I agree. I didn't really dwell on the idea the last time because I dismissed it as too much for a movie to go into, and the simpler pallate of physical world interacting with 'simulated world' woud allow them to more fully develop the story.
The problem of the cascading simulated realities is that it is an infinate feedback loop. IE you can't know where it ends. In a movie you have the chance to set up a finite problem and solve it which is what makes it so desireable as the real world has no such comfort. I haven't decided yet if I think the brothers made a good or bad choice to open themselves up to an unsolveable scenario with no 'The End'.
I think there was more plot development than this. The whole concept that the machines are not a 'borg collective' kind of system ( something very weak/subtle in the last one).. that they too compete and are at odds. And of course there is always the discussion of choice. Also what does Smith have to gain in Zion ? ultimately is he after control of the matrix or does he want to escape it ? how can he escape it if he is just a program ? Granted the movie deals with these things in a very rudimentry way comparitive to a philosohy class, but its a format more approachable to most people than good old Phi 101.
My biggest disapointment was the limiting of NEO to physcial fighting. It just didn't make sense. His combat should have been far more cerebral and trancendent after what he does to Smith at the end of The Matrix. Since he can alter the code directly instead of bending the rules of the program he has no need to 'fight' hand to hand.... course thats just not near as exciting to watch.
The infection theory is interesting... I like it. The 'getting it comment' was mostly a troll, I knew some people had to of but everyone that was talking was talking about lameness and what seems to be very periphial issues compared to what happens in the last 10 minutes or so. Smith's survival on the Zion Side, Morpheous's crisis of faith which will likely be a huge part of the next, and of course NEO using 'the force' to take out the squidies in the 'real' world.
Perhaps the connection is that direct, I mean after all NEO destroyed Smith by infecting him etc... I'll have to think on it some more. However at least for now I think their connection is more philisophical than it is direct. Yin & Yang kind of stuff ie the prophecy generates a human outside of the rules and thus the machines follow. I call it the law of the comic book....every hero needs a worthy vilan and vice versa.I think the alteration in Smith and NEO is the changing of the rules regarding transport from Zion to 'The Matrix' IE Smith is in Zion and NEO can alter it in someway as well.
The thing that disturbed me was that at the end of Matrix he learns what morpheous meant by when he understood he wouldn't have to dodge bullets and yet he limits himself to physcial interaction this movie except when he saves trinity. Smith learns the fact that he can in fact alter the matrix, not bend its rules, alter it via replication. NEO is fighting like he did initially instead of by altering the code. In my mind he should have been far more cerebral when facing lesser opponents in this one..... course that dosn't make for nearly as much excitment in a fight scene. I want a DVD for slow mo in the architect scene... all those monitors have got to be hiding something.
The brothers impressed me with something else also, the division of the machines, the deffinate life that they possess in that they do change, that they do have a free will, that they do compete. The first movie presented this solidity of the machines that was inhuman in the extreme. IE if there was AI where was it ??? did it just work to enslave the human population... where was the machine equivalent of the slave master etc... is that the architect, the oracle, the other AI programs inside the matrix ? Do they have physical correlations like NEO outside of the Matrix ? The squidies and harvesters didn't suffice at all for me as representatives of AI. So the programs in the matrix didn't have physcial form it seemed and the machines 'outside' didn't have AI, or at least not very impressive AI. Whats the harvest of power for ? What are the machines doing besides enslaving the human race ?
Now the question to me seems to be if freedom from the matrix is physical freedom or merely control of the program. The control of the illsion of choice. It also makes the choice to enter the Zion matrix very interesting. Something tells me that revolutions is going to have one of those brain twister endings rather than a true 'The End'. Perhaps something along the lines of the machines didn't enslave us... we enslaved ourselves.
SPOILER DO not READ further if you HAVE not SEEN and dont WANT to KNOW.
Is it just me or has everyone missed the fact NEO messed with the supposedly 'real' world at the end ? They are still in the Matrix. There is more than one. Zion is a Matrix, one built with different rules, a different purpose. It serves the needs of the phophecy. The question is if NEO can break the cycle.
If the daily grind is all you ever used your car for then it does not surprise me you find a car to be more burden than anything else.
Cars do represent Freedom. But if you never choose to enjoy that freedom Its not the cars fault. Perhaps you can ge by with mass transit and flying/renting lving in NYC perhaps even Denver. But speaking as someone who has grown up in the sprawl of the south east and who loves to tank up the car and see where the road takes me from time to time I can say perhaps a car is not equal to freedom for you but it most definatley is for me and many others.
Just becasue you think something is so != to it being true for everyone
I really am not sure how impressive this would be. Obviously there will be the initial struggle to make a fast enough and agile enough robot soccer player that can compete on the field safely with human soccer players.
However unlike trying to put together the perfect Human soccer team with the proper variables you can custom build the skills of the robots at will. IE nothing to stop having a team that can mimick all major styles of play and to effortlessly shift between them.
Physical capabilities need not be limited. IE sure you can designate a top speed / force capable of being expended by the bots but how about getting tired ? Soccer players don't go 100%, they have to pace themselves as needed. There would be nothing stopping a Robot from always running 100%.
Not that it isn't something I would like to see but once physcial capacity of the bots reaches approximately to that of a human team the competition is somewhat moot. You would have to limit the physical capacity of the Robots at some point or the obvious strategy is to make robots fast/strong enough that humans simply can't keep up. This is not unfair strategy. Fast teams out run slow teams etc... Take the finest Womens Team and Pit them against the finest Mes team and you have a perfectly fair example of superior strength/speed etc will do on the field of play.
There is always a trade off between physcial and mental ability on the field of play. However there is generally a point at which sheer physical superiority will beat the best strategy in most physcial contests. For example take Annika Sorrenstrom playing against the Men. She at least has the proverbial snow balls chance in hell of doing well. Its not outside the realm of possibility. The problem is that day in and day out she has no chance long term of competting against the Men becasue she has to play to such a level of perfection just to compete much less win that it simply isn't sustainable. What happens when you can make robotic Bipeds all capable of running the hundred yard dash in 7 seconds and turn/stop on a dime and maintaining that for the entire match who can accurately kick and pass with a consistency that is obviously machine like. A goalie that has nanosecond reflexive response times that allow it to intervene between a shot from any concievable goal scoring angle in an inhuman amount of time ?
As for that not being fair... whats fair got to do with winning a soccer match in terms of physcial ability utilized within the rules of the game ? Why would you build a robot team to outwit a human team when you can build one that is capable of simply overwhelming it ? This dosn't mean changing the rules. There is nothing that says a player can't compete becasue they are too good , too fast, too strong etc... Nothing stops Shaq from dominating the NBA because he is bigger than most eveyone else, Jordan becasue he was so much better/dedicated etc... Kofax/ Cy Young/ Johnson. Drysdale from being so dominate on the pitching mound. Pele, nuff said. Humans are limited by genetics and ingenuity, robots only by ingenuity. We can be pretty damn ingenious when it suits us and I have little doubt we can engineer robots capable of beating our butts on a soccer pitch if we so desire.
Sometimes the evil you know may be better than the one you don't. True enough Religion causes much bad in the world but there is another side of its coin. Extrem religious fundamentalists have a counter weight that generally stops them from doing to much damage.
If religious meme's die out I have little doubt we can find other reasons to kill each other over... the next one might not have any built in restraints IE Fascisim and Socialisim. Democracies growing vein of tolerance is hopefull but without religious(read moralistic) underpinings in its followers it is somewhat morally bereft and its in that abscence of morality that the crisis of lethal mass meme's tends to come to the fore.
Religion's have killed a great many. But Nationalistic meme's have killed many more in modern times. Perhaps WMD's in the hands of fundamentalists can alter that.... but Korea does have them and there problem is religious fanatiasicim.
Relegion has become a cold in a sense. It causes problems in human society but by and large it does more good than harm in the world. Nationalisim is what brought us the bomb and MAD.
This reminds me of an idiot standing in front of a speeding massive something or other saying stop when they know damn good and well it won't. If there was a qustion of whether or not computers environmental impact might eventually casue us to stop using them I would grant some relevence to the decision to use laptops over paper but since I simply don't belive that short of a catastrophic event throwing us out of this age of technology completely computers are going anywhere its a moot point. The educational system has to embrace computers as a primary educational tool sooner or later in an increasingly computerized world.
Computers have a place in the educational process becasue they area fundamental reality of functioning in the 'real world'. Currently the realm of education and the 'real world' are becomeing more and more estranged from one another. The longer this remains true the worse of a decline we will see in education. The education system ( speaking primarily of US education as its all I know about ) is fast loosing its relevence in modern society. More and more each day it seems the relevence of what you learn in school is less and less pertinate to what you will do/need to know in the 'real world'.
Of course many would say the real world us leading to the brink of technology dependent illiteracy but to me that depends on what you declare is illiteracy.
Why is manual computation ignorace such a bad thing if you can correctly perform the equations with the aide of a calculator/computer ? Why is the inability to write in a clear and legible handwriting bad if you can type ? The reason we remain so attached to writing and its paper use is that is the primary means with which most of us to date were taught to manipulate our thoughts outside of our heads. IE you are first taught to write with a pencil and paper instead of to type. Why ? Everyone will agree that a typewritten page is far far far more legible than a handwritten one. In fact one you get on up in the process of education handwritten pages are no longer acceptable to many professors/teachers. Why not teach children primarily to type instead of handwritting ?
Most would have an obvious knee jerk response to that suggestion but if you will go beyond that just a bit and trully examine it what would be so bad about that ? Teach rudimentary manual notation for the areas in which typing simply isn't very feasible but don't spend years practicing pretty print and cursive scripting for which the modern world has so little use. Seriously... how many people still primarily convey the written word through handwritting vrs typing ? I know I shifted somwhere my last couple of years of highschool and about the only use I had for handwritting was taking notes in college courses becasue I couldn't afford a laptop. The universal nature of computers is slowly but surely creeping down the ranks of the education system and sooner or later typing will replace handwritting at the most basic levels. Its simply a matter of time and sufficient penetration of the technology.
For every horror story about a kid that can't perform simple math without a calculator I ask you how many kids out there that can perform simple math equations that can't use a spreadsheet ? How many kids that won spelling bee's that can't use a word processing program ( and by that I mean more than typing in one.. replace, foot noting, formatting page numbers etc )? The key needs of education necesarry for survival in the modern world has shifted and manual processes of data manipuation are becoming antiquated rapidly. Students would often be far better served if time now devoted to learning the finer points of increasingly archaic notational skills were shifted to mastering those skills as they are actually employed in an increasingly computerized world. And I garountee you if you teach a kid to type and think on a computer screen FIRST they will bitch and moan about having to handwrite something the way most of us bitched about having to type a paper for the first time.... especially as screen quality/portability continues to increase.
One other problem with that. Your tree example is a primary example of the problem of equating P2P file sharing with stealing. In the case of your tree you have a physical object which if you take can no longer be provided to someone else. You take sole possesion of the tree and no one else can get it.
P2P file sharing is actually a means of duplication. No physical material is taken possesion of. If I chopped down a tree in my back yard and used the wood to create a copy of a chair design down at the local furniture store would that be considered theft ? No of course it wouldn't. Computers represent an amazing production and distribution capacity. In the event of copying a song I am using freely given bandwidth and computer capacity to create a copy of music. I do not take a copy. I do not STEAL a damn thing.
The thing that totally freaks the RIAA is that they realize something most people who say find a way to make money off of online distribution just don't grasp. There is little to no value to be reaped from online music distribution. You have already paid via your ISP supscription and your computer equipment. Its costs them insane amounts of money to provide a central server and the needed bandwidth to run an online store while such costs as that are distributed among the masses in a P2P system. P2P is not free. It is a distributed cost architecture where the economic burden is shared among the users. Again you pay for your connection ( even if your in school.... that tuition goes somewhere remember ) and for your equipment.
Pardon the cheezy nature of it but try to imagine Walmart competing with an in home replicator ala Star Trek. You pay the power company for power and the replciator uses whatever mass supply you give it and creates anything you need. Why would you go to Walmart ? Its more efficient. No issues of stock, distribution, staff etc... all the things which add value to the production of packaged goods which drives walmart goes out the window with such an in home production ability.
Well computers have not reached the point of phsycial reproduction but they have reached that level with digital reproduction and they have ripped out a hell of a lot of the value of packaged media. The role of the middle man is changing.
As for intellectual property rights there is a serious issue but there is a very sticky promblem with P2P. The RIAA, the artists etc are not missing out on any money. After all 10% of nothing is nothing. People are not making money on P2P file sharing. Any who are should be prosecuted for itellectual property rights infringement. This issue is why the RIAA is trying so hard to establish the precedent that possessing a copy you didn't pay for represents lost revenue to them. That exchange of files on a P2P network represents an economic transaction. Free exchange is something the letter of the law has a very difficult time dealing with which is also driving the RIAA's desire for specific laws regarding copying.
Anyway, out of curiosity, has anyone ever hooked up a computer to a random background noise monitor with a tie to an ascii set for representation and turned it loose to see what happend ?
ummmmmm... actually it was a ball of plasma during re-entry. Though it was technically controlled untill the breakup began in earnest.
One point not made though is that meteors tend to hit at much higher speeds and at higher angles, butt hen its just a matter of enough rock to protect the worms and worms that can survive in it.
I disagree that this is sensationalisim,this discovery is deffinatly news worthy. I do dislike the now ubiquotus ( on XXX date XXX happend killing XXX ) to every story in relation. Kind of a catch 22 though... leave it out and your belittling what happend, leave it in and your trying to cash in on the tragedy. Dosn't bother me so long as a news source is respectful and consistent in how they handle it. CNN Has done so fairly well on the whole.
Darth has been there since the intial completion of construction... saw him back in 89-90 when I went on a school trip to DC.
Not to mention, if Darth isn't suitable Gargoyle material what is ? He even has a theme of redemption going for him. I can think of plenty of worse characters to have chose to partray in the architecture of the national cathedral.
Tesla's idea was charging the earth itself so that all you had to do was plug your gadget into the ground to get power. funny stories about people getting 'grounded' around his home town late in his life when he was performing his experiments.
I think he also noodled with an atmospheric version where you bounced energy at specific frequencies off the ionozphere for over the horizon power beaming similar to the way shortwave radio works. Actually other than the insane amounts of power needed to usufully retrive it you could simply broadcast more energy in the radio badwidths and recover it.. after all thats technically what your doing when you listen to a radio. Would be an intresting experiment to see how large an antenna you would need to power a small light with ambient radio waves. Since that is radiant non focused energy that whole decreases by the square of the distance etc.. would apply. I supose Tesla had some theory for a way to focus the beam for a means of usefull energy delivery levels but its been a while since I looked at his stuff.
Soloar panel efficiency isn't maxed at 30-40. Its just damned difficult beyond that because the suns energy is scattered across a broad spectrum from infrared on up into ultraviolent. Solar panels of the common ordinary garden variety ( also the cheapest to make which isn't cheap ) absorb only a small portion of this spectrum. More expensive forms absorb acros a larger range but you run across increasing difficulty and efficiency losses as you attempt to catch a wider range.
Microwaves are easier to convert because they are not only physically focused but also focused at a very specific spectrum meaning you don't have to covcer a wide range for absorbtion. I foget what the hetz setting is for your average microwave but its one frequency... whereas the suns is spread over pretty much the whole spectrum. IE you walk outside and it warms you, you turn on your radio and it interferes with it, it comes over the horizon and you can see by its light ( ever try to read by the energy of a microwave ? )
a cubic foot from 12vdc in 10 15 minutes ??? Sure you don't mean a cubic centimeter ?
But even if it is a cubic foot its dosn't make it a cheap energy operation for one simple fact: Seperating water by electrolysis takes more energy than you recover from the processes. If you achive 80% efficiency both ways your doing a hell of a job.. ie 80% efficiency in power used to seperate the water and 80% recovery of that energy stored as hydorgen/oxygen.
So lets say you seperate 1 cubic foot in 15 minutes.. or a rate of 4 cubic feet per hour at 12vdc or 4 cubic feet per 12vdc/hr. When reversing the processes you would at best get 12vdc/hr *.8 energy in return for every 4 cubic feet of gas.
In larger scale you generate gas for 10 hours thus getting 40 cubic feet of gas production. TO get that production you expended 10 12vdc/hr of energy. You then take your gas and turn it back into energy at a feed rate of 4 cubic feet per hour to get 10 hours of 9.6 vdc current.
scale it up to reasonable energy needs and hydrogen from solar electrolysis dosn't look all that hot especially when you factor in solar panel costs. Take a look at hydrogen storage problems as well.
http://www.solar-electric.com/kc-40.html
If they can seriously boost efficiency and cut prices down to half or 1/4 of what they current;y run it will start looking like a better option. But the economics aside the space you need is pretty insane to provide serious power needs. I forget the stat but you would have to cover the landmass of a decenct sized state(s) to provide enough energy to power the US via solar panels and even more if you do so by storing it in hydorgen due to that 80% efficiency issue ( and thats best case ).
Your breathing arn't you... your altering the natural environment. Altering the 'natural' environment is probabaly the best basic discription of life.
I can't see that putting windmills up in North Dakota would be any more of a wind break than regrowing all that old growth forrest that has been chopped down over the years and environmentalists keep screaming about. Besides I doubt i fyou carpeting them all over the state you would capture a significant enough portion of the overall wind energy in the atmosphere over N Dakota to make even a single full 1% difference in the overall amount of wind energy that passes over the state in the atmosphere.
Have to say I sorta agree with you on the solar panels... not so much on the poison aspect as the selenium in solar panels is in a pretty stable state but that the land area that would have to be covered at current efficiency rates I just don't see solar ever being viable as a primary energy source. however it does full fill certain niches very nicely... and having a 1kw+ array on roof tops as a general rule in construction could proove very useful for easing the dependency we have on fossile fuel generated energy.
Still another round. Mostly comments this time though. To say the least we strayed a bit from the initial topic.... but good debates know no boundaries.
Regarding God, Damnation and Dante I have a brain teaser question for ya. No real answer to it I think.. but some disagree with that sentiment. Mostly I think its just a loaded question, but perhaps its one you will enjoy pondering.
Who is the better Christian ? Someone who rejects christ/god yet lives the life of christ ie a life without sin in full accordance with "gods will" except for that one small detail of beliving in the almighty and/or his son. Or someone who embraces christ/god and yet is imperfect, sinfull. Not damned but the every day average jane/joe who dosn't live fully in accordance with "Gods will" but dosn't stray to far from the path either.
I ask that one because that whole point made By Dante of God giving people what they want in banishing them to the various circles of hell in the inferno through their various forms of rejection of him always irked me and made God seem petty. Sending to someone to the eternal fire simply for not believing in you just seems small. Not at all worthy of the "almighty".... course who am I to judge:-)
On locking people up I think you slipped out the back door with an 'Its the lesser of two evils' argument quite nicely. But I have to say I think that still amounts to the old 'It Depends':-) In my book locking up Charles Manson ( or insert notorious absolute guilt example here ) is good. No doubt, no questions do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars go directly to jail and I won't shed a tear if its to sit in "Old Sparky". The extreme cases don't provide much challenge or call for much soul searching ( for an opposing point of view read Dead Man Walking). The problem, at least for me, comes with the grey areas. Those cases where we don't know the absolute truth about what happend on that fatefull tuesday night but we know something happend and we know it was bad and we have good reason to think *insert suspected evil doer* did it. Back to this in a minute.
Truth. For Truth I say you made a point I kind of went round about with. Truth is in the question, especially in my example. You have to define 2 consitently before you can evaluate 2+2 acurately as 2+2=4. As for the fact there is one truth about what I did tuesday night I concede that is so. However reaching that one truth is just as difficult as pinning down Hiesenburgh's dratted electron. Its rapidly approaching but never reaching 1. Course I can argue all day and night against that damned principle but it serves my purpose here:-)
Which incidentally is what leads to the problem of the criminal set free by truths. When the rules we set down for making sure we arrive at the objective one truth about what I did tuesday night are broken. Regarless if we know it was a silly mistake and not one meant to skew the results of my trial.. we have to assume that what we know is true has been tainted. Thus you have the underpinning basis of inadmissiable evidence.
I'm Not sure either if it is a good thing to let them go. The truly difficult thing in this example is that in my setup I say or at least imply we know the crime was committed and that we have the right person and even the right evidence but that a procedural mistake, a technicality, releases the miscreant. Real life rarely grants you perfect knowledge like this thus the real pondering nature of the example I chose which challenges the ideal of the system in an non-ideal circumstance. From here this generally devovles in a means justifying the end or the ends justifying the means debate. Sooner or later someone takes the high ground by saying its better to err to the side of caution.. if they are religious they will say something to the effect " after all in the end God will judge them ". That of course opens a whole other can of worms.
In the end its an imperfect system, just as our perce
But my only real problem with them is the stores habit of putting the prominent shelf price as the price after your rebate which I think is bogus. Its just plain annoying to have to sit there hunting for fine print and looking for after mail in rebate notices to make sure the price your seeing is the one you will actually pay at the register.
Not at all, Nice return shot. You hit my weak point right on the money. The hole ( if hole it is:) ) in my reasoning is of course it relies on whether or not you believe in the intrinsic nature of good or bad.
My ultimate argument regarding good and bad is not that good needs bad to be good or vice versa.Truth: Good and Bad exist.I do claim they are inseperable concepts. However do not confuse that with arguing that good and bad are relative and have no intrinsic nature. In society I think it is difficult and very very depressing to make a strong argument for their being no intrinsic good or bad in the world. Good and Bad as relative opposing abstracts to define our reality is something that can be done. Just ask the relativists(however you spell that). However, its also very difficult to explain them individualy which is a mistake I feel many make when arguing for intrinsic values of good and bad. It is difficult to conceptualize their seperate existence. I personally find it as hard to seperate them as I would something such as lightness and dark. Does a Blind person live in a dark world ? But how can they know their world is dark if never they have beheld the light ? Their blindness does not mean light does not exist, or even that it does not exist in their world. Simply that for them it does not have the same meaning as it does for those of us who see. Thus with good and bad. The abscence of good does not mean bad is also not to be found and vice versa but our perception of them would be affected. Just as there is light and darkness in the universe so to there is good and bad. Just as dark can never be light so can bad never be good other than in a purely semantic switch in which we agree as a society to change the indentifying symbology we use to discuss them. Of course you can argue about the details ( premarital sex, capital punishment, jaywalking etc... ) but ultimately I think as a race we agree some things are beyond the pale. We do disagree on where the line is exactly. But not that there is a line and that there is good on one side and bad on the other.
However, just to play devils advocate for a second. Going back to heaven and hell. If souls are for ever damned to fire and brimstone to be punished for their sins is not that punishment a 'good' thing ? Its certainly not something we would look on as a good thing in this life but we hold it is just and right if the judgement of the almighty banishes them to hell. The key of course being the infalible judgment of the almighty thus a decision made by the almighty is judged a 'good' thing while the same judgemnt regardless of whether or not it is the same is a 'bad' thing for a mere mortal. An imperfect being. Obviously this is a major bone of contention between people who believe in capital punishment and those who do not. Even short of death is it 'Good' to lock someone up in a cell ? No matter how you twist and turn I imagine the answer you have has to be ' It Depends ' which opens pandoras box.
Can't resist a stab at your truth line either though again I am devils advocating a tad. Truth does have wiggle room. If your view of what I did last tuesday night and my view differ but are both the god's honest truth as we each see it then what is the truth ? Who is more right ? Once you get beyond some basic physcial facts our perception of the world can vary greatly from person to person and to each it is 'Truth'.
I have 8 oranges in two numericaly equal bunches of 4. Each orange in pile one is twice as large as the oranges in pile two. I recieve 2 more oranges same as those in pile one and 2 others the same size as the oranges in pile two. By one measure my new 2 oranges plus my other 2 new oranges I have four more oranges. Numerical abstract. However, as you have probably deduced in terms of mass/size my two large oranges are = to four smaller oranges and my two smaller oranges are only equal to 1 larger orange. So I ask you, when considering my new oranges does 2 + 2 = 4 ? Which truth is more true ? There are
Depends on your deffinition of 'best cop'. Though I would choose to ammend that to most effective cop on my part. I generally agree with your assesment. but that is the age old argument of whether to fight fire with fire or with water. The answer of course is the best solution for the specific case. There is no universal solvent.
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I agree. I didn't really dwell on the idea the last time because I dismissed it as too much for a movie to go into, and the simpler pallate of physical world interacting with 'simulated world' woud allow them to more fully develop the story.
The problem of the cascading simulated realities is that it is an infinate feedback loop. IE you can't know where it ends. In a movie you have the chance to set up a finite problem and solve it which is what makes it so desireable as the real world has no such comfort. I haven't decided yet if I think the brothers made a good or bad choice to open themselves up to an unsolveable scenario with no 'The End'.
I think there was more plot development than this. The whole concept that the machines are not a 'borg collective' kind of system ( something very weak/subtle in the last one).. that they too compete and are at odds. And of course there is always the discussion of choice. Also what does Smith have to gain in Zion ? ultimately is he after control of the matrix or does he want to escape it ? how can he escape it if he is just a program ? Granted the movie deals with these things in a very rudimentry way comparitive to a philosohy class, but its a format more approachable to most people than good old Phi 101.
My biggest disapointment was the limiting of NEO to physcial fighting. It just didn't make sense. His combat should have been far more cerebral and trancendent after what he does to Smith at the end of The Matrix. Since he can alter the code directly instead of bending the rules of the program he has no need to 'fight' hand to hand.... course thats just not near as exciting to watch.
The infection theory is interesting... I like it. The 'getting it comment' was mostly a troll, I knew some people had to of but everyone that was talking was talking about lameness and what seems to be very periphial issues compared to what happens in the last 10 minutes or so. Smith's survival on the Zion Side, Morpheous's crisis of faith which will likely be a huge part of the next, and of course NEO using 'the force' to take out the squidies in the 'real' world.
Perhaps the connection is that direct, I mean after all NEO destroyed Smith by infecting him etc... I'll have to think on it some more. However at least for now I think their connection is more philisophical than it is direct. Yin & Yang kind of stuff ie the prophecy generates a human outside of the rules and thus the machines follow. I call it the law of the comic book....every hero needs a worthy vilan and vice versa.I think the alteration in Smith and NEO is the changing of the rules regarding transport from Zion to 'The Matrix' IE Smith is in Zion and NEO can alter it in someway as well.
The thing that disturbed me was that at the end of Matrix he learns what morpheous meant by when he understood he wouldn't have to dodge bullets and yet he limits himself to physcial interaction this movie except when he saves trinity. Smith learns the fact that he can in fact alter the matrix, not bend its rules, alter it via replication. NEO is fighting like he did initially instead of by altering the code. In my mind he should have been far more cerebral when facing lesser opponents in this one..... course that dosn't make for nearly as much excitment in a fight scene. I want a DVD for slow mo in the architect scene... all those monitors have got to be hiding something.
The brothers impressed me with something else also, the division of the machines, the deffinate life that they possess in that they do change, that they do have a free will, that they do compete. The first movie presented this solidity of the machines that was inhuman in the extreme. IE if there was AI where was it ??? did it just work to enslave the human population... where was the machine equivalent of the slave master etc... is that the architect, the oracle, the other AI programs inside the matrix ? Do they have physical correlations like NEO outside of the Matrix ? The squidies and harvesters didn't suffice at all for me as representatives of AI. So the programs in the matrix didn't have physcial form it seemed and the machines 'outside' didn't have AI, or at least not very impressive AI. Whats the harvest of power for ? What are the machines doing besides enslaving the human race ?
Now the question to me seems to be if freedom from the matrix is physical freedom or merely control of the program. The control of the illsion of choice. It also makes the choice to enter the Zion matrix very interesting. Something tells me that revolutions is going to have one of those brain twister endings rather than a true 'The End'. Perhaps something along the lines of the machines didn't enslave us... we enslaved ourselves.
SPOILER DO not READ further if you HAVE not SEEN and dont WANT to KNOW.
Is it just me or has everyone missed the fact NEO messed with the supposedly 'real' world at the end ? They are still in the Matrix. There is more than one. Zion is a Matrix, one built with different rules, a different purpose. It serves the needs of the phophecy. The question is if NEO can break the cycle.
If the daily grind is all you ever used your car for then it does not surprise me you find a car to be more burden than anything else.
Cars do represent Freedom. But if you never choose to enjoy that freedom Its not the cars fault. Perhaps you can ge by with mass transit and flying/renting lving in NYC perhaps even Denver. But speaking as someone who has grown up in the sprawl of the south east and who loves to tank up the car and see where the road takes me from time to time I can say perhaps a car is not equal to freedom for you but it most definatley is for me and many others.
Just becasue you think something is so != to it being true for everyone
Dude you hit Atlanta on the Nail. Its getting absolutely crazy there these days and Marta just don't cut it.
285 is Hell on earth... though Kennesaw isn't far behind.
I think Atlanta and NYC are the worst of both worlds congestion wise.
Nicely put. And to the other guy that responded to your post as well... the creationist lable use is getting a bit broad these days.
dought .. Korea has them and their problem ISN'T religious fanatacisim.
I really am not sure how impressive this would be. Obviously there will be the initial struggle to make a fast enough and agile enough robot soccer player that can compete on the field safely with human soccer players.
However unlike trying to put together the perfect Human soccer team with the proper variables you can custom build the skills of the robots at will. IE nothing to stop having a team that can mimick all major styles of play and to effortlessly shift between them.
Physical capabilities need not be limited. IE sure you can designate a top speed / force capable of being expended by the bots but how about getting tired ? Soccer players don't go 100%, they have to pace themselves as needed. There would be nothing stopping a Robot from always running 100%.
Not that it isn't something I would like to see but once physcial capacity of the bots reaches approximately to that of a human team the competition is somewhat moot. You would have to limit the physical capacity of the Robots at some point or the obvious strategy is to make robots fast/strong enough that humans simply can't keep up. This is not unfair strategy. Fast teams out run slow teams etc... Take the finest Womens Team and Pit them against the finest Mes team and you have a perfectly fair example of superior strength/speed etc will do on the field of play.
There is always a trade off between physcial and mental ability on the field of play. However there is generally a point at which sheer physical superiority will beat the best strategy in most physcial contests. For example take Annika Sorrenstrom playing against the Men. She at least has the proverbial snow balls chance in hell of doing well. Its not outside the realm of possibility. The problem is that day in and day out she has no chance long term of competting against the Men becasue she has to play to such a level of perfection just to compete much less win that it simply isn't sustainable. What happens when you can make robotic Bipeds all capable of running the hundred yard dash in 7 seconds and turn/stop on a dime and maintaining that for the entire match who can accurately kick and pass with a consistency that is obviously machine like. A goalie that has nanosecond reflexive response times that allow it to intervene between a shot from any concievable goal scoring angle in an inhuman amount of time ?
As for that not being fair... whats fair got to do with winning a soccer match in terms of physcial ability utilized within the rules of the game ? Why would you build a robot team to outwit a human team when you can build one that is capable of simply overwhelming it ? This dosn't mean changing the rules. There is nothing that says a player can't compete becasue they are too good , too fast, too strong etc... Nothing stops Shaq from dominating the NBA because he is bigger than most eveyone else, Jordan becasue he was so much better/dedicated etc... Kofax/ Cy Young/ Johnson. Drysdale from being so dominate on the pitching mound. Pele, nuff said. Humans are limited by genetics and ingenuity, robots only by ingenuity. We can be pretty damn ingenious when it suits us and I have little doubt we can engineer robots capable of beating our butts on a soccer pitch if we so desire.
Amazing, 3 resposnes and not one picked up that last tid bit you just left hanging out there..... sheeesh. Sometimes I despair the species.
Sometimes the evil you know may be better than the one you don't. True enough Religion causes much bad in the world but there is another side of its coin. Extrem religious fundamentalists have a counter weight that generally stops them from doing to much damage.
If religious meme's die out I have little doubt we can find other reasons to kill each other over... the next one might not have any built in restraints IE Fascisim and Socialisim. Democracies growing vein of tolerance is hopefull but without religious(read moralistic) underpinings in its followers it is somewhat morally bereft and its in that abscence of morality that the crisis of lethal mass meme's tends to come to the fore.
Religion's have killed a great many. But Nationalistic meme's have killed many more in modern times. Perhaps WMD's in the hands of fundamentalists can alter that.... but Korea does have them and there problem is religious fanatiasicim.
Relegion has become a cold in a sense. It causes problems in human society but by and large it does more good than harm in the world. Nationalisim is what brought us the bomb and MAD.
This reminds me of an idiot standing in front of a speeding massive something or other saying stop when they know damn good and well it won't. If there was a qustion of whether or not computers environmental impact might eventually casue us to stop using them I would grant some relevence to the decision to use laptops over paper but since I simply don't belive that short of a catastrophic event throwing us out of this age of technology completely computers are going anywhere its a moot point. The educational system has to embrace computers as a primary educational tool sooner or later in an increasingly computerized world.
Computers have a place in the educational process becasue they area fundamental reality of functioning in the 'real world'. Currently the realm of education and the 'real world' are becomeing more and more estranged from one another. The longer this remains true the worse of a decline we will see in education. The education system ( speaking primarily of US education as its all I know about ) is fast loosing its relevence in modern society. More and more each day it seems the relevence of what you learn in school is less and less pertinate to what you will do/need to know in the 'real world'.
Of course many would say the real world us leading to the brink of technology dependent illiteracy but to me that depends on what you declare is illiteracy.
Why is manual computation ignorace such a bad thing if you can correctly perform the equations with the aide of a calculator/computer ? Why is the inability to write in a clear and legible handwriting bad if you can type ? The reason we remain so attached to writing and its paper use is that is the primary means with which most of us to date were taught to manipulate our thoughts outside of our heads. IE you are first taught to write with a pencil and paper instead of to type. Why ? Everyone will agree that a typewritten page is far far far more legible than a handwritten one. In fact one you get on up in the process of education handwritten pages are no longer acceptable to many professors/teachers. Why not teach children primarily to type instead of handwritting ?
Most would have an obvious knee jerk response to that suggestion but if you will go beyond that just a bit and trully examine it what would be so bad about that ? Teach rudimentary manual notation for the areas in which typing simply isn't very feasible but don't spend years practicing pretty print and cursive scripting for which the modern world has so little use. Seriously... how many people still primarily convey the written word through handwritting vrs typing ? I know I shifted somwhere my last couple of years of highschool and about the only use I had for handwritting was taking notes in college courses becasue I couldn't afford a laptop. The universal nature of computers is slowly but surely creeping down the ranks of the education system and sooner or later typing will replace handwritting at the most basic levels. Its simply a matter of time and sufficient penetration of the technology.
For every horror story about a kid that can't perform simple math without a calculator I ask you how many kids out there that can perform simple math equations that can't use a spreadsheet ? How many kids that won spelling bee's that can't use a word processing program ( and by that I mean more than typing in one.. replace, foot noting, formatting page numbers etc )? The key needs of education necesarry for survival in the modern world has shifted and manual processes of data manipuation are becoming antiquated rapidly. Students would often be far better served if time now devoted to learning the finer points of increasingly archaic notational skills were shifted to mastering those skills as they are actually employed in an increasingly computerized world. And I garountee you if you teach a kid to type and think on a computer screen FIRST they will bitch and moan about having to handwrite something the way most of us bitched about having to type a paper for the first time.... especially as screen quality/portability continues to increase.
/*sarcasam*/Great analogy/*sarcasam*/
Guns are tools of dealing destructive force
Computers are tools for managing digital information
I see your point on guns... how again does an information tool not belong in a center for education ?
One other problem with that. Your tree example is a primary example of the problem of equating P2P file sharing with stealing. In the case of your tree you have a physical object which if you take can no longer be provided to someone else. You take sole possesion of the tree and no one else can get it.
P2P file sharing is actually a means of duplication. No physical material is taken possesion of. If I chopped down a tree in my back yard and used the wood to create a copy of a chair design down at the local furniture store would that be considered theft ? No of course it wouldn't. Computers represent an amazing production and distribution capacity. In the event of copying a song I am using freely given bandwidth and computer capacity to create a copy of music. I do not take a copy. I do not STEAL a damn thing.
The thing that totally freaks the RIAA is that they realize something most people who say find a way to make money off of online distribution just don't grasp. There is little to no value to be reaped from online music distribution. You have already paid via your ISP supscription and your computer equipment. Its costs them insane amounts of money to provide a central server and the needed bandwidth to run an online store while such costs as that are distributed among the masses in a P2P system. P2P is not free. It is a distributed cost architecture where the economic burden is shared among the users. Again you pay for your connection ( even if your in school.... that tuition goes somewhere remember ) and for your equipment.
Pardon the cheezy nature of it but try to imagine Walmart competing with an in home replicator ala Star Trek. You pay the power company for power and the replciator uses whatever mass supply you give it and creates anything you need. Why would you go to Walmart ? Its more efficient. No issues of stock, distribution, staff etc... all the things which add value to the production of packaged goods which drives walmart goes out the window with such an in home production ability.
Well computers have not reached the point of phsycial reproduction but they have reached that level with digital reproduction and they have ripped out a hell of a lot of the value of packaged media. The role of the middle man is changing.
As for intellectual property rights there is a serious issue but there is a very sticky promblem with P2P. The RIAA, the artists etc are not missing out on any money. After all 10% of nothing is nothing. People are not making money on P2P file sharing. Any who are should be prosecuted for itellectual property rights infringement. This issue is why the RIAA is trying so hard to establish the precedent that possessing a copy you didn't pay for represents lost revenue to them. That exchange of files on a P2P network represents an economic transaction. Free exchange is something the letter of the law has a very difficult time dealing with which is also driving the RIAA's desire for specific laws regarding copying.
Anyway, out of curiosity, has anyone ever hooked up a computer to a random background noise monitor with a tie to an ascii set for representation and turned it loose to see what happend ?
ummmmmm... actually it was a ball of plasma during re-entry. Though it was technically controlled untill the breakup began in earnest.
One point not made though is that meteors tend to hit at much higher speeds and at higher angles, butt hen its just a matter of enough rock to protect the worms and worms that can survive in it.
I disagree that this is sensationalisim,this discovery is deffinatly news worthy. I do dislike the now ubiquotus ( on XXX date XXX happend killing XXX ) to every story in relation. Kind of a catch 22 though... leave it out and your belittling what happend, leave it in and your trying to cash in on the tragedy. Dosn't bother me so long as a news source is respectful and consistent in how they handle it. CNN Has done so fairly well on the whole.
Darth has been there since the intial completion of construction... saw him back in 89-90 when I went on a school trip to DC.
Not to mention, if Darth isn't suitable Gargoyle material what is ? He even has a theme of redemption going for him. I can think of plenty of worse characters to have chose to partray in the architecture of the national cathedral.
Tesla's idea was charging the earth itself so that all you had to do was plug your gadget into the ground to get power. funny stories about people getting 'grounded' around his home town late in his life when he was performing his experiments.
I think he also noodled with an atmospheric version where you bounced energy at specific frequencies off the ionozphere for over the horizon power beaming similar to the way shortwave radio works. Actually other than the insane amounts of power needed to usufully retrive it you could simply broadcast more energy in the radio badwidths and recover it.. after all thats technically what your doing when you listen to a radio. Would be an intresting experiment to see how large an antenna you would need to power a small light with ambient radio waves. Since that is radiant non focused energy that whole decreases by the square of the distance etc.. would apply. I supose Tesla had some theory for a way to focus the beam for a means of usefull energy delivery levels but its been a while since I looked at his stuff.
Soloar panel efficiency isn't maxed at 30-40. Its just damned difficult beyond that because the suns energy is scattered across a broad spectrum from infrared on up into ultraviolent. Solar panels of the common ordinary garden variety ( also the cheapest to make which isn't cheap ) absorb only a small portion of this spectrum. More expensive forms absorb acros a larger range but you run across increasing difficulty and efficiency losses as you attempt to catch a wider range.
Microwaves are easier to convert because they are not only physically focused but also focused at a very specific spectrum meaning you don't have to covcer a wide range for absorbtion. I foget what the hetz setting is for your average microwave but its one frequency... whereas the suns is spread over pretty much the whole spectrum. IE you walk outside and it warms you, you turn on your radio and it interferes with it, it comes over the horizon and you can see by its light ( ever try to read by the energy of a microwave ? )
a cubic foot from 12vdc in 10 15 minutes ??? Sure you don't mean a cubic centimeter ?
.. ie 80% efficiency in power used to seperate the water and 80% recovery of that energy stored as hydorgen/oxygen.
But even if it is a cubic foot its dosn't make it a cheap energy operation for one simple fact: Seperating water by electrolysis takes more energy than you recover from the processes. If you achive 80% efficiency both ways your doing a hell of a job
So lets say you seperate 1 cubic foot in 15 minutes.. or a rate of 4 cubic feet per hour at 12vdc or 4 cubic feet per 12vdc/hr. When reversing the processes you would at best get 12vdc/hr *.8 energy in return for every 4 cubic feet of gas.
In larger scale you generate gas for 10 hours thus getting 40 cubic feet of gas production. TO get that production you expended 10 12vdc/hr of energy. You then take your gas and turn it back into energy at a feed rate of 4 cubic feet per hour to get 10 hours of 9.6 vdc current.
scale it up to reasonable energy needs and hydrogen from solar electrolysis dosn't look all that hot especially when you factor in solar panel costs. Take a look at hydrogen storage problems as well.
http://www.solar-electric.com/kc-40.html
If they can seriously boost efficiency and cut prices down to half or 1/4 of what they current;y run it will start looking like a better option. But the economics aside the space you need is pretty insane to provide serious power needs. I forget the stat but you would have to cover the landmass of a decenct sized state(s) to provide enough energy to power the US via solar panels and even more if you do so by storing it in hydorgen due to that 80% efficiency issue ( and thats best case ).
Your breathing arn't you... your altering the natural environment. Altering the 'natural' environment is probabaly the best basic discription of life.
I can't see that putting windmills up in North Dakota would be any more of a wind break than regrowing all that old growth forrest that has been chopped down over the years and environmentalists keep screaming about. Besides I doubt i fyou carpeting them all over the state you would capture a significant enough portion of the overall wind energy in the atmosphere over N Dakota to make even a single full 1% difference in the overall amount of wind energy that passes over the state in the atmosphere.
Have to say I sorta agree with you on the solar panels... not so much on the poison aspect as the selenium in solar panels is in a pretty stable state but that the land area that would have to be covered at current efficiency rates I just don't see solar ever being viable as a primary energy source. however it does full fill certain niches very nicely... and having a 1kw+ array on roof tops as a general rule in construction could proove very useful for easing the dependency we have on fossile fuel generated energy.
Still another round. Mostly comments this time though. To say the least we strayed a bit from the initial topic.... but good debates know no boundaries.
:-)
:-) In my book locking up Charles Manson ( or insert notorious absolute guilt example here ) is good. No doubt, no questions do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars go directly to jail and I won't shed a tear if its to sit in "Old Sparky". The extreme cases don't provide much challenge or call for much soul searching ( for an opposing point of view read Dead Man Walking). The problem, at least for me, comes with the grey areas. Those cases where we don't know the absolute truth about what happend on that fatefull tuesday night but we know something happend and we know it was bad and we have good reason to think *insert suspected evil doer* did it. Back to this in a minute.
:-)
Regarding God, Damnation and Dante I have a brain teaser question for ya. No real answer to it I think.. but some disagree with that sentiment. Mostly I think its just a loaded question, but perhaps its one you will enjoy pondering.
Who is the better Christian ? Someone who rejects christ/god yet lives the life of christ ie a life without sin in full accordance with "gods will" except for that one small detail of beliving in the almighty and/or his son. Or someone who embraces christ/god and yet is imperfect, sinfull. Not damned but the every day average jane/joe who dosn't live fully in accordance with "Gods will" but dosn't stray to far from the path either.
I ask that one because that whole point made By Dante of God giving people what they want in banishing them to the various circles of hell in the inferno through their various forms of rejection of him always irked me and made God seem petty. Sending to someone to the eternal fire simply for not believing in you just seems small. Not at all worthy of the "almighty".... course who am I to judge
On locking people up I think you slipped out the back door with an 'Its the lesser of two evils' argument quite nicely. But I have to say I think that still amounts to the old 'It Depends'
Truth. For Truth I say you made a point I kind of went round about with. Truth is in the question, especially in my example. You have to define 2 consitently before you can evaluate 2+2 acurately as 2+2=4. As for the fact there is one truth about what I did tuesday night I concede that is so. However reaching that one truth is just as difficult as pinning down Hiesenburgh's dratted electron. Its rapidly approaching but never reaching 1. Course I can argue all day and night against that damned principle but it serves my purpose here
Which incidentally is what leads to the problem of the criminal set free by truths. When the rules we set down for making sure we arrive at the objective one truth about what I did tuesday night are broken. Regarless if we know it was a silly mistake and not one meant to skew the results of my trial.. we have to assume that what we know is true has been tainted. Thus you have the underpinning basis of inadmissiable evidence.
I'm Not sure either if it is a good thing to let them go. The truly difficult thing in this example is that in my setup I say or at least imply we know the crime was committed and that we have the right person and even the right evidence but that a procedural mistake, a technicality, releases the miscreant. Real life rarely grants you perfect knowledge like this thus the real pondering nature of the example I chose which challenges the ideal of the system in an non-ideal circumstance. From here this generally devovles in a means justifying the end or the ends justifying the means debate. Sooner or later someone takes the high ground by saying its better to err to the side of caution.. if they are religious they will say something to the effect " after all in the end God will judge them ". That of course opens a whole other can of worms.
In the end its an imperfect system, just as our perce
But my only real problem with them is the stores habit of putting the prominent shelf price as the price after your rebate which I think is bogus. Its just plain annoying to have to sit there hunting for fine print and looking for after mail in rebate notices to make sure the price your seeing is the one you will actually pay at the register.
OH
MY
GAWD !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Damn...
Just........
Damn.
Not at all, Nice return shot. You hit my weak point right on the money. The hole ( if hole it is :) ) in my reasoning is of course it relies on whether or not you believe in the intrinsic nature of good or bad.
My ultimate argument regarding good and bad is not that good needs bad to be good or vice versa.Truth: Good and Bad exist.I do claim they are inseperable concepts. However do not confuse that with arguing that good and bad are relative and have no intrinsic nature. In society I think it is difficult and very very depressing to make a strong argument for their being no intrinsic good or bad in the world. Good and Bad as relative opposing abstracts to define our reality is something that can be done. Just ask the relativists(however you spell that). However, its also very difficult to explain them individualy which is a mistake I feel many make when arguing for intrinsic values of good and bad. It is difficult to conceptualize their seperate existence. I personally find it as hard to seperate them as I would something such as lightness and dark. Does a Blind person live in a dark world ? But how can they know their world is dark if never they have beheld the light ? Their blindness does not mean light does not exist, or even that it does not exist in their world. Simply that for them it does not have the same meaning as it does for those of us who see. Thus with good and bad. The abscence of good does not mean bad is also not to be found and vice versa but our perception of them would be affected. Just as there is light and darkness in the universe so to there is good and bad. Just as dark can never be light so can bad never be good other than in a purely semantic switch in which we agree as a society to change the indentifying symbology we use to discuss them. Of course you can argue about the details ( premarital sex, capital punishment, jaywalking etc... ) but ultimately I think as a race we agree some things are beyond the pale. We do disagree on where the line is exactly. But not that there is a line and that there is good on one side and bad on the other.
However, just to play devils advocate for a second. Going back to heaven and hell. If souls are for ever damned to fire and brimstone to be punished for their sins is not that punishment a 'good' thing ? Its certainly not something we would look on as a good thing in this life but we hold it is just and right if the judgement of the almighty banishes them to hell. The key of course being the infalible judgment of the almighty thus a decision made by the almighty is judged a 'good' thing while the same judgemnt regardless of whether or not it is the same is a 'bad' thing for a mere mortal. An imperfect being. Obviously this is a major bone of contention between people who believe in capital punishment and those who do not. Even short of death is it 'Good' to lock someone up in a cell ? No matter how you twist and turn I imagine the answer you have has to be ' It Depends ' which opens pandoras box.
Can't resist a stab at your truth line either though again I am devils advocating a tad. Truth does have wiggle room. If your view of what I did last tuesday night and my view differ but are both the god's honest truth as we each see it then what is the truth ? Who is more right ? Once you get beyond some basic physcial facts our perception of the world can vary greatly from person to person and to each it is 'Truth'.
I have 8 oranges in two numericaly equal bunches of 4. Each orange in pile one is twice as large as the oranges in pile two. I recieve 2 more oranges same as those in pile one and 2 others the same size as the oranges in pile two. By one measure my new 2 oranges plus my other 2 new oranges I have four more oranges. Numerical abstract. However, as you have probably deduced in terms of mass/size my two large oranges are = to four smaller oranges and my two smaller oranges are only equal to 1 larger orange. So I ask you, when considering my new oranges does 2 + 2 = 4 ? Which truth is more true ? There are
Depends on your deffinition of 'best cop'. Though I would choose to ammend that to most effective cop on my part. I generally agree with your assesment. but that is the age old argument of whether to fight fire with fire or with water. The answer of course is the best solution for the specific case. There is no universal solvent.