CDR: Re: Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
No accounting for taste, of course, but I _loved_ "The Matrix."
So did I.
Overall, it's up there in my Top 5 of SF films, with "2001," "Terminator 2," and "Blade Runner." Not necessarily in that order.
Our tastes seem curiously close. What's number 5 on your list?
Ihre Meilenzahl variiert vielleicht.
Die meisten Meile Zahlen verändern sich. (blame babelfish!) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com
At 1:53 PM -0500 10/24/00, Roy Silvernail wrote:
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
No accounting for taste, of course, but I _loved_ "The Matrix."
So did I.
Overall, it's up there in my Top 5 of SF films, with "2001," "Terminator 2," and "Blade Runner." Not necessarily in that order.
Our tastes seem curiously close. What's number 5 on your list?
Well, many consider these the classics. Usually "Aliens" is on the list. And "Star Wars." I should've have included that one, especially for its time. If "Dr. Strangelove" is considered SF (in involved science, of the bomb, and was fiction, mostly), then add it. There seems to be a new genre-defining SF film every several years. "2001" in 1967-8, "Star Wars" in 1977, "Blade Runner" in 1982, "Aliens" in 1987, "Terminator 2" in 1992-3, "The Matrix" in 1998. (If fantasy/horror is included, the pattern continues. "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist," etc. Many great movies show their age. I recently saw the re-release of "The Exorcist" and it seemed slow-moving and tame by today's standards.) Interesting that Bob Hettinga is so offended by the ideology/outlook of "The Matrix." I thought it was mostly consistent with our main outlooks, albeit set in a world unlike our own. Some film ideologies _do_ offend me. The world of "Star Trek" is a good example: the Federation, Starfleet, Prime Directive, aliens speaking English, too many aliens by Fermi's Principle, affirmative action quotas for races and species, and goody-two-shoes namby-pamby simp-wimps. By the way, I didn't take seriously the view that _we_ are living in a Matrix world. The film was ambivalent on the claim that _this_ world is a Matrix world: it was more plausible to buy the timeline Morpheus gives of how _our_ world becomes the "Matrix" world. That is, the events taking place are "really" a few hundred years from now, with the machines having set the "environment bit" to "late 20th century." I thought this was obvious. Maybe not. Normally I don't worry ovemuch about such subtleties, but it seemed to me some fraction of Bob Hettinga's hate-rant had something to do with the supposed conceit that _our_ world is the "Matrix" world. I didn't take it this way. Rather, I took it as a classic SF story, describing some _possible future_. It's fun for a few seconds to think about the implications of _this_ world being a simulation in the Matrix, but it doesn't hold up, even in the context of the film's conceits. (I mean "conceit" in the lit-crit sense, not in the common sense.) Anyway, no accounting for tastes, as I said. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Gee, I saw the Matrix as definitely being our world now, today -- as was The 13th Floor, and Wag the Dog. What they are all talking about is the illusionary nature of "reality". Basic Buddhist precept, really -- and very apropos for our times. Forget the sci-fi razzmatazz. They're just trying to wake people up to the scam, the big lie. Watch Wag the Dog on DVD, and then watch the commentary that comes with it. Reality is a construct, built by our keepers. Tim May wrote:
By the way, I didn't take seriously the view that _we_ are living in a Matrix world. The film was ambivalent on the claim that _this_ world is a Matrix world: it was more plausible to buy the timeline Morpheus gives of how _our_ world becomes the "Matrix" world. That is, the events taking place are "really" a few hundred years from now, with the machines having set the "environment bit" to "late 20th century." I thought this was obvious. Maybe not. Normally I don't worry ovemuch about such subtleties, but it seemed to me some fraction of Bob Hettinga's hate-rant had something to do with the supposed conceit that _our_ world is the "Matrix" world. I didn't take it this way. Rather, I took it as a classic SF story, describing some _possible future_.
-- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library System Virginia, MN (218) 741-3840 hseaver@arrowhead.lib.mn.us http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
At 2:53 PM -0700 on 10/24/00, Tim May wrote:
Interesting that Bob Hettinga is so offended by the ideology/outlook of "The Matrix."
I'm offended, if you can call it taking offense at all, by "cartoon physics", and innumeracy in general, in the movies and television. Just because we can show it on the screen and it looks real, doesn't mean that it'll ever be physically possible, and I don't mean that in the 19th century patent-examiner sense, I mean it in the "ain't physically possible" sense. Sound in space is a good example. Or, frankly, "morphing", "shapeshifting", or whatever. Sure, we might all turn into nanotech grey goo sooner or later, but, frankly, that stuff more likely in the realm of faster-than-light travel, which is another thing I have trouble with. However, life is too short to grumble about *everything*. :-). Moreover, all of these Hollywood Computer Generated Image applications were designed to model *physics* to begin with, and it's just plain ignorance on Hollywood's part, or at least on their audience's part, that keeps them from being used the right way in the first place. Blame it on public schools, or at least 30 years of socialist control of same.
I thought it was mostly consistent with our main outlooks, albeit set in a world unlike our own.
I think it's a lot less consistent with the cypherpunk viewpoint than most people here think. Morpheus et.al., are not libertarian anarchists, boys and girls. They're proto-statists. When the sequel comes out, if ever, and they show where the rest of the humans are, you'll see that, I bet. Unless they read cypherpunks, of course. :-).
Some film ideologies _do_ offend me. The world of "Star Trek" is a good example: the Federation, Starfleet, Prime Directive, aliens speaking English, too many aliens by Fermi's Principle, affirmative action quotas for races and species, and goody-two-shoes namby-pamby simp-wimps.
Amen. Hierarchical, frankly communist, nonsense. In a hairshirt, for that matter. At least Banks is a communist with a sense of humor. Roddenberry's Earth: The Final Conflict is certainly in the same vein, and, so, too, is Andromeda, from the looks of it. I still watch the damn stuff though, even if they take a chainsaw, or at least a lemon meringue pie, to Starship Troopers.
By the way, I didn't take seriously the view that _we_ are living in a Matrix world.
Neither do I. With the exception that most people out there *are* statists, and that the Matrix makes a marvellous allegory for the nation-state, at least in terms of its pervasiveness. Frankly, having learned about the impact of cryptography on public internetworks, it's hard to just "jack back in", even if some of us can probably afford the odd Armani jacket themselves now, as a result what they've learned here... :-).
it seemed to me some fraction of Bob Hettinga's hate-rant had something to do with the supposed conceit that _our_ world is the "Matrix" world.
Nope. Didn't intend that, sorry for creating that misapprehension.
Anyway, no accounting for tastes, as I said.
No argument there... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
At 7:43 PM -0400 10/24/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
Moreover, all of these Hollywood Computer Generated Image applications were designed to model *physics* to begin with, and it's just plain ignorance on Hollywood's part, or at least on their audience's part, that keeps them from being used the right way in the first place. Blame it on public schools, or at least 30 years of socialist control of same.
Nonsense, on at least a couple of accounts. I was active in the image processing field in 1980-84, and attended various SIGGRAPHs and suchlike. Fact is, "ray tracing" and various illumination models, and Gouraud and Phong shading and all the rest...were NOT motivated by a desire to model "*physics*." Physicist didn't give a dang about modelling light sources in 3D environments, and about morphing and wrapping and all that. The motivation was to produce special effects for education films (a la James Blinn at JPL), effects for movies (a la Alvy Ray Smith, eventually of Pixar), and advertisements for Hollywood and Madison Avenue. For many years, from at least the early 70s onward, the highlight of SIGGRAPH and similar conferences were the demos from leading makers of advertisements, digital paintboxes for t.v. weathermen, and so on. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote:
suchlike. Fact is, "ray tracing" and various illumination models, and Gouraud and Phong shading and all the rest...were NOT motivated by a desire to model "*physics*."
Yet now we have radiosity. And as you well know, illumination and rendering are just two parts of the process. We still have kinematics, which is probably the most abused part of the process, and the one designed to get plausible physics. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
At 12:43 PM +0300 10/25/00, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote:
suchlike. Fact is, "ray tracing" and various illumination models, and Gouraud and Phong shading and all the rest...were NOT motivated by a desire to model "*physics*."
Yet now we have radiosity. And as you well know, illumination and rendering are just two parts of the process. We still have kinematics, which is probably the most abused part of the process, and the one designed to get plausible physics.
We had radiosity many, many years ago. And models for human motion, animal motion, and so on. The point is not that physics-constraints are good things, the point is that most advanced graphics was _not_ developed for the sake of science and physics! I was refuting Bob Hettinga's point about what advanced graphics were developed for. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
At 5:08 PM -0700 on 10/24/00, Tim May wrote:
Nonsense, on at least a couple of accounts.
Maybe, but I was talking, and not too clearly, it seems, about modeling the motion of things, and not ray-tracing, which I was not even thinking about, frankly. Morphing, it seems to me, was done just because they could, and as a result, it is the most aggregious of this cartoon physics nonsense. I think, eventually, the public may get tired of camera-trick physics as a movie plot, which, I guess, is probably more likely to happen sooner than prying our schools out of the hands of innumerate socialists any time soon. Anyway, this topic has been beaten like a dead horse, and I'm done with wandering around in the minutae. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
At 08:08 PM 10/24/00 -0400, Tim May wrote:
Nonsense, on at least a couple of accounts. I was active in the image processing field in 1980-84, and attended various SIGGRAPHs and suchlike. Fact is, "ray tracing" and various illumination models, and Gouraud and Phong shading and all the rest...were NOT motivated by a desire to model "*physics*." Physicist didn't give a dang about modelling light sources in 3D environments, and about morphing and wrapping and all that.
Not *that* kind of physicist. Something more like psychophysics (ie measurement of human perception) empowered by these newfangled computer thangs. There was a desire to see what was sufficient to generate photorealism. After all, the shading models you mention are crude approximations; but they usually work[1], which talks to the limits of perception. And to a nontrivial physics of a certain scale (modelling translucent objects, objects with embedded reflectors and adsorbers, etc.) There was also a desire to understand the rendering process so that you could understand the *inverse*, ie, inferring the world from what you see. Machine vision. Rendered jello, fires, fractal cloud effects, realistic water, rocks, etc. Hollywood was for a while making entire movies around a single new model (particle systems in that terraforming star trek movie). The question that motivates was, how do you do that? Where 'that' might be rendering hair, or modelling how skin creases at elbows. I modelled wood grain with a VAX in 1985 using a 24 bit monitor that cost more than some cars. Nowadays you would just scan and texture map real wood, but the (psychophysical) question was, what did you need to model to get grain indistinguishable from real[2]? Texture mapping is cheating. Similar questions exist for modelling motion. How many harmonics do you need to render for realistic motion? How do you make a desklamp move with emotion? (Luxo Jr..) (Recording actors and mapping movement is cheating, Mr. Spielberg.)
The motivation was to produce special effects for education films (a la James Blinn at JPL), effects for movies (a la Alvy Ray Smith, eventually of Pixar), and advertisements for Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
These folks had a more academic interest than you make out.. Blinn wrote a very mathematical column.. the sci films and movies paid the bills, bought the equiptment, etc., and sometimes motivated problems, but the problems were fascinating in and of themselves. Sure, their output was often visual candy, but it was new and interesting regardless of jazz appeal. [1] The moon does not show the cos(incidence-angle) reflectance of typical matte surfaces, and thus looks flat. Its surface is powder. [2] slice vertical concentric shells with radially varying albedo (annual rings) paired with small vertical radial planes (rays). The 3D geometry yields 2D constraints on the texture that distinguish it from other striated textures. Turning the knobs generates different types of woodgrains.
----- Original Message ----- From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: CDR: Re: Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)
(If fantasy/horror is included, the pattern continues. "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist," etc. Many great movies show their age. I recently saw the re-release of "The Exorcist" and it seemed slow-moving and tame by today's standards.)
Remember what Beetlejuice said about it: "I've seen 'The Exorcist' a dozen (?) times and it keeps getting funnier each time I see it!"
On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, jim bell wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: CDR: Re: Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)
(If fantasy/horror is included, the pattern continues. "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist," etc. Many great movies show their age. I recently saw the re-release of "The Exorcist" and it seemed slow-moving and tame by today's standards.)
Remember what Beetlejuice said about it: "I've seen 'The Exorcist' a dozen (?) times and it keeps getting funnier each time I see it!"
I was raised Catholic, but became a severe agnostic at age 15. I read the Exorcist at age 12 and it scared the shit out of me. As I got older it kept getting more and more humorous. My son who was raised agnostic thought it was hilarious from the start. There is a lesson there. jim -- Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
At 12:02 PM -0500 10/25/00, Jim Burnes wrote:
I was raised Catholic, but became a severe agnostic at age 15. I read the Exorcist at age 12 and it scared the shit out of me. As I got older it kept getting more and more humorous.
My son who was raised agnostic thought it was hilarious from the start.
There is a lesson there.
Interesting. And of course it fits with why "exorcism works." Like other forms of sympathetic magic--voodoo, for example--it works by the power of belief and suggestion. Those who believe in all the stuff about eating the body of Christ, drinking his blood, being possessed by evil demons, speaking in tongues, etc., are the ones most inclined to become possessed. And when Ritalin won't work, maybe killing a few chickens or spritzing with holy water will chase dem demons out. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
For me the description of an ideal movie is "A series of gunshots and explosions strung together by one liners". I go to the movies for amusement, not intellectual satisfaction. That said:
By the way, I didn't take seriously the view that _we_ are living in a Matrix world. The film was ambivalent on the claim that _this_ world is a Matrix world: it was more plausible to buy the timeline Morpheus gives of how _our_ world becomes the "Matrix" world. That is, the events taking place are "really" a few hundred years from now, with the machines having set the "environment bit" to "late 20th century." I thought this was obvious. Maybe not. Normally I don't worry ovemuch about such subtleties, but it seemed to me some fraction of Bob Hettinga's hate-rant had something to do with the supposed conceit that _our_ world is the "Matrix" world. I didn't take it this way. Rather, I took it as a classic SF story, describing some _possible future_.
The *ONE* thing that beefed me big time about the "Matrix" was the excuse they gave for the computer keeping all the people alive. The claim (as I remember) was that the bodies were used to store/create energy for the computer to run. It *really* irked me.
It's fun for a few seconds to think about the implications of _this_ world being a simulation in the Matrix, but it doesn't hold up, even in the context of the film's conceits. (I mean "conceit" in the lit-crit sense, not in the common sense.)
If this world *were* a computer generated construct, it would explain a few things. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." --Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women s Studies, Bowling Green State University
On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, petro wrote:
If this world *were* a computer generated construct, it would explain a few things.
This is why the Gnostics had such a good run of it in the first century, right? At least until they were wiped out... -David
On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, petro wrote:
The claim (as I remember) was that the bodies were used to store/create energy for the computer to run.
It *really* irked me.
'Cause, you see, that's life energy. Of course you can produce *normal* energy in a plant, but anything that's alive, needs the other kind. In a word, ugly. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
petro <petro@bounty.org> wrote:
The *ONE* thing that beefed me big time about the "Matrix" was the excuse they gave for the computer keeping all the people alive.
Ah, but you are forgetting. It was the power from humans "combined with a form of fusion." Everything, when combined with a form of fusion, makes a good movie energy source. "Their spaceship was powered by goat pornography combined with a form of fusion." See? Doesn't is sound nifty and hi-tech? :-P -- Riad Wahby rsw@mit.edu MIT VI-2/A 2002 5105
"Riad S. Wahby" wrote:
Ah, but you are forgetting. It was the power from humans "combined with a form of fusion." Everything, when combined with a form of fusion, makes a good movie energy source.
"Their spaceship was powered by goat pornography combined with a form of fusion."
See? Doesn't is sound nifty and hi-tech?
Yeah, that aspect didn't irk me at all. I thought the premise was flawed Why would they need a world simulator if all they wanted was bioenergy they could just keep all the drones in a coma... :) Yes, your spaceship being powered by goat porno is far more believable. :^) -- ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------
On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, sunder wrote:
Why would they need a world simulator if all they wanted was bioenergy they could just keep all the drones in a coma... :)
It would have made rather a boring spectacle?
Yes, your spaceship being powered by goat porno is far more believable. :^)
And far more suiting for theatre distribution. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
At 15:38 -0400 10/27/00, sunder wrote:
"Riad S. Wahby" wrote:
Ah, but you are forgetting. It was the power from humans "combined with a form of fusion." Everything, when combined with a form of fusion, makes a good movie energy source.
That really amused me as well. After all, if you've got fusion why bother with the human- cut out the middle man as it were... Somthing along the lines of "they needed substantial neural net capacity for their to improve their RC-5 key rate" would have been more reasonable. -- "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas ____________________________________________________________________ Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott <mailto:kelliott@mac.com> ICQ#23758827
On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 10:48:35PM -0400, Kevin Elliott wrote:
At 15:38 -0400 10/27/00, sunder wrote:
"Riad S. Wahby" wrote:
Ah, but you are forgetting. It was the power from humans "combined with a form of fusion." Everything, when combined with a form of fusion, makes a good movie energy source.
That really amused me as well. After all, if you've got fusion why bother with the human- cut out the middle man as it were... Somthing along the lines of "they needed substantial neural net capacity for their to improve their RC-5 key rate" would have been more reasonable.
Maybe they really were being used as batteries, for portability. After all, it is beginning to seem obvious that electronics will never produce a battery that can power a laptop for more than like 2 minutes - even if the AI had fixed fusion stations, they may need to load up a couple of humans whenever they wanted to go walkabout (or sentinelling or whatever). "The new Human-Smasher toy with 200 easily breakable features - every little AIlings dream! (2 AA humans required and sold seperately.)"
--
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas ____________________________________________________________________ Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott <mailto:kelliott@mac.com> ICQ#23758827
-- 'DeCSS would be fine. Where is it?' 'Here,' Montag touched his head. 'Ah,' Granger smiled and nodded. Oskar Sandberg md98-osa@nada.kth.se
participants (14)
-
David Honig -
dmolnar -
Harmon Seaver -
jim bell -
Jim Burnes -
Kevin Elliott -
Oskar Sandberg -
petro -
R. A. Hettinga -
Riad S. Wahby -
Roy Silvernail -
Sampo A Syreeni -
sunder -
Tim May