The monorail is shown in light gray dashed lines. Easiest to spot just to the right of the Springfield Bridge where I-95 crosses the water... look for the words MONO and RAIL on either side of the street.
I'm still looking for the Escalator to Nowhere, the 50 ft. Magnifying Glass, and the burned ruins of the Popsicle Stick Skyscraper.
Re:Water is easy to simulate!
on
Shrek 2 How-To
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· Score: 1
... films only have to make things "look real", whereas computational physicists have to make them "be real".
Right, although what I was getting at with breaking waves is that the filmmaker is restricted in making his film "look real" by the same computational limitations as the physicist. So the waves never even look real.
Re:Water is easy to simulate!
on
Shrek 2 How-To
·
· Score: 1
I mean, if you are happy with whatever the output of a Navier-Stokes solver is, then fine, wait for the computer to finish and you're done.
Qualitatively this may be easy, but quantitatively, no. Numerical solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations that fully resolve all scales of many fluid flows are still beyond the grasp of modern computers. Nonlinearity and scaling effects become important when you start looking at waves, or turbulence, or both (in the case of breaking waves).
Let's use the last case (breaking waves) as an example, since you mentioned "foam," and "splashes" in your post. Large breaking waves generate big vortices, chunks of churned-up water, if you will. One of the features of turbulence is that such big chunks of water will be much much larger than the smallest chunks of churned-up water. This is referred to as separation of scales, and is the reason why you can't make a photograph or a film of a small wave look "real" simply by scaling it up, or by forcing perspective. To make your model of the big breaker "look real" you have to model both much finer details and at the same time model a much bigger wave. The computational requirements of this are too vast, so that even though the governing equations are quite well-known, a solution is infeasible.
All sorts of other problems come into play as well, such as accurately modeling how the wave pitches forward, etc. The upshot of all this is that it can't be done correctly by scientists, and so what hope does a studio have? None, which is why they do illustrations instead, which inevitably will look "fake" to someone who is used to looking at waves, be he a scientist or a surfer. This happens not because "simulating water is easy," but because it is so very difficult.
in the last few months the spammers have been intentionally misspelling words in random ways, which reduces the effectiveness considerably. Does anybody know if SpamBayes addresses this issue?
Paul Graham (inventor of Bayesian spam filters) assessed this a few months ago. He concludes that these sorts of tricks won't work. For misspellings in particular, he states "Misspellings end up having higher spam probabilities than the words they're intended to conceal."
I realize this doesn't quite answer your question, but I suggest you continue to train your filter. Then (like me) you should see the results improve with time.
The Finder automatically registers all applications as it becomes aware of them, such as when they are dragged onto the user's disk or when the user navigates to a folder containing them.
and as we see with this exploit, whenever a volume is mounted.
IMO the volume should never be downloaded or mounted. The exploit page includes the following:
So first off this is another exploit of the "disk:" protocol handler. The arbitrary protocol depends on the automatic download and mounting of that DMG file through the handler. It's definitely a security hole for that volume to get auto-mounted through meta-refresh, and I question whether it should even be downloaded. At a bare minimum the download should obey the preferences set in Safari about whether or not to open "safe" downloads, and disk image autorun upon mounting should be deactivateable (if not disabled entirely).
Keep in mind that almost all trailer soundtracks are borrowed or bought from other sources, hence what you hear now will most definately not appear in the film.
Very true. The best example is probably "Bishop's Countdown" from "Aliens," which achieved near-ubiquity in trailers for 90's sci-fi and action films. Not so often nowadays. Also there was the use of the Kronos Quartet's work from "Requiem for a Dream" in the trailer for ROTK.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" from decksanddrumsandrockandroll, playing in the background of the trailer. This album also has "Take California," used in an iPod commercial, "History Repeating," used in "Something About Mary," and "Spybreak," used of course in the lobby shooting spree of "The Matrix."
I happened to have corresponded with one of TechTV's major 2004 advertisers
Related at all to your sig? It reads word for word like an ad I would frequently see during TSS. Effective but annoying (like most ads) - it obviously stuck with me because I could hear the announcer's voice as my eyes scanned over your sig. I think maybe it even hit me on a subconscious level first that made me go back to read it. Scary.
Electric motors on each of the wheels to generate power while braking and to assist the IC drivetrain
This is inaccurate. The Honda IMA motor is mounted directly onto the driveshaft of the engine in both the Insight and the Civic Hybrid. Toyota Prius' design is quite different. No mass-produced hybrid to date has wheel-mounted electric motors.
it looks like my 1992 1.5L Civic Hatchback is(was) more fuel efficient (city and highway) than the modern 2004 Civic Hybrid.
It is(was). Civic HB VX was the precursor to the CRX which was the precursor to the Insight. HB VX is the 6th most fuel efficient car ever sold in the U.S. while CRX/Coupe HF (its successor(s)) is #5. Prius and Civic Hybrid are tied at #10.
Comparing the old highly efficient Civics to the Insight is unfair, as you note. It's also unfair to compare with the Civic Hybrid, which is larger, heavier, and has more features (adding to the weight) and seats, and an automatic transmission. Instead, compare Civic Hybrid to its feature-comparable Civic cousin, the EX or the LX. You will see a 30%-40% difference in mpg.
Now, it turns out that even with gas prices around $2/gal, the price premium for Civic Hybrid over EX probably means it won't pay for itself in a long time, if ever. But you might want to consider the other costs of gasoline that you don't pay at the pump.
Insight Central has some very good general fuel efficiency tips and more advanced / detailed tips. I have driven my 2000 Insight over 70,000 miles and have gotten nearly 70 mpg. My driving now includes a mix of city and highway; when it was mostly highway miles I was regularly beating 80 mpg on each tank. My daily commute is now 8 miles round trip. I still get over 60mpg, which beats the EPA estimate. This is not to brag, but to point out that one or two bloggers' experiences do not fairly reflect the general experience of all drivers.
When you drive a hybrid, you will get better mileage if you change your habits to make more effective use of the hybrid's abilities. This doesn't mean you have to poke along... I accelerate hard so that I am using my batteries and minimizing the time I spend burning a lot of fuel in the gasoline engine. Plus, it's fun. You'll also get better mileage if you pay attention to things like tire pressure. Dealers like to inflate my Insight tires to 32 psi all around, even though 38 psi is what Honda recommends. An Insight with 32 psi tires looks like it's running on flats. I inflate to 44 psi. The mileage change is dramatic.
As for the original article, it has some good points in it about the EPA tests. It also has some real head-scratchers, like this: "Schmidt says hybrid cars use computers to more precisely control the flow of gasoline and have more efficient catalytic converters..." and this "hybrid cars' ability to limit emissions contributes to the disparity in EPA versus real-world numbers." There are many, many cars that have the same or better EPA emissions rating (10/10) as the Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius. All cars today use computers to regulate gasoline flow.
When you get your hybrid, turn on its instantaneous readout of mpg and use it to give you feedback on your driving. It will train you. Happy driving...
Actually, no, I stopped watching a little before he stopped his stint as regular host. Also, even though I stopped watching, I maintained my subscription via Comcasts "Digital Extra" package of channels (which I purchased for the sole purpose of watching TechTV).
So I suppose that makes me 1) uninformed in my decisions of what to watch and 2) ineffective at making my decisions known in a way that matters (i.e. Comcast's pocketbook).
Still it's good to hear that Leo is back. Maybe I'll start watching again.
He turns in his friends, who in return turn in their friends. Then next thing you know the FBI is knocking on your door asking to look at your computer.
Aha! But you see, I have no friends! All my evil plans therefore remain secret and I remain safe to plot and connive. Mu-wah-ha-ha!
UBB for Universal Bulletin Board now called InfoPop... when posting on such a board you can add tags enclosed in brackets like this: [b][/b] and that's what I stupidly did in my original post (look at the word "exclude").
The diesel in the VW is proven technology, but I was also worried about how the hybrids would be in an accident.
Electric motors are also proven technology. The Honda Insight has a 4 star rating in NHTSA crash tests for front- and side-impact. You can read about the lightweight and stiff construction of the Insight here. Note that the elevated rear compartment holding the IMA computer and battery as well as the spare tire and wheel are all providing additional passenger protection.
Other hybrids: all part of the Prius gets 5 stars on front impacts. Civic Hybrid would be no different from regular Civics.
I have heard that electrical wiring in the new hybrids run through all sorts of places, including roof and roof posts.
This is not true for the Honda Insight. 144V DC IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) power is carried beneath the car by cables wrapped in thick orange tubing. You can read the PDF of the Honda Emergency Response Guide for the Insight yourself.
The short version is: cut the ignition. When you do this on the Insight, it throws a physical switch that cuts off the IMA. For example, a dead 12V battery on the Insight will prevent you from starting the car, even if the IMA battery (which always starts the car) is fully charged.
FileVault equivalents can be found from third parties
Or even from Apple itself, by using encrypted.dmg files. See this discussion. Panther introduced the sparse image file that could be increased in size (and shrunk for FileVault) dynamically, which is nice.
I still use encrypted disk images for content outside my home directory, such as in/Users/Shared/Documents/ for things that multiple users in my family need to access. For example, finanacial data files.
Humph. I thought Jaguar rocked. Pudge liked it. So did Ars. Specifically, Rendezvous has had a lasting impact on how my home network is set up. Jaguar had the first non-beta version of iChat, the first useful version of Address Book, and the introduction of the "Junk" filter in Mail.app which presaged the now-common Bayesian filters included in all decent mail programs. Plus it debuted Quartz Extreme.
DVDs are 480p, whereas HD is 720p or higher (1080i, 1080p). DVDs definitely look better on an HDTV, especially with component outputs. But even if your DVD player has DVI output on the back and upconverts the original video to HD, the source material is still not HD, and won't be until HD-DVD is out.
... smart playlists don't update on the iPod itself. My playlist excludes songs played in the last three days. This functions properly in iTunes but the iPod's playlist isn't dropping songs after they're played.
If you have your iPod syncing with the smart playlist(s), then when the playlist is updated in iTunes the change should be reflected in the contents of your iPod. See this Apple kbase article for more help.
I travel with the iPod and try to turn it off to preserve the battery. Turning it back on resets the random shuffle.
I agree; this is frustrating. 3rd generation iPods do not reset shuffles after being turned off, which is a nice improvement.
One with all your highly rated songs.
One with all your unplayed songs, in random order, limited to fit on your iPod.
One with your least recently played songs, in random order, limited to fit on your ipod.
Then throw some albums you want to listen to on a fourth playlist.
This is great. Up until recently I was only dumping dynamic playlists of my highest-rated and most-played songs onto my iPod, in addition to a large manual playlist (your fourth one). Updating the 4th playlist for a mostly-full 30GB iPod was a major pain. Now I'm back to a small list of albums that I definitely want (about 5GB worth). My iPod now works sort-of-like a radio station where I can be reasonably sure to get music I like or haven't heard in a while. I play by genre rather than choosing one of the specific playlists, this keeps me from following up a metal song with a classical one, so it's much better than my previous mix of my highest-rated songs.
The only change I made was to add two conditions to the 2nd and 3rd playlists. They both now [b]exclude[/b] songs with ratings of 2 or 1 star. This way if I hear a song, and dislike it, I can flag it and it will never come back. Without this exclusion, if I skipped the song, it would remain unplayed, and would be likely to stay and be heard again. I also don't delete the song altogether from my drive or iTunes playlist, because someone else in my family might like it and keeping all the songs in iTunes makes managing our music collection easier (I rip using my account and then simply "add to library" the audio files from other accounts).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still looking for the Escalator to Nowhere, the 50 ft. Magnifying Glass, and the burned ruins of the Popsicle Stick Skyscraper.
Let's use the last case (breaking waves) as an example, since you mentioned "foam," and "splashes" in your post. Large breaking waves generate big vortices, chunks of churned-up water, if you will. One of the features of turbulence is that such big chunks of water will be much much larger than the smallest chunks of churned-up water. This is referred to as separation of scales, and is the reason why you can't make a photograph or a film of a small wave look "real" simply by scaling it up, or by forcing perspective. To make your model of the big breaker "look real" you have to model both much finer details and at the same time model a much bigger wave. The computational requirements of this are too vast, so that even though the governing equations are quite well-known, a solution is infeasible.
All sorts of other problems come into play as well, such as accurately modeling how the wave pitches forward, etc. The upshot of all this is that it can't be done correctly by scientists, and so what hope does a studio have? None, which is why they do illustrations instead, which inevitably will look "fake" to someone who is used to looking at waves, be he a scientist or a surfer. This happens not because "simulating water is easy," but because it is so very difficult.
I realize this doesn't quite answer your question, but I suggest you continue to train your filter. Then (like me) you should see the results improve with time.
Anyone remember that? The Suliban and all that? What happened to it?
See the Green-E website. Many landfills already extract their methane emissions. This is good even from a global-warming perspective, as methane is also a greenhouse gas. Finally, the EPA has tips on reducing methane emissions from livestock themselves, as opposed to their turds.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" from decksanddrumsandrockandroll, playing in the background of the trailer. This album also has "Take California," used in an iPod commercial, "History Repeating," used in "Something About Mary," and "Spybreak," used of course in the lobby shooting spree of "The Matrix."
Comparing the old highly efficient Civics to the Insight is unfair, as you note. It's also unfair to compare with the Civic Hybrid, which is larger, heavier, and has more features (adding to the weight) and seats, and an automatic transmission. Instead, compare Civic Hybrid to its feature-comparable Civic cousin, the EX or the LX. You will see a 30%-40% difference in mpg.
Now, it turns out that even with gas prices around $2/gal, the price premium for Civic Hybrid over EX probably means it won't pay for itself in a long time, if ever. But you might want to consider the other costs of gasoline that you don't pay at the pump.
When you drive a hybrid, you will get better mileage if you change your habits to make more effective use of the hybrid's abilities. This doesn't mean you have to poke along... I accelerate hard so that I am using my batteries and minimizing the time I spend burning a lot of fuel in the gasoline engine. Plus, it's fun. You'll also get better mileage if you pay attention to things like tire pressure. Dealers like to inflate my Insight tires to 32 psi all around, even though 38 psi is what Honda recommends. An Insight with 32 psi tires looks like it's running on flats. I inflate to 44 psi. The mileage change is dramatic.
As for the original article, it has some good points in it about the EPA tests. It also has some real head-scratchers, like this: "Schmidt says hybrid cars use computers to more precisely control the flow of gasoline and have more efficient catalytic converters..." and this "hybrid cars' ability to limit emissions contributes to the disparity in EPA versus real-world numbers." There are many, many cars that have the same or better EPA emissions rating (10/10) as the Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius. All cars today use computers to regulate gasoline flow.
When you get your hybrid, turn on its instantaneous readout of mpg and use it to give you feedback on your driving. It will train you. Happy driving...
So I suppose that makes me 1) uninformed in my decisions of what to watch and 2) ineffective at making my decisions known in a way that matters (i.e. Comcast's pocketbook).
Still it's good to hear that Leo is back. Maybe I'll start watching again.
UBB for Universal Bulletin Board now called InfoPop... when posting on such a board you can add tags enclosed in brackets like this: [b][/b] and that's what I stupidly did in my original post (look at the word "exclude").
Other hybrids: all part of the Prius gets 5 stars on front impacts. Civic Hybrid would be no different from regular Civics.
The short version is: cut the ignition. When you do this on the Insight, it throws a physical switch that cuts off the IMA. For example, a dead 12V battery on the Insight will prevent you from starting the car, even if the IMA battery (which always starts the car) is fully charged.
I still use encrypted disk images for content outside my home directory, such as in /Users/Shared/Documents/ for things that multiple users in my family need to access. For example, finanacial data files.
If you have your iPod syncing with the smart playlist(s), then when the playlist is updated in iTunes the change should be reflected in the contents of your iPod. See this Apple kbase article for more help.
I agree; this is frustrating. 3rd generation iPods do not reset shuffles after being turned off, which is a nice improvement.
UBB code in a Slashdot post... how embarassing. sigh
The only change I made was to add two conditions to the 2nd and 3rd playlists. They both now [b]exclude[/b] songs with ratings of 2 or 1 star. This way if I hear a song, and dislike it, I can flag it and it will never come back. Without this exclusion, if I skipped the song, it would remain unplayed, and would be likely to stay and be heard again. I also don't delete the song altogether from my drive or iTunes playlist, because someone else in my family might like it and keeping all the songs in iTunes makes managing our music collection easier (I rip using my account and then simply "add to library" the audio files from other accounts).