Two Slashdot (and Slashcode) readers -- Alex McLintock of Openweb Analysts Ltd, and Dave Aiello of CTDATA -- have graciously contributed their impressions of the new O'Reilly book Running Weblogs With Slash. Since the Slash code is now used to run sites covering a huge number of topics (fly fishing, mountain biking, "news for nerds," etc.), it's time there was at least one printed reference to it.

feelafel writes: "Corona's Upcoming Films movie news site reports that the official Matrix website, www.whatisthematrix.com, has been "reloaded" today. Click on the keyboard twice, and enter the password "reload" to get to the new material. There's QuickTime VRs, on the set shots and most likely a slew of new hidden stuff. Happy searching."

Sure, we are being lied to by bloated, corporatized media all the time. What else is new? The great promise of the Net and Web has always been more truth: a great, hyper-linked network of diverse, individual expression, a vast, linked alternative subculture. There is hope. You can go to the Disinformation Web Site to see that idea in action, despite the AOL-ing and MSN-ing of cyberspace. This trove -- its content ranges from "The X-Men" and "Space Mutation" to "The Matrix" to pieces on the Real Jesus and Radiohead -- is what the Web is really about. It offers perspectives you definitely won't find anywhere in the mass media. Don't miss Marty Beckerman's "Death to all Cheerleaders 1." (Marty, whose piece became a book, was canned from a daily newspaper for observing that cheerleaders were "a urine stain on the toilet seat of America.")

Colour Blind asks: "I am working for a not-for-profit organization developing a website for kids. I am attempting to develop a method for testing if two colours (as defined by R, G, and B values [0-255]) are adequately different to be visible on top of each other. So far I have tried many things but this is the one that, by all accounts, should work: I have converted from RGB to (CIE)XYZ using a 3x3 matrix transformation. From here I have used three more equations to convert to CIELAB colour. I have then calculated the distance between the two colours in question in CIELAB colour space. The results are not correct: there are pairs of colours that are quite far from visible that yield the same difference as colours that are plainly acceptable for visibility. Any suggestions?"

tepes writes "From bottomquark, A new method of sub-pixel rendering could make monitors cheaper to produce. ClairVoyante Laboratories developed the PenTile Matrix, which uses five sub-pixels instead of the typical three, to take advantage of the fact that the human eye is more sensitive to blue colors."

brian wang writes "Matrix semiconductor has taped out 64 Mbyte write once chip. It is 8 layer memory that can be made at standard fabs. They will be made at Taiwan Semiconductor initially in a 0.25micron process. It will be compatible with Flash. Obviously when they move to 0.18 micron and 0.13 and 0.10 micron processes that already are producing chips the memory size will shoot up to rival CDRoms from single chips. Revolutionary impact for handhelds, PCs, ROMDrives etc..." See, I knew it: Little is better.

Richard Jones writes: "In my opinion, the most difficult aspect of writing a good 3D game is coding complex physics. If you can take away all the flashy graphics, texture maps, light and shadows from a game, and it's still at least 75% as playable and addictive, then you have an excellent game. But too many programmers seem to be ready to concentrate on the graphics, neglecting the underlying physics which make the game playable. If you compare, say, Re-volt with its fabulously detailed models of remote-controlled cars, and Carmageddon which on the N64 at least has sucky physics, well I know which one I'm still playing." He's contributed his review (below) of a book intended to help game programmers make games that aren't sucky.

tenchiken writes: "First the bad news, Square has announced that they are selling off Square Studios. This is the group that was responsible for the FF Movie and also a forthcoming short for The Matrix. Better News. Final Fantasy X, the first FF for the new PS2, is shipping tommorow (in stores Wed). You can find reviews at GameSpot,Gamers, IGN, etc. The reviews are all positive, and I will be waiting in line on Wed morning to pick up my copy. Square's new online game for the PS2 FF11 is also coming along nicely. Playonline Has a 'webcam' up feeding 24x7 images. The pictures look great. The above pages are Japanese." CowboyNeal and I both have our copies of FFX on reserve and are planning on some time off to watch LotR and play FFX this week.

For tonight's Slashback, eaders have submitted updates and corrections tonight on several recent stories, from the global raid on illegally copied software to ever-more software for your TI-89 to the confusing names (and ownership status) of Mexican banks. Read on for the details.

m5shiv writes: "Scientific American is running a feature on 3-D Memory Chips. These devices look like they will significantly reduce the cost of PDA's and other handheld devices as well as replacing analog film. By stacking devices vertically, density goes up considerably. The company, Matrix Semiconductor, appears to have some very interesting investors such as Kodak, Sony and Microsoft."

If the Matrix successfully fused sci-fi, film noir and martial arts movies, maybe The One will end the shameless, non-stop ripoffs of the martial arts/ balletic combat sequences Neo brought to the big screen for the mass audience. This movie features not one but two Jet Li's, from parallel dimensions (sound familiar?), drop-kicking one another all over the galaxy, and both are stupefyingly boring. People who dodge bullets in slo-mo are getting to be so commonplace they're tiresome. And while we're at it, isn't it high time, so long as we're zipping people around via particle beams, to find a fresher weapon than the .9mm pistol that spews all those hot, clinking cartridges all over the place? Even passionate martial arts movie lovers can skip this one without regret, though two or three of the fight sequences were first rate. (Spoilage warning: plot discussed, not ending.)

rkischuk writes: "IGN FilmForce has gathered several tidbits about the Matrix sequels. Among the most interesting of them is that the dailies from the shooting of the film in Australia will be transmitted electronically to the U.S. using TRW's Picture Pipeline."

Chase asks: "Has anyone ever used an old PDA as a control panel for a larger headless system? I was planning on installing a computer in my car to do a variety of things and I happen to have a few old PDAs laying around gathering dust. (HP320LX, HP360LX, PalmPilot Pro). The general idea here is that you could power the PDA from the car and use a null modem cable to create a connection between the PDA and the headless computer. I have a matrix oribital display and compatible number pad, but the PDA touch screen with buttons and back light seems like it would be much cooler."

NeoCode sends tons of juice starting with "Ghost in the Shell creator, Masamune Shirow, has talked about a sequel to GITS in a recent interview. The director of the original is working on GITS2. The Matrix Revisted is essentially a prequel to the original Matrix movie. My guess is that the anime story might be along the lines of the Matrix comics that are on their website. Anyways, here are some tidbits about the Matrix anime. And lastly, CartoonNetwork has a interviewed Daft Punk about their anime video and their anime" I saw the Daft Punk (as well as all 3 Gorillaz!) videos on Toonami last friday. Had to immediately hit Cheap CDs and buy the album. (Yes, I'm buying CDs again. I ended my boycott now that Napster battle is over) I thought it was just Gap commercial soundtracks, but those are sweet videos.

Code Fixer writes: "The first (and perhaps last) issue of The Infinite Matrix is up." The one and only issue of a would-be science fiction magazine. Good stuff.

Last week you asked Sam Lantinga , developer of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) about SDL and other issues related to gaming. He's responded with answers about the SL port to Sony Playstation, game audio, DirectX, his new job at Blizzard, and more. He even drops some hints about some interesting gaming developments to watch out for.

moojin was among the countless slashdot readers who noted that scifi (No I am Sci-Fi dammit) has reported that the 'Matrix Reloaded' will be delayed until the summer 2003. I'm bummed, but I'm willing to wait to see the Brothers W do it right (no way I'm gonna try to spell that name ;)

With the possible exception of Shrek, I haven't seen an audience have as much fun all summer as the full house yukking through Rush Hour 2, a multi-cultural martial arts comedy/adventure/ cop/ buddy movie and testament to the still- growing sweep and reach of Hong Kong cinema, for which Jackie Chan deserves much credit. Lots of laughs in an unpretentious movie that stars one actor's mouth and another's feet.

kato writes: "Doug Bagley has posted results from benchmarking of 29 different language implementations solving 25 different problems (he's written ~600 of the 725 programs so far). The languages include C/C++, Perl, Python, Eiffel, BASH, Tcl, and OCaml. The problems range in complexity from "Hello, World!" to the Sieve of Eratosthenes and Matrix Multiplication. The results can be sorted by speed, memory usage, or lines of code. You can also give one particular program more weight than another (if you are doing more client/server code than "Hello, World!") and find the faster/smallest/shortest language implementation. I can see many of my programs being written in OCaml from now on." Update: 07/04 12:42 PM by CT : The site is apparently now redirecting people back here. I guess technically thats an error message, just not a helpful one. Update: 07/05 8:40 PM by M : Please don't email. The link is broken. We know. The guy is running a server at home on a metered connection, and doesn't want any more traffic.

As you might have expected, several of the slashdot folks went to see A.I. this weekend. Jon Katz and I were brave enough to write about it. In case you've been dead for the past six months, there's a huge game being run to promote the movie (though the plot of the game apparently has little to do with the plot of the movie). Read on for a thorough dissection of this much-hyped tale of the robot boy who can (sniff, sniff) love. (Usual warnings about spoilers apply.)