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Comment Re:The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source (Score 1) 233

Feel free to submit to a gentle, peaceful decapitation. Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.

I see what you did there.

Actually, decapitation historically was considered about the most humane and dignified means of execution there was. Commoners were hanged, royalty was decapitated. The guillotine was invented to make the process even more humane by making decapitation less likely to be botched.

Decapitation and hanging weren't always human forms. However as society progressed they learned that breaking the neck at the base of the spine was the least painful way to kill someone. Eventually they refined it that hanging would break the neck rather than strangle someone. Society went backwards when someone thought electrocution was a good idea but advanced when lethal injection became common and even further when we realised death penalties are abhorrent and ineffective.

Comment Re:Zombie apocalypse universe rules (Score 1) 247

Brooks quickly discounts the effectiveness of military weapons like cluster munitions, Gatling guns and other kinds of weapons designed to put a large amount of shrapnel or projectiles into an area quickly. Even if it didn't result in killing of an entire horde, I would expect it to kill a large number and greatly reduce the threat of most of them by seriously degrading their mobility through damage to their ability to walk or move.

You're assuming that a zombie horde acts like a human enemy.

The enemy does not panic, does not fear and it's numbers are far in excess of of the survivors opposing it.

In World War Z, by the time the Battle of Yonkers occurs, New York was already zombiefied, so that's up to 14 million zombies with a conservative estimate still being several million. Further more, the enemy will not stop even if incapacitated they will continue on their hands and knee stumps. Further more, you have to be very accurate and the majority of our area effect weapons are designed to be indiscriminate and inaccurate.

Even though there's a chance they could kill hundreds, you're dealing with thousands of zombies per gun. This is why later in the books, a simple repeating rifle used with tactics designed to counter an enemy that could not fight at range but outnumbered you 100 to 1 was shown to be more effective than a gatling gun and airburst weapons.

The Battle of Yonkers was written to demonstrate the futility of human tactics against a non human enemy.

Comment Re:Zombies versus Predators (Score 1) 247

Nevertheless, this is silly.

Humans are the most deadly predators that the planet has ever had. Killing stuff is what we're really really good at. Making weapons is something we're really really good at.

Zombies... their weapons are teeth and fingernails. Their tactics are go straight in and attack regardless of tactical situation.

They wouldn't have a chance.

The thing about zombies is not their tactics or weapons but their numbers and drive.

A human needs to sleep,
A human needs food and clean water,
A human needs ammunition,
A human is vulnerable to infection,

If you have one infected or even five infected, they can be dealt with easily using modern gear. However once their number reaches a critical mass, humans are instantly on the back foot. It doesn't matter if a survivor kills 20 zombies when there is 100 of them. Max Brooks' World War Z book does a good job of explaining how they reach these kind of numbers, mainly through panic, ignorance and occasionally greed. However compared to humans, zombies have several key strengths.

The zombie does not need rest,
The zombie does not feel fear,
The zombie will not despair,
The zombie will not give up,
The zombie can still operate with debilitating injuries,

Humanity's only reprieve is the zombie is not real :)

Comment Re:Best idea is not to hide. (Score 1) 247

4) So please tell me how in the real world a single zombie can infect all the rest of us?

Stop thinking of it as a Zombie and start thinking of it as a highly infections, virulent disease spread by direct contact with bodily fluids and a 100% mortality rate.

Basically thats what they were moddelling, the Zombie angle just gets publicity (which is good as it draws attention to their research and gets backers).

This is less trying to track a Zombie horde over the US than trying to extrapolate if a hyper deadly mutation of Ebola somehow takes root in a populated area.

Comment Re:seriously (Score 1) 247

Yes, traditional zombie-ism is modeled like a disease that is highly contagious, highly virulent, and requires direct contact to transmit. Truthfully, the prominent characteristic of zombie-ism is that the infected are easily distinguishable.

Traditional zombies are magically reanimated creatures (the origin of the word is from Haitian Voodoo lore) and the original Zombie movies from the 60's and 70's tended to follow this even if it implied and not indicated outright.

Viral and parasitic zombies are a new concept in cinema. Personally I prefer the biological explanation compared to a magical one as far as stories go (World War Z (book) and 28 Days Later even though it's technically not a zombie movie), but the original concept of the living dead was supernatural.

Comment Re: Right, but does it correctly model... (Score 1) 247

Your warehouse might work, but a high rise tower would be a terrible position. You have to figure that the power grid would go down and emergency generators would soon be out of fuel, so no elevators. How many flights of stairs do you want to climb on a regular basis while carrying food, water and fuel?

Being in a tower with only a couple of escape routes also leaves you very vulnerable to human predators who will be looking to steal everything you have.

If I actually lived in such a place, I'd probably try to stay put during the mass exodus and the initial die-off, but I certainly wouldn't seek out a tall building as a permanent base of operations.

Its a trade off, stairwells are also very defensible positions. Especially when your enemy isn't nimble and has a small problem with staying balanced.

Obviously you wouldn't live on the top floor of a high rise, but the second or third floor is ideal. As for lugging up supplies, for that you'd need to put in a simple rope and pulley system. A limited number of escape routes is a feature, not a bug of security because it also means points of ingress for the horde are equally limited.

Ultimately what you want is an easily sealed building with few doors and no windows that is connected to a seal-able tunnel system that allows egress at multiple locations... I dont know of any such buildings in my city?

I live in Perth, Western Australia. One of the most isolated cities in the world, by the time the Zombie invasion gets here, it will have wiped out the United States, most of Europe, all of Asia and much of Africa. Whilst is may seem like a good idea to go bush that can kill you easily too as you run out of water in a land that is very hot and has very few fresh water sources that are reliable year round. Beyond this, if you think zombiefied humans are bad, wait until they get the Wombats. A Zombat would be nigh upon unstoppable.

Comment Re:Just damn (Score 1) 411

if it 's bad for the companies to profit off a legal product, it's just as bad for the government to profit off it.

the biggest profiteer from cigarettes is the government.

No.

Taxes from Tobacco sales doesn't even cover the medical costs of long term treatment of smokers in Australia, where tobacco taxes are high.

This is just medical costs, it doesn't include fires started by cigarette butts or costs that the government doesn't have to pay (such as cleaning a car or house after it's been occupied by a smoker) that have a net drain on the economy.

Comment Re:news, why? (Score 1) 52

Civ V, a game historically known for its poor programming, rushed schedules and years of repair to get playable. This game still has one of the most artificially stupid AI's in the history of the Civ series, so I fail to see how this is even mildly interesting.

For the same reason people prefer to watch 42 meat heads wrestle each other for a ball rather than watch 42 of the brightest minds debate.

I dont mean the suppressed homoerotic desires either.

Given my experience with Civ V, they'll build about 2 cities each and never actually go to war, let alone attack. It will be a paint drying simulator. The incredibly stupid AI was what ultimately forced me back to Civ IV.

Comment Re:It's not just the fragmentation (Score 2) 136

I don't understand why people are expected to buy more software on their phone then on their PC.

Because this is pretty much the only thing the anti-android crowd can complain about.

Its becoming harder and harder for them to hide how butthurt they are behind legitimate excuses because the legitimate excuses are disappearing rapidly. Whenever you see an article on the horrors of Android Fragmentation/Piracy/Profitability and so on you know it's going to be bullshit by someone who's upset that Android has become the dominant platform.

These renewed attacks are conveniently timed with Google's release of Google Work.

However, what people forget is that 95% of small app developers on IOS dont break even, it's still high 90's on Android but more break even due to lower start up costs. The idea that you make millions from an app is something Apple likes to perpetuate but in reality only 0.001% of devs make a significant amount of money. The way to make money as an application developer on Android or IOS (or Win Phone, can we call it WinPo?) is the same way as you do it on PC. You make applications for other people.

Everyone from banks to supermarkets to coffee shops want an application that they give to customers for free as it brings in business. Someone has to write these applications and dollars to doughnuts I'll bet that Tesco didn't write the Tesco app, they hired someone to do it for them. If you want to make money from Android or IOS, forget selling direct to consumers because chances are you wont make it.

Comment Re:No (Score 2) 136

There'll be forks, there'll be distros that die out but ultimately choice is good. Out of all the traditional Linux distributions eventually a status quo develops of some core popular ones. Over time they fall out of favour and the critical mass slowly moves to another. In the medium term maybe some fresh eyes and fresh thinking will solve some of the current issues that plague users now. Will they have vested interests? May they take things down a path that turns out ba? At times, probably but there's a fork for that

This.

The only people afraid of Android "fragmentation" (those are sarcastic quotes) are the people who dont have an Android device and are desperately hoping for Android to fail for some reason, any reason.

Comment Re:Follow the money (Score 5, Insightful) 136

On Android, most Android users don't pay for apps. Either because they can't (Google Wallet isn't universal)

Next time, just write "I know nothing about Android" because it'll waste less of our time.

You dont need Google Wallet to purchase apps on Google Play. You can do it with a normal credit card or the Google Play preload cards that are sitting next to the Itunes cards.

Google wallet is a completely different product, whilst it can be used on Google Play, it is not required.

So the Android business model is to sell ads and give the app away

And this ends up being more profitable. Especially over the long term.

Comment Re:Google had Flash ads? (Score 3, Interesting) 188

Great Scott! It appears I've been leading a sheltered life thanks to AdBlock, Ghostery and the like. I did not expect that level of douchebaggery from them, though. Well, hope AdBlock is ready for this.

Yeah, it's like the HORROR the web looks like when you are working on an end user's PC and they only have Internet Exploder.

I guess there will be HTML5 blocker extensions soon.
And I'll use them. Why? I hate ads. To me there is NO SUCH THING as an acceptable ad. I will never surf without ad blockers running. And if you don't like it, take your site offline.

And now that its happened, I'm going to blow my own trumpet.

For all the people who bashed Flash and said HTML5 is our lord Geezus and Saviour, I hope you enjoy it because now that you've more or less killed flash all the things flash was being used for (I.E. annoying the living shit out of you with ads) is now in HTML5. The problem is, Flash was a plugin, you cold block it completely at that level and easily select the bits you wanted to play. Now with HTML5 the ads and annoying videos are part of the code so in order to block them you need to parse the code. This means advertisers can get even trickier in hiding ads as part of the content and ad blockers are going to have to wrestle with a higher number of false positives.

If you thought adwords was annoying, wait until you have adword videos in HTML5 (and if I've thought of it, you can bet that someone with less scruples has too). So you've killed flash and all the evil that was in flash is not moving to HTML 5 where it'll be easier to hide and harder to block. There's your victory, drink it in.

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