Posted 8:48 PM by Eric
Mark! I fixed my PS2!!! I dunno maybe it wont run aero elite, havent tried that yet, but it runs MGS2 so I dont care! I cleaned the CD lens with rubbing Alcohol and then sprayed it with Compressed air. and now it works. Its only I temporary Fix and Ill have to do it more and more often until the laser dies completely. heres where i got the instructions: http://www.gamingworldx.com/features/PlayStation2DiscReadErrorDRERepairGuide.shtml That guy wrote them very well and Im gonna email him tommorrow to thank him.

Posted 10:36 PM by Eric
Wow, I fell kinda bad I mad you type all that. But I really get it now, I get what S3 was, what GW was, what the colonel was doing. Wow thanks :)

I think there is a piece of paper before it shows the Declaration of independence, its got some Japanese lettering on it, i dont quite know what it is though, maybe some important document of japan.

Hmmm, in the new Electronic Gaming Monthly it has a little paragraph about twin snakes and a picture. The caption is what is interesting it mentions that they want to know more about the GBA-GC connection feature in twin snakes. I really want to know what it is, maybe its the radar on your GBA thats kinda dumb, thats what Splinter cell did, Hmm dont know what else it could be though. Maybe the codec? that would be stupid to have to watch the codec things on a GBA though. Wouldnt they need a game to be in the GBA too? A new Metal gear solid on GBA? :) Hmmm that stuff might not be true, dont take my word for it.

Do you know if they still sell MGS1, I might buy a copy of that too after I play twin snakes, just so I can look at different stuff.

About that part the you said, "But the Patriots still couldn't finish the programming of GW without information about how the human mind worked..." So is that where that Turing Test comes in where the machines is try to convince the person its human? and if they could understand how the human mind worked they could make the machine convince people it was human?

My PS2 doesnt read MGS2 anymore at all, and there is a thing online that involves taking your PS2 apart, and fixing it. I don't know If I could do it, but my ps2 probably is out of warranty and if I am gonna buy a new one it might be kinda fun, maybe I'll get dan to help me :)

Maybe my mom might chip in for a new Ps2.

I think my mom said your cousin is staying with you in superior, how is that?

Back to school really sucks, I started football last wednesday, and I suck. I didnt do anything for it the whole summer and I got wasted when it started. lol my head is too big for any of the middle school helmets so I got a helmet sent over from the High school. The only thing is that the helmet is purple, so my dads got to spray paint it white. after the first coat we found out that one coat made it look pink, so we gotta put more coats of paint on :)

anyways cya, dont worry about posting, schools starting so well probably not post quite as much.

Posted 7:57 PM by Mark
Hey Eric, I'll try to respond to all of your posts, not really in order...

In MGS1, that battle where the guy read your mind, that guy was Psycho Mantis. It was really cool, I guess I won't say much else so I don't totally ruin it for you. And I think I have tried that shoulder button codec trick where you get them to say funny stuff.

But that really sucks about your PS2 not working anymore. I know some people who that has happened to, it must be the older ones weren't manufactured as well or something. I was trying the five VR missions that are on The Document of MGS2 and the first four are really simple but the fifth one is a sniping mission that's impossible...

Yeah, you're right about the intro with the stone, then the paper, and then the digital barcodes. Actually, if you look carefully, the paper is actually the Declaration of Independence, I think, which ties into the part about free will and freedom. Cause the Sons of Liberty were an actual organization during the American Revolution that worked for our independence from Britain.

So about that ending analysis at junkerhq.net... You're exactly right about how the Patriots are selecting what they think are the strongest information and filtering out the weaker information. Because thousands of years ago, or even just a couple of decades ago, information was created by writing it down, which was time consuming. That meant that if someone spent the time to write it down, it was probably a good idea that was worth the trouble of writing it down. But now, with the Information Age and the internet, it's simple for anyone anywhere to simply create information on the internet. Because it's so easy to create, a lot of the information on the net turns out to be just crap. Like spam and popup ads and stuff. And digital information never goes away, like paper - it just stays out there on the net. The Patriots are worried about all this information slowing down human evolution:

Rose: We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books... But not all the information was inherited by later generations.
Colonel: A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really.
Rose: That's what history is, Jack.
Colonel: But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.
Rose: Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...
Colonel: All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.
Rose: It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution.

So in order to "create context" in recorded history, the Patriots created Arsenal Gear to house the GW computer system to filter out unnecessary information on the internet - the S3 project (Selection for Societal Sanity). But the Patriots still couldn't finish the programming of GW without information about how the human mind worked, and to get that information, they set up the Big Shell incident, which was a simulation of Shadow Moses in MGS1. (When you go back and play The Twin Snakes, you'll see all the resemblances to MGS2, and how the Big Shell was a reenactment of Shadow Moses.) They sent Raiden in to undergo the simulation, and then they used the information from his nanomachines to try to understand how the human mind works so that they could finish programming GW. During the simulation, GW created AIs in the codec network to pose as the Colonel and Rose.

And that's really what that analysis at junkerhq.net is about - explaining what the Patriots are. Because, remember, at the very end after the credits, Otacon tells Snake that the names of the Patrots all belonged to people who died over 100 years ago, so they can't be a human life form. Basically, the Patriots are a form of life that scientists have only theorized about so far, a form of life where the replicating agent isn't DNA, like in every living thing that we know of on Earth; but where the replicating agent is information. Because what is life here on Earth? At it's most basic level, life is DNA that replicates, and passes on its genes to its copies. Evolution occurs when the genes are modifed from generation to generation of DNA in a way that helps it survive. If it is a bad modification, it causes it to die out.

That is evolution on the genetic level.

Now think about bits of information in our society today. Think of catchphrases, slogans, concepts and ideas. "Just do it." "The New Coke." The "Jeopardy" theme song. "Is that your final answer?" The government system of democracy and capitalism. The governemtn system of dictatorship and communism. All of these things can be considered "memes" because they act just like genes in replicating DNA. Wheareas genes replicate when they are passed down from generation to generation; memes, or information, "replicate" when they are "passed down" by us humans spreading the information and sharing it to other people. When we tell another human being about an idea or a slogan, we have created a copy of that information (meme) in that person's mind, just like when genes are passed down by replicating DNA. Then, if that person likes the idea or slogan, they will tell other people, creating more copies. If that person *doesn't* like the idea, then they *won't* share it with someone else, and that idea will die out. For example, the Nike slogan "Just do it" has been around for a long time, but the New Coke advertising campaign was a disaster and died out as soon as it started. The game show Jeopardy and its trademark theme song has been around forever, but Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and its trademark catchphrase "Is that your final answer" is already off the air. Democracy and capitalism has created the USA, the most powerful nation on earth, and they are spreading all over the globe; while communism has proved to be a living hell for its citizens and is nearly extinct.

*That* is evolution on the "memetic" level.

So now the scientific reasoning goes, because replicating DNA and genes eventually became a form of sentient life, then, if replicating information and memes act the same way, couldn't information eventually also become a life form? That is what some scientists think are happening - that just as DNA started out in the primordial soup with single cell organisms gradually evolving to life forms that emerged from the ocean, today, information is in its own primordial soup and could eventually evolve into its own life form. Also, we know that DNA life existed for billions of years as simply those single-cell organisms in the oceans with a very slow rate of evolution until suddenly, the evolutionary process suddenly took off and in maybe a billion years, we went from those tiny, insignificant organisms in the ocean to intelligent, human life. After billions of years of close to zero evolutionary progress, something, we don't know what, served as a catlyst for the process of DNA replication, wildy accelerating its evolution. We don't know what it was that caused such rapid progress on the genetic level, but the thinking goes that the internet is what will serve as the catlyst for information on the memetic level. Because it makes sense - never before the internet could we share and spread such incredible amounts of information around the world. We had to write things down and physically transport the information around the world, and once it got there, who knows if it could even be read, depending on what language was spoken. Never before the internet did information have an opportunity to swirl around the world and replicate in our minds as freely as it does today. The scientists say that if the meme theory is true, we are on the verge of seeing the formation and development of a totally and radically new form of life - information as a living, sentient being.

It's a pretty abstract and wild concept and I don't know if it is very much widely accepted in the scientific community, yet it does make quite a bit of sense. And that is what the Patriots are in MGS2 - life forms created from replicating information, with American values as their memes.

Just like how the specific genes that created human beings have proved to be remarkably successful on the genetic level, the memes that have created the United States (democracy, freedom of speech, free will, capitalism, etc.) have also proven to be remarkably successful on the memetic level. And in MGS2, it is those basic American values and concepts that make up the memes of the Patriots.

The Colonel says:

To begin with -- we're not what you'd call -- human. Over the past two hundred years -- A kind of consciousness formed layer by layer in the crucible of the White House. It's not unlike the way life started in the oceans four billion years ago. The White House was our primordial soup, a base of evolution. We are formless. We are the very discipline and morality that Americans invoke so often. How can anyone hope to eliminate us? As long as this nation exists, so will we.


GW stands for George Washington, I'm pretty sure. That also makes the last bit of the game another symbolic part, after Arsenal has come to rest at Federal Hall, where the General George Washington took office as the first president of the United States 200 years ago. And then Solidus gets mortally wounded by Raiden and falls off of the roof of Federal Hall, and after having tried so during the game hard to disable the GW system, he ends up falling onto and clinging to the statue of George Washington. He gets weak and lets go and falls and dies, but the statue of George Washington remains standing through all the mayhem of Arsenal's crash. This is definitely symbolic, but I'm not sure what of. It could mean that the GW computer censorship program survives. But, I'm pretty sure that the message the game tries to send is that the Patriots' S3 program is a bad thing because that's what Snake says, so I think that George Washington's statue still standing symbolizes that his dream of a free nation still survives, not the GW system.

I read through the ending part of the script on The Document of MGS2 and found a couple of interesting points. When Snake and Emma and them implant the virus 90% of the way, it's enough to make it go haywire. I used to think that was the reason Arsenal crashed into Manhattan, that the virus made it go out of control. But actually, I read the script on The Document, and a part that they cut out after 9.11 was a part where Liquid, after having taken over Ocelot in the Metal Gear RAY on the top of Arsenal Gear, tells everyone that he's about to crash it on Manhattan.

There's another interesting note in the script on The Document. It was noted at the very bottom of the text dump on the junkerhq.net analysis, I don't know if you caught it or not. When Arsenal crashes, GW is destroyed, and supposedly the AI's that it was generating. But then the Colonel and Rose AIs come back on Raiden's codec:

Colonel: Raiden, are you receiving? We're still here. (The script notes that at this point, the Patriots are speaking directly to Raiden through the codec alias of the Colonel and Rose)
Raiden: How's that possible!? The AI was destroyed!
Colonel: Only GW...
Now at this point, the script notes: "Only" Implies that there are still other sets of Arsenal and AI. In this case the 'speaker' is JFK.

Now this is really interesting. It seems that the Patriots have already created several other Arsenal Gears with computers systems named after former presidents, only two of which are GW for George Washington and JFK for John F. Kennedy. I haven't heard much speculation about this, but my own personal theory is that this ties into the part a bit later where the Patriots say:
Colonel: The mapping of the human genome was completed early this century. As a result, the evolutionary log of the human race lay open to us.
Rose: We started with genetic engineering, and in the end, we succeeded in digitizing life itself.

Because of what Rose says about digitizing life itself, I think that the processing units of the computer systems named GW and JFK and all the other Arsenal AIs are actually digital clones of their presidential namesakes - like, the Patriots got DNA samples of former presidents and then digitzed their DNA into the computer cores of the Arsenal AIs to use their minds to help decide what information to keep and what to delete.

Man, I spent a long time typing and revising this. Over two hours, I think. I hope this helps. Everything in the junkerhq.net analysis should make sense, hopefully, because it's a really, really good article. But keep asking questions about it, because that's the fun part about the game, trying to figure out all the hidden meanings and symbolisms.

Posted 4:54 PM by Eric
lol, Dan just found something really cool in MGS. He's playing on the plant. But anyways he was talking on the Codec and if you hit L1,L2,L1,L2 over and over again or R1, R2, R1, R2 or R2,L2,R2.L2 while the other person is talking it says some pretty funny stuff. He was talking to Rose, and rose is talking and the sound comes in the background. Raiden is like She Cute, She's so self centered, and Get Real. Stuff like that pretty funny, dont know if you have seen it before, but if you havent try it.

Oh by the way I've posted alot and I don't know but you might need to check the archives for some posts.

On the internet I found ring tones for cell phones that are the MGS theme. There is one thats pretty good, alot really suck.

Posted 11:20 AM by Eric
okay I read the one ending analysis at JunkerHQ.net and its pretty confusing, I dont really understand what memes are, So a meme is like a gene but it's a piece of information? But I don't quite understand where that comes into play with MGS? I don't get what the S3 simulation was either, I know that it wasnt the thing to make Raiden on par with snake, and that it was the Selection for Societal Sanity? so the are trying to figure out what about raiden? is it to get something for GW?

Posted 11:13 AM by Eric

Posted 12:39 PM by Eric
I found a trailer for MGS:The Twin Snakes, I remeber game informer talking about some battle in MGS1 were there was the guy who "read your mind" he like looked on your memory card and stuff and he "magically" moved the controller across coffee tables. Is that Liquid Snake who that is? In the trailer it shows some of that and I thought before he said like something about konami games (or was it more general) but in the trailer it says, "I see you like nintendo games, you see Mr. Kojima has respect for Miyamoto" So they must have changed that, well actually I don't know because I havent played mgs1, so I'm asking you.

The trailer is at : http://www.techtv.com/xplay/shownotes/story/0,24330,3497875,00.html scroll down to previews and The Twin Snakes is there.

Also in the trailer is alot of stuff that has the abbreviation NGC is that because its on gamecube must be, cause they keep stating that its on gamecube, wow Nintendo is getting desperate, in the trailers they have to keep going "Remeber its on gamecube". It looks like In the next mario trailers they'll have mario talking about why he likes the gamecube more than any other next-gen console.

My Ps2 is about to die, It wont read some of the stuff in substance, It really sucks, I cant do the skateboarding, and some of the snake tales dont work. I think I might have to get another Ps2, I got alot of money from my birthday so I am considering doing that.

lol I am on a mission in substance where you have to snipe these guys who are trying to eat this plate of food. Its really hard actually. But I was thinking that it would be cool that if like you took a ton of petazamin all at once the screen would get all blurry, ha ha it would be cool if the gaurds were allergic to pentazamin so you could feed them it and then they would sneeze and stuff. lol that would be pretty dumb though.

Me and dan were screwing around on the tanker and we kept letting the birds poop on the screen so that it was like probably 60-70 percent covered in bird poop.

Okay so I am working on reading the ending analysis things. and one talks about natural selection, that the strongest animals survive and the other anaysis says that the meaning of MGS2 is how information is passed on to future generations. So are the 12 patriots selecting what they think is the strongest information and telling that to people and then filtering out what they think is weaker? So that the future generations have all the Important or stronger information and not all the information that is not important? I don't get what I just said either I am just trying to figure out why the 12 patriots censor the information, maybe you know.

anyways I am gonna go now.

Posted 6:07 PM by Eric
Wow I read the one Ending Analysis at GameFAQs just now. Its really amazing all the meaning of MGS2. I like the thing about how information got passed on first by stone, then paper, and now it is all digitized. So I think that is why in the first cutscene it shows a stone tablet with some roman numerals on it, then a paper with some lettering on it, then through the rest of the cutscene it when peoples names pop up like for example Hideo Kojima or Vannessa Marshall they are first barcodes, I think that might be related. I am gonna start reading the other ending analysis after supper :)

Posted 9:12 PM by Eric
on gamestop.com they have the twin snakes marked at ETA: 11/18/03, but it says ETA so that might not be official, it could be though then it would get the holiday rush.

Posted 9:09 PM by Eric
I am listening to the SWON Theme right now, sounds really good.

Substance has some VR and you can be snake and raiden in it, but dan was playing it, and he unlocked pliskin. He is really cool. I guess that the "our boys right on time" thing is in MGS2:SOL but maybe i dont remeber it, I guess at the time I saw that cutscene it was 2 years ago and I had no idea who ocelot was.

Wow its a long theme for SWON :) It just ended. Anyways I think I am gonna watch Reno 911. cya

Posted 1:10 AM by Mark
When you clicked on the mp3 link, it probably downloaded it to the temporary internet files folder. I hate it when Windows does that. If you want, you can try to find it in c:\windows\temporary internet files (I think that's the path on the hard drive where it should be) and sort by name or type - the filename should be SWON Main Theme.mp3. Or, you can always download files to a specific place on your hard drive by right clicking on the link and clicking on Save Target As... and that will open up a dialog window that will ask you where you want to save it.

About that scene on the tanker with Ocelot - that scene is in the regular MGS2:SOL, where Snake lands on the tanker and busts the stealth camo device, and Shalashaska (Ocelot) says like, "Our boy's right on time," I remember that scene. But anyway, MGS2 Substance looks pretty cool, with all the extras and stuff. Since I already have MGS2:SOL, I don't think it's worth another $50 for me just for the extras, but they do look cool. When is The Twin Snakes coming out on GameCube? I really want to try playing that, and you'll definitely want to get it. Btw, did you get a chance to read through either of those MGS2 articles/analysis things that I posted?