You're correct that in most (all?) of the US the local municipality gets a portion of any driving citations.

That's why many of them (at least here in SC) will often issue a "Careless Operation" ticket when they pull you over as a "favor". A speeding ticket here is often less than $100 but levies "points" against your license (ie, they make your insurance rate go up). Careless Operation runs around $250 but has no points associated, so your insurance generally isn't affected. The drivers thinks they're getting off lucky as the extra $150 in fines is much lower than the difference in insurance premiums would be and the police get a portion of a larger fine.

There is actually one small town nearby here that is documented to have over 2/3 of its annual budget come from traffic citations. The "town" is little more than an intersection with a population of under 100 people, but they have a police force of exactly 1 officer who just writes tickets all day long. The speed limit conveniently drops from 55 mph to 35 mph for about 1/4 mile while driving through there. Locals know better than to speed through that area, but they mostly catch people just passing through. I've always joked with friends that its a ticketable offense to drive through there with out-of-state plates.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. As the living standards an education levels of each group goes up eventually places run out of cheap backwaters to outsource to. Eventually the whole world gets more skilled and more prosperous.

Trust me. A government can keep the lower class down. They can tax us into oblivion, and take away most of our freedoms and we'll take it in stride. Take away the porn though, and the peasants will burn this bitch down.

Patents also helped here though - sometimes designing around them spurs innovation.

The Wright Brothers had a "warping wing" method for turning the plane that they had patented. To get around that patent aileron's were invented - and were a far superior technology.

Compared to Ouya most certainly, but Amazon has 15x the market cap of Nvidia. The only thing Nvidia has there is potentially better hardware specs, and a stronger brand identification with the games industry.

Although one thing that may have hobbled the FireTV was making the game controller an optional accessory. It is harder to convince devs to target a platform when only part of your userbase can really take advantage of stuff.

Honestly, I don't doubt the technical feasibility of an Android console, but they just don't seem to be catching on.

I was one of the "early adopters" that bought an Ouya. I figured I would mostly use it for XBMC anyways and the games would just be a bonus. Thankfully XBMC works OK as the games never really materialized there (the Final Fantasy ports are about the only thing decent available).

I also bought a FireTV - again, mostly as a video device (Netflix, Hulu) for the living room TV. Again - the games haven't really taken off. The Telltale games are available on it (but then again they're available almost everywhere) and I did see SW: Knights of the Old Republic was made available for it, but overall its pretty stale.

Personally, I'm not going to be rushing out for this one until it proves itself to not be another flop. The only thing that MIGHT would interest me would be the ability to stream games from a PC, but all the steaming options I've seen in the past recommend a wireless or "robust" Wifi connection, which I generally interpret to mean it'll suck over WIFI.

Not sure how much easier it could be. Yes, I'm a technically savvy user, but I haven't had to "exercise" any of those skills on my home machine in forever. If I wan to install a program it really is just as easy as going to Software Center and searching for it - not unlike an "App store" on a phone.

I even find it easier than Windows because the update process for the system takes care of application updates too.

Now I do maintain quite a few Linux servers at work that do require a lot more knowledge, but they don't even have a GUI installed.

In both "major" zombie mythos right now (Romero's world and The Walking Dead), anyone who dies becomes a zombie. You don't have to be bitten - bites simply result in death in relatively short order so that one returns.

People die all the time - over 150,000 per day - sometimes without warning. Now take into account that in most "zombie scenarios" the world is familiar with such a disease or phenomenon. The initial impact of that would be devastating. Many people would likely initially proclaim it a miracle - running up to embrace a loved one that has seemingly come back to life. Or a doctor checking on a patient that had just recently died. Considering that no one would immediately know that incapacitating the brain was required to put them down, I'd wager that many would be bitten trying to restrain the zombie (thinking it alive) and assist someone being attacked.

In the early outbreak I'd wager that each zombie would probably end up biting at least half a dozen people. If they turn within a few hours I'd wager the same thing will play out at least 3 times or so. By that time we're talking about MILLIONS of zombies.

I bet you're real fun at parties . . .

Many people in life have a goal to be entertained and have fun. If you can make work more entertaining without degrading the quality of your work, then why not?

No decent zombie movie has zombies going after brains. That trope started with Return of the Living Dead which was a cheap knock-off that intentionally tried to imply that it was a sequel to Night of the Living Dead. It's a pretty bad movie. All of Romero's stuff though, The Walking Dead, The Dead 1 & 2, World War Z and even comedic stuff like Zombieland and all of them have zombies just wanting to eat flesh.

That aside, "I Am Legend" is hard to call a zombie story. The restriction to night-time only is a big one. Fast moving critters also aren't necessarily a deal-breaker, but are a step away from the norm and dilute the claim. The disease being transmitted other than by bites (well, infected bites - mosquitos spead it in the novel) is also a mark against it.

The final "nail in the coffin" however is that there are certain members of the hordes in I Am Legend (the novel) that can speak and interact with humans.

In general "I Am Legend" may well be a good end of the world type story, but it's different enough from later works that I wouldn't consider it quite as much a direct progenitor of the zombie genre as Night of the Living Dead.

It accounted for the fact that everyone would see this study, think everyone else is going to Glacier National Park and then not go to avoid the crowds, so the park is still the destination to go.

No. I'm speaking of just Ubuntu on a desktop.

Windows still has the problem of spyware. Whether that's due to lack of security or its popularity is a matter of debate, but still, to me at this point using the internet on Windows feels like sex without a condom. Relatively safe if you truly trust what's on the other end, but definitely a risk.

On the other hand I surf the internet without so much as a care on my Linux machine. You still have to not be an idiot (ie, don't type your info into phishing sites), but I have no fear that simply visiting a particular site is going to hose up my machine.

As to the Office competitor - Office is being marginalized. Even in our corporate environment we just implemented Office 365, and when you do that you have an option: an "E1" license which has browser-based office, and "E3" which includes the full MS Office suite. We've put about 80% of our users on the browser based version and they're doing fine. That browser-based MS Office actually works just fine on Linux, and is actually far more limited than LibreOffice - it just is branded MS Office so people will accept it.

Microsoft is being marginalized. My guess is that if PC gaming survives, it'll eventually shift to Linux. I'm just not sure there will be too many people aside from geeks and gamers still using a desktop computer by that time.

This isn't 1998 anymore. Linux doesn't require "expert knowledge" to run and use. My parents in their 50's are using Linux full-time (even though they don't know they are) as is my sister - who knows it but doesn't really regard the fact as more than an interesting piece of trivia.

Linux works just as simply as any other OS these days. You want a program? Go to Software Center and search for it. It installs. The icon appears in your menu.

Yes, you CAN get technical and in depth with the system if you want, but that's no different than Windows having the registry and Powershell available if you want to tweak things.

Right now Linux just isn't popular with gamers because there are no games for it, and there are no games for it because gamers don't use it. It's chicken and egg problem, but it's changing, albeit slowly. I personally use my Linux system for everything EXCEPT games, though I'll admit that I'd be excited to ditch Windows even for the games if I could (I do have a PS4 that I play some stuff on). It is nice though that Pillars of Eternity will be available for Linux and is coming out very soon. I've been waiting for that one for quite a while and it may be the first "real" game I'm able to play there.

Yeah, I'll agree they look worse, but they're not SOO much worse that I'd find it distracting. They're still relatively professional looking. After a while the icon theme just kinda becomes something I'm gonna ignore anyways.