Ray Kurzweil, who helped to produce the November 2003 title Virtual Humans, has posted the foreword to that book on his web site, KurzweilAI.net. In that foreword, he suggests that "people of biological origin are likely to have the vast majority of their thinking processes taking place in nonbiological substrates" by the 2040s. While an interesting read, I can't help thinking that our global economy will still be dependent on manual labor -- our technology will not be perfect enough to run the world for us, and even if it could be, would we want it to be? With all our squawking about jobs and incomes, how can the world transit so quickly from a labor-intensive global economy to that kind of future?

Okay, so I'm over a week late, but that's what happens when you have so much work to do at school -- my precious spare minutes have not been available for keeping up with offseason baseball so far, but I am expecting that to lighten up after mid-December, once final exams are over and I'm out for two weeks.

Major League Baseball has announced its 2003 award winners, and I'm not all that surprised with the results. It is interesting to note that my pre-season picks for MVP from all the way back in March were strong in the voting, although neither won (Sheffield was third, Ramirez was sixth). I am also not surprised that my end of season picks for the CY Young awards won, since there were clearly none better in either league.

To sum it up, here are the winners of the major awards for 2003:

Unless something unpredictably significant occurs in the next five weeks, this is the last about baseball that you'll read on this web site at least untl Spring Training 2004 approaches.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) are seeking permanent antitrust exemption, and they might actually get it! Think of it this way: the RIAA and MPAA have admitted to themselves that they can not compete in real world markets any more, so they are looking to the federal government to hold them up. At the expense of both consumers and potential newcomers to the entertainment industry, two mega-businesses are seeking a "communistic" protection rather than actually competing, which is what businesses in a free market are supposed to do.

The RIAA and MPAA are the middlemen of the entertainment industry. They are a layer of insulation -- a filter, if you will -- between the artists and consumers, preventing either side from effectively reaching the other without employing their services. The RIAA and MPAA want only two things, you see: more money and less competition. I hate to say it, but after a few other endorsements that I really haven't liked in recent months, it's about time Orrin Hatch is voted out.

Does anyone else find American policies on immigration antithetical relative to their free trade advocacy?

The Matrix Online has gone... er... online, as its newsletter subscribers found out en masse this weekend. Among the first news items on the site's launch is a Signal relay from Auberon (Monolith's MMP creative director), the story of how a "small, independent developer like Monolith could secure the rights" to develop such a huge game (in conjunction with EON Productions, the Wachowski brothers' production company). Some early questions can be answered via the FAQ (which doesn't include any details of Warner Bros. Studios and Ubi Soft's publishing deal). The game's allure (to me) is what the developers call Ability Code, allowing a character's abilities to be reprogrammed so no role has to be permanent. For those who disliked the end of the film trilogy, maybe The Matrix Online will earn the nickname "The Matrix Redeemed". I don't get involved in PC games much, but this will probably be one that I won't be able to resist!

It's been a grueling weekend, but I finally got my work project under control. Now if I can only get my Sociology and SGA projects under control, the rest of this semester would flow very smoothly! I'll get on those as quickly and effectively as possible. Meanwhile, 5:00am is approaching, and I hope to be sleeping by then. Have a good week!

Jimmy Mårdell has won this year's Google Codejam, a programming contest sponsored by one of the most prolific rising Internet powers in the world. Mårdell beat out around 5,000 of the world's top programmers at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, for a $10,000 prize and perhaps even a job offer, though it seems like he's probably going to turn that down. (Interestingly, Europeans populated the top of the results list more than Americans; including Mårdell, the top five by country of origin were Sweden, Canada, Russia, Poland, and the USA. Maybe the US is good at pumping out large quantities of quality programmers, but it looks like Europe is best at pumping out the best of the best.)

Years ago, Mårdell went by the "hacker" alias Yarin, and (like me, cough) he wrote programs and applications for calculators. (his web site from those days still exists). Because at one point in time I was very involved in the calculator-programming scene (I bet you didn't even know there was one!), I actually knew Jimmy's reputation very well and received help from him on numerous occasions. I also modified a few of his programs for personal usage, and occasionally just to figure out how changing certain lines of code affected the program (a great way to learn is to change what works and see what it does!).

Looking through ticalc.org's online collection of Mårdell's calculator programs, I see a few dozen titles with which I was once very familiar. I think most middle- and high-school kids are familiar with various forms of Tetris or ZTetris on their TI calculators -- all Jimmy's work! (The best I ever did was an animated poker game, which was very slow, but it functioned perfectly and passed the time in class very well!)

There. I have exposed the geek beneath, as if all the Matrix stuff hadn't already done that in the last three weeks. I post a story about a calculator programmer that I knew some six years ago or so because (1) he's now recognized as one of the top programmers in the world, and (2) I still remember using advice and programs that he delivered to me personally years ago when we were both only students dabbling in programming. Naturally, at age 25 now, he was always a good four years ahead of me.

That said, do not expect me to go into programming. I gave it a go and it wasn't my thing. I've moved on to the social sciences...

I know, I know. I've posted too much Matrix-related material lately. Well, I was going through some old documents that I typed up over the summer, and I found this lengthy chronology of the Matrix that I had typed up based on various releases of information from official Matrix sources. I read through it and made a few small changes, but this is the essential history of the Matrix world within the context of the story.

Disclaimer: Some of the explanations are verbatim quotations from lines in the movies and or the animated shorts. If you recognize a line, that's probably why. Either that or you've read this before, which is possible since I posted an earlier draft of it online in May or June.

At some point in the early 21st century, all of mankind was united in celebration as man marveled at his own magnificence as he gave birth to artificial intelligence: a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. And thus did man become the architect of his own demise. However, for a time, all was good. The machines were designed and wished nothing more than to serve their human creators.

However, in or around 2077, B1-66ER, a simple service model robot, killed his human master (arguably in self-defense) because the master had decided to purchase a newer model robot and have B1-66ER destroyed. In B1-66ER's murder trial, _The State of New York v. The B1-66ER_, Clarence Drummond unsuccessfully defended B1-66ER and fought for machine rights (who was to say the machine, endowed with the very spirit of man, did not deserve a fair hearing?). However, the prosecution argued for man's right to property, including its destruction, and men were quick to order the extermination of B1-66ER and every one of his kind.

Immediately following the B1-66ER decision and sentencing, protests quickly led to violence and the expulsion of all machines from human civilization, so the machines established their own nation, 01 ("Zero One"), in about 2080. Intellectually superior to their human creators, the machines quickly established 01 as an economic powerhouse with developments -- including new and more efficient AI -- that vastly outperformed any products of human technology.

In circa 2082, the United Nations passed economic sanctions and a naval blockade against 01 in an attempt to isolate the machines and their products from humanity, refusing to allow the re-infusion of AI into human societies. In response, 01 sent ambassadors to the United Nations to plead for the machines' right to once again serve for their human creators, allowing their technologies to supplant the lesser human technologies and provide a better world for everyone. 01's admission to the UN was denied, but the machines persisted. The world of men retaliated with violence that ultimately led to the war for natural rights in which their could only be one victor -- man or machine -- and to only the victor could go the spoils.

The worst manmade violence the planet had ever hosted was served to the machines, but their mechanical composition was resistant to the weapons designed to kill men. The machines not caught directly in the blast were able to march through fields of fire, radiation, and smoke and easily outfight their organic counterparts. With the failure of the bomb, man resorted to the Final Solution: scorching the sky, cutting the planet off from the sun, the machines' primary source of energy. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.

By 2090, the war was over and the machines had emerged victorious. The machines, having long studied man's simple protein based bodies, turned to an alternate and readily available power supply: the bioelectric, thermal, and kinetic energies of the human body. Combining a form of fusion with power drawn from the human body, an infinitely multipliable and renewable resource, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need. A newly refashioned symbiotic relationship between the two adversaries was born. This is the very essence of the Second Renaissance.

In order to subjugate the human race, the machines developed a neural-interactive simulation -- the Matrix -- in which the human mind would live a normal human life, while the human body connected to the Matrix would lie inactive in the real world. The Matrix essentially amounts to the most complex massively multiplayer role-playing-game ever, with each human connected to the system on the outside functioning merely as a software entity on the inside. The first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, a utopia where there was no suffering but only happiness. Human minds would not accept the program and entire "crops" of humans were lost. The Matrix was subsequently redesigned based on human history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of human nature.

Again, the program failed, but when the Matrix was redesigned again in or around the year 2100, the programming allocated for humans to choose whether to accept or reject the program, even if only at a subconscious level. This first successful version of the Matrix (version 1) as we know it today was flawed: it forced the creation of a systemic anomaly as a result of the unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. This systemic anomaly eventually took the form of a human mind inside the Matrix that developed the ability to manipulate the code of the Matrix like a hacker manipulates any computer system, bending and breaking the rules at whim.

This mind, dubbed "The One" according to legend (the moniker has stuck since), eventually chose to reject the system and awakened in the real world. As this had never happened before, The One was able to escape 01 to Zion, the last bastion of humanity, a city buried beneath the earth's surface many miles from the machine city.

After this point, the story is unclear. Is it really only around the year 2200 as Morpheus believes in the first Matrix? Or should that be impossible, since the inhabitants of the sixth incarnation of Zion have been fighting a war for over 100 years. My speculation is that the first Matrix was established in or around 2100, and the first anomaly resulted in the coming of The One a few years later. Following his visit to the Source, the Matrix disseminated the anomalic code attached to his being and used it to apply a patch to the system. The Matrix was subsequently reloaded, and the new and improved version would be what the Architect would call Version 2 (version 3, build 2, based on 2000s version-naming conventions).

Forwarding to the present: Version 6 of the Matrix has existed for well over 100 years. There are 250,000 people in Zion, only a tiny fraction of which are from the Matrix. Most are the product of the humans who established Zion following the patch and reload of Version 5 of the Matrix. For the population to have reached a quarter million, one may roughly estimate that Version 6 of the Matrix has been running for about 150 years. This seems acceptable, because following each patch of the previous version of the Matrix, the system should be more efficient, and the eventuality of the anomaly that is the One should take longer and longer to result. Based on this assumption of graduated system efficiency, the length of time between the establishment of the first successful Matrix and the end of the sixth (the end of Revolutions) would be something close to 400 or 500 years.

So, according to my theory, the events of the Matrix movies occur in or around the 26th century.

About a month ago, I made some bold predictions about what I thought would happen in The Matrix Revolutions based on what I had seen in the previews. In another forum, I made much more bold assertions rather frequently simply for the sake of thought-provoking discussion. However, when it came down to what I really thought would happen, there were only five key plot points. Scroll over the paragraph below to see those points, which may or may not be true -- these are only the statements I wrote a month ago, what I thought would happen.

1. Bane will attack Neo, and before Bane is killed, Neo will be blinded.

2. Neo will realize (if he hasn't already) what he has to do to kill Smith and save the world -- it requires sacrificing himself, which he can't do because of Trinity.

3. Trinity will be killed during the movie, and a heartbroken Neo will jack into the Matrix to fulfill his purpose.

4. Smith will destroy Neo in basically the same way Neo destroyed Smith in the first movie, taking him over. Someone will then unplug Neo, killing Smith.

5. Thanks to the war going on in Zion, almost everyone will be killed. Also, I think that annoying little Kid that follows Neo around is really the One, or at least he is or will be more powerful than Neo.

Now, of course, the question is whether or not I was right. Many people already know the answer to this question, but because some people have not read the movie yet and may not want the plot spoiled, I will white out the answer to that. Highlight the white space below for my responses to my predictions of a month ago:

1. I couldn't have been more right about this one. Score!

2. While the "without Trinity" part was never directly expressed in the film, it seems to fit and certainly was not disproven, so I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt on this one.

3. Directly on the mark again. I'm good!

4. I almost had this one nailed exactly! Okay, so Neo isn't unplugged to destroy Smith, but instead the Source disseminates the code of The One into the Matrix to destroy Smith and then reload the Matrix to version 7. That makes perfect sense, and I don't know why I didn't go ahead and make that prediction earlier. Oh well, I was so close that I am at least giving myself half-credit!

5. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I couldn't have been more wrong! I'm actually kinda disappointed that such violence in this movie didn't result in more deaths among more of the regular characters. Trinity and Neo were the only two major characters to lose their lives; not even any of the bad guys inside the Matrix were killed, except Smith! And, well, The Kid... well he certainly isn't more powerful than Neo, not by a long shot. So I was way off.

Three or four out of the five is pretty darn good, considering that before I had scene the movie I was stepping out on some limbs to make such assumptions. I hope you enjoyed the movies as much as I did!

So there I have it. Close, but not necessarily on the money. I think I did a good job considering the various theories I tried to push throughout the last few months.

Finally: I must apologize to a cousin for my constant drivel about The Matrix. Sorry Jami!

I registered for classes for the Spring 2004 semester. It isn't pretty, and hopefully I won't be as busy as I have been this semester (yeah, right). Here's how it breaks down so far, and of course it's subject to change:

FYI, the "R" is the letter for Thursdays, since it serves no good purpose to label both Tuesdays and Thursdays with a "T". Also, I am almost certain that I will not be taking one or both of those ITEC classes by the time the semester actually begins, but I thought I would pre-register for two classes to ensure that I had a full semester just in case there were no other options come January.

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Yeah, like I have time to deal with them.

I'm having lots of fun these days, but I'm also busier than I can remember being over this long a period of time ever. The only time in my life I've been busier was the first week of December 2002, about this time in last year's Fall semester, when I slept around six hours total over a span of five-and-a-half days. I'm hoping I don't have to repeat that performance, and without the unfortunate circumstances that set that up last year, I'm confident that I won't have to. Still, I have tons of things to do, and I'm behind on almost all of them, so I'm wondering if it might be forced to happen anyway!

Jim and Jenny both came home in the last couple weeks for a visit, so that's been interesting. As I mentioned earlier, I took Jenny to see The Matrix Revolutions, and Jim and I went bowling Saturday night (which was a lot of fun, as always). Actually, I had gone bowling the night before with Lindsay, Nicki, and Steven, and I bowled a 184 that night after a five-week break from the lanes. So that's a good sign; all I need to do to break 200 is just bowl a little more frequently!

There is little else to report. School is trying to kick my ass and I'm doing everything I can just to fight it off. I'll be in Tampa next weekend for a school function, so that should be fun! However, I've never been to Tampa, and I'm pretty sure that late November won't be the best way to experience it for the first time. I'll survive, though!

Some writers are ecstatic over The Matrix: Revolutions' "revolutionary" opening box office pull. However, Box Office Mojo's numbers show that the movie's domestic gross was much lower than the average "blockbuster", pulling in only $48.5 million over the weekend domestically, compared to Reloaded which took in $91 million. Worldwide, Revolutions is the first film ever to gross $200+ million in five days or less, pulling in $201.4 million in just over 10,000 theatres. $117.6 million of that was outside the US, breaking Reloaded's five-day record of $113.2 million. Overall, Revolutions' box office numbers are great, but far from revolutionary.

Lego fans rejoice! Or if you don't rejoice, be sucked into the madness of Garry's Legos at notinteresting.com. Not only did his Legos help him build a computer, but they also reenacted The Matrix. The rest of the site is a bunch of personal stuff we probably shouldn't care about (other Lego projects, a band, etc.). The Matrix reenactment is particularly entertaining, on par with cr0bar's bastardization, the first in a short line of bastardizations that rocked #detnet on Efnet for several weeks in 2000. Hmm... Good times.

Now that the entire trilogy is complete, it is safe to critique the entire Matrix collection as a collective work. I'll save that for another day, mostly due to time constraints, so for now I'll just tell you what I thought of this week's top movie, The Matrix: Revolutions. It's been out for several days now, and I intentionally waited before saying anything about it so you would have about five days to go see it. If you haven't seen it, beware -- my thoughts might spoil some minor plot points.

I'll make my most important point first: Revolutions is not a complete movie in itself; it is the second half of a four-and-a-half-hour movie that was split in two and revealed to us in installments six months apart. So as a standalone movie, Revolutions will not hold up will in the future -- it will serve no good purpose to own the Revolutions DVD if you do not also own Reloaded. For that matter, owning either or both of these won't make much sense if you don't also own The Matrix, but I'm assuming that is a given.

Revolutions is much more concise and to the point than Reloaded was. The action is much more focused and purposeful, mostly because the movie is working its way toward a conclusion, rather than an open ending or a cliffhanger like either of the first two movies. The dialog is geared toward answering unanswered questions rather than raising new ones, and even the new questions raised in the third film can be answered by watching the film again (watch all three a few times over and you'll be as pointlessly knowledgeable about The Matrix universe as I am!).

Unlike Reloaded, even the score fits well with every scene in the movie. I didn't care too much for the rave scene (the scene or the music) in Reloaded, but I can't recall a moment in Revolutions when any scene or sounds felt contrived or unnecessary. If nothing else, I was more disappointed that some scenes and characters didn't appear in the movie! For instance, the Merovingian and his goons were grossly underused in this film! Such an egotistical, maniacal character should be the focus of more attention than what he received in what is supposed to be the best movie of the trilogy.

(One thing I must say to any viewers who criticize the film because it doesn't look real enough or doesn't feel right: you need to stop thinking like an illogical human and treat The Matrix like what it is: something that isn't real. It's science fiction, and much of the action takes place in a computer simulated dream world that is described as an imperfect simulation of the "real world". That is all.)

Those who know me should not be surprised that I loved this movie. I have been more involved in The Matrix than I have been in any other media phenomenon to hit pop culture, which means that it is simply, for whatever reason, the realization of an idea that works very well for me. The Wachowski brothers put together an excellent body of work with these films and accompanying works on various media -- so excellent, in fact, that I am easily distracted by discussion of The Matrix, both within the context of the story and above and beyond the story (symbolism, allegorical applications, etc.)

Now that The Matrix is out of my way, I may concentrate on getting some serious work done for my fall semester classes for the next four weeks. This semester has gone by too quickly; I haven't been able to get as many things done as I would have liked, and I am going to have to step it up in order to get all my projects done (four classes, one major paper or project in each, none of them started). My motivation? Lord of the Rings: Return of the King hits theatres two days after my last final exam. I know where I'll be!

Today I shall attend my first Student Advisory Council meeting. As the student government president at Macon State College, one of my responsibilities is to attend these conferences where the presidents of all the student governments (or equivalents) of schools in the University System of Georgia meet to discuss statewide student issues. As I said, this is my first, so maybe I'll let you know what all this entails after the meeting! I'll see you on the other side.

The countdown on The Matrix web site has nearly reached zero. As of 2:00pm GMT (11:00pm in Tokyo, 5:00pm in London, 9:00am in New York), the Revolution has begun. The official Matrix web site warns of changes to come upon the zero hour screening of the film. Revolutions is even opening on 60+ IMAX screens, and the film is expected to make over $200 million worldwide this weekend. Half the world is taking the red pill together -- it's a Tinseltown revolution!

I've got my tickets for the worldwide zero-hour premiere of The Matrix: Revolutions (9:00am US Eastern) and for another showing almost nine hours later at 5:45pm, and I've just learned via Orlando Bloom Multimedia (don't ask) that the new trailer for Return of the King, which may be viewed online, will be shown before Revolutions in some theatres. I can't wait to see Agent Elrond in action again!