Spanish for "little tails". It refers to the buds of marijuana leaves which were believed to be "sweeter" than the rest of the leaf and would be used exclusively in the rolling of some joints.
6) Again, that's one theory. An alternate theory is that the Wachowski brothers are frickin abysmal writers who just got lucky the first time.
You could also be generous and concede that they may have been okay writers but that in attempting to visually convey extremely sophisticated philosophical concepts using the language of cyberpunk mixed with the visual themes of martial arts cinema and work like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner their reach exceeded their grasp.
It was relatively easy to frame a story which posited Machines=baddies, humans = goodies in The Matrix but in Reloaded and Revolutions they moved towards a philosophy in which Smith became representative of a kind of nihilistic instinct where Neo represented a vital and enlightened soul, alive to suffering and the transience of the apparent but able to move within the world of appearances in tune with the creatures of spirit. The machine world came to represent this world of spirit over the course of the trilogy, programs and machines representing the highest forms of intellect and wisdom that much eastern philosophy attempts to teach us are, at first, seen as enemies of our unenlightened selves but later come to be angelic beings prompting us to move into a state of nirvanic bliss.
It's an interesting philosophy but not one that anyone has ever really tried to put into the visual language of action cinema, until these guys. That they failed was almost inevitable. That they tried remains admirable. That they are scorned remains unsurprising.
Unwittingly you may have just provided the answer to the age old query of why it is that men don't seem to be able to multitask.
They are all multi-tasking, constantly. Most men that I've encountered take the assessment of a female person's surface attractiveness as something their brain will just do regardless of whether they want it to or not. It doesn't stop them listening to anything she might have to say or assessing her personal qualities any more than any other factor such as trying to hold a sensible conversation on a bad phone line or whatever.
If it is true that a woman can have many conversations with a man and never once think about his surface attractiveness then that leaves a whole heap of spare brain capacity for multi-tasking. I have heard women say "I just never thought of x that way" and assumed it meant the survey had been carried out but disregarded as irrelevant; this is the way it works for me.
If, in fact, the survey never takes place at all it explains a hell of a lot about a lot of things... to me, anyway.
Are you not allowed to say "I'm sorry you didn't make the cut, we wish you luck gaining employment elsewhere"? Why do you have to say "I'm sorry but I don't like Jewish Asian Lesbian Possibly-Illegal One-Legged Half-blind Over 50s so I'm not going to hire you"? Is it illegal not to give people a solid reason why they have been turned down? And if it is could "we had more suitable candidates present themselves" be a better response than "we had more young white male protestant applicants"? I'm not really trying to be rude but even though I have been known to be a young white male indistinguishable from a protestant of the same gender, age and racial background nobody ever told me they were either hiring or not hiring me for any reason other than "stuff" probably to avoid such recruiting snafus.
I'm from the UK and I know certain branches of Asda and Morrisons employ some local senior citizens to harangue people on the way in (the "greeting" the "greeter" is to deliver). As the kind of senior citizen who would agree to such a humiliating and pointless task in our country of dour cynics is usually a few sandwiches short of a picnic anyway it's a little bit like certain supermarkets have their own court jester drooling all over you as you step through the door. So, that's what a greeter is.
I actually wish I knew a bit more about these from a practical standpoint. I know the theory but have never really messed about with even a simple one. I feel the lack. Mechanics seem like shaman to me.
I don't think anyone actually bothers to track purchases of individual customers. Or if they do then they don't pay much mind. I have this curse, it is the subject of jokes amongst myself and my nearest and dearest. If I like a product, I mean really like it, so that I become brand loyal and all that crap the suppliers go out of business or they stop making whatever it is that I want to buy.
I live in the UK and back in the mid nineties we briefly got a taste of Pretzel Flipz chocolate covered pretzels. I absolutely loved the White Fudge variety you now can't get in the UK for love nor money. A takeout near where we live did a particular type of burger I ate too many of and shortly thereafter the place changed hands and menus. A short while ago the grocer just opposite where we live stopped stocking both flapjacks, which I inhale, and a particular brand of glucose energy drink which I thought was superior to the leading brand. That's just the start. I can't help noticing that all of these items were totally bad for me. So maybe they were watching, and decided to put my health before their profits... maybe...
This. Mostly.
I do have time to work on projects outside of work, and I do. They just happen to be RP Design projects. Our group has self-published some stuff and done some work in the area of narrative RP. It's my hobby, coding is my work. I don't like the thought that I would be discriminated against as a coder with eight year's experience simply because the only free-time work I've done is to write a little app that helps you make fighting fantasy style adventure books.
And after much scrolling I find this gem buried at the bottom of the thread. Exactly this. Not only that but the seedy reputation poker has is an excellent object lesson is how stupid people will bitch and whine about anything.
Poker teaches you that life is not fair, that you need to learn both academics (e.g. probabilities) and politics (e.g. reading others) in order to survive and that people get real weird when money goes on the table. I can't think of any lessons any human being needs to learn early any more than these.
I was more annoyed by the throwaway assumption that this new version of reality was "created" as opposed to running in parallel with the "original" reality, that the "Source Code" was more a means of travel between alternates than a simulation. So all the other realities were real too. That premise is intriguing, and rapidly brain melting. Yet it was squandered on the last five minutes of a fairly humdrum OK movie.
When Holmes died the first time it's because Conan Doyle actually was irritated by the whole thing and wanted to kill him off. He survived because readers of The Strand Magazine went ape about it and demanded the return of their favourite detective. So ACD bent to the will of the people and the promise of a lucrative paycheck on that one.
Paul Verhoeven is a trendy, liberal Dutch film director. This is why his films revolve around crude satire and boobies. His commentary on ST makes it very plain he saw it as a satire. His commentary on The Hollow Man made it very clear that we should never let him become invisible...
The difference is that there is very little currency in celebrity for software. I write software, novels and role-playing games. If people pirate either the role-playing games or the novels (I wish on the latter!) then I get exposure and the trickle down may work as you suggest. If someone pirates some software I wrote and I write more software the people who pirated and enjoyed the first program will not think "oh, this guy writes good software maybe I should reward him by paying this time" they'll either pirate it again because it's a useful thing to them or not. Programmers have no cachet when it comes to people thinking of them third-hand via the work they produce.
The second two were crap but not because of plagiarism. For the record the plagiarism accusation is so demonstrably false it's got its own Snopes entry:
The 10 Disc "Fanboys Only" Matrix Box Set has the full analysis of why the sequels failed, the Wachowskis decided to eschew a commentary track of their own to present two by philosophers and critics. The philosophers love all the films, the critics hate the latter two but have some time for the first. The reasons for both sets of opinion are cogent and well thought through.
The critics point out that the first Matrix is revolutionary in that it asks a lot of an audience in terms of the way it plays with reality but it gives a lot in the way it presents a science fiction universe unlike any depicted before. Instead of post apocalyptic grime (which is presented as a footnote of history) or high camp glitter the future inside the Matrix is this polished, designed "game world" filled with extravagantly but stylishly dressed martial arts super heroes. Then, as the series progresses, the "real" world which resembles a hundred other post apocalyptic movies gets used more and more, the stakes become woolly, the plot focus becomes blurry and we lose the ability to care about what's happening.
The philosophers, on the other hand, go through checklisting all the philosophical concepts the movies try to convey; "try" being the operative word. The philosophers are not so keen on what they see as the "Manichean" dynamic of the first movie where good and evil are clearly and allegorically separated. It's fun, but intellectually childish. As the films progress the Wachowskis attempted to introduce more sophisticated notions of individual choice and responsibility but they can't handle fitting those into a movie about "robots vs kung fu". To be fair it's not an easy task for someone to set themselves, I'm not really surprised they failed.
It has been a source of disappointment to me since the whole series finished just how keen people were to buy in to the simple explanation that the Matrix Sequels sucked the way the Star Wars prequel trilogy sucked. They both suck, for sure; but for different reasons. The Star Wars prequels are lazy, incoherent and pompous, the Matrix Sequels are bloated, incoherent and over-ambitious. I applaud the Wachowskis for over reaching, because even today there's something to be found in the Matrix Trilogy for those willing to dig.
The Matrix Trilogy deals with more complex issues than everybody's poster film for intellectual worth of 2010 Inception. Inception is quite easy to pick apart, it just takes a little time and effort. Some of the themes of the Matrix have been central to the human condition for millennia. The worst I can say about Reloaded and Revolutions is that they are dull and incoherent if you don't have a solid grounding in the philosophy of self, fate vs. free will, the nature of reality etc. They can still be dull even if you do know what they're trying to do and you have an instinct for decent storytelling because they don't tell their story decently.
I'm not apologising for them, they're not good movies. However they're about the best bad movies that have ever been made because in their disappointing morass of uninspiring specatacle there are genuine attempts to talk about some really mind blowing stuff. No film maker before or since has attempted to make a fun, accessible movie about these concepts. The reasons they don't should be in recognition of the insane difficulty of the challenge. I suspect it's more because most people just think they're terrible movies like all other terrible movies and "probably plagiarised" to boot.
I believe all Apple stuff is overpriced and not as great as apple enthusiasts make out. I am irritated just trying to use any given Apple device. This is my opinion. I don't look down on others for using it, I know why I believe it's overpriced and I don't believe people really understand the reasons why they say they buy it. It's 90% marketing and 10% other factors IMO.
I may shorthand this to "Apple stuff is crap".
Glad I'm never going to have to work with some jackass who can't tell that people shorthand and don't necessarily mean harm or insult to others just because they state their opinion but know that others may not want the full carefully thought through dissertation on the subject. People are free to disagree with me but if they disagree with you sounds like they won't be getting a job.
Slashdot Mirror
obligatory XKCD http://xkcd.com/434/
I think part of the point is that it hasn't "gone missing" it was, rather, "in the wrong place" to a degree of federal criminality.
I'd be more apt to trust someone who randomly found an MBA in a snack box than someone who actually paid to do one...
According to the discussion underneath the second link... apparently not. I was surprised too.
Spanish for "little tails". It refers to the buds of marijuana leaves which were believed to be "sweeter" than the rest of the leaf and would be used exclusively in the rolling of some joints.
6) Again, that's one theory. An alternate theory is that the Wachowski brothers are frickin abysmal writers who just got lucky the first time.
You could also be generous and concede that they may have been okay writers but that in attempting to visually convey extremely sophisticated philosophical concepts using the language of cyberpunk mixed with the visual themes of martial arts cinema and work like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner their reach exceeded their grasp.
It was relatively easy to frame a story which posited Machines=baddies, humans = goodies in The Matrix but in Reloaded and Revolutions they moved towards a philosophy in which Smith became representative of a kind of nihilistic instinct where Neo represented a vital and enlightened soul, alive to suffering and the transience of the apparent but able to move within the world of appearances in tune with the creatures of spirit. The machine world came to represent this world of spirit over the course of the trilogy, programs and machines representing the highest forms of intellect and wisdom that much eastern philosophy attempts to teach us are, at first, seen as enemies of our unenlightened selves but later come to be angelic beings prompting us to move into a state of nirvanic bliss.
It's an interesting philosophy but not one that anyone has ever really tried to put into the visual language of action cinema, until these guys. That they failed was almost inevitable. That they tried remains admirable. That they are scorned remains unsurprising.
Now *that's* misogynistic... unless you tar men with the same brush. In which case I apologise and leave you to your misanthropy.
Unwittingly you may have just provided the answer to the age old query of why it is that men don't seem to be able to multitask.
They are all multi-tasking, constantly. Most men that I've encountered take the assessment of a female person's surface attractiveness as something their brain will just do regardless of whether they want it to or not. It doesn't stop them listening to anything she might have to say or assessing her personal qualities any more than any other factor such as trying to hold a sensible conversation on a bad phone line or whatever.
If it is true that a woman can have many conversations with a man and never once think about his surface attractiveness then that leaves a whole heap of spare brain capacity for multi-tasking. I have heard women say "I just never thought of x that way" and assumed it meant the survey had been carried out but disregarded as irrelevant; this is the way it works for me.
If, in fact, the survey never takes place at all it explains a hell of a lot about a lot of things... to me, anyway.
Are you not allowed to say "I'm sorry you didn't make the cut, we wish you luck gaining employment elsewhere"? Why do you have to say "I'm sorry but I don't like Jewish Asian Lesbian Possibly-Illegal One-Legged Half-blind Over 50s so I'm not going to hire you"? Is it illegal not to give people a solid reason why they have been turned down? And if it is could "we had more suitable candidates present themselves" be a better response than "we had more young white male protestant applicants"? I'm not really trying to be rude but even though I have been known to be a young white male indistinguishable from a protestant of the same gender, age and racial background nobody ever told me they were either hiring or not hiring me for any reason other than "stuff" probably to avoid such recruiting snafus.
I'm from the UK and I know certain branches of Asda and Morrisons employ some local senior citizens to harangue people on the way in (the "greeting" the "greeter" is to deliver). As the kind of senior citizen who would agree to such a humiliating and pointless task in our country of dour cynics is usually a few sandwiches short of a picnic anyway it's a little bit like certain supermarkets have their own court jester drooling all over you as you step through the door. So, that's what a greeter is.
All the worthless and mostly meaningless crap I had in my dropbox was available to the world for four hours. Poor world. I'm sorry.
Seriously. It's a cloud based file-syncing service any "security" you imagine files have in there inherently is entirely fictional.
I actually wish I knew a bit more about these from a practical standpoint. I know the theory but have never really messed about with even a simple one. I feel the lack. Mechanics seem like shaman to me.
Bully is one of my favourite games ever. And like most things I like it is almost entirely forgotten.
I don't think anyone actually bothers to track purchases of individual customers. Or if they do then they don't pay much mind. I have this curse, it is the subject of jokes amongst myself and my nearest and dearest. If I like a product, I mean really like it, so that I become brand loyal and all that crap the suppliers go out of business or they stop making whatever it is that I want to buy.
I live in the UK and back in the mid nineties we briefly got a taste of Pretzel Flipz chocolate covered pretzels. I absolutely loved the White Fudge variety you now can't get in the UK for love nor money. A takeout near where we live did a particular type of burger I ate too many of and shortly thereafter the place changed hands and menus. A short while ago the grocer just opposite where we live stopped stocking both flapjacks, which I inhale, and a particular brand of glucose energy drink which I thought was superior to the leading brand. That's just the start. I can't help noticing that all of these items were totally bad for me. So maybe they were watching, and decided to put my health before their profits... maybe...
This. Mostly. I do have time to work on projects outside of work, and I do. They just happen to be RP Design projects. Our group has self-published some stuff and done some work in the area of narrative RP. It's my hobby, coding is my work. I don't like the thought that I would be discriminated against as a coder with eight year's experience simply because the only free-time work I've done is to write a little app that helps you make fighting fantasy style adventure books.
And after much scrolling I find this gem buried at the bottom of the thread. Exactly this. Not only that but the seedy reputation poker has is an excellent object lesson is how stupid people will bitch and whine about anything. Poker teaches you that life is not fair, that you need to learn both academics (e.g. probabilities) and politics (e.g. reading others) in order to survive and that people get real weird when money goes on the table. I can't think of any lessons any human being needs to learn early any more than these.
I was more annoyed by the throwaway assumption that this new version of reality was "created" as opposed to running in parallel with the "original" reality, that the "Source Code" was more a means of travel between alternates than a simulation. So all the other realities were real too. That premise is intriguing, and rapidly brain melting. Yet it was squandered on the last five minutes of a fairly humdrum OK movie.
When Holmes died the first time it's because Conan Doyle actually was irritated by the whole thing and wanted to kill him off. He survived because readers of The Strand Magazine went ape about it and demanded the return of their favourite detective. So ACD bent to the will of the people and the promise of a lucrative paycheck on that one.
Paul Verhoeven is a trendy, liberal Dutch film director. This is why his films revolve around crude satire and boobies. His commentary on ST makes it very plain he saw it as a satire. His commentary on The Hollow Man made it very clear that we should never let him become invisible...
The difference is that there is very little currency in celebrity for software. I write software, novels and role-playing games. If people pirate either the role-playing games or the novels (I wish on the latter!) then I get exposure and the trickle down may work as you suggest. If someone pirates some software I wrote and I write more software the people who pirated and enjoyed the first program will not think "oh, this guy writes good software maybe I should reward him by paying this time" they'll either pirate it again because it's a useful thing to them or not. Programmers have no cachet when it comes to people thinking of them third-hand via the work they produce.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp
Boardrooms and Bureaucrats
but my password is XXXXXX... so I'd better make sure not to type XXXXXX into this comment or else everyone will be able to see that it's XXXXXX.
The second two were crap but not because of plagiarism. For the record the plagiarism accusation is so demonstrably false it's got its own Snopes entry:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp
The 10 Disc "Fanboys Only" Matrix Box Set has the full analysis of why the sequels failed, the Wachowskis decided to eschew a commentary track of their own to present two by philosophers and critics. The philosophers love all the films, the critics hate the latter two but have some time for the first. The reasons for both sets of opinion are cogent and well thought through.
The critics point out that the first Matrix is revolutionary in that it asks a lot of an audience in terms of the way it plays with reality but it gives a lot in the way it presents a science fiction universe unlike any depicted before. Instead of post apocalyptic grime (which is presented as a footnote of history) or high camp glitter the future inside the Matrix is this polished, designed "game world" filled with extravagantly but stylishly dressed martial arts super heroes. Then, as the series progresses, the "real" world which resembles a hundred other post apocalyptic movies gets used more and more, the stakes become woolly, the plot focus becomes blurry and we lose the ability to care about what's happening.
The philosophers, on the other hand, go through checklisting all the philosophical concepts the movies try to convey; "try" being the operative word. The philosophers are not so keen on what they see as the "Manichean" dynamic of the first movie where good and evil are clearly and allegorically separated. It's fun, but intellectually childish. As the films progress the Wachowskis attempted to introduce more sophisticated notions of individual choice and responsibility but they can't handle fitting those into a movie about "robots vs kung fu". To be fair it's not an easy task for someone to set themselves, I'm not really surprised they failed.
It has been a source of disappointment to me since the whole series finished just how keen people were to buy in to the simple explanation that the Matrix Sequels sucked the way the Star Wars prequel trilogy sucked. They both suck, for sure; but for different reasons. The Star Wars prequels are lazy, incoherent and pompous, the Matrix Sequels are bloated, incoherent and over-ambitious. I applaud the Wachowskis for over reaching, because even today there's something to be found in the Matrix Trilogy for those willing to dig.
The Matrix Trilogy deals with more complex issues than everybody's poster film for intellectual worth of 2010 Inception. Inception is quite easy to pick apart, it just takes a little time and effort. Some of the themes of the Matrix have been central to the human condition for millennia. The worst I can say about Reloaded and Revolutions is that they are dull and incoherent if you don't have a solid grounding in the philosophy of self, fate vs. free will, the nature of reality etc. They can still be dull even if you do know what they're trying to do and you have an instinct for decent storytelling because they don't tell their story decently.
I'm not apologising for them, they're not good movies. However they're about the best bad movies that have ever been made because in their disappointing morass of uninspiring specatacle there are genuine attempts to talk about some really mind blowing stuff. No film maker before or since has attempted to make a fun, accessible movie about these concepts. The reasons they don't should be in recognition of the insane difficulty of the challenge. I suspect it's more because most people just think they're terrible movies like all other terrible movies and "probably plagiarised" to boot.
And I think that's a great shame.
I believe all Apple stuff is overpriced and not as great as apple enthusiasts make out. I am irritated just trying to use any given Apple device. This is my opinion. I don't look down on others for using it, I know why I believe it's overpriced and I don't believe people really understand the reasons why they say they buy it. It's 90% marketing and 10% other factors IMO.
I may shorthand this to "Apple stuff is crap".
Glad I'm never going to have to work with some jackass who can't tell that people shorthand and don't necessarily mean harm or insult to others just because they state their opinion but know that others may not want the full carefully thought through dissertation on the subject. People are free to disagree with me but if they disagree with you sounds like they won't be getting a job.
Just the way it sounds.