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Latest Animatrix Short Released

Posted by michael on from the breathe-in-the-sweet-sweet-scent-of-marketing dept.

martyn s writes "The latest animatrix short, The Second Renaissance, Part 2 is finally out. This short is the continuation of The Second Renaissance Part 1. Taken together, these shorts document how, in the matrix universe, 'Man was the architect of his own demise.'" And here's the BitTorrent link.

20 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot Reloaded by mao+che+minh · · Score: 5, Funny

    I liken the recent rebirth, revelations, and renaissance of trolling on Slashdot to the soon-to-be-classic epic battle between Neo (played by actor Keanu Reeves) and the rogue virus Agent Smith (portrayed by the esteemed actor Hugo Weaving).

    In this climactic and feverishly pitched battle, a rejuvenated Agent Smith confronts Neo. Neo (cmdr taco) has increased his power (anti troll filters) exponentially. Agent Smith (troll) has since developed the ability to infect the "shells" of others, a process which he uses to effectively multiply. At the outset of the battle, Agent Smith attempts to first infect Neo and spread into his "system". The troll filters prove amiable, and Neo easily repels this clever initial attack. Undaunted, the troll (Agent Smith) seeks to gain assistance from those in his surrounding environment. With the most excellent and well placed of trollings, Agent Smith captures the hearts and minds of many others, effectively creating an army in his own image (Trollkore, CLIT, You Fail It, IN SOVIET RUSSIA, etc).

    This new army of Agent Smiths pour down upon Neo in a glorious wave of absurdity, brutal character attacks, vulgar ASCII imagery, and unprecedented and unusual tales of sexual escapades. The ensuing melee is a remarkable epic of good vs. evil, as the many trolls continue to pour down upon cmdr taco, seeking to defeat him with an avalanche of numbers. The outcome to this bitter rivalry has yet to be seen.

    Which is where we find ourselves tonight gentlemen.

    This is a war, and we are soldiers.

  2. It's AOL! by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why are we using BitTorrent to spare AOL's bandwidth?!?!?!? We never use BitTorrent to spare the poor guy who builds a lego robot or whatever and hosts his site on his DSL and then gets slashdotted. Sometimes Slashdot editors can just be so dumb...

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    1. Re:It's AOL! by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oh, and here are the REAL links to the second episode (as I post this, the links in the article still point to the first episode).
      Medium version (recommended for people with non-godly computers, the large version starts skipping frames)
      Large version

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  3. Totally sweet...wget -c rocks... by `Sean · · Score: 4, Informative

    wget -c http://progressive1.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/ progressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.m ov

    For those of you who keep getting dropped or get half finished downloads...

    --
    PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
  4. Feeling a little empty after watching by kammat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just finished watching it, and I'm a smidge disappointed. I thought the first half set up an excellent backstory, but here, it's just "We attacked them, we lost, we're a power source," without any kind of expansion. It feels like this half just ended the story without trying to make any details beyond what we've gleaned from the first movie. Wasn't there a first Matrix that crashed and burned due to the people not able to accept it as reality? Was there any debate at all over how long the Dark Storm would last, unless they had some way to clear it afterwards? When did the AI develop the spidery robots?

    While I think the Animatrix project has been pretty damn good, I think this one has fallen way short of expectations.

    1. Re:Feeling a little empty after watching by br0ck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      we're a power source

      And it made it worse when the narrator stated that (SPOILER?) "the machines turned to an alternate and readily available power supply, the bioelectric, thermal and kinetic energies of the human body. A newly refashioned symbiotic relationship between the two adversaries was born. The machine, drawing power from the human body, an endlessly multiplying infinitely renewable energy source. This is the very essence of the second renaissance. Bless all forms of intelligence."

      Arghh.. bless all forms of intelligence to have a 7th grade understanding of thermodynamics. It's too bad they didn't take the chance to use these shorts to clarify or correct the human battery crossed with a form of fusion explanation from the first movie.

  5. BAD LINKS by ChrisCampbell47 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Those direct links are for the FIRST episode (hence the "Episode1" in the URL). And post the sizes next to the links, these are HUGE (e.g. 140 MB). Better yet, just link to the page, it's really well done and quick.

    --
    One simple rule for its versus it's
  6. Natural order of progression by mahdi13 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The latest animatrix short, The Second Renaissance, Part 2 is finally out. This short is the continuation of The Second Renaissance Part 1.

    Thanks for clearing that up for me...I was wonder what part was before part 2

    --
    "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
  7. Nice to see slashdot promoting legitimate p2p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But, with all the illegal stuff also going around, im sure that the **AA's will be going after bittorrent as well!

    Because it needs a centralised server (the tracker), it will be easier to knock out!

  8. Preaching? by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "Taken together, these shorts document how, in the matrix universe, "Man was the architect of his own demise."

    I dunno, man, I feel like I'm being preached to, again. Like:

    Clean out the fridge before you eat something moldy which will make you sick.

    Driving an SUV supports terrorism

    Ordering french fries supports evil regimes which have WMD

    If you don't pick up your room it'll lead to communist world domination.

    Technology advances faster than our ability to manage it, eventually it will manage you if you don't watch out.

    Some year, first the Matrix 2, then T3... What's the message here? Fear technology? Screw that.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Preaching? by mraymer · · Score: 4, Interesting
      It's interesting that you should mention terminator...

      Terminator shows that technology itself is neither good nor bad. It is merely the use of it that makes it so. In the first movie, the Terminator attempts to destroy the future of the human race by killing the mother of its enemy. In the second, the same model terminator is reprogrammed to save the human race.

      And another thing... In both the matrix, and Terminator... what's so bad about humans being wiped out or machines taking over control of them? Would this not be, in a sense, a form of natural selection? If machines were more fit than us to survive, and intelligent enough to exterminate us or control us, then don't they sort of deserve to take our place as the dominant form of life on this planet?

      I think that a planet of machines would probably be a lot less self-destructive, and more productive, than the current one containing humans.

      The machines in both the Matrix and the terminator movies want us controlled or exterminated for good reasons: we're a danger to ourselves, and everything on the planet.

      "If a machine, a terminator, can learn the value of human life... maybe we can, too."

      Probably not, which is why the machines are likely morally superior to us, and more worthy of the right to exist, even if they are "soulless" creations. Better that we humans die and our work live on, than we simply fade out of existence without a trace.

      --

      "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  9. wrong links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "direct links" are wrong, they point to the episode 1. Here are the correct ones:
    http://progressive1.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wb online/ progressive/thematrix/us/med/2R2_640_dl.zip
    http: //progressive1.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/ progressive/thematrix/us/med/2R2_480_dl.zip
    http: //progressive1.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/ progressive/thematrix/us/med/2R2_320_dl.zip

  10. Links might be wrong by Zakabog · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think those links are wrong, I only tried the large one. Here's some new links -

    Large 640x272 - 138 MB
    Medium 480x204 - 87 MB
    Small 320x136 - 31 MB

    Or you can go here.

  11. Animatrix on DVD out soon by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 5, Informative

    The entire series of 9 short CG-Animatrion/Japanese Anime films will soon be available on DVD. Depending on your MPAA stance (and what day of the week it is) follow the white rabbit via one of the links below to pre-order your copy.

    Official web site
    Amazon US: available 3 June
    Amazon UK: available 2 June

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  12. Never seen this coming... by ePhil_One · · Score: 4, Funny
    This short is the continuation of The Second Renaissance Part 1.

    Never saw this one coming... :^)

    --
    You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
  13. Freenet Link by E1ven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's advisable to download this using Freenet, rather than BitTorrent, as Freenet has a more robust, permanent network, and has many hundreds of nodes that might have never seen this file, but will automatically begin to share it, if it becomes popular.

    That means faster download speeds. The RedHat 9 ISO files were downloading at over 120KB/sec on Freenet.

    There is also the advantage that the link does not go down, when the people close their download windows ;)

    You can Download a copy of Freenet here, and donate Here

    I had just uploaded it, but apparently the direct links in the story were wrong, so I've re-uploaded Episode 1 of the Animatrix. I'll try to provide a freenet link again soon, but I suspect it will be too late for most people ;)

    -Colin

    --
    Colin Davis
  14. Minor spolier by ymgve · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They still don't explain how a human in itself can generate more energy than it costs to maintain that very same human alive and well in the Matrix.

    That is a major plot hole for me, and I hoped they would use the possibility here to explain it in greater detail. But noo. Just a tiny bit of plot that amounts to 'the war started, we darkened the sky, then we lost and got put in the Matrix'.

    (Since this is anime, they could have gone wacky with this. For example, say that humans posess a unique ability to harvest immense amounts metaphysical energy, and that the Matrix somehow taps this energy. Much better than the 'new form of fusion' crap explanation.)

    1. Re:Minor spolier by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Informative
      This is becoming almost a FAQ, but here goes anyway. AFAIK the initial script used humans in a computing cluster, which would make more sense, but it was considered too difficult for the mundane masses, and it was changed for the final movie.

      I'm not sure if that's true though, might be just a rumour. In fact, using human brains in a Beowulf cluster does present some problems, because people would probably find more hints of the reality through the calculations going on in their subconscious minds.

      On the other hand, it's marginally possible that humans can be used to extract energy from food such as carbohydrates, even if some entropy is increased in the process. Maybe the alternatives for using that particular fuel were not that efficient or practical. Then again, the food had to be produced somehow, and in the absence of sunlight it would have meant even more wasted energy.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    2. Re:Minor spolier by egomaniac · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They still haven't explained how it's energy-efficient for humans to use fossil fuels. After all, it takes more energy to generate fossil fuels than is released in burning them.

      So what?

      The laws of thermodynamics guarantee that you're always going to put more energy into a machine than you're going to get back out. This can't be a surprise to anyone who has taken high school physics. Converting energy from, say, the chemical bond energy of the wood in a tree to another form, such as heat, is still a useful process, even though you're putting in far more energy than you're getting out.

      What if, for instance, the machines are feeding us their waste products? And our metabolisms conveniently convert this waste into useful heat energy? As long as the process is efficient enough to be useful, it makes sense.

      --
      ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
  15. Interseting by YllabianBitPipe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Beyond the sci-fi and action elements of the Matrix it's neat how they are working more of the religios and philisophical elements into the canon ... quite a bit of it going on in this short ... the Boddhavista sitting on the lotus, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. That being said, I was expecting this episode to be a bit more cynical (if that can be imagined, it's pretty dark already) ... I always thought it would be a mind bender to learn that the humans voluntarily hooked themselves up to the Matrix because living that way would be preferrable to the burned out wasteland they created through war.