A Matrix prequel could be a sequel to Terminator3... the machines won and put humans into the 1st Matrix but a revived Arnie releases the first "The One"... bwahahahaha!
Hmmmm have to find some way to work Summer Glau into it though....
That's what I thought too. They were still in the matrix. How else could Smith move from one to the other? HE'S A FUCKING COMPUTER PROGRAM.
Mmmm it seemed to me that the need to find "exit points" within the matrix implied that the humans were being digitized into programs that were then inserted into a running simulation. If you can convert a human into a computer program, download the program into a computer system and then later upload the program along with all the data it has accumulated back into the human brain then it isn't hard to believe a computer program could infect the human program and upload itself into the brain.
Otherwise, if they are just interfacing to the matrix and still running everything with their organic brains then what's the big deal about getting out? If they are in trouble just cut the connection - tranquillize them if necessary, make them unconscious if necessary, to prevent shock - but it couldn't be *that* difficult if everything was running locally on the body... after all they took Neo out of the matrix the first time without him knowing what was going to happen.
who was piloting a ship to catch them and keep them from drowning??? You've got a chicken-and-the-egg problem there.
It's been a long time so maybe I'm not remembering properly but I thought that after the initial failures of the matrix the machines decided that it was necessary to have some humans alive outside the matrix... the ones "who just could not accept the program" or something like that... so it was the machines who freed the first human(s). After that on ending each iteration Zion is destroyed and "The One" gets to pick a small number of humans who will be freed and rebuild Zion - presumably it the machines again who are doing the freeing, but it could have been "The One" I suppose.
My problem with all that was that the reasons given ("instabilities" etc.) for all this were completely unnecessary. The matrix is a full fledged simulation of a complex society - there would have to be some "progress" and eventually the humans would advance enough to be able to figure it out for themselves and possibly be able to do something about it. The only way to keep that from happening is to restart every so often.
My third movie would have had Neo be the first guy to figure that out - the "outside world" is still the matrix.
That what I thought he did... he could see the golden energy patterns in "reality" just the way he could see the green patterns in the matrix and he was learning to manipulate them... by the end he must have realized he was in some other matrix type system and that the machines were too... the question is - do the machines know it?
It's interesting to see how different countries structure taxes. If I'm not mistake all he would have had to do to legally avoid payroll taxes in Canada would be to own the company and pay himself through dividends instead of salary.
Geez I thought it was bad in Canada where the first (about) $40,000 of income has a social security tax of (about) 10% - half from the employee and half from the employer... but 12.4% on the entire income? Yikes!!!
The Medicare tax seems to work out to be about the same as the average person pays here on the first $30,000 of income.
There is also another story the title of which I cannot remember but the plot is children are taken in for an intelligence test when young... so the smart ones can be done away with by the machine(s) running the world.
Wow just yesterday my spouse got called by Amex because a (one single) charge appeared that fell outside her normal spending pattern and they suspended her card right away, told her she would not be charged the amount and told her a replacement card would be received within 5 business days.
I used my business debit card for a sub $100 withdrawal, at an ATM in a branch of my bank, in a small town about 30 miles from where I normally do business. This set off some kind of alert and the fraud division called my number but I wasn't around to take the call so they cancelled the card - all within 2 hours of my using the card.
I misspoke (mis-typed?) there, I had actually been picturing the limit of the derivative of F(x) as x approached some value where F(x) was discontinuous... hmmm, now I'm not sure where I had been going with that.... I plead Friday nightism!
Infinity represents a value which, it seems to me, makes it a number... just not a number with a fixed value. You can do calculations with Infinity/Infinities which, again I think, qualifies it as a number... If 1 is a number and you assert 0.99999.... equals 1 you are claiming that the sum of 9/(10**N) [as N ranges from 1 to X] is 1 where in this case X is assigned the value of Infinity. IF you can assign it to a variable then it is a number. To restrict the definition of "number" to being "constant" or even "enumerable" is too restrictive... Is Aleph-Null not a transfinite *number*? But wth it's Friday night, I'm tired enough that I may as well be drunk and I haven't thought of this particular stuff for a painfully long number of years so I'm probably wrong.
Hmmm, I think that if you are going to start asserting things like that then you need to be making some unspoken assumptions explicit. For one thing all the arguments I've seen so far (and of course I may have skimmed too quickly) are implying that the limit of F(x) is asymptotically approaching a single value and that's certainly not necessarily true.
I "started it"???? Geez what are we 5 year-olds??? Sorry, rhetorical question. I'm sorry if you think questioning what someone says on a discussion forum, because a third party's lengthy article full of citations disagrees with with what they say, is "starting something". And I didn't try to point out how "you" are "all clearly wrong about it all"... In my experience when someone resorts to such hyperbole and/or ad hominem comments it indicates lack of an actual argument.
What was said didn't jibe with what I remembered about dark matter theories so I looked it up on the most easily accessible sources and found an article with 76 citations to sources like Phys. Rev., Royal Astronomical Society, NASA etc. Many of the statements in that article conflicted with what had been said so I responded quoting just some of those statements. I'm sorry if doing that on a discussion forum makes me a "clever guy"... how out of line of me. How could I have had the temerity to do something like that? Sheeesh, maybe if the article is so wrong you guys could reel in the egos for a bit and go offer up some corrections to it.
I did not say, and neither did the Wikipedia article, that only baryonic dark matter interacts with photons or baryonic matter. So before you start trying to be condescending and tossing around labels like "pedantic" perhaps you ought to first try a little more reading and a little more thinking.
Well my point was (completely internalized and so probably not obvious) really that we don't know what dark matter is, or how many kinds of dark matter there may be, and we really don't know whether there is no interaction (outside of gravity) with particles such as photons. Head on collision between photon and dark matter particle - is there an actual collision or do they not exist as far as the other is concerned or something else? It seems that, at least in some cases, there is an actual collision which would mean there is an interaction with photons - just very very infrequently. But wrt the implications for what dark matter "is" there is an enormous difference between never and almost never. So I object a bit to theories and opinions being presented in a manner that might lead one to believe they are facts.
Umm he didn't say "little or no interaction" with photons - he said "It precisely means that its coupling to photons is zero", no interaction with photons. Big difference.
The largest part of dark matter, which does not interact with electromagnetic radiation, is not only "dark" but also, by definition, utterly transparent.
Which implies there is a part that does interact with electromagnetic radiation - photons.
nonbaryonic dark matter includes neutrinos
And of course neutrinos can interact with photons and baryonic matter... just not frequently. I can't remember the number of miles of lead a neutrino can pass through without it likely being stopped bit it isn't infinite or even really very big.
Some hard-to-detect baryonic matter, such as MACHOs and some forms of gas, is believed to make a contribution to the overall dark matter content but would constitute only a small portion.
Small does not equal zero.
At present, the most common view is that dark matter is primarily non-baryonic, made of one or more elementary particles other than the usual electrons, protons, neutrons, and known neutrinos. The most commonly proposed particles are axions, sterile neutrinos, and WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, including neutralinos).
Most common does not mean all. Primarily does not equal entirely. WIMPs [ re cold dark matter] interact with baryonic matter through the weak force. WILPs [re hot dark matter], e.g. neutrinos, interact with baryonic matter through the weak force and trigger an event through a head on collision with a nucleus. Colliding implies interaction.
The DAMA/NaI experiment and its successor DAMA/LIBRA have claimed to directly detect dark matter passing through the Earth,......
Direct detection implies interaction,
Experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be able to detect WIMPs... these experiments could show that WIMPs can be created
Created by baryonic matter and/or the known forces other than gravity...implying interaction although possibly only in one direction.
And finally, describing other efforts to detect dark matter...
Both of these detectors are capable of distinguishing background particles which scatter off electrons, from dark matter particles which scatter off nuclei.
Scattering off nuclei sounds like interaction with baryonic matter to me.
You know this is somewhat worrisome. Forget about the actual topic at hand and reflect upon the idea that we can be comfortable with a theory because all the people who agree with each other have said there is no debate about the thing with which they all agree.
When any group of people all decide they believe the same thing, and that anyone disagreeing with them is wrong, then perhaps they are not the best choice of people to be deciding the question of whether there is still room for debate on the issue. And it doesn't matter what the issue is to see the problem with that mechanism. Consider all the times in our past that we have absolutely known with no doubt at all that certain kinds of people were inferior, that the physical world obeyed some particular set of laws, that certain kinds of people were mentally ill... all the many, many sacred cows that were finally turned into burger. Unless you are wiling to ignore human history and human nature then "the establishment", regardless of whether they are correct in their beliefs about some issue, are probably not the best choice to decide whether there is still room for debate.
1) Some people have indicated that the students "should" know certain things. I'm assuming that the class has no pre-requisites, so you shouldn't be assuming that they know anything. Many people who do things like that do so to make themselves feel better; these students are the ultimate newbs, and treat them like you'd like to be treated. Remember that they are not stupid, just uneducated, and they are in your class to correct that.
As someone with long time teaching experience let me give my own version of #1 above:
1) Find out what they know. Survey the class to see what computers, systems, computer-like devices etc. they have had experience with and then you can perhaps take a lesson or two to try and get everyone up to about the same general level of understanding as their fellow classmates (as it pertains to the course of course). After your first feedback do a bit of research and try to find them some extra material for the ones who will need to do the most catching up, for them to read/examine on their own time.
Otherwise you will be spending the entire semester with a set of students who will be having fundamentally different problems learning the same material.
I don't think you are just being awkward. What about people with arthritis (and there are a lot of them)? A simple button is much friendlier than a multi finger gesture.
Slashdot Mirror
A Matrix prequel could be a sequel to Terminator3... the machines won and put humans into the 1st Matrix but a revived Arnie releases the first "The One"... bwahahahaha!
Hmmmm have to find some way to work Summer Glau into it though....
Mmmm it seemed to me that the need to find "exit points" within the matrix implied that the humans were being digitized into programs that were then inserted into a running simulation. If you can convert a human into a computer program, download the program into a computer system and then later upload the program along with all the data it has accumulated back into the human brain then it isn't hard to believe a computer program could infect the human program and upload itself into the brain.
Otherwise, if they are just interfacing to the matrix and still running everything with their organic brains then what's the big deal about getting out? If they are in trouble just cut the connection - tranquillize them if necessary, make them unconscious if necessary, to prevent shock - but it couldn't be *that* difficult if everything was running locally on the body... after all they took Neo out of the matrix the first time without him knowing what was going to happen.
It's been a long time so maybe I'm not remembering properly but I thought that after the initial failures of the matrix the machines decided that it was necessary to have some humans alive outside the matrix... the ones "who just could not accept the program" or something like that... so it was the machines who freed the first human(s). After that on ending each iteration Zion is destroyed and "The One" gets to pick a small number of humans who will be freed and rebuild Zion - presumably it the machines again who are doing the freeing, but it could have been "The One" I suppose.
My problem with all that was that the reasons given ("instabilities" etc.) for all this were completely unnecessary. The matrix is a full fledged simulation of a complex society - there would have to be some "progress" and eventually the humans would advance enough to be able to figure it out for themselves and possibly be able to do something about it. The only way to keep that from happening is to restart every so often.
That what I thought he did... he could see the golden energy patterns in "reality" just the way he could see the green patterns in the matrix and he was learning to manipulate them... by the end he must have realized he was in some other matrix type system and that the machines were too... the question is - do the machines know it?
Ummm that you yanks pay more in SS Tax than Canadians do?
It's interesting to see how different countries structure taxes. If I'm not mistake all he would have had to do to legally avoid payroll taxes in Canada would be to own the company and pay himself through dividends instead of salary.
Geez I thought it was bad in Canada where the first (about) $40,000 of income has a social security tax of (about) 10% - half from the employee and half from the employer... but 12.4% on the entire income? Yikes!!!
The Medicare tax seems to work out to be about the same as the average person pays here on the first $30,000 of income.
Go read "The Marching Morons" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons.
There is also another story the title of which I cannot remember but the plot is children are taken in for an intelligence test when young... so the smart ones can be done away with by the machine(s) running the world.
Wow just yesterday my spouse got called by Amex because a (one single) charge appeared that fell outside her normal spending pattern and they suspended her card right away, told her she would not be charged the amount and told her a replacement card would be received within 5 business days.
I used my business debit card for a sub $100 withdrawal, at an ATM in a branch of my bank, in a small town about 30 miles from where I normally do business. This set off some kind of alert and the fraud division called my number but I wasn't around to take the call so they cancelled the card - all within 2 hours of my using the card.
Sounds like you may need a new bank?
Must be that New Maths ah bin heering 'bout so much!
I misspoke (mis-typed?) there, I had actually been picturing the limit of the derivative of F(x) as x approached some value where F(x) was discontinuous... hmmm, now I'm not sure where I had been going with that.... I plead Friday nightism!
Infinity represents a value which, it seems to me, makes it a number... just not a number with a fixed value. You can do calculations with Infinity/Infinities which, again I think, qualifies it as a number... If 1 is a number and you assert 0.99999.... equals 1 you are claiming that the sum of 9/(10**N) [as N ranges from 1 to X] is 1 where in this case X is assigned the value of Infinity. IF you can assign it to a variable then it is a number. To restrict the definition of "number" to being "constant" or even "enumerable" is too restrictive... Is Aleph-Null not a transfinite *number*? But wth it's Friday night, I'm tired enough that I may as well be drunk and I haven't thought of this particular stuff for a painfully long number of years so I'm probably wrong.
Hmmm, I think that if you are going to start asserting things like that then you need to be making some unspoken assumptions explicit. For one thing all the arguments I've seen so far (and of course I may have skimmed too quickly) are implying that the limit of F(x) is asymptotically approaching a single value and that's certainly not necessarily true.
Ummmm geez I have a problem with the idea that 1/3 = 0.333... because it isn't true.
I "started it"???? Geez what are we 5 year-olds??? Sorry, rhetorical question. I'm sorry if you think questioning what someone says on a discussion forum, because a third party's lengthy article full of citations disagrees with with what they say, is "starting something". And I didn't try to point out how "you" are "all clearly wrong about it all"... In my experience when someone resorts to such hyperbole and/or ad hominem comments it indicates lack of an actual argument.
What was said didn't jibe with what I remembered about dark matter theories so I looked it up on the most easily accessible sources and found an article with 76 citations to sources like Phys. Rev., Royal Astronomical Society, NASA etc. Many of the statements in that article conflicted with what had been said so I responded quoting just some of those statements. I'm sorry if doing that on a discussion forum makes me a "clever guy"... how out of line of me. How could I have had the temerity to do something like that? Sheeesh, maybe if the article is so wrong you guys could reel in the egos for a bit and go offer up some corrections to it.
I did not say, and neither did the Wikipedia article, that only baryonic dark matter interacts with photons or baryonic matter. So before you start trying to be condescending and tossing around labels like "pedantic" perhaps you ought to first try a little more reading and a little more thinking.
Well my point was (completely internalized and so probably not obvious) really that we don't know what dark matter is, or how many kinds of dark matter there may be, and we really don't know whether there is no interaction (outside of gravity) with particles such as photons. Head on collision between photon and dark matter particle - is there an actual collision or do they not exist as far as the other is concerned or something else? It seems that, at least in some cases, there is an actual collision which would mean there is an interaction with photons - just very very infrequently. But wrt the implications for what dark matter "is" there is an enormous difference between never and almost never. So I object a bit to theories and opinions being presented in a manner that might lead one to believe they are facts.
Umm he didn't say "little or no interaction" with photons - he said "It precisely means that its coupling to photons is zero", no interaction with photons. Big difference.
Ummm well I hate to rely upon Wikipedia as the cite for an opposing opinion but....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
Don't stop at the first paragraph or two...
Which implies there is a part that does interact with electromagnetic radiation - photons.
And of course neutrinos can interact with photons and baryonic matter... just not frequently. I can't remember the number of miles of lead a neutrino can pass through without it likely being stopped bit it isn't infinite or even really very big.
Small does not equal zero.
Most common does not mean all. Primarily does not equal entirely. WIMPs [ re cold dark matter] interact with baryonic matter through the weak force. WILPs [re hot dark matter], e.g. neutrinos, interact with baryonic matter through the weak force and trigger an event through a head on collision with a nucleus. Colliding implies interaction.
Direct detection implies interaction,
Created by baryonic matter and/or the known forces other than gravity...implying interaction although possibly only in one direction.
And finally, describing other efforts to detect dark matter...
Scattering off nuclei sounds like interaction with baryonic matter to me.
You know this is somewhat worrisome. Forget about the actual topic at hand and reflect upon the idea that we can be comfortable with a theory because all the people who agree with each other have said there is no debate about the thing with which they all agree.
When any group of people all decide they believe the same thing, and that anyone disagreeing with them is wrong, then perhaps they are not the best choice of people to be deciding the question of whether there is still room for debate on the issue. And it doesn't matter what the issue is to see the problem with that mechanism. Consider all the times in our past that we have absolutely known with no doubt at all that certain kinds of people were inferior, that the physical world obeyed some particular set of laws, that certain kinds of people were mentally ill... all the many, many sacred cows that were finally turned into burger. Unless you are wiling to ignore human history and human nature then "the establishment", regardless of whether they are correct in their beliefs about some issue, are probably not the best choice to decide whether there is still room for debate.
Mmmmm, you are saying that a photon hitting a particle of dark matter simply passes through it with no chance of being absorbed?
ok, sorry, I thought you might be someone I used to play with years back... :)
Hey Nutria... you ever play WOD?
Yeah... think of all the money we could save on schools if people would just learn by themselves.
As someone with long time teaching experience let me give my own version of #1 above:
1) Find out what they know. Survey the class to see what computers, systems, computer-like devices etc. they have had experience with and then you can perhaps take a lesson or two to try and get everyone up to about the same general level of understanding as their fellow classmates (as it pertains to the course of course). After your first feedback do a bit of research and try to find them some extra material for the ones who will need to do the most catching up, for them to read/examine on their own time.
Otherwise you will be spending the entire semester with a set of students who will be having fundamentally different problems learning the same material.
Yes it wouldn't be too hard to find answers, and choose questions carefully, so that the computer wouldn't have much chance of winning, such as:
Category: "Women moaning"
Answer: "When a man does this with his hand."
*duck*
I don't think you are just being awkward. What about people with arthritis (and there are a lot of them)? A simple button is much friendlier than a multi finger gesture.