An anonymous reader writes "According to The Digital Bits, the recently announced Matrix Special Edition has been cancelled. Rumor is that it was cancelled by the Wachowski brothers in hopes of coming out with a Super Collectors Special Edition later."

shiroi_kami writes "What does Information Security mean to you? To many, it means firewalls and encryption. To some, it means intrusion detection systems. Chances are the words "file servers" weren't high on your list, but they probably should be. After all, information security is about information, and when it's not flying across the network it's got to be stored somewhere, right? In fact, the security of the storage mechanism is often overlooked, which makes it an attractive target for attackers. In their new book, Storage Security, the authors take a comprehensive look at this often-ignored subject. Update: 03/26 05:44 GMT by T : Please note, this review was written by David Bianco under the handle shiroi_kami as an Amazon.com review, and also appears at InfosecBooks.com. Apologies to David for the misplaced and delayed attribution.

Devistater writes "The official Matrix page has word of the first officially released widescreen Anime episode of the Animatrix for download (in quicktime format). This is the first of 4 free episodes that will be released on the web. A total of 9 episodes will be availible for purchase on DVD within the next few months. The feature-quality anime shorts range in length from 6 minutes to 16 minutes. There's a trailer availible if you want to get a taste for what they will be like."

Kartik3 writes "IGN.com is reporting that Warner Bros. is releasing a 2-disc special edition DVD of The Matrix (loaded with extras) on April 29th and The Animatrix (An Anime series set in the world of the Matrix) DVD on June 3rd." If Animatrix is half as cool as the promo comic that was given out at the Matrix opening, I'll like it.

So, if you're a good, patriotic American, you're certainly watching the Superbowl right about now. The dot-com ads should be pretty much absent this year, but perhaps there will be something more interesting than ads for recycled movies. Maybe even the game will be worth watching. :) Update: 01/27 17:02 GMT by T : Chardish writes "If you didn't catch the trailer for The Matrix: Reloaded on the Superbowl last night, it's now available for download."

Yes folks some sort of sporting event is occuring later today. Super something or other. And while I don't know what teams are playing, I believe that trailers for X-Men 2, and the first Matrix sequel are both supposed to air during the 2 million dollar 30 second ad spots. So this time around, you can tivo in reverse!

An anonymous reader writes "The Bar-Monkey is a bar built around a 486 running linux that can dispense an 8 ounce mixed drink in under 10 seconds. It uses a Matrix Orbital Serial LCD panel with a keypad built into the bar surface for user input. Three Harvey Mudd College students built the bar in their spare time last semester. The bar holds 16 ingredients with which it can currently mix 188 drinks stored in its drink database. Total project cost: $235."

QuietKarma writes "Consider this the first of next year's ads for Matrixx Reloaded and Matrixx Revolutions releases. Here's some semi-official poop from MSNBC with some spoilers. Or you can do what I did and read about halfway through without learning how Reloaded will end. Either that or wait until Harry at Ain't It Cool News comes out with his list of spoilers."

ChrisGoodwin asks: "Why do geeks support MPAA and RIAA? Here on Slashdot, the talk is all about how evil the film and record companies are. But when the next Star Wars or Matrix or Lord of the Rings comes out, it's all about camping out to get tickets. According to RIAA's web site, member companies distribute 90% of the legitimate sound recordings in the United States; chances are, if you've ever bought music, you've given them money. (Take a look at their list of members.) Heck, most of the film companies own, are owned by, or share a corporate parent with a record company, and many of us get our internet access from part of the MPAA/RIAA conglomerate. So why is it? Why do we continue to buy their product? Why are we giving them money so that they can harass us? Why hasn't there been a call for a boycott of the record and film industries?" This is in the FAQ, but this is certainly a discussion worth having. With the pervasiveness of media in our society, for some it is not as easy as "boycott" or "no boycott", and it may be unfair to the artists we like for us to do so, and as Big Media diversifies, a boycott on movies and music may still not be enough. So do you feel a boycott of mass media will help matters, or would such be counter-productive in some way?

mikvo asks: "I work for my state Department of Transportation, and we have a reasonably advanced traffic monitoring system, currently with almost 300 cameras (and expanding). However, our matrix (300x200) video switch is running out of life, and we have to replace it. The primary consultant on the project is recommending we move entirely to digital video, using VBrick encoders and decoders. It's a private network, though we know there are still security issues around that. However, the primary question is, are there viable open source alternatives for both encoding and decoding the live video streams, rather than relying on proprietary (read expensive) decoding hardware?"

The_Hiro writes ""Farenheit 451 - meets - Brave New World - meets - Matrix" (minus the overdone wire work). Created on a limited budget, Equilibrium combines the best of sci-fi with the action genre. Unfortunately, the marketing droids at Dimension have neglected to promote the film (release date: Dec. 6th). Chud.com has a glowing review of the film and some pretty pictures. Check out the trailer also."

gnat writes "Two New Zealand computer scientists have a paper accepted for OOPSLA called Notes on Postmodern Programming, which identifies shortcomings in traditional views of computer science. With a section on the difference between "The Matrix" and the net, a bulleted list of new approaches called "We're All Devo", and a section called "Messy is Good" consisting of nothing but a scan of a hand-drawn diagram, this is not your father's computer science paper. It's thought-provoking stuff, though. And you know they did their homework--they cite Larry Wall's Postmodern Perl talk."

Okay, former DrinkOrDie member and convicted warez dude Chris Tresco got his answers to your questions back to us, so here they are. (Note: Chris does not advise you to follow in his footsteps.)

Dalvenjah FoxFire writes "D-Box, a Canadian speaker company, has designed a system called the Odyssee consisting of four motor-driven actuators that go under your couch and a controller box with a CD-ROM drive for the control files. The controller reads the Dolby Digital bitstream from your DVD player, and plays back synchronized motion effects designed by the company. For about $20,000, you too can add motion simulation to your home theater. They have a list on their site of the movies they've encoded, including The Matrix, Drunken Master, Star Wars Episode I, and more, though it also has an 'audio driven' mode which will work with any source."

MBCook writes "Everybody's favorite Xbox hackers have got Linux running for roughly six weeks, and now it runs well enough to announce that Windows has been run inside Linux with common PC virtualization software. They even have a little video of it playing a MPEG 4 of The Matrix fullscreen!"

NeoCode writes "Like The Matrix? Like anime? Well, feast your eyes on this. The Matrix web site has released a preview trailer for Animatrix, a series of 9 anime stories set in the world of matrix, to be released on DVD. They are done rather beautifully, by the looks of the trailer, in both traditional anime and using computer graphics."

Slashback tonight with a few words on forcing Open software, NASA mind-reading tricks, a reminder of one nice way not to pay for an MP3 decoder, and more. Read on for the details. Update: 08/28 00:36 GMT by T : Oops -- No DoubleClick news tonight, as the original headline implied. Regrets.

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm curious as to what video capture cards are being used successfully by the linux user base. I need to capture screen shots from 4 video sources and collect the images in a manner that makes them easy to present in a web browser. A 4 input card would be nice! But I could always use a matrix switcher to grab frames from each source periodically. Matrix-Vision has a card - the mvDelta - that seems to work, but alas, they don't sell single units. What's out there? Who's using it? Any suggestions?"

kazama writes: "Toronto-based IMAX said that it had developed a new process called DMR (for "digital remastering") to digitally convert conventional 35mm films to the IMAX format without significant loss of detail. 'Our customers have been saying to us for years, "We want to see Star Wars on IMAX, we want to see The Matrix on IMAX." and DMR is the technology which is the enabler,' Co-CEO Bradley Wechsler told Reuters. 'That's going to be an increasingly important part of the company's performance.'" So what movies would you want to see on IMAX?

Your intrepid reporter took a jaunt down to the H2K2 conference this past weekend, held in the lovely Hotel Pennsylvania. The conference had much more floor space than they had two years ago, and it seemed like more attendance as well. Wireless networks were available, though overcrowded, and if you didn't encrypt your communications, well, you've probably already paid the price. My notes on the conference and the sessions I attended are below, followed by a couple of reader submissions.