understand is that our parties aren't divided on left and right lines (there are no left win parties left in Oz, even the Greens are extremerly centrist these days). Our major parties (Liberal and Labor) have both left and right elements. Whilst the Liberals tend to be more socially conservative the Labor party has a sizable Christian contingent that are just as backwards. So often legislation like this is introduced to keep the extremists happy even though it'll never pass because the majority of the party will vote against it.

G'day,

This is the kind of bollocks that the government has been talking about since day one. Mostly driven by the deplorable ACT Attourney General, George Brandis.

The first thing I should point out is that it's just talk. They're talking about introducing legislation to parliment. They haven't done anything but talk.

The second thing is, the Libs face a hostile senate. The Liberal party are our conservatives BTW. Whilst they can pass it in the lower house, it will fail in the upper house.

The third thing is, they will face a revolt from their back bench, many of whom are facing re-election in the next 18 months in an environment where the Liberal party is losing almost every election they're coming up against. So a lot of them are thinking of their own good over the parties.

Finally, ISP's are a powerful lobby over here and you can bet they dont want to turn customers to smaller ISP's who will skirt the laws.

So I'm not worried. the LNP (Liberal/National Party) haven't been able to do much of anything and what they have done has earned them a severe backlash.