Actually, eWorld was an earlier effort than what I was thinking of. (More.) It appears the focus was on setting up a portal but not trying to compete on access. Their early alliance with Earthlink (what happened to that?) might have been a gesture towards some sort of synergy. Anyway, the distinction between access and portal probably goes right by most consumers, taking us back to the trademark problem. (I went through enough agony in my old job trying to explain to my boss the difference between RAM and hard drives, and why we needed to buy both.)
I remember that there iswww.appleisp.net What up with that? There's not even the usual "in no was associated with" disclaimer.
It's a pity that (apparently) sincere opinion in the parent is labeled a "troll." Did the modder notice that the story's author was actually soliciting opinion??? Or merely object to the parent's fairly mainstream opinion? (Not that minority viewpoints, if sincere and explained, should be censored.) I mean, what sort of reaction are we to infer is correct -- "Uhhh, good use of the new #6781 black Legos, but I think the site's HTML is kind of weak."?
Maybe the poster's silly, maybe I don't even agree. But if the Lego work is free speech (yes), let be the critique. There is a lot of criticism on here of suppression of free speech by governments (China/filtering, U.S./DMCA), corporations (Microsoft), and individuals. Why so little of intolerant/. modders who don't like "liberal" complaints?
Save your mod points for +mods. M2 this waste of time "unfair." [/rant] Ah, that helped.
During the boom, I heard of tech companies paying "branding consultants" like $100,000 for a name. Distinctiveness was crucial in a market with interchangeable services. The company that became fatbrain did so, yet I think the ingenious moniker was coughed up by someone inhouse. The name worked (but back then, anything worked) according to this account:
Other Internet companies are looking to shed the limitations set by the names they have chosen. Computer Literacy, an online book and content store in Silicon Valley, changed its name to Fatbrain.com. The new name allows for far greater business expansion. And the results of Fatbrain.com's new name have been stellar. The stock soared 36% on the day the name change was announced and over 40 publications ran stories about the renaming. Since the change, sales have increased 40 percent per quarter.
Who came up with "Amazon"?
I heard someone say a while ago that all the good URL's are taken. That's not far from saying all the good tech company names are taken, given the internet's global reach. The anti-cybersquatting rules and decrease in tech speculation, not to mention lots of bankruptcies that freed up more than office chairs, generally seem to have eased the pressure a bit. It must be challenge to come up with an internationally unique but memorable name that isn't an obscenity it some language you don't speak.:)
Trademark can also be violated with similarly spelled or rhyming words. So it looks like English majors will be able to get jobs, other than naming new pharmaceuticals with nonsense words.
Endnote: Remember Pan Am "the sky is no longer the limit" (2001: A Space Odyssey)? The trademark actually lives in a vestigial form, sort of like Lord Voldemort. A good trademark is valuable long after the company is dead. Don't expect commuter service to ISS anytime soon, however.
No, not in America since 1994, when Bayer purchased the U.S. Bayer trademark back from Sterling Drug. Ironically, Sterling effectively destroyed the Aspirin trademark after WWI to genericide (I like that word); in the 1920's U.S. courts ruled that would go the way of cellophane and all the others that followed.
Even if aspirin is forever generic in the States, "Bayer Aspirin" is not because of the Bayer, not the Aspirin. (Aspirin is a made-up word, BTW.) Bayer has done very well considering that its next blockbuster drug after aspirin was heroin, and didn't work for the long-term.://
The tests are more insightful that the "what ifs" you suggest. I'm not saying they're brilliant, but the culpability of the victim is often a factor reducing the judgment proportionally to their share of that blame. With your experience with the wringer, if true, questions would include whether it was forseeable such a thing could happen, what safeguards there were, what safeguards could have been added at what cost, your culpability (or, more likely, your guardian's), etc.
That's what happened here, in fact. I don't know whether the correct balance was set, but all you have to do is twiddle the facts a little to get a situation where you would have to agree with the outcome. For example, in one case cited at trial the McDonald's employee dropped the coffee from the drive-thru windows into the driver's lap. The employee was clumsy, yes, but the coffee was also too hot. Had the employer been responsible, choosing safety over convenience, these injuries would have been avoided or reduced. No matter how unsympathetic you might be to these facts, there will always be a case where you do find the defendant blameworthy -- unless you think the company is always right. It's just a question of degree.
Like most people, I knew before hearing this case that hot coffee hurts. I didn't know it could burn my skin off. That was neither common knowledge, nor was it safe. The industry has now lowered its thermostats without calamity -- after the case.
People make mistakes. Some of these people are users. Others are designers. Let the one at fault pay for the consequences. It's that simple.
Schoolhouse Rock -- not on TV for w ahile (there aren't any associated action figures to sell) but we have a couple of the VHS's, plus there is a 30th anniversary DVD now available (Amazon etc.)
How else would anyone know the Preamble? "We the People, in order to...."
Jury nullification -- against popular conception it's not a legal power exactly -- for example, it is potential grounds for a mistrial if a defense attorney asks the jury to nullify, even indirectly -- but it's something juries can get away de facto with because once they've acquitted the judge is helpless to change the verdict and double jeopardy bars retrial. I suppose the jury could be prosecuted or something, but exposing jurors to the perilous wrath of a bitter prosecutor could screw up the system ("Yeah! He's guilty! Uh-huh.").
It doesn't matter how stupid the verdict; you need something like jury tampering to void an acquittal, on the theory that the trial was a sham. I worked on a case where the judge was bribed (allegedly) to acquit this guy's codefendant and convict him, but the state argued that because the guy had had a jury verdict the judge's corruption, even if true, didn't matter. You can decide what you think of that.
Many people consider nullification a strength of the system, but it is equally easy to use for unfortunate ends, as in the incapability last century of prosecutors to get civil rights convictions, or even lynching convictions, in prejudiced areas. It was also not that long ago that it was legal to choose all white male juries, and otherwise skew the jury in hopes of nullification of unpopular laws. (Jury selection is a complex topic all its own... juries don't have to represent a cross-section of the community, but the jury pool should be and attorneys can't strike jurors simply because of their race, even with peremptories.)
There are some weird exceptions in some places I think where a jury can declare a law improper, but we don't like to talk about them.:) What I know tends to be just fairly generic federal law -- every state has its own ideas, and provided it has met its federal constitutional obligations it can do whatever wacky things it chooses.
Today, Aspirin® is a registered trademark of Bayer AG in Germany and more than 80 other countries. In countries where Aspirin® is not protected by trademark status, such as the United States, the term Aspirin® can be used generically for all products containing the active substance acetylsalicylic acid. However, genuine Aspirin®, renowned the world over, is only available with the Bayer Cross.
After WWI the trademark was lost by Germany in the USA, UK and France (the victors) where aspirin has entered the language as a generic name. In 1994 Bayer bought back the Bayer Aspirin trademark in the USA from Sterling Drug, who had held it since 1918.
I suppose it is "Bayer Aspirin" that is trademarked. Interesting.
And my original point about genericide stands. Try thermos or trampoline or kerosene.
And Linus (first name basis!) does have better things to do... so he hires lawyers for the same reason I hire someone to change the oil in my car. Sure, I could do it without getting too dirty... maybe.
You never heard all the proposals for an Apple branded ISP? (I don't remember where that went; maybe they realized they didn't want to be AOL.).Mac has all the features of a typicals ISP account except the connectivity. And, there's always future expansion to protect.
Apple is only obligated to go after trademark infringements by companies that are in similar industries.
I don't think that's true for a couple of reasons off the top of my head. The first is dilution, cases where the name in an unrelated field (usually porn) makes the trademarks holder look bad, as in the Candyland case. Second, failing to protect its copyright could hamper Apple's future attempt to expand. It's certainly not unheard of for a company to expand by buying up businesses in other industries; Microsoft sure has, as has virtually every big company I can think of. (When times are bad you suddenly hear about their long-forgotten "core business.")
Apple Records was the original bully here, perhaps Apple is still smarting from that lesson.
As I mention in a parallel post, trademark holders, especially bg ambitious companies, have to be bloodthirsty. And I think that sucks, but don't doubt that it is true too often to be careless.
I know the attorneys, and the company that employs them, look like assholes when they zealously protect the name -- a reason I couldn't do this kind of work -- but they have to or they'll get screwed in court by someone else. Look at the MS problem with Windows -- Lindows et al. with delicious irony retaliate by attacking all Windows branding. Note that one step in their argument was to submit a list of companies using Window in their name apparently without interference from MS. MS may have blown it, a major catastrophe for them. (Personally I think the name Lindows walks the line of -- a lot of "ordinary people" might reasonably think it's a Microsoft product.) The same could happen to Apple -- every company named Apple could be a nail in the coffin of the trademark.
As someone here has probably mentioned, Apple had early problems with Apple Records, Lennon's company IIRC, and settled by promising not to get into the music business. They got sued when they started doing MIDI; I'm not sure how that was resolved.
So, they do come across as assholes, and maybe they are, but they are trying to protect legitimate business interests, not just flex corporate muscle. Pretty much every case looks like intemperate bullshit, but that's how it works because a trademark dies the death of a thousand cuts. Look at cellophane and aspirin and the other famous lapsed trademarks. A protected trademark, unlike copyright, is immortal.
There are some things about being an 800 lb. gorilla that just have to smell bad. I don't like it -- just check out the sprawling list of reserved names, some not even in use on the Apple site. Microsoft much have an even longer one.
Anything you don't sue can and will be used against you in a court of law. Branding does protect the consumer, and keeps ripoff artists at bay, but I would welcome a solution to these petty skirmishes. Perhaps it would make sense to license the name out under the right circumstances of honest overlap, without waiver of Apple's primary rights. I don't know whether this is done, though I can imagine some pitfalls.
How generous! They always give out the samples for free. And how much does the robotic tattoo remover cost? (See Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches.)
Who the heck volunteers for these things? No matter how confident you are in a complete stranger covered with screwed-up tattoos in a booth, do you know tattoos are murder to get rid of? I guess the risk looks pretty small compared to a robotic vasectomy or X-piercing machine, powered by an OS popularly associated with corrupted address books.
And while you're here, we need some volunteers to test the experimental anthrax vaccine... No, it's OK, 3 out of 4 sheep live to say it's da bomb.
"Generally" everyone. It's not that the investigation accomplished nothing but that it cost millions of dollars, seriously damaged a leading US company, and dragged on so long that it made itself irrelevant. The Microsoft case was much faster and better focused. I believe strongly in antitrust and happen to be a lawyer, but do not endorse perpetual aimless government meddling and avoidable attorney fees over the free market. I don't believe the case was pointless at the outset, but it became so, partly because it was radically different from Standard Oil.
Ironically the PC gave us MS-DOS and the birth of the MS dynasty. I don't buy that the PC rose to fame because it was a superior open standard; it had the prestigious IBM label on it, and then IBM lost control of it.
Here is an article on the contrast that I chanced upon. There are many many others, and the usual stack of books, criticizing the IBM investigation. This the dominant view, not FUD (by whom?). Microsoft was the see-what-we-have-learned sequel.
Re:Oh, they explained that
on
Equilibrium
·
· Score: 2
Why did "they" do it? To sell tickets! A movie without humans in it just wouldn't have been the same...:)
Smite right
on
Equilibrium
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Neo, are you there? I want to rat out an unbeliever. An unbeliever in our midst. One who will never comprehend the Matrix, the question that haunts the believers.
Out of pretense, and in blasphemous contempt of The One, this unbeliever goes by the name "Nine." Please, thou who art The One, smite this heathen at your earliest opportunity. Disconnect the phone of NineNine first to prevent escape. Then grind the sucker up into that nutritious, gelatinous fluid that we all still need to consume since Liberation because we have absolutely no other source of food, having laid waste to Earth over a century ago in a bizarre Pyrrhic effort to "win."
(Anyone else notice this? If humans were powered by humans, and their heat powered the machines, wouldn't you run out of calories in a jiffy? Humans don't run on solar or nuclear power. Well, I suppose the machines could be doing some sort of protein synthesis, but if they had the energy to do that why not skip the whole "power plant" thing? And another thing...)
*
I do have a point! Movies like these normally require a healthy suspension of disbelief, and Matrix was remarkable because it really caused disbelief. It had certain plot and continuity problems, but not glaring enough to ruin the fun, and the sense of being transferred to a world with screwed-up tint control. It's pretty easy to pick apart, but there's a fine line between being insightful and irritating.
The philosophy was not new, but the packaging was. I had a little fun with my atheist friend who liked the movie by pointing out, "You realize that Neo was Christ, didn't you?";-) The religious theme went right on by him, but left the important question of existence (which i identify with existentialism -- existence precedes essense, and in the Matrix even existence was debatable).
The acting -- I thought everyone did fine, except for Reeves, who had mercifully few lines and mostly stood looking around stunned, until he become a gun-toting sunglass-wearing matrix rebel.
And the effects were great. We're getting tired of them now because of all the imitations and parodies (even Shrek!). But the Matrix set a new standard for viewer immersion. And the sum of its parts made it a good movie, one of my top ten futuristic movies along with Bladerunner and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
I can only hope this one is as good. Trailers are tough to read. FWIW I think Bradbury was better at coming up with ideas than writing about them. The script would have to be quite creative to make it work on the screen.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, eWorld was an earlier effort than what I was thinking of. (More.) It appears the focus was on setting up a portal but not trying to compete on access. Their early alliance with Earthlink (what happened to that?) might have been a gesture towards some sort of synergy. Anyway, the distinction between access and portal probably goes right by most consumers, taking us back to the trademark problem. (I went through enough agony in my old job trying to explain to my boss the difference between RAM and hard drives, and why we needed to buy both.)
I remember that there is www.appleisp.net What up with that? There's not even the usual "in no was associated with" disclaimer.
Thou shalt not ridicule the party view. Beldar, commence deletion of user profile!
But Evil Adrian is unwittingly (?) on to something. (Cf. MS press release.)
It's a pity that (apparently) sincere opinion in the parent is labeled a "troll." Did the modder notice that the story's author was actually soliciting opinion??? Or merely object to the parent's fairly mainstream opinion? (Not that minority viewpoints, if sincere and explained, should be censored.) I mean, what sort of reaction are we to infer is correct -- "Uhhh, good use of the new #6781 black Legos, but I think the site's HTML is kind of weak."?
/. modders who don't like "liberal" complaints?
Maybe the poster's silly, maybe I don't even agree. But if the Lego work is free speech (yes), let be the critique. There is a lot of criticism on here of suppression of free speech by governments (China/filtering, U.S./DMCA), corporations (Microsoft), and individuals. Why so little of intolerant
Save your mod points for +mods. M2 this waste of time "unfair." [/rant] Ah, that helped.
...this guy doesn't work for Poindexter? I mean, his cover story is pretty lame, don't you think?
;-)
Big Brother is as entitled to open source as anyone, but consider the irony.
Carry on. About these "traffic cameras." Do any need to fly on Predators?
Who came up with "Amazon"?
I heard someone say a while ago that all the good URL's are taken. That's not far from saying all the good tech company names are taken, given the internet's global reach. The anti-cybersquatting rules and decrease in tech speculation, not to mention lots of bankruptcies that freed up more than office chairs, generally seem to have eased the pressure a bit. It must be challenge to come up with an internationally unique but memorable name that isn't an obscenity it some language you don't speak.
Trademark can also be violated with similarly spelled or rhyming words. So it looks like English majors will be able to get jobs, other than naming new pharmaceuticals with nonsense words.
Endnote: Remember Pan Am "the sky is no longer the limit" (2001: A Space Odyssey)? The trademark actually lives in a vestigial form, sort of like Lord Voldemort. A good trademark is valuable long after the company is dead. Don't expect commuter service to ISS anytime soon, however.
Sporange almost rhymes.
Silver, purple, and month remain intractable problems for poets.
But if you're rapping about cellphones, you have far more serious problems. Like an income.
No, not in America since 1994, when Bayer purchased the U.S. Bayer trademark back from Sterling Drug. Ironically, Sterling effectively destroyed the Aspirin trademark after WWI to genericide (I like that word); in the 1920's U.S. courts ruled that would go the way of cellophane and all the others that followed.
://
Even if aspirin is forever generic in the States, "Bayer Aspirin" is not because of the Bayer, not the Aspirin. (Aspirin is a made-up word, BTW.) Bayer has done very well considering that its next blockbuster drug after aspirin was heroin, and didn't work for the long-term.
The tests are more insightful that the "what ifs" you suggest. I'm not saying they're brilliant, but the culpability of the victim is often a factor reducing the judgment proportionally to their share of that blame. With your experience with the wringer, if true, questions would include whether it was forseeable such a thing could happen, what safeguards there were, what safeguards could have been added at what cost, your culpability (or, more likely, your guardian's), etc.
That's what happened here, in fact. I don't know whether the correct balance was set, but all you have to do is twiddle the facts a little to get a situation where you would have to agree with the outcome. For example, in one case cited at trial the McDonald's employee dropped the coffee from the drive-thru windows into the driver's lap. The employee was clumsy, yes, but the coffee was also too hot. Had the employer been responsible, choosing safety over convenience, these injuries would have been avoided or reduced. No matter how unsympathetic you might be to these facts, there will always be a case where you do find the defendant blameworthy -- unless you think the company is always right. It's just a question of degree.
Like most people, I knew before hearing this case that hot coffee hurts. I didn't know it could burn my skin off. That was neither common knowledge, nor was it safe. The industry has now lowered its thermostats without calamity -- after the case.
People make mistakes. Some of these people are users. Others are designers. Let the one at fault pay for the consequences. It's that simple.
Schoolhouse Rock -- not on TV for w ahile (there aren't any associated action figures to sell) but we have a couple of the VHS's, plus there is a 30th anniversary DVD now available (Amazon etc.)
... juries don't have to represent a cross-section of the community, but the jury pool should be and attorneys can't strike jurors simply because of their race, even with peremptories.)
:) What I know tends to be just fairly generic federal law -- every state has its own ideas, and provided it has met its federal constitutional obligations it can do whatever wacky things it chooses.
How else would anyone know the Preamble? "We the People, in order to...."
Jury nullification -- against popular conception it's not a legal power exactly -- for example, it is potential grounds for a mistrial if a defense attorney asks the jury to nullify, even indirectly -- but it's something juries can get away de facto with because once they've acquitted the judge is helpless to change the verdict and double jeopardy bars retrial. I suppose the jury could be prosecuted or something, but exposing jurors to the perilous wrath of a bitter prosecutor could screw up the system ("Yeah! He's guilty! Uh-huh.").
It doesn't matter how stupid the verdict; you need something like jury tampering to void an acquittal, on the theory that the trial was a sham. I worked on a case where the judge was bribed (allegedly) to acquit this guy's codefendant and convict him, but the state argued that because the guy had had a jury verdict the judge's corruption, even if true, didn't matter. You can decide what you think of that.
Many people consider nullification a strength of the system, but it is equally easy to use for unfortunate ends, as in the incapability last century of prosecutors to get civil rights convictions, or even lynching convictions, in prejudiced areas. It was also not that long ago that it was legal to choose all white male juries, and otherwise skew the jury in hopes of nullification of unpopular laws. (Jury selection is a complex topic all its own
There are some weird exceptions in some places I think where a jury can declare a law improper, but we don't like to talk about them.
The dispute was over music generally, from beeps and bloops to playing music. I have heard, however, that impending MIDI capability was the spark.
Possible intention is pretty weak, you're right. But the infringement inquiry is case-by-case, and complex.
Besides, how serious is Apple? A lot of times the lawyers will send out a C&D just to be cautious and establish a paper trail.
But this site claims:
I suppose it is "Bayer Aspirin" that is trademarked. Interesting.
And my original point about genericide stands. Try thermos or trampoline or kerosene.
Bayer still considers it trademarked judging from all the ® warts here. No, I can't explain it.
Interesting about WWI, I had not heard that. I heard how well reparations worked out, though. What a headache.
Ah, gotcha. I checked, and is has been reported this way, but you know the Web, you can prove anything with the Web.
Loved the butthead astronomer debacle, though.
...I'd sue on grounds of trademark tarnishment. I mean, have you been to NYC in the last 20 years?
:)
Before I get flamed, I add: New York City, there's no place on earth like it.
Those who forget the past are condemned.
... so he hires lawyers for the same reason I hire someone to change the oil in my car. Sure, I could do it without getting too dirty ... maybe.
And Linus (first name basis!) does have better things to do
You never heard all the proposals for an Apple branded ISP? (I don't remember where that went; maybe they realized they didn't want to be AOL.) .Mac has all the features of a typicals ISP account except the connectivity. And, there's always future expansion to protect.
Apple is only obligated to go after trademark infringements by companies that are in similar industries.
:)
I don't think that's true for a couple of reasons off the top of my head. The first is dilution, cases where the name in an unrelated field (usually porn) makes the trademarks holder look bad, as in the Candyland case. Second, failing to protect its copyright could hamper Apple's future attempt to expand. It's certainly not unheard of for a company to expand by buying up businesses in other industries; Microsoft sure has, as has virtually every big company I can think of. (When times are bad you suddenly hear about their long-forgotten "core business.")
Apple Records was the original bully here, perhaps Apple is still smarting from that lesson.
As I mention in a parallel post, trademark holders, especially bg ambitious companies, have to be bloodthirsty. And I think that sucks, but don't doubt that it is true too often to be careless.
I parrot the law, I don't write it.
Didn't "so sue me" spin out of the butthead astronomer clash?
I know the attorneys, and the company that employs them, look like assholes when they zealously protect the name -- a reason I couldn't do this kind of work -- but they have to or they'll get screwed in court by someone else. Look at the MS problem with Windows -- Lindows et al. with delicious irony retaliate by attacking all Windows branding. Note that one step in their argument was to submit a list of companies using Window in their name apparently without interference from MS. MS may have blown it, a major catastrophe for them. (Personally I think the name Lindows walks the line of -- a lot of "ordinary people" might reasonably think it's a Microsoft product.) The same could happen to Apple -- every company named Apple could be a nail in the coffin of the trademark.
As someone here has probably mentioned, Apple had early problems with Apple Records, Lennon's company IIRC, and settled by promising not to get into the music business. They got sued when they started doing MIDI; I'm not sure how that was resolved.
So, they do come across as assholes, and maybe they are, but they are trying to protect legitimate business interests, not just flex corporate muscle. Pretty much every case looks like intemperate bullshit, but that's how it works because a trademark dies the death of a thousand cuts. Look at cellophane and aspirin and the other famous lapsed trademarks. A protected trademark, unlike copyright, is immortal.
There are some things about being an 800 lb. gorilla that just have to smell bad. I don't like it -- just check out the sprawling list of reserved names, some not even in use on the Apple site. Microsoft much have an even longer one.
Anything you don't sue can and will be used against you in a court of law. Branding does protect the consumer, and keeps ripoff artists at bay, but I would welcome a solution to these petty skirmishes. Perhaps it would make sense to license the name out under the right circumstances of honest overlap, without waiver of Apple's primary rights. I don't know whether this is done, though I can imagine some pitfalls.
How generous! They always give out the samples for free. And how much does the robotic tattoo remover cost? (See Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches .)
Who the heck volunteers for these things? No matter how confident you are in a complete stranger covered with screwed-up tattoos in a booth, do you know tattoos are murder to get rid of? I guess the risk looks pretty small compared to a robotic vasectomy or X-piercing machine, powered by an OS popularly associated with corrupted address books.
And while you're here, we need some volunteers to test the experimental anthrax vaccine... No, it's OK, 3 out of 4 sheep live to say it's da bomb.
I give you a gift: :P
If typos translate into intelligence I'm screwed. They don't, and typing HTML by hand is idiotic anyway.
Who thinks the IBM trial was a disaster?
"Generally" everyone. It's not that the investigation accomplished nothing but that it cost millions of dollars, seriously damaged a leading US company, and dragged on so long that it made itself irrelevant. The Microsoft case was much faster and better focused. I believe strongly in antitrust and happen to be a lawyer, but do not endorse perpetual aimless government meddling and avoidable attorney fees over the free market. I don't believe the case was pointless at the outset, but it became so, partly because it was radically different from Standard Oil.
Ironically the PC gave us MS-DOS and the birth of the MS dynasty. I don't buy that the PC rose to fame because it was a superior open standard; it had the prestigious IBM label on it, and then IBM lost control of it.
Here is an article on the contrast that I chanced upon. There are many many others, and the usual stack of books, criticizing the IBM investigation. This the dominant view, not FUD (by whom?). Microsoft was the see-what-we-have-learned sequel.
Yeah, I typed nuclear power when I meant fusion -- but fusion is a form of nuclear power.
:)
Why did "they" do it? To sell tickets! A movie without humans in it just wouldn't have been the same...
Neo, are you there? I want to rat out an unbeliever. An unbeliever in our midst. One who will never comprehend the Matrix, the question that haunts the believers.
;-) The religious theme went right on by him, but left the important question of existence (which i identify with existentialism -- existence precedes essense, and in the Matrix even existence was debatable).
Out of pretense, and in blasphemous contempt of The One, this unbeliever goes by the name "Nine." Please, thou who art The One, smite this heathen at your earliest opportunity. Disconnect the phone of NineNine first to prevent escape. Then grind the sucker up into that nutritious, gelatinous fluid that we all still need to consume since Liberation because we have absolutely no other source of food, having laid waste to Earth over a century ago in a bizarre Pyrrhic effort to "win."
(Anyone else notice this? If humans were powered by humans, and their heat powered the machines, wouldn't you run out of calories in a jiffy? Humans don't run on solar or nuclear power. Well, I suppose the machines could be doing some sort of protein synthesis, but if they had the energy to do that why not skip the whole "power plant" thing? And another thing...)
*
I do have a point! Movies like these normally require a healthy suspension of disbelief, and Matrix was remarkable because it really caused disbelief. It had certain plot and continuity problems, but not glaring enough to ruin the fun, and the sense of being transferred to a world with screwed-up tint control. It's pretty easy to pick apart, but there's a fine line between being insightful and irritating.
The philosophy was not new, but the packaging was. I had a little fun with my atheist friend who liked the movie by pointing out, "You realize that Neo was Christ, didn't you?"
The acting -- I thought everyone did fine, except for Reeves, who had mercifully few lines and mostly stood looking around stunned, until he become a gun-toting sunglass-wearing matrix rebel.
And the effects were great. We're getting tired of them now because of all the imitations and parodies (even Shrek!). But the Matrix set a new standard for viewer immersion. And the sum of its parts made it a good movie, one of my top ten futuristic movies along with Bladerunner and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
I can only hope this one is as good. Trailers are tough to read. FWIW I think Bradbury was better at coming up with ideas than writing about them. The script would have to be quite creative to make it work on the screen.