It's not the Tim Allen factor, it's the Bright Red Sprinkler factor. My mug is sensitive, I guess. I've tried the cheap-o razors, trust me. It was brutal. I've even had two GOOD electric razor. They don't nick, but me give the razor rash like nobody's business. The Mach3 and Mach3 Turbo are the only ones I find that treat my face nicely...the Sensor was OK, but the Sensor Excel? EVIL!...and even just the right blades, I have to shave in the shower so my bristles get sufficiently soft and water-logged.
What I am alleging is that the shaving companies have a conspiracy and setup a nice and neat monopoly.
No, what you are referring to is not a monopoly, but a cartel, where competitors collude to fix prices and, sometimes supply.
I kinda doubt this is happening, but I do agree the prices are exorbitant. But damn, how ironclad are the patents on the Mach series blades? Why doesn't somebody reverse-engineer these baddies and put up some competition? I did try a storebrand work-alike of the older Gillette line (it was a Sensor generic designed for the Sensor stick) and it was AWFUL. Bloody mess.
It appears that instead of "flamebaiting," I've baited praise. Thanks.
BTW, bitter moderator: I used to be a Republican. I voted for Bush the Elder, and Dole. But all things in moderation, I say. And the pendulum has swung way, way too far.
"Yes, I was detained and harrassed by federal airport security without cause or explanation because my name is David Nelson. I am not allowed to know that I am on a do-not-fly list or what criteria put a person there in the first place."
"Yes, I was forced to drink my own breast milk out of three bottles by federal airport security to prove it was not a "security risk."
"Yes, my right to freely assembly has been infringed my Bush and his cronies with their establishment of (incredibly cyncially named) 'First Amendment Zones' that stipulate that demonstrators who are protesting the president must remain in specific "safe distances" often blocks away from presidential appearances, while "supporters" are allowed to demonstrate in the immediate vicinity.
"Yes, my government is developing a system that will systematically spy on everyone, all of the time, in an effort to provide me better "security." Thankfully, budgetary politics in the Senate will hopefully kill this monstrosity."
Fromt the article: "It's not good to charge people for using something which is like a social infrastructure. It also inhibits the development of the computer industry. The very basic infrastructure should be free," he said.
"But Mr Gates is free to do whatever he wants, as we live in a world of capitalism."
A man who's got it right. Why can't we (in the western world) get this type of soft-spoken wisdom to be the face of OSS, and not the curmudgeonly off-putting geekazoidness of RMS?
"This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," [CEO of power co. Pepco Holdings] Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist. "Why in the world have we been so stupid as a country to have all this information in the public domain? Does that openness still make sense? It sure as hell doesn't to me."
Because security through obscurity is just as brainless an alternative for the physical infrastructure as it is for virtual infrastructure.
Hiding things doesn't make them safe. It makes them safe until found. With the added bonus of fostering the kind of clandestine, repressive, bitter societal climate that our govnt seems bent on pursuing these days.
You want to protect something? 1) Make it less desirable as a target (i.e. take away people's reasons for attacking in the first place). 2) Build in redundancies to dilute vulnerability. 3) Monitor, patrol, survey in an open and visible manner
1) If you subscribe to most modern accounts of biogenesis, there was likely a single source for the origin of life (or at least the life from which every living thing today evolved). So, every living thing has had just as much time to evolve as every other.
2) If by "longest time" you mean time in a constant environment, please see all the other posts in this thread on how land ecology impacts deep sea ecology. Furthermore, keep in mind the earth's tectonics which are particularly violent in the Pacific. Volcanic activity has tremendous impact on deep sea life.
Things evolve to adapt to their (ever-changing) enviornments. These creatures' environments are very unlike ours. It has nothing to do with time on earth or environmental stability.
when your product has been superior for years and recognized as such
In this case, it's not so. My dad runs a video production business. He runs Final Cut Pro, but before he went digital he did a lot of research between Mac/Windows, and the various editing platforms on each. Apparently working with Premiere is widely regarded as a painful, frustrating experience. It has its strong adherents who are used to idiosyncrasies, but new adopters are often annoyed, or don't know that there's a better way. His experience with FCP, btw, has been spectacular. He's awed by its power, its interface, and its reliability. It's probably a good thing Adobe is redesigning Premiere things from the bottom-up. Maybe it will be too FCP-like to distinguish it from Apple on the Mac, or they just know they can't compete on that platform. You can read the user boards on digitalvideoediting.com or www.2-pop.com to get the feel for Premiere out there.
Econ does not assume that all people make rational, only that collectively people act rationally in aquizition and distribution of scarce resources. Hence people are going to act in self-interest which in economic terms translates to rational.
Not really. May I refer you to the work of this year's nobel laureate in economics, Daniel Kahneman?
Secondly economic's is not a science like physics or chemistry, there are no theorems or knowns, it is a social science like political science or psycology.
If you're gonna bring econ down, don't take psych with you. We absolutely operate as a science. Collecting empirical data, disconfirming or supporting hypotheses, inducing theories, proposing models. There are certainly laws and theories like any other science. The power law of learning, Weber's law, Herrnstein's matching law, the fundamental attribution error, just to name a few biggies off the top of my head....And there's plenty of theories as well. Kahneman's Prospect Theory is appropos here.
Only it differs from them in that uses mathmatics to support theory and model it rather than just observational study. Hence Economics is the only discipline which tries to understand human behavior though mathatical model.
This is just false. There's an entire branch of psychology called Mathematical Psychology. It deals with developing very detailed formal models of all sorts of behavior. And besides that, psychologists across the spectrum do all sorts of computational modeling. I myself use artificial neural networks in modeling neural and behavioral processes.
Don't visit the site! Life worked for eons before eBay, I find it hard to believe people really need to visit such a site.
You know, life isn't the same as before eBay. I can't find it now, but there was even a discussion here on Slashdot on the decline of hobby and collectibles stores because much of that business has gone online. If I needed to buy/sell something rare, very specific, or just cheap, eBay is the first place I, and I think most people, think of.
Boycott is fine, but avoidance is not a solution to a blatantly unethical, if not illegal (although with our ever eroding civil liberties, this may not be true) policy. This is like saying, "This restaurant does not serve [minority group]!" "So if it bothers you, don't eat there." eBay's BS needs to be actively addressed.
I respectfully point you to the work of Kahneman and Tversky. Read Judgment Under Uncertainty. And Choices, Values, and Frames. Kahneman didn't win a Nobel Prize for not delivering on some very real principles of human behavior.
There are patterns and principles to the kinds of irrationality humans exhibit. Psychology, exemplified in the work of Kahneman and Tversky, has made tremendous progress in characterizing how people behave. K & T's stuff has especial bearing on economic behavior which is the topic of the research discussed.
Re:YANANS (You Are Not A Neuroscientist)
on
Working with ADHD?
·
· Score: 1
That is not a "truth". That is a HUGE debate in psychology and all of philosophy. Basically if what you said is true, then there is no free will, and all of our actions are determined not by us, but for us by our brian, which is in effect something that (according to you) we have no control over.
Fine, I was speaking glibly. But I don't know any brain scientists that are not hold to the "materialist assumption." That is, that the brain gives rise to the mind. That is the only direction any empirical evidence points. And, far better philosophers of science than I (Penrose, Dennett come to mind) have argued for the existence of free will (which I believe in) in a materialist account of the mind.
Yeah, free will is a deep, rich issue. So are responsibility, control, nature/nurture, etc. But honestly, none of them have to do with the point I made. Which is that our society suffers in a very real way by dismissing people with psychological disorders as just "weak" or "bad" or "lazy." And, we suffer by not realizing that whether you treat with a couch or a pill, the substrate of the treatment is the same. The efficacy, specificity, side effects, and mechanisms are all different, but not the thing that changes.
BTW, to suggest the mind gives rise to the brain..I don't even understand that. Do you mean that the soul directs neural ontogeny? Cuz that presupposes dualism which there is just no evidence for.
YANANS (You Are Not A Neuroscientist)
on
Working with ADHD?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I am. I also happen to be an expert on the central catecholamine systems, which are implicated involved in ADD.
I really, really didn't want to be drawn into this debate because, like religion and politics, you are often either preaching to the choir or a wall.
However, your utter misinterpration of the dopaminergic system, along with the completely fallacious claim that many people have made regarding lack of scientific evidence is egregious.
ADD is real, and it's a problem of the brain. Its etiology is not completely understood, but better understood everyday. Is it over-diagnosed? Probably. Is Ritalin over-prescribed? Probably. However, the boundary between what is and is not ADD is fuzzy, and a difference of degree, not quality.
First, quick factual rectification: Increasing dopamine in the front of the brain does not slow the brain. In the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex), increased dopamine is thought to help keep focus on current task demands by sharpening their representations in attractor networks of neurons. That is to say, the front of the brain keeps "online" what it is you intend to do right now. If this "goal" or "intention" fades or is disrupted by competing intentions, you get off track and distracted. In ADD patients, this is thought to happen too readily. Increasing dopamine levels (via agonists like ritalin) is thought to help lock down intentions and goals, keeping them "online" and the person "focused."
However, the majority of your post is a kind of armchair philosophizing about the place of ADD in the spectrum of psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, convincing the general public of the reality of psychiatric illness and the utlity of psychoactive medications is a problem of paradigm. People, including you, are far and away dualists even when they claim not to be. And I use dualism here in an extended sense, to appy to psychology as it does to to metaphysics. People tend to be adamant that there is a distinction between the mind and the brain. People tend to think there are a class of "real" organic disorders of the brain, and then there a bunch of fluffy dysfunctions of the "mind" which are due to socialization, personality, will, judgment, and possibly genetics (although they don't see the contradiction of this last one).
Here's the truth: You are your brain, your brain is you. The brain gives wholly rise to the mind, and the mind is wholly derived from the function of the brain. One is a phenomenological construct, the other is the implementing hardware.
Here's another truth: The brain is plastic and every moment of experience changes it. Now, all organs changes and adapt, but no other organ is designed to be as profoundly plastic as the brain.
The first point invalidates the idea that some psychological problems are just "in people's heads" while others are "chemical imbalances." Every feature of a person's behavior is rooted in the brain. Some breakdowns in brain function have a gross, systematic nature that makes them easier to categorize (schizophrenia, parkinsons, alzheimer's, etc.). While some, like ADD are a little subtler. And some, like personality disorders, are subtler still and chronic. Generally, the more the disorder impacts the way the brain conveys personality, social interaction, or sense of "self" the more we believe the problem to be relegated to the artificial realm of "mind" not body.
The second point underscores the fact that both chemical and experiential treatment of the brain have real impact. By chemical, I mean psychopharmacology. By experiential, I mean things like psychotherapy, self-therapy, social interaction, changing the environment. All these things affect a person's mind and hence their brain (or vice versa).
Anyway, back to science: Here's a good reference on the scientific basis of ADD. Its a little dated, but it's by the same group that performed the neuroimaging study some AC linked to earlier (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/events/pradhd.htm ).
Re:my /usr/share/dict/words is bigger !
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 3, Funny
you must feel very manly. you clearly have the bigger dict.
The SCOpe of your SCOuring SCOffs at our punny diSCOurse, but don't diSCOunt the SCOrnful diSCOntent eSCOrting these SCOundrels' miSCOnduct. The puns are diSCOmforting, but they are verbal SCOwls that underSCOre the disSCOuragement felt as we diSCOver the latest SCOop regarding their miSCOnstruals of truth. Putting this SCOurge under the microSCOpe may SCOrch their miSCOnceptions before they can abSCOnd from this fiaSCO without settling the SCOre. Vile SCOrpions!
What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever)
Proper names take a regular plural. Thus when talking of mathematics, it is one matrix, many matrices. When talking of movie-reality-constructs, one Matrix, many Matrixes. That's the English language for you.
Wouldn't the "regular" plural be Matrixs then? Isn't -es already an irregular form, like -ies for -y, etc.?
"Matrixs" is of course silly, I'm just putting it up as a straw man. It's not cut-and-dry is it? I mean, the rules for pluralization of proper nouns usual focus on true proper names, such as family names, team names, etc.
So one Kennedy, many Kennedys (not Kennedies). But one Goodfinch, many Goodfinches (not Goodfinchs). And clearly, one Bob Child, but having "the Childs" over for dinner.
But the Matrix is a little different in that the proper noun actually does refer to a kind of "matrix." (Unlike the last name Child, which is simply a label with no semantic connection to "child.")
Thus, consider the fantastic proper noun "the Golden Child." (Not the movie title, just consider the ficticious proper construct). Surely the plural here would be "the Golden Children" not "the Golden Childs?"
Plus, while the title of the movie is clearly proper, is the reality construct "the Matrix" actually proper at all? It is a special, particular instance of a "matrix," but does that make it proper? We have the sky, the moon, the sun, but they're not proper. Could the characters not refer to "the matrix," and thus to multiple "matrices?"
Even if this last point is just wrong, the former point may stand.
Slashdot Mirror
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble , and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Aschroft: "Define peaceably. Define assemble. Define petition. Define redress."
Or has the First Amendment been repealed already?
Alas, define repeal.
It's not the Tim Allen factor, it's the Bright Red Sprinkler factor. My mug is sensitive, I guess. I've tried the cheap-o razors, trust me. It was brutal. I've even had two GOOD electric razor. They don't nick, but me give the razor rash like nobody's business. The Mach3 and Mach3 Turbo are the only ones I find that treat my face nicely...the Sensor was OK, but the Sensor Excel? EVIL!...and even just the right blades, I have to shave in the shower so my bristles get sufficiently soft and water-logged.
But..uhm..yeah..maybe that's TMI.
What I am alleging is that the shaving companies have a conspiracy and setup a nice and neat monopoly.
No, what you are referring to is not a monopoly, but a cartel, where competitors collude to fix prices and, sometimes supply.
I kinda doubt this is happening, but I do agree the prices are exorbitant. But damn, how ironclad are the patents on the Mach series blades? Why doesn't somebody reverse-engineer these baddies and put up some competition? I did try a storebrand work-alike of the older Gillette line (it was a Sensor generic designed for the Sensor stick) and it was AWFUL. Bloody mess.
unofficial firmware to remove the 2x CSS read mode so I can rip my own DVDs (for backup[1]) at 7-8x.
Could you explain what this means a little further? Does the firmware circumvent CSS decryption allowing you bitwise access? Or is it something else?
Also, where could one find such unauthorized firmware?
It appears that instead of "flamebaiting," I've baited praise. Thanks.
BTW, bitter moderator: I used to be a Republican. I voted for Bush the Elder, and Dole. But all things in moderation, I say. And the pendulum has swung way, way too far.
Yep. Have yours been infringed lately?
Fromt the article:
"It's not good to charge people for using something which is like a social infrastructure. It also inhibits the development of the computer industry. The very basic infrastructure should be free," he said.
"But Mr Gates is free to do whatever he wants, as we live in a world of capitalism."
A man who's got it right.
Why can't we (in the western world) get this type of soft-spoken wisdom to be the face of OSS, and not the curmudgeonly off-putting geekazoidness of RMS?
"The dead know only one thing: It's better to be alive."
Whats so fun about real life?
I dont know about you, but real life is repetitive and boring most of the time.
You're always free to hit the reset button, Saddy McSad.
yeah, i believe it's called the "diamond" ring.
(ducks)
This post is an AC's ripoff ot the original here.
Translation also appeared in that thread.
This poor schlub has just made himself the nation's #1 target for a "disappearing."
Either by the bad guys or the (*cough*) "good" guys.
From the article:
"This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," [CEO of power co. Pepco Holdings] Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist. "Why in the world have we been so stupid as a country to have all this information in the public domain? Does that openness still make sense? It sure as hell doesn't to me."
Because security through obscurity is just as brainless an alternative for the physical infrastructure as it is for virtual infrastructure.
Hiding things doesn't make them safe. It makes them safe until found. With the added bonus of fostering the kind of clandestine, repressive, bitter societal climate that our govnt seems bent on pursuing these days.
You want to protect something? 1) Make it less desirable as a target (i.e. take away people's reasons for attacking in the first place). 2) Build in redundancies to dilute vulnerability. 3) Monitor, patrol, survey in an open and visible manner
1) If you subscribe to most modern accounts of biogenesis, there was likely a single source for the origin of life (or at least the life from which every living thing today evolved). So, every living thing has had just as much time to evolve as every other.
2) If by "longest time" you mean time in a constant environment, please see all the other posts in this thread on how land ecology impacts deep sea ecology. Furthermore, keep in mind the earth's tectonics which are particularly violent in the Pacific. Volcanic activity has tremendous impact on deep sea life.
Things evolve to adapt to their (ever-changing) enviornments. These creatures' environments are very unlike ours. It has nothing to do with time on earth or environmental stability.
when your product has been superior for years and recognized as such
In this case, it's not so. My dad runs a video production business. He runs Final Cut Pro, but before he went digital he did a lot of research between Mac/Windows, and the various editing platforms on each. Apparently working with Premiere is widely regarded as a painful, frustrating experience. It has its strong adherents who are used to idiosyncrasies, but new adopters are often annoyed, or don't know that there's a better way. His experience with FCP, btw, has been spectacular. He's awed by its power, its interface, and its reliability. It's probably a good thing Adobe is redesigning Premiere things from the bottom-up. Maybe it will be too FCP-like to distinguish it from Apple on the Mac, or they just know they can't compete on that platform. You can read the user boards on digitalvideoediting.com or www.2-pop.com to get the feel for Premiere out there.
As a psychologist, I can't let this slide.
Econ does not assume that all people make rational, only that collectively people act rationally in aquizition and distribution of scarce resources. Hence people are going to act in self-interest which in economic terms translates to rational.
Not really. May I refer you to the work of this year's nobel laureate in economics, Daniel Kahneman?
Secondly economic's is not a science like physics or chemistry, there are no theorems or knowns, it is a social science like political science or psycology.
If you're gonna bring econ down, don't take psych with you. We absolutely operate as a science. Collecting empirical data, disconfirming or supporting hypotheses, inducing theories, proposing models. There are certainly laws and theories like any other science. The power law of learning, Weber's law, Herrnstein's matching law, the fundamental attribution error, just to name a few biggies off the top of my head....And there's plenty of theories as well. Kahneman's Prospect Theory is appropos here.
Only it differs from them in that uses mathmatics to support theory and model it rather than just observational study. Hence Economics is the only discipline which tries to understand human behavior though mathatical model.
This is just false. There's an entire branch of psychology called Mathematical Psychology. It deals with developing very detailed formal models of all sorts of behavior. And besides that, psychologists across the spectrum do all sorts of computational modeling. I myself use artificial neural networks in modeling neural and behavioral processes.
Don't visit the site! Life worked for eons before eBay, I find it hard to believe people really need to visit such a site.
You know, life isn't the same as before eBay. I can't find it now, but there was even a discussion here on Slashdot on the decline of hobby and collectibles stores because much of that business has gone online. If I needed to buy/sell something rare, very specific, or just cheap, eBay is the first place I, and I think most people, think of.
Boycott is fine, but avoidance is not a solution to a blatantly unethical, if not illegal (although with our ever eroding civil liberties, this may not be true) policy. This is like saying, "This restaurant does not serve [minority group]!" "So if it bothers you, don't eat there."
eBay's BS needs to be actively addressed.
I respectfully point you to the work of Kahneman and Tversky. Read Judgment Under Uncertainty. And Choices, Values, and Frames. Kahneman didn't win a Nobel Prize for not delivering on some very real principles of human behavior.
There are patterns and principles to the kinds of irrationality humans exhibit. Psychology, exemplified in the work of Kahneman and Tversky, has made tremendous progress in characterizing how people behave. K & T's stuff has especial bearing on economic behavior which is the topic of the research discussed.
That is not a "truth". That is a HUGE debate in psychology and all of philosophy. Basically if what you said is true, then there is no free will, and all of our actions are determined not by us, but for us by our brian, which is in effect something that (according to you) we have no control over.
Fine, I was speaking glibly. But I don't know any brain scientists that are not hold to the "materialist assumption." That is, that the brain gives rise to the mind. That is the only direction any empirical evidence points. And, far better philosophers of science than I (Penrose, Dennett come to mind) have argued for the existence of free will (which I believe in) in a materialist account of the mind.
Yeah, free will is a deep, rich issue. So are responsibility, control, nature/nurture, etc. But honestly, none of them have to do with the point I made. Which is that our society suffers in a very real way by dismissing people with psychological disorders as just "weak" or "bad" or "lazy." And, we suffer by not realizing that whether you treat with a couch or a pill, the substrate of the treatment is the same. The efficacy, specificity, side effects, and mechanisms are all different, but not the thing that changes.
BTW, to suggest the mind gives rise to the brain..I don't even understand that. Do you mean that the soul directs neural ontogeny? Cuz that presupposes dualism which there is just no evidence for.
I am. I also happen to be an expert on the central catecholamine systems, which are implicated involved in ADD.
I really, really didn't want to be drawn into this debate because, like religion and politics, you are often either preaching to the choir or a wall.
However, your utter misinterpration of the dopaminergic system, along with the completely fallacious claim that many people have made regarding lack of scientific evidence is egregious.
ADD is real, and it's a problem of the brain. Its etiology is not completely understood, but better understood everyday. Is it over-diagnosed? Probably. Is Ritalin over-prescribed? Probably. However, the boundary between what is and is not ADD is fuzzy, and a difference of degree, not quality.
First, quick factual rectification: Increasing dopamine in the front of the brain does not slow the brain. In the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex), increased dopamine is thought to help keep focus on current task demands by sharpening their representations in attractor networks of neurons. That is to say, the front of the brain keeps "online" what it is you intend to do right now. If this "goal" or "intention" fades or is disrupted by competing intentions, you get off track and distracted. In ADD patients, this is thought to happen too readily. Increasing dopamine levels (via agonists like ritalin) is thought to help lock down intentions and goals, keeping them "online" and the person "focused."
However, the majority of your post is a kind of armchair philosophizing about the place of ADD in the spectrum of psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, convincing the general public of the reality of psychiatric illness and the utlity of psychoactive medications is a problem of paradigm. People, including you, are far and away dualists even when they claim not to be. And I use dualism here in an extended sense, to appy to psychology as it does to to metaphysics. People tend to be adamant that there is a distinction between the mind and the brain. People tend to think there are a class of "real" organic disorders of the brain, and then there a bunch of fluffy dysfunctions of the "mind" which are due to socialization, personality, will, judgment, and possibly genetics (although they don't see the contradiction of this last one).
Here's the truth: You are your brain, your brain is you. The brain gives wholly rise to the mind, and the mind is wholly derived from the function of the brain. One is a phenomenological construct, the other is the implementing hardware.
Here's another truth: The brain is plastic and every moment of experience changes it. Now, all organs changes and adapt, but no other organ is designed to be as profoundly plastic as the brain.
The first point invalidates the idea that some psychological problems are just "in people's heads" while others are "chemical imbalances." Every feature of a person's behavior is rooted in the brain. Some breakdowns in brain function have a gross, systematic nature that makes them easier to categorize (schizophrenia, parkinsons, alzheimer's, etc.). While some, like ADD are a little subtler. And some, like personality disorders, are subtler still and chronic. Generally, the more the disorder impacts the way the brain conveys personality, social interaction, or sense of "self" the more we believe the problem to be relegated to the artificial realm of "mind" not body.
The second point underscores the fact that both chemical and experiential treatment of the brain have real impact. By chemical, I mean psychopharmacology. By experiential, I mean things like psychotherapy, self-therapy, social interaction, changing the environment. All these things affect a person's mind and hence their brain (or vice versa).
Anyway, back to science: Here's a good reference on the scientific basis of ADD. Its a little dated, but it's by the same group that performed the neuroimaging study some AC linked to earlier (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/events/pradhd.htm ).
you must feel very manly. you clearly have the bigger dict.
The SCOpe of your SCOuring SCOffs at our punny diSCOurse, but don't diSCOunt the SCOrnful diSCOntent eSCOrting these SCOundrels' miSCOnduct. The puns are diSCOmforting, but they are verbal SCOwls that underSCOre the disSCOuragement felt as we diSCOver the latest SCOop regarding their miSCOnstruals of truth. Putting this SCOurge under the microSCOpe may SCOrch their miSCOnceptions before they can abSCOnd from this fiaSCO without settling the SCOre. Vile SCOrpions!
Nancy the Nanobot sez:
P.U. You smell fat.
What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever)
And what I want is a pony.
Mode=even more pedantic
Proper names take a regular plural. Thus when talking of mathematics, it is one matrix, many matrices. When talking of movie-reality-constructs, one Matrix, many Matrixes. That's the English language for you.
Wouldn't the "regular" plural be Matrixs then? Isn't -es already an irregular form, like -ies for -y, etc.?
"Matrixs" is of course silly, I'm just putting it up as a straw man. It's not cut-and-dry is it? I mean, the rules for pluralization of proper nouns usual focus on true proper names, such as family names, team names, etc.
So one Kennedy, many Kennedys (not Kennedies).
But one Goodfinch, many Goodfinches (not Goodfinchs).
And clearly, one Bob Child, but having "the Childs" over for dinner.
But the Matrix is a little different in that the proper noun actually does refer to a kind of "matrix." (Unlike the last name Child, which is simply a label with no semantic connection to "child.")
Thus, consider the fantastic proper noun "the Golden Child." (Not the movie title, just consider the ficticious proper construct). Surely the plural here would be "the Golden Children" not "the Golden Childs?"
Plus, while the title of the movie is clearly proper, is the reality construct "the Matrix" actually proper at all? It is a special, particular instance of a "matrix," but does that make it proper? We have the sky, the moon, the sun, but they're not proper. Could the characters not refer to "the matrix," and thus to multiple "matrices?"
Even if this last point is just wrong, the former point may stand.
Anyway, just being contrarian.