You don't understand how you get electricity from humans? Okay...the Earth was devastated in the war of the Humans vs. the Machines. The Sky was scortched - so there is not enough light to grow the plants that can heal the radiation-crippled soil...
Except for a strain of genetically-modified bean. So, the big solar plants don't work anymore, you've got a zillion defeated humans around, and the only thing that grows are mutant beans.
Solution: farm the humans to eat the processed beans, and process the farts in giant turbines...and of course you can use the chemical byproducts of your farmed humans and beans to make various synthetics useful for a highly industrialized civilisation.
See? It makes perfect sense. (big grin)
Ok, so it does't. I liked the third movie, but I'm still wondering what the hell the W brothers were smoking about the whole power generation thing...using the humans as a big storage or processing array makes more sense.
Because when you are connected to the Matrix via that great big jack in your head, the machines (like Smith) have direct access to write stuff into your brain - which is how the whole Matrix illusion works. Smith just used that direct connection to overwrite the existing human brain patterns with an identity that believed itself to be Smith. Memory-altering powers available to the Machines have been shown and/or alluded to earlier - an indicate that the Matrix link can do more than simply play with the senses.
The Agents have the ability to temporarily take over human consciousness and replace it with their own identity - Smith is just making it permanent instead of a temporary takeover. Offline, Smith had no more connection with the Matrix than anyone else (well, ok except Neo's Bluetooth link:), except by this point Bane's identity of Bane was gone, replaced by some subset of the memories of Smith and the desire to kill Neo.
This process of permant brain alteration is obviously traumatic, risky, and damaging - the medical scans in Revolutions that being hijacked in this way has done systemic damage to Bane's brain. Neural scarring I think the guy called it.
Zion itself isn't all that beaten up - the Dock is toast, but as for getting in and out, someone bored a nice access shaft right down to the city. If you've got peace with the machines it shouldn't be too hard to put in a freakin elevator. Or just pour some of that horrible slime food down it...
Thats the whole point. Everything from the movies, from the animated stuff is talking about cycles. We've been here before, we've done this, and we'll be here again.
Look at the title of movie 3 - Revolutions. Lots of people seem to think is Revolution. It's not. Not a bunch of people overturning a government and establishing a new system, its a wheel thats going around and around and around and around.
Things change, but in doing so remain the same. Except of course, everything changes. Thats the entire underlying structure of the trilogy.
I agree I liked the movie. IF you don't get it, look at the title - it's not supposed to be a neatly tied off standard hollywood ending. Cycles. Balance. Homeostasis.
Things change, and by doing so, remain the same. Except of course, everything changes.
Though, granted, I think it does work better if you think of parts 2 and 3 being one long movie, with a really big intermission:) The pacing is a bit more typical then - because part 2 ends too soon. I watched parts 1 and 2 immediately before seing 3 so I've got that flow working for me.
Still, whats with the reel of the new live action Dragonball Z film that got laid on top of the big Agent Smith fight? Is it some sort of promo?
Having lived for the past three years in Canada I can tell you Canadians have a much higher living standard than we Americans do. Mostly because they score LOTS higher on the moose index. Oh, and they are less often routinely rude to each other. Of course, the rude ones get squished by moose-a-pults.
Why did I buy alienware? Summer before last my computer began to break down - CD burner and monitor both died about a week apart, and the main hard drive started misbehaving - and since it was a 4 year old box I started looking at my replacement options...
I originally looked at purchasing parts and assembling a system piecemeal. I discovered that living where I did (middle of nowhere town in NEw Brunswick, Canada) I'd have to have everything shipped - most of it from the states. After I totaled up the cost of shipping and customs duties for the parts, and then factored in the time required for me to assemble it, I realized it would be about the same cost as buying what I wanted, pre=assembled and warrentied, from Alienware (w/free shipping). Free shipping really helped - as well as the fact that when my nice big Alienware box crossed the border the customs official informed me that as an international student residing temporarily in Canada I wasn't required to pay duty (something I wouldn't have discovered if I had made a bunch of small purchases not requiring me to speak on the phone with customs).
As for what they offer as added value, the support people that I talked to when I had problems with my box were first-rate. The ONLY help desk people I've ever spoken with who didn't treat me like a moron and actually listened to me.
Oh - Christians - metaphorically fish. Or sheep. Silly Jehovah and his biblical mixed metaphors.
Oops, I left out something!
on
Tai Chi Robots
·
· Score: 1
The point of my post was supposed to be that we need to give robots martial arts forms suitable for high-tech weapononry. This will greatly improve their world-dominating potential.
Man, I've been up all a couple nights and a day - it shows...
Re:I'd only point out that. . .
on
Tai Chi Robots
·
· Score: 1
The skills taught by the martial arts are useful - but in the modern age somewhat dated. Given the roots of many disciplines in providing weapons for those required to go "unarmed" (peasants, rebels, etc) a bare-hand master is a bit outclassed by technology.
What we need are the martial arts equivalents of napalm, cluster munitions, nukes, and asteroid drops... Not to mention tanks, gunships, carriers, and subs.
Exactly - the point is the artifacts in Tolkein all had a history and were hard won, with a purpose. Making them via mass-production just wouldn't work - even if technically all the raw materials available for their creation were available.
Those poor trees. Tolkein's bad guys, pretty consistantly, had it in for trees.
Weathertop was fun - you come so close to getting to see Gandalf blow ringwraiths out of the sky but you never quite get that front row seat.
Strider does his bit, sure, and it's important, but the only 'world saving' he does is by extension - guarding the ring bearer(s). That and NOT taking the ring for his own:)
So let's have three chears for gollum! The hero of the LOTR!
It's not about mythic heroes saving the day. Frodo bears the ring into Mordor - very heroically. Sam helps him, becoming a Ring Bearer as well. Togather they both become darker, and Frodo takes wounds that will haunt him - forever.
In the end it is NOT the mythic hero Frodo, favored heir of the richest man in the village, with his mithril coat and magic sword, who saves the day.
In the end Evil is defeated by squabbling against itself - as the corrupted Gollum seizes the ring and ends up getting cooked.
Lets look at the Fellowship of the Ring - a gathering of mythic heroes all. A returned King, assorted adventurer-hobbits, a wizard with assorted elves, dwarves, and horses.
What happens to this Fellowship? Well...the leader is slaughtered (albeit to return - being Maia real death is tricky buisiness), there is blood and betrayal amongst them...and they are scattered to the four winds.
So now you have mythic heroes wandering the landscape... So what do they manage? They bring down Saruman... but that's bungled as he ends up corrupting the Shire.
These wandering heroes do manage other heroic feats - the dead rise, wormtongues are dewormed, and so forth. Of course what this amounts to is mostly the heroes gathering to defend Minas Tirith because the *real battle* is in Frodo and Sams hands.
Gandalf shows some of his power defending the city, but in the end it is a woman - female empowerment! - who dares to ignore the mythic prophecies and exert her will over presumed Fate - who takes down the Witch King. That's a powerful message - one can transform oneself form an unimportant marginzalized bystander by telling the mythic "truth" to stuff it and then *making it so*.
Now, by the time Frodo is at the end game he isn't really that bright and shining heir of the richest man in the village anymore. He's become a simple soldier - marching to what he believes will be his death, sick, disheartened, and motivated by his duty to do what must be done.
At the end of the books, when Frodo passes into the West, he's not that much different. He's haunted by what he has done, he has wounds that will not heal, and much of the light in his own heart has guttered out. He's a fairly realistic war vet, not a idolized shining hero - even while Strider has become the archetypal Rightful King. Note: Strider, Mr. Mythic Hero from beginning to end, doesn't do all that much in the grand scheme of things - he secures his kingdom but does not save the world.
There is a message here - that if one is determined enough fighting the unbeatable immortal darkness one might win - but the cost will be high and being on the right side is no guarentee.
Frodo is rewarded for his toils with immortality in the West, as a wounded and darkened man. Think carefully about being that, in a land of shining Gods and happy bright elves - many of whom have never left paradise - he's going to be one of the very few with inescapable darkness. Forever.
That's *not* the end of a mythic hero, that's the end of a soldier, returning home to try to build a normal life after experiencing direst horror.
Mythic Hero Boy -> becomes ordinary soldier -> Saves World -> pays realistic price for the rest of his days.
The great works which could not be duplicated were mostly due to their makers either dying, being corrupted to evil, or deciding (after seeing the woe their works caused) to stop making stuff like that.
The mighty crafters were genuses, mostly elven, and given the lifespan of elves, admittedly dying out in Middle Earth, hard to replace when they were gone.
Not to mention some of the great artifacts required the assistance or sole involvement of the Valar, and if the gods don't WANT to help you make a replacement silmaril when you lost the perfectly good one you had not a millenia ago...
A good game shop won't require it - but will have it there for those who can use it. Is it dead? No, people have just realized not everyone has a T&L card.
Stuff will still go up, it's the nature of the beast.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't understand how you get electricity from humans? Okay...the Earth was devastated in the war of the Humans vs. the Machines. The Sky was scortched - so there is not enough light to grow the plants that can heal the radiation-crippled soil...
Except for a strain of genetically-modified bean. So, the big solar plants don't work anymore, you've got a zillion defeated humans around, and the only thing that grows are mutant beans.
Solution: farm the humans to eat the processed beans, and process the farts in giant turbines...and of course you can use the chemical byproducts of your farmed humans and beans to make various synthetics useful for a highly industrialized civilisation.
See? It makes perfect sense. (big grin)
Ok, so it does't. I liked the third movie, but I'm still wondering what the hell the W brothers were smoking about the whole power generation thing...using the humans as a big storage or processing array makes more sense.
Because when you are connected to the Matrix via that great big jack in your head, the machines (like Smith) have direct access to write stuff into your brain - which is how the whole Matrix illusion works. Smith just used that direct connection to overwrite the existing human brain patterns with an identity that believed itself to be Smith. Memory-altering powers available to the Machines have been shown and/or alluded to earlier - an indicate that the Matrix link can do more than simply play with the senses.
:), except by this point Bane's identity of Bane was gone, replaced by some subset of the memories of Smith and the desire to kill Neo.
The Agents have the ability to temporarily take over human consciousness and replace it with their own identity - Smith is just making it permanent instead of a temporary takeover. Offline, Smith had no more connection with the Matrix than anyone else (well, ok except Neo's Bluetooth link
This process of permant brain alteration is obviously traumatic, risky, and damaging - the medical scans in Revolutions that being hijacked in this way has done systemic damage to Bane's brain. Neural scarring I think the guy called it.
Zion itself isn't all that beaten up - the Dock is toast, but as for getting in and out, someone bored a nice access shaft right down to the city. If you've got peace with the machines it shouldn't be too hard to put in a freakin elevator. Or just pour some of that horrible slime food down it...
Thats the whole point. Everything from the movies, from the animated stuff is talking about cycles. We've been here before, we've done this, and we'll be here again.
Look at the title of movie 3 - Revolutions. Lots of people seem to think is Revolution. It's not. Not a bunch of people overturning a government and establishing a new system, its a wheel thats going around and around and around and around.
Things change, but in doing so remain the same. Except of course, everything changes. Thats the entire underlying structure of the trilogy.
I agree I liked the movie. IF you don't get it, look at the title - it's not supposed to be a neatly tied off standard hollywood ending. Cycles. Balance. Homeostasis.
:) The pacing is a bit more typical then - because part 2 ends too soon. I watched parts 1 and 2 immediately before seing 3 so I've got that flow working for me.
Things change, and by doing so, remain the same. Except of course, everything changes.
Though, granted, I think it does work better if you think of parts 2 and 3 being one long movie, with a really big intermission
Still, whats with the reel of the new live action Dragonball Z film that got laid on top of the big Agent Smith fight? Is it some sort of promo?
Good movie. I liked it. A bit err..Dragonball Zish towards the end, but still good.
It leaves things open, which is good, because the entire trilogy is about *cycles* and *balance*.
A neatly-tied off hollywood ending might appease the masses but would betray the underlying structure of the films.
The God from the Machine is cool - nice way of giving something that has no need for a human face, a human face.
bane is plugged in during Reloaded when Smith overwrites him. He's Smith from that point on. Smith doesn't jump to meatspace without a line.
Having lived for the past three years in Canada I can tell you Canadians have a much higher living standard than we Americans do. Mostly because they score LOTS higher on the moose index. Oh, and they are less often routinely rude to each other. Of course, the rude ones get squished by moose-a-pults.
I give you a florgbort of agreement.
How do you spank a computer? Install windows.
How do you reward a computer? Give it the pass codes to the nuke nets and a set of Terminator dvds.
Laundry?
Well they released a crap game, so hopefully the fires of heaven toasted their backsides.
Why did I buy alienware? Summer before last my computer began to break down - CD burner and monitor both died about a week apart, and the main hard drive started misbehaving - and since it was a 4 year old box I started looking at my replacement options...
I originally looked at purchasing parts and assembling a system piecemeal. I discovered that living where I did (middle of nowhere town in NEw Brunswick, Canada) I'd have to have everything shipped - most of it from the states. After I totaled up the cost of shipping and customs duties for the parts, and then factored in the time required for me to assemble it, I realized it would be about the same cost as buying what I wanted, pre=assembled and warrentied, from Alienware (w/free shipping). Free shipping really helped - as well as the fact that when my nice big Alienware box crossed the border the customs official informed me that as an international student residing temporarily in Canada I wasn't required to pay duty (something I wouldn't have discovered if I had made a bunch of small purchases not requiring me to speak on the phone with customs).
As for what they offer as added value, the support people that I talked to when I had problems with my box were first-rate. The ONLY help desk people I've ever spoken with who didn't treat me like a moron and actually listened to me.
Kettle of fish?
Oh - Christians - metaphorically fish. Or sheep. Silly Jehovah and his biblical mixed metaphors.
The point of my post was supposed to be that we need to give robots martial arts forms suitable for high-tech weapononry. This will greatly improve their world-dominating potential.
Man, I've been up all a couple nights and a day - it shows...
The skills taught by the martial arts are useful - but in the modern age somewhat dated. Given the roots of many disciplines in providing weapons for those required to go "unarmed" (peasants, rebels, etc) a bare-hand master is a bit outclassed by technology.
What we need are the martial arts equivalents of napalm, cluster munitions, nukes, and asteroid drops... Not to mention tanks, gunships, carriers, and subs.
Exactly - the point is the artifacts in Tolkein all had a history and were hard won, with a purpose. Making them via mass-production just wouldn't work - even if technically all the raw materials available for their creation were available.
Those poor trees. Tolkein's bad guys, pretty consistantly, had it in for trees.
Weathertop was fun - you come so close to getting to see Gandalf blow ringwraiths out of the sky but you never quite get that front row seat.
:)
Strider does his bit, sure, and it's important, but the only 'world saving' he does is by extension - guarding the ring bearer(s). That and NOT taking the ring for his own
So let's have three chears for gollum! The hero of the LOTR!
It's not about mythic heroes saving the day. Frodo bears the ring into Mordor - very heroically. Sam helps him, becoming a Ring Bearer as well. Togather they both become darker, and Frodo takes wounds that will haunt him - forever.
In the end it is NOT the mythic hero Frodo, favored heir of the richest man in the village, with his mithril coat and magic sword, who saves the day.
In the end Evil is defeated by squabbling against itself - as the corrupted Gollum seizes the ring and ends up getting cooked.
Lets look at the Fellowship of the Ring - a gathering of mythic heroes all. A returned King, assorted adventurer-hobbits, a wizard with assorted elves, dwarves, and horses.
What happens to this Fellowship? Well...the leader is slaughtered (albeit to return - being Maia real death is tricky buisiness), there is blood and betrayal amongst them...and they are scattered to the four winds.
So now you have mythic heroes wandering the landscape... So what do they manage? They bring down Saruman... but that's bungled as he ends up corrupting the Shire.
These wandering heroes do manage other heroic feats - the dead rise, wormtongues are dewormed, and so forth. Of course what this amounts to is mostly the heroes gathering to defend Minas Tirith because the *real battle* is in Frodo and Sams hands.
Gandalf shows some of his power defending the city, but in the end it is a woman - female empowerment! - who dares to ignore the mythic prophecies and exert her will over presumed Fate - who takes down the Witch King. That's a powerful message - one can transform oneself form an unimportant marginzalized bystander by telling the mythic "truth" to stuff it and then *making it so*.
Now, by the time Frodo is at the end game he isn't really that bright and shining heir of the richest man in the village anymore. He's become a simple soldier - marching to what he believes will be his death, sick, disheartened, and motivated by his duty to do what must be done.
At the end of the books, when Frodo passes into the West, he's not that much different. He's haunted by what he has done, he has wounds that will not heal, and much of the light in his own heart has guttered out. He's a fairly realistic war vet, not a idolized shining hero - even while Strider has become the archetypal Rightful King. Note: Strider, Mr. Mythic Hero from beginning to end, doesn't do all that much in the grand scheme of things - he secures his kingdom but does not save the world.
There is a message here - that if one is determined enough fighting the unbeatable immortal darkness one might win - but the cost will be high and being on the right side is no guarentee.
Frodo is rewarded for his toils with immortality in the West, as a wounded and darkened man. Think carefully about being that, in a land of shining Gods and happy bright elves - many of whom have never left paradise - he's going to be one of the very few with inescapable darkness. Forever.
That's *not* the end of a mythic hero, that's the end of a soldier, returning home to try to build a normal life after experiencing direst horror.
Mythic Hero Boy -> becomes ordinary soldier -> Saves World -> pays realistic price for the rest of his days.
The great works which could not be duplicated were mostly due to their makers either dying, being corrupted to evil, or deciding (after seeing the woe their works caused) to stop making stuff like that.
The mighty crafters were genuses, mostly elven, and given the lifespan of elves, admittedly dying out in Middle Earth, hard to replace when they were gone.
Not to mention some of the great artifacts required the assistance or sole involvement of the Valar, and if the gods don't WANT to help you make a replacement silmaril when you lost the perfectly good one you had not a millenia ago...
I forgot suspicious, cheap, and posessed of an astounding level of poor taste.
I was referring to your .sig
Was.
Did.
Was an improvement actually, but that's neither here nor there.
Your statement is not condusive to much.
A good game shop won't require it - but will have it there for those who can use it. Is it dead? No, people have just realized not everyone has a T&L card.
Stuff will still go up, it's the nature of the beast.
Sadly due to the /. effect I read the test code rather later...
/. effect and note your units and cases!
Still, you should be aware of the famous