Trying to make a 1-to-1 assignment with every character in the Matrix and in the bible is going to run into trouble when you come down to the character of Trinity. If anything, she has to be a personification of Jesus' love for humanity, because there is no counterpart in the Christian story of Jesus.
Of course this takes on another light if you take into account the "new" theory presented in the book "The DaVinci Code" that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdlane(sp) and had a family with her.
I say "new," because i first heard of the theory years ago, but it seems to have just recently hit critical mass with the public with the publication of "The DaVinci Code." Before it was just one of those things that history buffs knew about, now they've got primetime specials talking about the issue and late night hosts making jokes about it.
The Oracle is Lucifer("Light-bringer")/Prometheus. She rebelled against god, and brought fire (knowledge) to the humans.
Almost makes sense, except A: it's hard to believe that in a series that is so by the numbers christianity in every other aspect would have a "good" Lucifer, and B: there's the Merovingian who seems to be portrayed as a devil figure. (Except the Merovingian's were a line of ancient rulers who claimed descent from the line of christ, which in turn seems a bit odd for a devil character.)
I'm still trying to figure out if the authors did something fiendishly clever, or if they just threw in random mythological elements for the minor elements of the film with no regard as to how they meshed.
Oh, and those 'Mechs were the stupidest thing I've ever seen. You've got all this metal and armor...but none of it is protecting the freaking pilot. Also, if the Mechs are only going to be on flat ground....why use legged machines? Isn't that just another easy point of failure? How about treads instead.
Yeah, i notived the distinct lack of armor on the AMPs(?) as well. However a more pressing point...
Let's pretend an idiot designed the armored suits. Or perhaps a sadistically efficient one (if you make the human pilot easy to kill, maybe the sentinels will just kill the pilot without damaging the suit so another pilot can quickly drag the corpse out and get it running again?) who the hell decided on the placement of those things?
Up until this point they've been spewing a lot of defense lingo that sounds halfway reasonable, and then they place most of the armored suits in the middle of the freakin catwalks. (Well okay, they're really big catwalks, but still)
I couldn't help but wonder before the battle started why they weren't all along the edges of the cavern in fortified positions? And sure enough, once the fighting started, we saw more than one suit get taken out when a sentinel nailed it from behind while they were focusing on the other side.
Even if they couldn't have rigged any kind of cover at least placing them along the outside rim of the cavern would have prevented all those losses from rear attacks.
Please tell me that i'm not the only one to notice the similarities with the scene where Neo finally figures out who the Smith-possessed person is? My friends and i couldn't help but sniggering at the dialogue, which was really close to...
Smith: Search your feelings
Neo:*look of horror* No, it can't be...
Smith: You know it's true!
Neo: That's impossible!
Fight then proceeds, and Neo is horribly maimed. And if one wanted to really stretch the analogy, he has his disfigurement replaced with a "prosthetic" that brings him even closer to being what his nemesis is.
--Oh, geez... This is explained IN THE MOVIE, by the Trainman himself. He says, "*I* created this place. Down here, I make the rules, I make the threats. Down here, *I'm* god."
So? Your point? The Architect created the matrix, but that didn't stop Neo from having powers there. And, i really doubt the Trainman _created_ the conduit between the machine world and the matrix. He probably created that aspect of it, the "underground railroad" for smuggling people back and forth. (Or if you want different imagery, transporting people back and forth across the river Lethe.) But the hardware interface was almost asuredly created by others.
And in any case, it's still irrelevant because by that point Neo had control over the matrix and the machine world. He could interface with the Source directly and fry sentinels in the real world. The Machine was clearly god in the machine world, and a much more powerful one in his world that the Trainman was in his. If the Machine couldn't stop Neo from blowing the sentinels, why should we expect the Trainman to be any more powerful?
--I think the reason I "get" the whole storyline for the most part, is because I've seen all 3 movies more than once (saw Revolutions 2x in two consecutive days.) I recommend the same to anyone.
I've seen Matrix at least five or six times, and Reloaded three times. I have only had the chance to see Revolutions once so far, but so far i seem to have "gotten" most of the things the people who claim to "get it" are boastfull about.
Recourse to "I 'get it,'" and "you just don't 'get it,'" doesn't really resolve anything, it's just avoiding rational discussion. So please explain why the Trainman is so much more powerful in the tunnels than the Architect/Agents are in the Matrix or the Machine is in the machine world?
In a mythological sense it fits in perfectly that the Trainman is that master of his own domain, but it doesn't really match up with the logic of the world as it has been explained to us. Admiration of the symbolism does not excuse the occasional slopiness of the plot.
The Architect in Reloaded couldn't force Neo into the door he wanted. He was forced, by some higher ranking machine, to allow Neo to choose an alternatee path, a path that the Oracle and some higher machine power knew would hopefully lead to a peaceful coexistance.
Whether or not he could have forced Neo into the "correct" door is besides the point. Neo was given a choice, and then the Architect, with _full_ _foreknowledge_ told Neo the information that would make him choose the wrong door. The Architect knew that Neo would respond "irrationally" to Trinity being at risk. If he's actually wanted Neo to choose the "correct" door he should have lied, or at least ommited that particular truth. "If you pick the door to your right, you will choose eight females and 15 males, including Trinity if you want, to restart Zion." Just don't mention that Trinity will be dead by that point so selecting her won't do any good.
Or if the Architect can lie, tell Neo that Trinity is about to die, but tell him that if he picks the door on the right, he can save Trinity and let Neo pick her as one of the eight. Hell, the Architect could very well have that power. The Agents should all be under his supervision anyway, right? Just order that agent to cease fire if Neo picks the right door. Or do one of those rewrites of the matrix that they've done before (deja vu in the first movie) and save her ass.
There are a lot of ways the Architect could have manipulated Neo into making the "right" choice. However he just as clearly manipulated Neo into making the "wrong" choice. It doesn't seem clear to me that the Machine wanted peace between the humans and machines like you say, but you're right, _something_ has to have wanted Neo to make the "wrong" choice.
This is a nice idea in theory, and i'm partial to it along with the "Neo merged with all the Smiths and destroyed them from the inside."
However the problem with this theory is, why wasn't the Machine able to do the same thing through the billion of humans in the field who had all been assimilated by Smith, but who were still connected to the machines?
One could argue that it was because Neo was the One and/or the alter-ego of Smith unlike all the billions of other people the Machine could have acted through, however that's really just a way of restating and avoiding the original question.
Did you notice the glowing cross and wings when Neo was being charged full of energy from the Source?
*groan* YES, i noticed that blatant and annoying christ-imagery.
However "he looked like an angel of the lord" is _not_ an answer, it is an observation. Also, it wasn't clear if the "Source" was infusing Neo with energy, or the Machine was infusing him with energy, or if he was infusing himself with energy as he ascended to the next level, or that was the energy of the Smith collective interacting with Neo, or what. Any one of those answers is plausible, or it could be something entirely different. Perhaps it was Yahweh gethering up the soul of his second born son after his sacrifice upon the cross of metal, how are we to know? We certainly weren't told.
Clearly the christ imagery was meant to convey the idea of "he died to save us," but it doesn't really convey _how_ he did so. As someone else pointed out, there is at least the possibility that the authors just liked the imagery and left it to the fans to come up with a plausible explanation.
And the train guy was like Charon who ferried the dead across the river Lethe. And Neo is a christ figure. I'm still working on why the head of the underworld is named after a line of kings supposedly descended from christ, seems a bit counterintuitive. I'm also still working on if the Oracle should be considered similar to Lucifer, since she led a rebellion against the god figure.
But all of that aside, what does it mean? Anyone can make a lot of symbolic references and toss out a lot of pithy ideas from philosophy 101, but that doesn't make a good story all by itself.
Some of those questioning the basis of the story have "missed it" as you say, but others didn't miss it at all, they're just seeing past the facade of allusions and metaphors and trying to figure out if there is actually anything at the center of the symbolic maelstrom.
Why did Neo marging with Smith destroy Smith? Was it because of their very natures? Or was it something Neo did? Or was it something the Machine did through Neo? Why does the Oracle think they might see Neo again someday, other than because he's a christ figure and he's supposed to rise again? Why was Neo really able to manifest "supernatural" powers outside the matrix?
I've only seen it once, so i haven't even nailed down all the questions to ask, but just saying they left it open to interpretation isn't a good answer. Sometimes not answering the question directly is subtle and meaningful because the author gave you the clues you need to figure it out, and sometimes it's just a copout because the author couldn't figure out a good answer and left a lot of meaningless "clues" scatered about to obfuscate the issue.
See, I understand WHAT but not HOW. The HOW he got that vision was generally attributed to his "foresight" which is simply assumed as mystic fact.
Anyways, my point is that it all comes down to Suspension of Disbelief, and if you (the audience, not you personally) can't grok that then why are you watching Science Fiction in the first place?
Every science fiction or fantasy story has one or more "gimmes," "facts" that you are just supposed to accept as being part of that universe. Once those gimmes are established most fantasy and all science fiction is supposed to follow those rules. If all of the sudden the author changes the rules in the middle of the book (or even worse, in the last chapter when the hero's life is on the line) then the audience can quite rightly expect a _really_ good explanation as to why the rules were changed or feel free to cry foul.
The big gimme in the Matrix is that humanity has been enslaved by machines, but most of them are kept in a full senses virtual reality so they never know. Inside the matrix people who know what they're doing can fudge the laws imposed by the computer to allow superhuman abilities, but outside the matrix everyone is normal and real world physics applies. Then all of the sudden Neo breaks that rule, just when everyone is about to die he does what we have been told up to this point is impossible. The audience deserves an explanation for how this happened, and they deserver a better explanation than "he's connected to the Source," which means what exactly?
On the other hand in Dune the gimme, established from the very begining, is that Spice changes human perceptions of space and time, and allows some of them to warps space to allow FTL travel. It's mentioned quite frequently that the Bene Geserit(sp) were trying to breed a super-being of some kind, so when Paul begins to manifest strange visions and have prophetic dreams it fits withing what we have been led to expect. The ability to see the future when exposed to Spice is impressive, but certainly not outside the range of possibilites we have been led to expect.
Likewise, when Paul is blinded his ability to have visions of the future a split second before they happen and thus "fake" vision is impressive, but completly within the bounds of the rules originally established for that universe.
Yes, in the end it's all science fiction, and we're supposed to suspend our disbelief, but breaking your own rules without good cause is neither good science fiction nor good storytelling.
Re:Everything WAS explained (Spoilers, of course)
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The Matrix: Resolutions
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I will say that this movie has the most hidden religious and philosophical imagery I've ever seen...it's all way more subtle than Reloaded (who noticed the glowing cross and wings when Neo was killing Smith?
Yeah, subtle like a brick to the head.
Let's start out with Smith-in-hijacked-human-body refering to Neo as some kind of Messiah. Of course the term Messiah, combined with the facts that Neo had just been horibly blinded, if he was really blind he was going to get his ass-kicked, and although Neo dying was a possibility it was way too early for it to happen, immediatly led to the conclusion, "He's going to be able to see with his new and improved real-world mystic powers, just like Paul in Dune." Sure enough, when all seems lost, Neo suprises Smith-3749 with his ability to see, and proceeds to kick his ass.
Having already set up the messianic theme, it was pretty damn obvious when Neo assumes the crucified position during the final fight. Oh look, he's sacrificing himself to save humanity, just like christ! Oh my! Not only is he in a crucified pose, he's got a big glowing cross superimposed on him! And now he's got giant glowing angel wings! And now he's dead and being carried away by a god-like figure, and look! More glowingness and angel wings!
The only way they could have been any more obvious was if the Oracle had extended her final speech a little bit, from "I think we'll see him again someday," to, "I think we'll see him again someday, in three days when he rises again!" I started to groan about the point the blatantly obvious cross of fire was superimposed over Neo, and had a hard time paying serious attention to the rest of the movie while i gagged on the over the top christian imagery.
As for the rest of what you said, i mostly agree. The theme behind Neo's destruction of Smith was pretty clear, but i really would have liked to have known more details. Was it a fundamental incompatibility between the two "Ones," like a matter-anti-matter reaction? Was it Neo acting from within the Smith collective? Was it the Machine acting on the Smith collective with Neo as a conduit? (That last seems possible given the behavior of the machines in the real world when Neo was taken over, need to watch a few more times to be sure.)
The bit that annoyed me was that it wasn't apparent that Neo actually took any action once he sacrificed himself. Although someone else has pointed out that this is consistent with the passive nature of christ, it doesn't really fit with what i expected of Neo, christ figure or not. It was clear after the first half of the fight that Neo wasn't going to win by physically beating Smith, but it didn't have to be through total passivity, there was a lot of middle ground that could have been covered.
It may or may not be easier to get to Mars from LEO than from the Moon, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get to LEO from the Moon than from Earth. In the long run we're better off developing infrastructure on the moon and using it as a staging post.
Spaceships aren't going to magically appear at LEO. Even if they were built there the raw materials need to be produced from somewhere. At the moment the only good candidates for a source of raw materials are the earth and the moon.
"The second is the important number in every venue but Nintendo of America press releases."
I'll agree with you that the installed base is by far the more important factor, although i wouldn't say that market share is completly irrelevant.
However it's a bit biased of you to be singling out Nintendo for this behavior. Every time something similar happens to Sony or Microsoft they crow about it just as loudly. How long has Microsoft been claiming that they're beating Nintendo in the console wars, and how often do they remember to mention that thwy're talking about America, and they're third place world wide in installed user base? When Sony was talking about how much better than the Dreamcast the PS2 was going to be, did they ever mention that it was going to have almost no games at launch and comparable graphics? They're _all_ guilty of that kind of crap, the only thing that changes is which positive looking number they're touting this week.
"Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."
There's a lesson for us all, there.
Yeah, it's good to know there's at least _one_ feedback loop that will kick in when the "market" gets too saturated with this crap.
It always makes the news when a stupid crook accidently picks a cop as a victem of whatever scheme, or they're fleeing the police and try to hide in a police station, etc. In the case of all kinds of internet spamming they don't have to be stupid though, they just have to be "successfull" enough, and eventually they'll piss off the wrong people.
What is this fucking revisionist crap about changing all the stormtrooper voices? Oh wait, this is Lucas we're talking about, but still...
What's the shelf life on those clones anyway? I'll admit that the idea that "stormtrooper aim" is due to the fact that they're all geriatrics, or that when the original set started to get long in the tooth the copied the copies and thus introduced errors that way, but it doesn't make any real sense.
I don't really believe that the incompetents we see in the original trilogy can be the same as the competent stormtroopers in the new trilogy. Even accounting for the inevitable deterioration in skill once they "switched" to the bad side (as is mandated in some obscure movie code) they _still_ suck too much to be the same clones.
The reason the clone army was manufactured the way it was was because they were being developed by a subversive group that needed to keep their activites secret. They paid through the nose both for the secrecy and the quality.
After that though Palpatine is in charge of the Republic-cum-Empire, and do you think the same person/government who decided the best route to go for military craft was Tie Fighters (noted for being inferior and thereby cheap and easy to replace, thus "explaining" why the Rebels could win against such bad numerical odds) would continue to pay high prices for high quality clones? No! After he was firmly in power he'd get new recruits the way every other despotic government does. Recruiting Joe Average volunteers at best, forced conscriptions at worst.
Given how many stormtroopers there must be in the galaxy at the time of the original trilogy, and given that the original clones would be about 40 years old relative at least, you'd expect the clones to be few and far between, and the rank and file to be filled with normal people recruited (by whatever means) and trained (however badly) after the Clone War.
I still play PSX games on my PS2, although not as much as i did when the PS2 first came out. I've got four friends with PS2s who i discuss games with on a regualr basis, and all four of them have used the PS2 to play PSX games on them within the last year at the very least (two of them i know have played PSX games on their PS2s within the last month)
Back when the PS2 first came out most of the PS2 games were crap, and everyone i knew was talking about either the backwards compatibility, the DVD player, or both. And just about everyone got SSX since it was the _only_ PS2 game everyone could agree was actually worth the money, but unlike the bitching you see after similar launches for other systems, most people were of the opinion "oh well, at least there are a lot of good PSX games i can play on it."
Make a satirical post about the nature of the reporting in the article (specifically, putting "Critics Mistaken" in big bold text with no quotes or explantory text as one of the headers, when it was actually part of a statement made by a clearly biased party) and get modded as Flamebait because of it. Oh the irony!
Now what does this tell us about the news agencies that actually use this technique?:)
Diebold Guilty of Fraud and Incompetency!
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CNN Reports on Diebold
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Diebold Guilty of Fraud and Incompetency!
People who don't like them say Diebold is guilty of fraud and incompetency.
So I don't think that we're missing anything by not being involved [in online gaming]. I will say, though, that it certainly has played out the way we thought it would in this generation. The hype may have been more important than the actual substance.
Good to see that acceptance of the truth is begining to leak through the denial. The online capabilities have been a big selling factor for the XBox, even though most people don't use it. PS2 is holding steady, they've got online play although not out of the box. GameCube however has been getting slammed by the press and message board junkies for their lack of online support.
It doesn't matter that most people won't use the online capabilities much, they still buy into the hype. If someone thought that two consoles were equally valuable for the price, and then you added online capabilities to one and not the other, that would probably influence their decision.
Plus of course there's always the gap between impulse and follow-through. Even if someone is never going to do much online play, they might like to think that they will. I'm a friendless geek (well, not entirely friendless, but all my friends who play games live in other states, so close enough =) but i'll still let multiplayer capabilities of games influence my purchasing decisions. I'll be more likely to purchase a game with cool multi-player aspects in the vain hope that i'll find someone to play it with sometime.
There's no problem with making fuel cells "powerful enough" for large vehicles. A fuel cell uses hydrogen to produce electricity. I don't know what the upper limits are for fuel cells (if there are any) but you can certainly have as many as you want in parallel to provide enough electricity for whatever task you want.
No one is making bitumen based engines, unless you intend to make a steam engine whose furnace is fed with old egyptian mummies. The only relation between cars and bitumen is that it's often used in the production of asphalt.
Ford is not building an ion drive based dragster. At the current level of development ion drives are useless under any conditions involving significant amounts of gravity or friction. They're really only good for lightweight space probes. (I seriously doubt if they'll _ever_ be competitive in ground transportation, although i don't know enough about the technology to be absolutly sure)
I haven't bothered picking apart the rest of his statements, although I'm sure they're all equally as faulty.
I probably don't qualify as a hacker, but if i were one i would be annoyed by the conceited way in which this guy has decided to assume this task.
"It's my job to think of these things."
I can't think of a worse way for a group of people such as hackers usually are to pick a logo. Sure, Anarchists have a symbol, but i doubt it was dreamed up by the self apointed "Anarchist Historian" who ran the idea past a few focus groups before prclaiming it to the community.
What exactly does a penguin have to do with Linux? Or a cammel with Perl? Donkeys and elephants with Democrats and Republicans? No think tank sat down and analyzed what would be the most symbolic logo to represent those things. Some guy thought it was cool and used it, and other people agreed and went along. Symbols really _should_ be groupthink, not personthinkandgroupgoesalongwithit.
If hackers really want a symbol, a real symbol will fall out of the collective. If they want to promote such a process then there should be some kind of forum where hackers can suggest all kinds of symbols that they think would be cool as a method of priming the pump. Instead of then voting on said symbols, everyone should then sit back and see which survive best in the enviroment.
The best symbols are the ones that survive competition with other symbols, not ones that are created with the intent of being "meaningful." A committee could come up with a more "meaningfull" symbol than the Darwin Fish, but the Darwin Fish is what you see plastered on cars all over the place.
Maybe the glider would survive best in such a process, but the arrogance of the way in which it was proposed really annoys me.
I am not going to interpret that as meaning "demos make people less likely to buy games"...
I am going to interpret that as meaning "your game sucks"...
That only works if you also make the corresponding interpretation that "people are more likely to buy the game if they don't know it sucks." Unfortunatly that second assumption can form the basis for a reliable buisness model if you don't care about repeat customers and are willing to stake your company's future on "there's a sucker born every minute."
Whoops, you're right. I did actually read the article last night, but i must have gotten confused. Somehow i thought it meant there were two groups of games, one which had demos and the other which didn't. That'll teach me to post while sleep-deped.
Ah well, the other point still stands. Is this an example of people being jerks, or an example of people being tricked into buying something they don't really want? Unfortunatly i can't think of an easy experiment to do which would give you an accurate answer. (You can try surveys and such, but asking people what they think is a notoriously unreliable way of finding out their actual motivations.)
If they guess wrong they're going to be hurting either their short term buisness or their long term buisness.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course this takes on another light if you take into account the "new" theory presented in the book "The DaVinci Code" that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdlane(sp) and had a family with her.
I say "new," because i first heard of the theory years ago, but it seems to have just recently hit critical mass with the public with the publication of "The DaVinci Code." Before it was just one of those things that history buffs knew about, now they've got primetime specials talking about the issue and late night hosts making jokes about it.
Almost makes sense, except A: it's hard to believe that in a series that is so by the numbers christianity in every other aspect would have a "good" Lucifer, and B: there's the Merovingian who seems to be portrayed as a devil figure. (Except the Merovingian's were a line of ancient rulers who claimed descent from the line of christ, which in turn seems a bit odd for a devil character.)
I'm still trying to figure out if the authors did something fiendishly clever, or if they just threw in random mythological elements for the minor elements of the film with no regard as to how they meshed.
Yeah, i notived the distinct lack of armor on the AMPs(?) as well. However a more pressing point...
Let's pretend an idiot designed the armored suits. Or perhaps a sadistically efficient one (if you make the human pilot easy to kill, maybe the sentinels will just kill the pilot without damaging the suit so another pilot can quickly drag the corpse out and get it running again?) who the hell decided on the placement of those things?
Up until this point they've been spewing a lot of defense lingo that sounds halfway reasonable, and then they place most of the armored suits in the middle of the freakin catwalks. (Well okay, they're really big catwalks, but still)
I couldn't help but wonder before the battle started why they weren't all along the edges of the cavern in fortified positions? And sure enough, once the fighting started, we saw more than one suit get taken out when a sentinel nailed it from behind while they were focusing on the other side.
Even if they couldn't have rigged any kind of cover at least placing them along the outside rim of the cavern would have prevented all those losses from rear attacks.
Smith: Search your feelings
Neo:*look of horror* No, it can't be...
Smith: You know it's true!
Neo: That's impossible!
Fight then proceeds, and Neo is horribly maimed. And if one wanted to really stretch the analogy, he has his disfigurement replaced with a "prosthetic" that brings him even closer to being what his nemesis is.
So? Your point? The Architect created the matrix, but that didn't stop Neo from having powers there. And, i really doubt the Trainman _created_ the conduit between the machine world and the matrix. He probably created that aspect of it, the "underground railroad" for smuggling people back and forth. (Or if you want different imagery, transporting people back and forth across the river Lethe.) But the hardware interface was almost asuredly created by others.
And in any case, it's still irrelevant because by that point Neo had control over the matrix and the machine world. He could interface with the Source directly and fry sentinels in the real world. The Machine was clearly god in the machine world, and a much more powerful one in his world that the Trainman was in his. If the Machine couldn't stop Neo from blowing the sentinels, why should we expect the Trainman to be any more powerful?
--I think the reason I "get" the whole storyline for the most part, is because I've seen all 3 movies more than once (saw Revolutions 2x in two consecutive days.) I recommend the same to anyone.
I've seen Matrix at least five or six times, and Reloaded three times. I have only had the chance to see Revolutions once so far, but so far i seem to have "gotten" most of the things the people who claim to "get it" are boastfull about.
Recourse to "I 'get it,'" and "you just don't 'get it,'" doesn't really resolve anything, it's just avoiding rational discussion. So please explain why the Trainman is so much more powerful in the tunnels than the Architect/Agents are in the Matrix or the Machine is in the machine world?
In a mythological sense it fits in perfectly that the Trainman is that master of his own domain, but it doesn't really match up with the logic of the world as it has been explained to us. Admiration of the symbolism does not excuse the occasional slopiness of the plot.
Whether or not he could have forced Neo into the "correct" door is besides the point. Neo was given a choice, and then the Architect, with _full_ _foreknowledge_ told Neo the information that would make him choose the wrong door. The Architect knew that Neo would respond "irrationally" to Trinity being at risk. If he's actually wanted Neo to choose the "correct" door he should have lied, or at least ommited that particular truth. "If you pick the door to your right, you will choose eight females and 15 males, including Trinity if you want, to restart Zion." Just don't mention that Trinity will be dead by that point so selecting her won't do any good.
Or if the Architect can lie, tell Neo that Trinity is about to die, but tell him that if he picks the door on the right, he can save Trinity and let Neo pick her as one of the eight. Hell, the Architect could very well have that power. The Agents should all be under his supervision anyway, right? Just order that agent to cease fire if Neo picks the right door. Or do one of those rewrites of the matrix that they've done before (deja vu in the first movie) and save her ass.
There are a lot of ways the Architect could have manipulated Neo into making the "right" choice. However he just as clearly manipulated Neo into making the "wrong" choice. It doesn't seem clear to me that the Machine wanted peace between the humans and machines like you say, but you're right, _something_ has to have wanted Neo to make the "wrong" choice.
However the problem with this theory is, why wasn't the Machine able to do the same thing through the billion of humans in the field who had all been assimilated by Smith, but who were still connected to the machines?
One could argue that it was because Neo was the One and/or the alter-ego of Smith unlike all the billions of other people the Machine could have acted through, however that's really just a way of restating and avoiding the original question.
*groan* YES, i noticed that blatant and annoying christ-imagery.
However "he looked like an angel of the lord" is _not_ an answer, it is an observation. Also, it wasn't clear if the "Source" was infusing Neo with energy, or the Machine was infusing him with energy, or if he was infusing himself with energy as he ascended to the next level, or that was the energy of the Smith collective interacting with Neo, or what. Any one of those answers is plausible, or it could be something entirely different. Perhaps it was Yahweh gethering up the soul of his second born son after his sacrifice upon the cross of metal, how are we to know? We certainly weren't told.
Clearly the christ imagery was meant to convey the idea of "he died to save us," but it doesn't really convey _how_ he did so. As someone else pointed out, there is at least the possibility that the authors just liked the imagery and left it to the fans to come up with a plausible explanation.
But all of that aside, what does it mean? Anyone can make a lot of symbolic references and toss out a lot of pithy ideas from philosophy 101, but that doesn't make a good story all by itself.
Some of those questioning the basis of the story have "missed it" as you say, but others didn't miss it at all, they're just seeing past the facade of allusions and metaphors and trying to figure out if there is actually anything at the center of the symbolic maelstrom.
Why did Neo marging with Smith destroy Smith? Was it because of their very natures? Or was it something Neo did? Or was it something the Machine did through Neo? Why does the Oracle think they might see Neo again someday, other than because he's a christ figure and he's supposed to rise again? Why was Neo really able to manifest "supernatural" powers outside the matrix?
I've only seen it once, so i haven't even nailed down all the questions to ask, but just saying they left it open to interpretation isn't a good answer. Sometimes not answering the question directly is subtle and meaningful because the author gave you the clues you need to figure it out, and sometimes it's just a copout because the author couldn't figure out a good answer and left a lot of meaningless "clues" scatered about to obfuscate the issue.
Anyways, my point is that it all comes down to Suspension of Disbelief, and if you (the audience, not you personally) can't grok that then why are you watching Science Fiction in the first place?
Every science fiction or fantasy story has one or more "gimmes," "facts" that you are just supposed to accept as being part of that universe. Once those gimmes are established most fantasy and all science fiction is supposed to follow those rules. If all of the sudden the author changes the rules in the middle of the book (or even worse, in the last chapter when the hero's life is on the line) then the audience can quite rightly expect a _really_ good explanation as to why the rules were changed or feel free to cry foul.
The big gimme in the Matrix is that humanity has been enslaved by machines, but most of them are kept in a full senses virtual reality so they never know. Inside the matrix people who know what they're doing can fudge the laws imposed by the computer to allow superhuman abilities, but outside the matrix everyone is normal and real world physics applies. Then all of the sudden Neo breaks that rule, just when everyone is about to die he does what we have been told up to this point is impossible. The audience deserves an explanation for how this happened, and they deserver a better explanation than "he's connected to the Source," which means what exactly?
On the other hand in Dune the gimme, established from the very begining, is that Spice changes human perceptions of space and time, and allows some of them to warps space to allow FTL travel. It's mentioned quite frequently that the Bene Geserit(sp) were trying to breed a super-being of some kind, so when Paul begins to manifest strange visions and have prophetic dreams it fits withing what we have been led to expect. The ability to see the future when exposed to Spice is impressive, but certainly not outside the range of possibilites we have been led to expect.
Likewise, when Paul is blinded his ability to have visions of the future a split second before they happen and thus "fake" vision is impressive, but completly within the bounds of the rules originally established for that universe.
Yes, in the end it's all science fiction, and we're supposed to suspend our disbelief, but breaking your own rules without good cause is neither good science fiction nor good storytelling.
Yeah, subtle like a brick to the head.
Let's start out with Smith-in-hijacked-human-body refering to Neo as some kind of Messiah. Of course the term Messiah, combined with the facts that Neo had just been horibly blinded, if he was really blind he was going to get his ass-kicked, and although Neo dying was a possibility it was way too early for it to happen, immediatly led to the conclusion, "He's going to be able to see with his new and improved real-world mystic powers, just like Paul in Dune." Sure enough, when all seems lost, Neo suprises Smith-3749 with his ability to see, and proceeds to kick his ass.
Having already set up the messianic theme, it was pretty damn obvious when Neo assumes the crucified position during the final fight. Oh look, he's sacrificing himself to save humanity, just like christ! Oh my! Not only is he in a crucified pose, he's got a big glowing cross superimposed on him! And now he's got giant glowing angel wings! And now he's dead and being carried away by a god-like figure, and look! More glowingness and angel wings!
The only way they could have been any more obvious was if the Oracle had extended her final speech a little bit, from "I think we'll see him again someday," to, "I think we'll see him again someday, in three days when he rises again!" I started to groan about the point the blatantly obvious cross of fire was superimposed over Neo, and had a hard time paying serious attention to the rest of the movie while i gagged on the over the top christian imagery.
As for the rest of what you said, i mostly agree. The theme behind Neo's destruction of Smith was pretty clear, but i really would have liked to have known more details. Was it a fundamental incompatibility between the two "Ones," like a matter-anti-matter reaction? Was it Neo acting from within the Smith collective? Was it the Machine acting on the Smith collective with Neo as a conduit? (That last seems possible given the behavior of the machines in the real world when Neo was taken over, need to watch a few more times to be sure.)
The bit that annoyed me was that it wasn't apparent that Neo actually took any action once he sacrificed himself. Although someone else has pointed out that this is consistent with the passive nature of christ, it doesn't really fit with what i expected of Neo, christ figure or not. It was clear after the first half of the fight that Neo wasn't going to win by physically beating Smith, but it didn't have to be through total passivity, there was a lot of middle ground that could have been covered.
Spaceships aren't going to magically appear at LEO. Even if they were built there the raw materials need to be produced from somewhere. At the moment the only good candidates for a source of raw materials are the earth and the moon.
I'll agree with you that the installed base is by far the more important factor, although i wouldn't say that market share is completly irrelevant.
However it's a bit biased of you to be singling out Nintendo for this behavior. Every time something similar happens to Sony or Microsoft they crow about it just as loudly. How long has Microsoft been claiming that they're beating Nintendo in the console wars, and how often do they remember to mention that thwy're talking about America, and they're third place world wide in installed user base? When Sony was talking about how much better than the Dreamcast the PS2 was going to be, did they ever mention that it was going to have almost no games at launch and comparable graphics? They're _all_ guilty of that kind of crap, the only thing that changes is which positive looking number they're touting this week.
There's a lesson for us all, there.
Yeah, it's good to know there's at least _one_ feedback loop that will kick in when the "market" gets too saturated with this crap.
It always makes the news when a stupid crook accidently picks a cop as a victem of whatever scheme, or they're fleeing the police and try to hide in a police station, etc. In the case of all kinds of internet spamming they don't have to be stupid though, they just have to be "successfull" enough, and eventually they'll piss off the wrong people.
What's the shelf life on those clones anyway? I'll admit that the idea that "stormtrooper aim" is due to the fact that they're all geriatrics, or that when the original set started to get long in the tooth the copied the copies and thus introduced errors that way, but it doesn't make any real sense.
I don't really believe that the incompetents we see in the original trilogy can be the same as the competent stormtroopers in the new trilogy. Even accounting for the inevitable deterioration in skill once they "switched" to the bad side (as is mandated in some obscure movie code) they _still_ suck too much to be the same clones.
The reason the clone army was manufactured the way it was was because they were being developed by a subversive group that needed to keep their activites secret. They paid through the nose both for the secrecy and the quality.
After that though Palpatine is in charge of the Republic-cum-Empire, and do you think the same person/government who decided the best route to go for military craft was Tie Fighters (noted for being inferior and thereby cheap and easy to replace, thus "explaining" why the Rebels could win against such bad numerical odds) would continue to pay high prices for high quality clones? No! After he was firmly in power he'd get new recruits the way every other despotic government does. Recruiting Joe Average volunteers at best, forced conscriptions at worst.
Given how many stormtroopers there must be in the galaxy at the time of the original trilogy, and given that the original clones would be about 40 years old relative at least, you'd expect the clones to be few and far between, and the rank and file to be filled with normal people recruited (by whatever means) and trained (however badly) after the Clone War.
It's nice to know that the "Haven't you heard? Nintendo doesn't make the GameCube anymore!" trolls will have to find a new line.
Hasn't everyone been bitching about how the handle on the GameCube makes it look "kiddy"? :)
(And yes, i can see that it's not the same kind of handle, but it's still amusing.)
Back when the PS2 first came out most of the PS2 games were crap, and everyone i knew was talking about either the backwards compatibility, the DVD player, or both. And just about everyone got SSX since it was the _only_ PS2 game everyone could agree was actually worth the money, but unlike the bitching you see after similar launches for other systems, most people were of the opinion "oh well, at least there are a lot of good PSX games i can play on it."
Now what does this tell us about the news agencies that actually use this technique? :)
People who don't like them say Diebold is guilty of fraud and incompetency.
Yay misleading reporting.
Good to see that acceptance of the truth is begining to leak through the denial. The online capabilities have been a big selling factor for the XBox, even though most people don't use it. PS2 is holding steady, they've got online play although not out of the box. GameCube however has been getting slammed by the press and message board junkies for their lack of online support.
It doesn't matter that most people won't use the online capabilities much, they still buy into the hype. If someone thought that two consoles were equally valuable for the price, and then you added online capabilities to one and not the other, that would probably influence their decision.
Plus of course there's always the gap between impulse and follow-through. Even if someone is never going to do much online play, they might like to think that they will. I'm a friendless geek (well, not entirely friendless, but all my friends who play games live in other states, so close enough =) but i'll still let multiplayer capabilities of games influence my purchasing decisions. I'll be more likely to purchase a game with cool multi-player aspects in the vain hope that i'll find someone to play it with sometime.
No one is making bitumen based engines, unless you intend to make a steam engine whose furnace is fed with old egyptian mummies. The only relation between cars and bitumen is that it's often used in the production of asphalt.
Ford is not building an ion drive based dragster. At the current level of development ion drives are useless under any conditions involving significant amounts of gravity or friction. They're really only good for lightweight space probes. (I seriously doubt if they'll _ever_ be competitive in ground transportation, although i don't know enough about the technology to be absolutly sure)
I haven't bothered picking apart the rest of his statements, although I'm sure they're all equally as faulty.
"It's my job to think of these things."
I can't think of a worse way for a group of people such as hackers usually are to pick a logo. Sure, Anarchists have a symbol, but i doubt it was dreamed up by the self apointed "Anarchist Historian" who ran the idea past a few focus groups before prclaiming it to the community.
What exactly does a penguin have to do with Linux? Or a cammel with Perl? Donkeys and elephants with Democrats and Republicans? No think tank sat down and analyzed what would be the most symbolic logo to represent those things. Some guy thought it was cool and used it, and other people agreed and went along. Symbols really _should_ be groupthink, not personthinkandgroupgoesalongwithit.
If hackers really want a symbol, a real symbol will fall out of the collective. If they want to promote such a process then there should be some kind of forum where hackers can suggest all kinds of symbols that they think would be cool as a method of priming the pump. Instead of then voting on said symbols, everyone should then sit back and see which survive best in the enviroment.
The best symbols are the ones that survive competition with other symbols, not ones that are created with the intent of being "meaningful." A committee could come up with a more "meaningfull" symbol than the Darwin Fish, but the Darwin Fish is what you see plastered on cars all over the place.
Maybe the glider would survive best in such a process, but the arrogance of the way in which it was proposed really annoys me.
I am going to interpret that as meaning "your game sucks"...
That only works if you also make the corresponding interpretation that "people are more likely to buy the game if they don't know it sucks." Unfortunatly that second assumption can form the basis for a reliable buisness model if you don't care about repeat customers and are willing to stake your company's future on "there's a sucker born every minute."
Ah well, the other point still stands. Is this an example of people being jerks, or an example of people being tricked into buying something they don't really want? Unfortunatly i can't think of an easy experiment to do which would give you an accurate answer. (You can try surveys and such, but asking people what they think is a notoriously unreliable way of finding out their actual motivations.)
If they guess wrong they're going to be hurting either their short term buisness or their long term buisness.