Thanks to GameSpy for its interview with the lead designer of The Matrix Online, featuring new details regarding the PC MMO which recently parted ways with original co-developer UbiSoft, meaning the newly rejuvenated Warner Bros. Interactive "...is now the sole publisher of the title." According to the article, the developers Monolith are utilizing a combat system called Interlock, where "...players have the opportunity to optimize their fighting technique by managing their move-by-move combat tactics, and performing combos and other special maneuvers. This is definitely not 'click and watch.'" There's more information at the official Matrix Online FAQ.

Thanks to Stratics for its editorial discussing the problems faced by the licensed massively multiplayer game. The author points out: "Star Wars, The Matrix, Middle Earth - these are just some of the pre-existing worlds that are making the MMOG leap", and goes on to lament: "One of the problems is that you have to create an entire believable, explorable world. This is hard enough as it is, but then you have to cater to pre-existing notions of that world. Fans are your main target group here, and they have that world all locked up tight in their heads. Prepare for Foaming-at-the-Forum disease, my illustrious developers, prepare well." We've previously covered other aspects of this dilemma, but do licenses bring excessive expectations to a persistent world where everyone wants to be the hero?

Nuclear Elephant writes "DSPAM v2.10 is finally available, after four months of development. This is the first stable release to include Bayesian Noise Reduction which was recently mentioned on Slashdot and in Wired News as an algorithm providing accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human. Some other new features include Neural Networking - which finds nodes in a network that are contextually similar to form a decision matrix, Global Filtering - which provides SpamAssassin-like out-of-the-box type filtering for new users until they build up their own wordlist, Automatic Whitelisting - which automatically learns who your trusted senders are, and many other optimizations and enhancements. Head on over and download the latest tar ball."

lexbaby writes "The Salt Lake Tribune has an article claiming that at least 33 states have released government and commercial records on residents to the controversial MATRIX (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) network instead of the originally claimed 13." Don't worry, there's plenty of RAM for all 50 and the territories too.

prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech tested Windows Media, DivX, QuickTime/Sorenson and QuickTime/MPEG4 codecs. They encoded clips from Matrix Reloaded, Monsters, Inc., X2 and Spider-Man. QuickTime/Sorenson won the encoding speed contest, for the quality tests read the entire review, as each movie sample was encoded with 500KB and 1MB bitrates. Video samples provided on the site as well, so see for yourself."

unassimilatible writes "Wired reports that Wisconsin has decided to join a controversial interstate antiterrorism database that holds billions of records of ordinary Americans' activities known as the MATRIX, or Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. Is your state next?" Update: 03/10 19:05 GMT by T : Thanks to reader philthedrill for a correction: according to an article in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Daily Cardinal, Wisconsin has backed out of the Matrix, effective yesterday.

darrellberry writes "We went to see the World Sneak Preview of Masamune Shirow's Appleseed at the ICA tonight. Complimentary sake and sushi, a loving but silly flipchart presentation from the producer about the politics of the world in which it is set, then the film. The animation is amazing the rendering of the city of Olympus is beautiful, the battle set-pieces are fluid and very well choreographed, and the fine line betwen genre conventions and attempts at hyper-realism is treated with respect. Although the first few minutes owe too much to The Matrix-meets-Avalon, and in parts (to my eye) the human characters suffer somewhat from traditional anime styling, Appleseed is something genuinely new in animation. Detail everywhere, lovingly rendered. Way too much exposition, in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s, and music supervision that was entirely wrong: it was nice to see Basement Jaxx turning up for the premiere, but their music and that of Oakenfold and the rest on the soundtrack made no sense thematically or emotionally. I can see that they are going for a big international release with Appleseed, but the music is just wrong. On the plus side, the motion capture-based character animation is very convincing, and the Mobile Fortresses out-scale any other city-stomping weapons platform I can remember. And lovely to see anime at a high frame-rate, not jumping in triples. Go see it at a big cinema with decent Dolby when it's on release next month, or get it on DVD (evidently on release in July) and turn up the sub-woofer." I don't know if we linked to the official site in our last story.

broKenfoLd writes "Monkeys moving robotic arms by manipulating a cursor on a computer screen, simply by thinking about it? Mice who cause their water tube to dispense some refreshing H2O just by wishing it? Signal processing and decoding has long been a dream of Matrix fans and lazy system administrators for years, and science is amazingly keeping up! Popular Science's Carl Zimmer has written a fascinating piece documenting recent progress in decoding brain signals and interpreting commands issued from thoughts alone. If you heard a single violin playing Beethoven's 5th, you would be able to tell what piece of music was being played even though the rest of the orchestra was not heard. In the same way, by monitoring a relatively few neurons, computers can recognize patterns and allow programming based on these patterns to say, know if a mouse is thinking about pushing his water lever. You can pass the time waiting for Matrix-style video games and motionless system adminstration/utilization by reading the full article."

PHPee (Rob Maeder) writes "Scott Fullam's Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks is an excellent book outlining all you need to know to get started in the wonderful world of hardware hacking. With step-by-step guides to fifteen useful, amusing and off the wall projects, even a novice hacker can be up and running with some basic hacks in a few hours. The book demonstrates various ways consumer electronics can be modified to do things they were never intended to do, and shows you just how much fun voiding your warranty can be." (We mentioned this book yesterday, too.) Read on for PHPee's review.

securitas writes "The CS Monitor's Andrew Downie reports that Brazil plans to open in May the world's largest digital movie theater network. About 100 theaters will use Sao Paulo-based Rain Networks' KinoCast digital theater DRM software. Rain based its system on Windows Media 9 software with MPEG-4 video compression. 'The MPEG-4 software can squeeze a feature film onto a file of just five gigabytes, 15 times smaller than the MPEG-2 technology presently used' at one-third the $150,000 cost. It takes 20 minutes to distribute a 90-minute film over a VPN and the system avoids the costs associated with transporting physical copies to areas largely inaccessible by road - it can cost up to $750,000 for 500 copies of a Matrix-type blockbuster to be distributed. Interestingly, in the affluent USA the fight between the 35,000 theater owners and Hollywood is about who will pay for cinemas to switch to digital projection. In December 2003 the Guardian published a story with more financial and technical details of the KinoCast digital cinema system."

Saqib Ali asks: "There are numerous SSL based VPNs available in the market. They all offer same basic functionality, but a varied set of features. I am currently evaluating a few of these of SSL based VPN solutions. Compared to a IPsec based VPN, SSL based VPNs are fairly easy to test and evaluate, since no client installation is required for the SSL based VPNs. One way to evaluate is to test all of my applications against the each product. I am also planning to test support for various browsers. I was wondering if Slashdot readers have some suggestion/ideas on what else to include in my evaluation matrix. Are there any features that are a MUST, or things that I should watch out for while evaluating SSL based VPNs?."

jxs2151 writes: "According to the Deseret Morning News former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt signed Utah's 2.4 million residents up for a pilot program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child and didn't bother to tell anyone. According to the article MATRIX -- Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange '...cross-references government records from both public and private databases, putting together a dossier on individuals for use by law enforcement.' The state's homeland security specialist dismisses concerns: '...any data gleaned for Utah's participation in MATRIX is information already available to law enforcement.' The Utah legislature is trying to figure out how to get the state out of the program but the question is how was the Governor able to enroll the -whole state- without anyone knowing?"

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the press release revealing Warner Bros has created a new videogame division, headed by Monolith co-founder Jason Hall, which "will focus on the creation, development, production and distribution of games that will be marketed to consumers under the Warner Bros. Games brand." This represents a change of attitude for Warner Bros, who previously licensed titles such as Harry Potter and The Matrix for external game development, and GameSpot provides some background for the move, noting that new WBIE boss Jason Hall "...was CEO of Monolith Productions, developer of Tron 2.0 and No One Lives Forever 2... There were previous ties between the two companies, since Monolith is currently developing the Matrix MMORPG, The Matrix Online." Update: 01/15 04:22 GMT by S : Game Informer has an interview with Jason Hall about his new position, in which he hints on "...some interesting developments throughout the course of this year... things like the Harry Potter titles."

atkulp writes "According to this Wired article, a private company, Cyberkinetics is seeking permission from the FDA to test a product called BrainGate that implants in the brain and can control actions on a computer. So far it works for monkeys and they'd like to see it as viable for quadriplegics and others in need. How soon until anyone can become the ultimate expansion card? Sign me up!"

morris57 asks: "In the past few months, I have had at least 3 brand new compact disks or DVDs not work right out of the box. I don't mean that any sort of copy protection on the disk prevented me from using them; they were simply defective disks. I was able to exchange my DVD of 'The Matrix Reloaded' at Best Buy for a working copy, but some disks I got for Christmas I just recently opened and they are either unplayable or garbled. It is not a hardware issue, either. I've tested the disks in several types of players: new, old, component, computers, etc... It seems to me to make a very good case for downloadable media files, although I know these tracks are not available on iTunes or audible.com. So, I guess I'm wondering if the Slashdot community has noticed a decline in quality control of CDs/DVDs. What can be done (individually or communally) to not get burned by defective disks?" The solution for this particular type of problem boils down to simple consumerism. If you get a defective product, return it! If manufactures notice a high rate of return (and they should), they'll hopefully address the quality of what they ship. Has anyone else noticed an increase of non-working DVDs or CDs?

Bombcar asks: "I'm going to be installing an EPIA mainboard in my car, using a DC-DC power supply. It is mainly for playing music, but it has the potential for so much more. I know I can get LCD displays, and I know that various sensors are made for automobiles, but I want to combine both these with the computer. Most car sensors are analog, so does anyone know of an easy way to interface with analog (and perhaps some digital) sensors? Anything used would have to be able to stand up to the rigors of automobile use. The EPIA board has 4 serial ports, a parallel port, and some USB ports, along with a PCI slot. I plan to use this for display purposes only (not control any important vehicle functions), but am also leaning towards some 'fun' improvements, such as playing certain songs when the pedal is floored."

dark_lotus writes "The fine folks at The Matrix website, have re-encoded all 9 trailers from the original Matrix, bumped up the resolution and uploaded them for us to enjoy, including a never before released trailer. Also included, all the missing Reloaded and Revolutions Trailers and TV Spots - all now available to download."

nurble writes "The short list of films being considered for a best visual effects Oscar was released today. The biggest news is that the final two installments of the Matrix trilogy were snubbed in favor of Universal Studios' "The Hulk," New Line Cinema's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," 20th Century Fox's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," Universal's "Peter Pan," Buena Vista Pictures' "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," Warner Bros. Pictures' "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and Fox's "X2". Finalists will be announced following the effects "bake-off" on January 21st."

rufey asks: "As 2003 comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to ask Slashdot what they thought the best and worst movie of 2003 was, and why. At the beginning of the year there was excitement about parts 2 and 3 of The Matrix triology, X-Men 2, and of course, LOTR: Return of the King. In Slashdot's opinion, what did and didn't live up to the hype and expectations, and were there any surprises?"

An anonymous reader writes "On the occasion of this year's Chaos Communication Congress some hackers of the German CCC have set up another Blinkenlights installation in Berlin (they use the glass facade of a house as a giant computer screen). It is on the same house as from September 2001 till February 2002 but with similar capabilities to the installation in Paris in September/October 2002. Heise has a story about this (German, here's the Google translation), but actually there's better information on the project website itself."