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Put your body in statis and hook your brain into a computerised world? Sounds sorta familiar...

We knew it would happen , eventually

It is possible that someone could want to go to matrix.com instead of whatisthematrix.com, since Matrix is a popular brand of hair products that predates the movies. (At this point, Matrix styling gel is probably more popular than Matrix movies anyway...)

MATRIX REJECTED This is bad - Matrix 2 (Reloaded) had plenty of hi-tech CGI and good visuals also Matrix 3 was not bad... PLENTY OF MONEY WAS PUMPED AND A LOT OF SCENES WERE WORTH A AWARD (No Doubts) But Lord of the Rings 2 http://lotr.com/us/ must be good I have seent he 1st one it was cisual treat no doubts

Yeah, right!!!
Let's see one of us create a huge Matrix spoof moovie starring ourselves and show it at some large gathering or post it on the Internet. Warner Brother's and the MPAA's copyright nazis would be on us like stink on a big hot pile of fresh feces!!!

How about one of those blood sugar powered [smh.com.au] setups. Then your laptop could help you lose weight without all that inconvenient moving around. I can see it now. "I need to finish this paper by midnight, bring me more Krispy Kremes NOW!"

Didn't we learn anything about been human batteries for machines, in this movie: The Matrix

Mad Hatter

And we wonder why the Machines will rise up to enslave us!

"Daddy, daddy! Can you tell me how was before, when you had to stand up to turn the TV on?"

Some 'new technology' makes us useless... "If you don't use it, it rots".

And then, someone come in and says a human being wired to a computer to do everything a human being must do is a sci-fi tale...

This is what happens when confused pseudo-philosophy makes US$100 million in it's opening weekend at the box offfice.

Eva was annoying. Shinji just whines. It's a Japanese tit/fuck/pedofest with some philosophical mublings in there to give the smarties an excuse to watch it.

See, it's crap like that which kills me. Open-ended text with no point and can be interpreted a million different ways. Then you're told to "find your own interpretation". Way to go jackasses.

This cuts through the possibility of infinite regression, and also hints at a way of testing whether a universe is simulated. I personally have serious doubts that our universe, with its demonstrable complexity, could be simulated, since the simulator would have to be several orders of magnitude more complex, to be able to store the state of all particles.

There is a possible escape, mentioned in The Matrix, which is that the simulator "cheats" by not simulating to the same level of detail in all areas. Maybe Bishop Berkeley had the right idea to ask "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?". If the simulator cheats, then maybe not all falling trees do make a sound.

Translated into physics, this would mean that some unobserved actions might not totally follow the same laws as observed actions. I'll let the Quantum Mechanics experts see how well this fits their observations. If anything, I feel QM disproves the cheating simulator - since an observed particle with collapsed wave function needs less information to describe it than an uncollapsed set of possibilities. But maybe our universe needs more stress-testing to see if the simulation breaks down.

Anyway, our planet already contains 6,337,052,626 separate universes, and counting...

I sort of understand how it works, but was making a (bad) joke about animals the researchers tried, and the animals used for a similar purpose in a certian movie that was released today.

Did we mention there is enough material in THE MATRIX: RELOADED to support yet more than is currently released? Good, because the number of trailers are growing, daily, and they are in full assault-mode rotation on numerous television stations. Fast cuts and faster glimpses of things yet not seen are tauntingly found in each of the numerous spots. Should you see them? No. The best way to see THE MATRIX: RELOADED is cold, with no pre-knowledge (besides, of course, the small underground '99 film, THE MATRIX).

But you can get the trailer off of their site

That almost sounds like the movie "The Thirteeth Floor", a great movie which got put into the B-movie category because it came out in the same year as a movie with much the same theme, and more money. The Thirteenth Floor tells us that humans created a virtual world - a 'simulation' - only to find out that they were simply characters in a simulation themselves. Or, if you follow, this particular simulation that humans of the future indulge in trips into, was the first to actually develop simulation technology themselves.

That's a scary thought. As soon as we can simulate life (any life) completely, we have no way of proving we are not a simulation being run by a higher life form.

Please just listen. I know why you're here, pVoid. I know what you've been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. You're looking for him. I know, because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, pVoid. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did.

In my opinion, there's so much fantastic original material from artists like Poppy Z. Brite and Neil Gaiman on their website, that I don't even care how the sequels turn out. Although I do hope for the best of course and am rather excited for the trailers to start appearing...

I'm starting to think more and more than life is a computer system. Perhaps we are all running in some ultimate program... Or even worse, what if we are just "running" in a crazy program thats not finished yet.. and some programmer is just getting his jollies seeing how far along his project is with an incomplete test-build... but that's another story :-P

Bottom line.. DNA error-checks.. we are in the Matrix.

The ads on Slashdot are good? What the hell are you talking about? They are some of the most idiotic pieces of crap on the web. The Source Forge ads are a perfect example. This one is a poorly-drawn direct rip-off of the Spiderman movie, as is this one. Or how about this one, with a light sabre and "May the forge be with you"? It is one of a whole series of Star Wars rip-offs, such as this, this, , this, and this . Here's one that mentions hobbits. Coding in a matrix, or just ripping one off? If I were George Lucas (or any of the other copyright/trademark holders), they would have been sued quite some time ago. I am sure they aren't paying to use the characters. I imagine the only reason why this hasn't happened yet is that nobody has bothered to tell Lucas about them.

Actually they aren't US made, I believe all of them are made by Japanese studios. There's a lot of information about it available at whatisthematrix.com. Sure the language is in English, which is most likely their key market, but I'm sure even for some of the purists (read: Ignorant people so tied up in their own little worlds that they can't for the life of them realise why people like things in their own language) there'll even be a Japanese dub.

The Earth Simulator Project will create a "virtual earth" on a supercomputer...

Hmmm, now where have I heard of an idea like that?

I won't claim to speak for everyone but my experience with eps. I-II has mostly to do with how I have changed since the first ones came out. I was 4, 7 and 10 for eps. IV-VI. I expected less then than I demand now. So while I've had 20+ years to view Star Wars with nostalgia and enjoy the memory of how it changed my perspective of what sci-fi/action movies should be like now that's not an option for me. George faces several challenges:

1) Just being a Star Wars movie is not enough to be exciting, whereas with the first 3 (released, not chrono) just being Star Wars was enough. It was new and exciting. Even kids who did not get to see the first 3 have grown up in a world where Star Wars has been lauded as the model for sci-fi/action. (This is starting to change.) Culturally, the bar has been raised and I think today's children demand more from a movie than children did 20 years ago.

2) I'm an adult now. (Or at least, I masquerade as one.) I need more from a movie now than I did then. When I was 4 I didn't care if the dialogue or acting wasn't that great. It was fun and that's what was important.

3) Back-story? One of the things I realized after watching AOTC is that part of what made the first 3 feel complete was the presence of the back-story. The effect, while subtle, is important because it helps make the universe-of-the-movie more fully realized. You don't exactly notice it when it's there, but it's glaring when absent. Eps. I-III are the back-story, but there's no back-back-story and I think this makes everything feel a little flat and less-realized.

4) Related to 3, I already know the frickin' ending. It's hard to feel the suspense for Amidala, Obi-wan, Anakin or any other major character when I know they have to survive. (If only through ep. III) Which is not to say that their escape was boring, there's just less of an edge-of-my-seat factor when I never really believe they are in any danger.

And I agree that a Han Solo type character is a shortcoming of I-III, I'm just not sure that such a character would make up for everything else.

-r

Think of how powerful media corporations are. They are truely the ones that make or break a politician.

And how hard would it be to arrainge a few hookers, some hidden cameras, etc. and then save it 'til the next election. Or worse, blackmail him now.

And how hard would it be to just digitally fake the whole thing with blue screens and some graphics people.

Scary these days. It's hard to know who's really telling the truth. Then again, it's always been this way. You just have to have blind faith that everything's going to work out.

Look at AOL-TW. Hahaha

Go look at some professional sites instead of hanging around geekboards.

Except that the most popular commercial sites (Yahoo, MSN, Google, Amazon, etc) don't use it. Among the most popular commercial web sites, only the movie brochure sites (the matrix, the time machine, etc) use Flash to present the main content, and I find their navigation frustrating, not to mention their performance over a dial-up line.

~programmed to do something magic only when you double-click it.

When you single-click, you get a pop-up with a prompt to enter the "password."

Yes, the instructions were confusing. Here is how to get to the keyboard:

1. Surf to What is the matrix
2. Click on "enhanced version" (on the top of the page)
3. Click on the keyboard (on the lower-right side of the page).
4. Type reload in the popup window's edit box.
5. Click on the enter button
6. have fun!

I predict that in the future, stuff will happen, and some of it will be wierd.

I has read the About Matrix
But I don't get What is the Matrix.
But I still want to join the Matrix team. :)

Um, dude, there already is software of the computer sort on DVDs. Has been since the early days. That's what's infected on that Powerpuff Girls DVD, in fact--the interactivity software.

The earliest DVD that I know of to have software on it as well as media was the Bubblegum Crisis 3-disc set, which included its own Shockwave DVD player so you could watch the disc on your computer even if you didn't have a player program. Then came discs like The Matrix , which had an app called "PC Friendly" on them. PC Friendly, in addition to containing its own player for the DVD, would allow you to access the "special interactive features"--in the case of The Matrix, that would be things like the "I Know Kung Fu" fight scene collection, the interactive trivia game, the text articles, and of course the weblink.

These days, the helper app of choice is the Interactual Player, which is included on titles like The Mummy Returns, Star Wars Episode One (it is this software, by the way, that controls whether you can access the DVD-exclusive trailers on their website), and just about anything else that touts interactive features. (Notable exceptions including the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD, which uses a Quicktime program, and the forthcoming Shrek DVD, which the Bits says will be interactive without having to install anything, though it doesn't say how.) Interactual will also play the interactive content from PC Friendly-enabled discs.

You'll always know when you have a software-enabled disc--because when you put it in the drive, it'll either try to install the program, or else launch it if it's installed already--probably interfering with your DVD player software, which will also be trying to launch. For this reason, I went into the Windows registry and disabled the CD autorun function (and thanks for making it so easy for me, Microsoft! (That was sarcasm)).

Anyway, like I said, the interactivity software is what's infected on the Powerpuff DVD. If you didn't install it and have autorun off, it should be safe to play the movie content--but I wouldn't take chances anyway.

It really is a cool book. Everyone I know has seen and liked the film, so its truly the coolest thing to stick in the living room on the table. It's very fun to read.

Also, check out a lot of cool related comic art, at the official Matrix site. And check out their page for the book, because its funny to read William Gibson's complimentary quote, then think to yourself: "Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Matrix, both sci-fi, both Keanu, and you know Gibson is feeling like he seriously got the shaft." (Even know, the thoughts return..."I've got...to get on...the Net!"... So cold...)

well ACTUALLY...

the official windows screensaver at Whatisthematrix runs in 800x600, if memory serves. On a larger, higher resolution monitor, it will be a little box of matrix goodness surrounded by black bars. Add that to the fact that flat panel monitors generally look like crap if not set to the resolution they are designed for, and you've got one basic choice... xmatrix on UN*X, which, while great fun and the screensaver I use, is a basic hacked version which is not at all like the actual matrix code from the movie. (for instance, notice the lack of the "explosion-like" bursts of bright expanding squares as seen in the movie.).

Looks like its time for you to start coding up a newer better version of xmatrix, to be released for all us /. ers to enjoy, naturally :)

You know, with all the green letters on the sample screenshot pages, I get the feeling I'm watching The Matrix live!

"Dune" isn't a christ story, it's a 'the one' story. It doesn't matter WHO is the subject, it could be Tommy, Neo, Connor, etc...

Remember, Moses was one, that's a HELLUVA long time before Christ...

"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

Now, this may just be a result of how his images were screengrabbed. But it sure doesn't look like a suitable replacement for DVD quality to me -- especially if I have to have a computer monitor instead of a 36-inch (or larger) television set to watch the movie.

nobody69 wrote:
A lot of hard sf fans on usenet had some pretty big beefs with the science part of The Matrix.

Reading the Matrix website, I learned the movie was simply an exercise in making the world's first live-acton adult-style comic book.

Adult comic books as a rule feature science that makes no sense, but is made believable to the reader by the brute force of adult-comic-book style hype. The Matrix purposely copied that convention.

You must've hated "The Matrix", then. :-) That was basically a superhero movie (super-cracker movie, anyways) with a defined story, and well-explained characters, which was so well-paced I still don't feel how long it is when I watch it.

On the other hand, if what Singer trimmed was mainly exposition and character speeches by folks whom the movie wasn't spending much time on anyways, then that's fine with me. The movie needed to focus on the core characters -- Magneto, Xavier, Rogue, and Wolverine -- or else it would've gotten totally lost in itself.

And I'd suggest anything by Miyazaki, too, but about the only work of his that's on DVD yet is Castle of Cagliostro . (Which is easily one of the best anime movies of all time, by the way, and hit Express.com's top-ten list the first week it was out, selling out over 2500 copies in just a couple weeks.)

The original Bubblegum Crisis is another good one, though you might be advised to wait for the re-pressing/additional disc set that's due out one of these days; the first set, being a relatively early DVD issuance, had some problems.

And hey, if someone can suggest The Matrix as anime, then I feel more than entitled to suggest Tampopo . It's Japanese live-action comedy (like anime except not animated!), and deals with another geek staple--ramen noodles. (It's a "noodle western," a parody of/homage to all the samurai movies/westerns of bygone days.) It's probably the best movie ever made that you've likely never heard of.

There are so many good anime, and I'm at least fond of most of them. A good place to check for tips is AnimeOnDVD; it has an "Essential Anime" section that hits a lot of the classics.
--

I think Tux would make a better Morpheus then Neo.

First, you must come to realize... there IS no OS...

Given that many new major movies seem to have a website with a domain name of it's own 1,2, 3, etc. This one makes a lot of sense to me.

I thought when I first saw Episode 1 I would have sworn that it would win best costume (or at least one oscar). I think the Matrix deserved all the oscars it got, and I think it should have been a nominee for best picture. Oh well. Also, all the awards that American Beauty won makes me want to go out and watch the movie. Did you know that it took the screenplay person 50 rewrites of the script to get it right. True.

Who mourns for Q? I do, he was a great actor and it was sad to see him go. (car accident)

Great quality, good features, and usually very inexpensive if you buy it with a service contract. Not to mention that Nokia phones were the phones used in The Matrix

I highly recomend Nokia phones. Check out the 6100 series if you live in a digital area. www.nokiausa.com

It seems the interviewer still misses the point: what happened to the "Do you understand that DeCSS does not aid copying DVDs, and in fact does the opposite?" question
That's exactly what I would ask, and it seems he's still missing this one.
There's all this piracy propoganda going round, when all it comes down to is media control and licensing with a poor coverup.
Sure, the MPAA want "the movie industry to make money" - when in fact they are limiting their audience by disallowing us to access data which we have already paid them money to access.
Someday, they will see. I hope. Otherwise I'll go back to by Betamax collection and watch I love lucy reruns. They were better than the matrix anyway.

As an example of the exposure differences they had to deal with, check out http://smaug2.whatisthematrix.com/dld/NUMBER_TWO.m ov and compare frames 49 & 51 (which are similiar) to frame 50 (which is rather darker than either of the other two).

This might be a QuickTime artifact, or it might be real. Either way, this sort of thing is probably the simplest of all the problems they had to compensate for.

PS-- Ebert covered this months ago. Also, if you go to the visual fx part of the matrix site you can see 3 movies-- the original filming, with all the camers in view, then a matted-out version, then the final version seen in the film. Sadly, these aren't on the DVD, even though it has the original website on the disc. (I dunno, I was at the site pretty early... musta been v1.1. :-( )

By the way. If you like those green-falling-letters-screen, try the Matrix screensaver included in the xscreensaver. Also fun to run in your root-window :P

By the way. If you like those green-falling-letters-screen, try the Matrix screensaver included in the xscreensaver. Also fun to run in your root-window :P

OK, this is getting ridiculous.

Aspects of the tragic human tendancy to continually return to an abusive mate are beginning to show up here--a (now retracted) headline story about how maybe, possibly, somehow George Lucas's Audience might actually be granted an ever-so-precious DVD home release of Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, within a year of the original theatrical debut(ooh!).

Oh! My word! He's so great! What a wonderful, selfless, giving man, always willing to take that extra step*BZZZZ* Youch! Damn Pizza Hut chick with a blaster...

C'mon, people. Being jerked around is being jerked around. Lucas is more of an audiophile than most of us combined--for crying out loud, THX. He knows who his fans are. He knows why he's able to fund the entire production of his movies(flicks?) based on the licensing of toy rights alone.

If any film studio was treating its customer base the way Lucas was, the Slashdot community would be up in arms. As is, we truly cannot comprehend how the film industry's ultimate indepedent, a shining symbol of individuality in a land of second guesses and conditional green lighting, could behave in ways more exactingly greedy than the biggest, most cynical corporate mogul could ever imagine. Consumers have purchased--often redundantly--millions of Episodes, Trilogies, and Special Editions, yet we're left in such baited breath that Slashdot posts two stories in three days about how "Oh, we might get DVD...oh wait, who knows if we'll ever get it. Oh fooey!"

Mr. Lucas, this is not the way you respect your customers. This is the way you alienate them. But that's fine, because you know what? This summer, I watched a movie that engaged me technically, that appealed to my philisophical intelligence, that asked questions that were left unanswered. At the end of the movie, not only did I remember each of the character's names but I cared about who they were and why they were. The effects blew me away, both in their originality and in their execution. And you know what the best part was?

No bullshit. No games. Just the top selling DVD thus far. The Matrix has all the magic that George Lucas once tried to honestly sell. Maybe he can do a turnaround--I've made mistakes in my life, publically admitting here the tragedy I see in the fall of Lucas may end up being one of them. Redemption's a good thing. But it's not the end of the world if he doesn't find it. While Lucas was out complaining about all the fans, the Wachowski brothers were hard at work updating www.whatisthematrix.com.

You want to know what the future of engaging your audience looks like? Ask the Wachowski Brothers. They understand.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

I'll take a stab at your puzzle: "I toss my cookies down the toilet." Just a guess, highly dependent on humorous context. ;)

Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product

Regards, Ralph.

"Enemy missile took out a central processing unit," he said. "Two hundred thousand people, hooked up in parallel, blown to dead meat. We've got a mirror going of course, and we'll have it all up and running again in no time flat. You're just free-floating here for a couple of nanoseconds, while we get London processing again."

If you've read Gaiman before, and absolutely hated him, avoid this book. If you've seen Amano's work before and hated it, avoid this book.

I'm gonna sound like a raving fanboy here, but how can anyone hate Neil Gaiman? I've seen people who are indifferent to his tales, but hatred?

Truly, Gaiman is one of the greatest fantasy writers ever. The fact he writes comicbooks usually distracts people to that fact, but let it not be said that geniuses are recognised by the mainstream while alive.

That's not to say I liked everything Gaiman wrote, but I never hated any part. The Sandman series in its entirety is a moving, magnificent story; a story for adults, and not a story for violent, sex-crazed children in men's bodies as most so-called "adult" stories are. I'm proud to say the ten hardcovers spanning the story of the Sandman sit on my shelf and are a delight to read to this day.

For those who don't know Neil Gaiman: for gods' sake, do yourself a favour. The Sandman is available in softcovers, so picking one every two weeks or so will definitely not break your budget. I suggest you either start at the beginning ('Preludes and Nocturnes'), although the style was not as defined back then. (The stories remain great, though, just not entirely mature.) Otherwise, try picking Fables and Reflections or The Doll's House. If that doesn't hook you, nothing will.

To get you in the mood for Gaiman's style, here's a short story he wrote for The Matrix . Too good to be true? You bet.

Finally, Yoshitaka Amano. This guy is a god. Check out his artwork. I have to say, he has to be the best artist to come to the Sandman world ever, and that's saying a lot.

"The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays."

If you've read Gaiman before, and absolutely hated him, avoid this book. If you've seen Amano's work before and hated it, avoid this book.

I'm gonna sound like a raving fanboy here, but how can anyone hate Neil Gaiman? I've seen people who are indifferent to his tales, but hatred?

Truly, Gaiman is one of the greatest fantasy writers ever. The fact he writes comicbooks usually distracts people to that fact, but let it not be said that geniuses are recognised by the mainstream while alive.

That's not to say I liked everything Gaiman wrote, but I never hated any part. The Sandman series in its entirety is a moving, magnificent story; a story for adults, and not a story for violent, sex-crazed children in men's bodies as most so-called "adult" stories are. I'm proud to say the ten hardcovers spanning the story of the Sandman sit on my shelf and are a delight to read to this day.

For those who don't know Neil Gaiman: for gods' sake, do yourself a favour. The Sandman is available in softcovers, so picking one every two weeks or so will definitely not break your budget. I suggest you either start at the beginning ('Preludes and Nocturnes'), although the style was not as defined back then. (The stories remain great, though, just not entirely mature.) Otherwise, try picking Fables and Reflections or The Doll's House. If that doesn't hook you, nothing will.

To get you in the mood for Gaiman's style, here's a short story he wrote for The Matrix . Too good to be true? You bet.

Finally, Yoshitaka Amano. This guy is a god. Check out his artwork. I have to say, he has to be the best artist to come to the Sandman world ever, and that's saying a lot.

"The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays."