Uhh, I imagine they are already doing full text statistical analysis. How do you think they get such cool features as Google Sets (and the back end stuff that powers that; all the word/idea clustering technology). Personalized search using Search History, they have to analyze the web and your searches for that. Heck, even their search algorithms could probably be considered full-text statistical analysis. So, don't get your panties in a knot, they are already doing stuff like that on a scale that I can't possibly comprehend.
Thanks for posting those, I flagged all three. After I noticed this feature yesterday, I went through some random blogs and marked the spam ones. I consider it community service:).
I don't know about Google indexing Blogger sites quickly, though. I created a blog there back in like February. I post their somewhat reliably, and linked to it from my relatively high PageRank website, yet it barely is accessible in Google. I don't think Google has spidered it once (since it only shows the URL when searching, no snippets).
Google does use stemming, I see it all the time. The results are still different, though, because I'm sure they weight the main query higher than the stems.
Also, you can see something to similar to stemming when you search for certain acronyms. Try searching for [lotr] or [ada]. It also performs searches for the full version of the acronym, as you can see by the bold query in the snippets and title.
Unfortunately, it seems most chains are requiring these cards these days. And by require, I mean you get the increased prices if you don't use them. QFC is 1/4 the distance of any other grocery store from my house, and very easy to bike to, but if I ever start using Safeway, I'll be sure to use someone else's club card.
As for the grandparent, I don't consider huge store size a redeeming factor.
I agree. I'm not sure if my friends understand, but I think one mouse button is better for laptops. When I'm forced to use a Windows laptop, I keep hitting the right mouse button because I'm not used to stretching my hand in weird, uncomfortable positions to reach the left button.
13.1 is all well and good, but not if there is no dynamic range. My friend and I always get upset about this whenever we talk about it. Many movies and TV shows are ruined because they have no dynamic range. I want my gunshots to be ear shattering and my whispers to be quiet. I've seen TV shows where the bed sheet crinkling is as loud as whispers which are in turn as loud as normal talking. Another good example of bad dynamic range is Half Life. The radios are louder than the guns. For a good example of dynamic range, look at Enter the Matrix. You turn up the volume to hear the cut scenes, and then when you get to the fight scenes, it is fucking loud. Unfortunately, most movies have compressed dynamic range to make them 'sound better' on most consumer's crappy equipment. Unfortunately, this ruins it for those of us with high end equipment. There is no way to increase dynamic range in movies, but if your system can't handle it, it is easy to squish dynamic range. However, the DVD producers do it for us, so we are screwed. I'm happy with my 7.1, but I'd be even happier with proper dynamic range.
No, it is possible to tell where sound is coming from. Everyone's ear shape and head shape is different. Even how you are wearing your hair can affect how sound reaches your ears. I don't remember the term for this (how people hear sound differently based on ear shape), but it does exist.
We can tell where sound is coming from and it was very handy long ago when we had to be defensive out in the world, from predators and such. Now it makes our movies more interesting.
There are ways to fake making sound come from behind you (when you are wearing headphones). However, they only estimate and use a generic model, since everyone's profile is different. It sounds fairly good, but isn't perfect.
To conclude, yes, you can tell where sound is coming form.
Andrew
PS: I'm not an audio engineer, but I've been to meetings with them and have talked to people about this very subject (although, not the engineers in question).
I stopped watching 24 because it was fascist. I didn't know how to describe it at first, but I was turned off by the violation of human rights and due process. This is not a good show to be airing while we are at war and violating rights all the time (like in Guantanamo).
Your post makes a lot of sense and should be modded up to +5.
I really like Safari RSS, but I have one major complaint. About 1/3 the time, it gets the dates wrong on the new entries in feeds. Often times it thinks the date is a few days before the actual post date of the entry. I've confirmed in the RSS feed that the date is correct, but Safari manages to fuck it up.
Okay, damn. I wasn't going to say anything, but after seeing so many comments, I just have to? What the fuck is wrong with Bob Dylan? You guys are acting like he's the backstreet boys are something. He is one of the most influential artists of the last century and was a very prolific songwriter. His voice may not be the best, but he has great music.
Okay, the people that run this website might not like me posting this, but to view the old map, go to geobloggers.com (type it in yourself, I'm not going to link it) and type in the zip code. Anchorage is 99501. You'll probably have to zoom in, and then you can scroll around for angled streets (it is harder to notice in map mode when the streets go north/south).
I looked at Google Maps at the Apple Store on their 30" monitor and nearly wet myself:). I'll have to go back sometime now that they've changed it around.
I saved some pictures. They are not of Alaska (which was amazingly distorted, but they were sufficiently distorted to make it noticeable. It wasn't really a mistake, it was just the projection they chose, but I imagine they got lots of complaints and changed it. But yeah, the satellite imagery hasn't ben reprojected yet.
If you interested, I've tried to make a full list of changes on my website. That website has side by side picture comparisons of the old and new. Some things they did as well: darkened minor streets, changed the projection, added one-way arrows, added some major building landmarks, and changed the size of the images being sent.
Exactly. The three episodes are on the DVD and I've seen them a number of times. They are just as good as the rest of the series.
I'm not sure what the grandparent doesn't expect character development. As the parent said, what about the 'preacher'? What about the sexual tension between Kaylee and the doctor or Inara and Mel? Inara just announced that she was leaving in the second to last episode. The series barely even had a chance to gain reoccurring characters. We saw a few characters more than once, like Badger. I imagine Niska would have been back as well. Don't forget more fun with the reavers.
That's true. There is a lot of hype around the Star Trek series. I watched all of Enterprise because it was Trek, but I was pretty tired of it for a while (in the middle when they had all the decontamination gel). I think Trek could use a rest, and that's why I'm glad Firefly is around. It is Sci-Fi without (much) technobabble and no particles of the week.
PS: Oops, I forgot the 'see' in the sentence you quoted.
I was a Star Trek fan, but only casually (well, more casually than most, but I was far from a hard core fan; I only know the name of a few episodes).
However, I've seen all the Firefly episodes a number of times and I know most of their names (of course, that is easier when you only have to know 15 episodes (like 650 minutes of television). I also evangelize the show whenever I have a chance.
Everyone owes it to themselves to watch this show at least once. If people got that obsessed over Enterprise, they should this show.
Firefly is barely Sci-Fi. It doesn't even have aliens! The characters are one of the reasons I love it so much. The characters are very well written in the show. I love how they all fit together and provide many interesting situations and dialogues. There was a lot of backstory that was hinted to in the show's short run, so it could provide a very interesting story arc over time. I just hope they don't reveal to much in the movie (which I've heard is mostly about River).
Well, as the other poster said, you should just use it with another system. The other system can handle the full water load if needed, but the solar system offsets it much of the time and lowers your total power usage. If nothing else, it should save lots of energy because it will heat water up from very cold (I assume the water is very cold during the winter when it enters your house) to a warmer temperature. Even if it just heats it to luke warm, it is much easier to heat warm water up to a nice temperature than frigid water (and it uses less energy too).
Also, I don't have the numbers, but I imagine much of the price is just for the install. It shouldn't be too much more to add a few extra tubes to support extra load or to have just in case. I believe the house I toured had theirs installed for like $4k USD.
If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of Hell, a level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
I'd love if a channel that was dedicated to the show picked it up and gave Joss free reign.
As much as I love Firefly, I won't be watching it... I already have it on DVD:). Hopefully enough people that don't own the DVD will watch the episodes, in order to show SciFi there is interest in it. After much prodding, I finally got my college roommates to watch the show and they loved it. They were very hesitant at first, but once they saw what a quality show it was, they were begging to see more. Actually, to be honest some of them got mad at me because they wanted to sleep, but we had to watch another episode:).
Let's hope enough people give it a chance and then realize how good the show is.
The strangest thing is our DVD player from 1998 and the other from 2001 are working just fine after fairly heavy use. Hmm, maybe you shouldn't have bought the cheapest one on the market?
2: On-Demand, CNG water heater (i.e.: no tank to keep warm)
Even better, get a solar water heater. This is how it works: you install these tubes on your roof facing in the normal direction of the sun (not too many can heat lots of water). You have two tanks for water (both well insulated). The first tank brings water from the mains and has a coil in it. A pump sends ethylene glycol through the pipe to the tubes on the roof and back down and through the first tank. The substance has a high heat capacity, so it can move energy well. You also have another well insulated tank (both can be fairly small) that heats the water conventionally if the solar heat isn't enough. When the difference in temperature between the first tank and the roof fluid temperature is great enough, the pump automatically turns on to heat the water.
I had a chance to see one of these systems here in Seattle. The tubes aren't very big or noticeable (they can be put on the side of the house as well, if you get enough light there). They can produce heat most days (even here in dark Seattle), even when it is below freezing outside (the tubes contain a vacuum, so the light radiation comes in, but there is very little way for the energy to come back out (no convection through atmosphere)).
Slashdot Mirror
Uhh, I imagine they are already doing full text statistical analysis. How do you think they get such cool features as Google Sets (and the back end stuff that powers that; all the word/idea clustering technology). Personalized search using Search History, they have to analyze the web and your searches for that. Heck, even their search algorithms could probably be considered full-text statistical analysis. So, don't get your panties in a knot, they are already doing stuff like that on a scale that I can't possibly comprehend.
Thanks for posting those, I flagged all three. After I noticed this feature yesterday, I went through some random blogs and marked the spam ones. I consider it community service :).
I don't know about Google indexing Blogger sites quickly, though. I created a blog there back in like February. I post their somewhat reliably, and linked to it from my relatively high PageRank website, yet it barely is accessible in Google. I don't think Google has spidered it once (since it only shows the URL when searching, no snippets).
Google does use stemming, I see it all the time. The results are still different, though, because I'm sure they weight the main query higher than the stems.
Also, you can see something to similar to stemming when you search for certain acronyms. Try searching for [lotr] or [ada]. It also performs searches for the full version of the acronym, as you can see by the bold query in the snippets and title.
Unfortunately, it seems most chains are requiring these cards these days. And by require, I mean you get the increased prices if you don't use them. QFC is 1/4 the distance of any other grocery store from my house, and very easy to bike to, but if I ever start using Safeway, I'll be sure to use someone else's club card.
As for the grandparent, I don't consider huge store size a redeeming factor.
I agree. I'm not sure if my friends understand, but I think one mouse button is better for laptops. When I'm forced to use a Windows laptop, I keep hitting the right mouse button because I'm not used to stretching my hand in weird, uncomfortable positions to reach the left button.
13.1 is all well and good, but not if there is no dynamic range. My friend and I always get upset about this whenever we talk about it. Many movies and TV shows are ruined because they have no dynamic range. I want my gunshots to be ear shattering and my whispers to be quiet. I've seen TV shows where the bed sheet crinkling is as loud as whispers which are in turn as loud as normal talking. Another good example of bad dynamic range is Half Life. The radios are louder than the guns. For a good example of dynamic range, look at Enter the Matrix. You turn up the volume to hear the cut scenes, and then when you get to the fight scenes, it is fucking loud. Unfortunately, most movies have compressed dynamic range to make them 'sound better' on most consumer's crappy equipment. Unfortunately, this ruins it for those of us with high end equipment. There is no way to increase dynamic range in movies, but if your system can't handle it, it is easy to squish dynamic range. However, the DVD producers do it for us, so we are screwed. I'm happy with my 7.1, but I'd be even happier with proper dynamic range.
No, it is possible to tell where sound is coming from. Everyone's ear shape and head shape is different. Even how you are wearing your hair can affect how sound reaches your ears. I don't remember the term for this (how people hear sound differently based on ear shape), but it does exist.
We can tell where sound is coming from and it was very handy long ago when we had to be defensive out in the world, from predators and such. Now it makes our movies more interesting.
There are ways to fake making sound come from behind you (when you are wearing headphones). However, they only estimate and use a generic model, since everyone's profile is different. It sounds fairly good, but isn't perfect.
To conclude, yes, you can tell where sound is coming form.
Andrew
PS: I'm not an audio engineer, but I've been to meetings with them and have talked to people about this very subject (although, not the engineers in question).
Cat's are old school... now we film ourselves typing.
Andrew
PS: My video is in there, yay!
I stopped watching 24 because it was fascist. I didn't know how to describe it at first, but I was turned off by the violation of human rights and due process. This is not a good show to be airing while we are at war and violating rights all the time (like in Guantanamo).
Your post makes a lot of sense and should be modded up to +5.
Andrew
Everybody who likes B5 raves about its long story arcs, which Firefly mostly lacks.
Well duh. It was only on for 15 episodes. I think if it went on longer it would have a lot more arcs and become even more interesting.
I really like Safari RSS, but I have one major complaint. About 1/3 the time, it gets the dates wrong on the new entries in feeds. Often times it thinks the date is a few days before the actual post date of the entry. I've confirmed in the RSS feed that the date is correct, but Safari manages to fuck it up.
Okay, damn. I wasn't going to say anything, but after seeing so many comments, I just have to? What the fuck is wrong with Bob Dylan? You guys are acting like he's the backstreet boys are something. He is one of the most influential artists of the last century and was a very prolific songwriter. His voice may not be the best, but he has great music.
Okay, the people that run this website might not like me posting this, but to view the old map, go to geobloggers.com (type it in yourself, I'm not going to link it) and type in the zip code. Anchorage is 99501. You'll probably have to zoom in, and then you can scroll around for angled streets (it is harder to notice in map mode when the streets go north/south).
Andrew
I looked at Google Maps at the Apple Store on their 30" monitor and nearly wet myself :). I'll have to go back sometime now that they've changed it around.
I saved some pictures. They are not of Alaska (which was amazingly distorted, but they were sufficiently distorted to make it noticeable. It wasn't really a mistake, it was just the projection they chose, but I imagine they got lots of complaints and changed it. But yeah, the satellite imagery hasn't ben reprojected yet.
If you interested, I've tried to make a full list of changes on my website. That website has side by side picture comparisons of the old and new. Some things they did as well: darkened minor streets, changed the projection, added one-way arrows, added some major building landmarks, and changed the size of the images being sent.
Exactly. The three episodes are on the DVD and I've seen them a number of times. They are just as good as the rest of the series.
I'm not sure what the grandparent doesn't expect character development. As the parent said, what about the 'preacher'? What about the sexual tension between Kaylee and the doctor or Inara and Mel? Inara just announced that she was leaving in the second to last episode. The series barely even had a chance to gain reoccurring characters. We saw a few characters more than once, like Badger. I imagine Niska would have been back as well. Don't forget more fun with the reavers.
Andrew
That's true. There is a lot of hype around the Star Trek series. I watched all of Enterprise because it was Trek, but I was pretty tired of it for a while (in the middle when they had all the decontamination gel). I think Trek could use a rest, and that's why I'm glad Firefly is around. It is Sci-Fi without (much) technobabble and no particles of the week.
PS: Oops, I forgot the 'see' in the sentence you quoted.
I was a Star Trek fan, but only casually (well, more casually than most, but I was far from a hard core fan; I only know the name of a few episodes).
However, I've seen all the Firefly episodes a number of times and I know most of their names (of course, that is easier when you only have to know 15 episodes (like 650 minutes of television). I also evangelize the show whenever I have a chance.
Everyone owes it to themselves to watch this show at least once. If people got that obsessed over Enterprise, they should this show.
Andrew
Firefly is barely Sci-Fi. It doesn't even have aliens! The characters are one of the reasons I love it so much. The characters are very well written in the show. I love how they all fit together and provide many interesting situations and dialogues. There was a lot of backstory that was hinted to in the show's short run, so it could provide a very interesting story arc over time. I just hope they don't reveal to much in the movie (which I've heard is mostly about River).
Andrew
Well, as the other poster said, you should just use it with another system. The other system can handle the full water load if needed, but the solar system offsets it much of the time and lowers your total power usage. If nothing else, it should save lots of energy because it will heat water up from very cold (I assume the water is very cold during the winter when it enters your house) to a warmer temperature. Even if it just heats it to luke warm, it is much easier to heat warm water up to a nice temperature than frigid water (and it uses less energy too).
Also, I don't have the numbers, but I imagine much of the price is just for the install. It shouldn't be too much more to add a few extra tubes to support extra load or to have just in case. I believe the house I toured had theirs installed for like $4k USD.
Andrew
If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of Hell, a level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
I'd love if a channel that was dedicated to the show picked it up and gave Joss free reign.
:). Hopefully enough people that don't own the DVD will watch the episodes, in order to show SciFi there is interest in it. After much prodding, I finally got my college roommates to watch the show and they loved it. They were very hesitant at first, but once they saw what a quality show it was, they were begging to see more. Actually, to be honest some of them got mad at me because they wanted to sleep, but we had to watch another episode :).
As much as I love Firefly, I won't be watching it... I already have it on DVD
Let's hope enough people give it a chance and then realize how good the show is.
Andrew
The strangest thing is our DVD player from 1998 and the other from 2001 are working just fine after fairly heavy use. Hmm, maybe you shouldn't have bought the cheapest one on the market?
2: On-Demand, CNG water heater (i.e.: no tank to keep warm)
Even better, get a solar water heater. This is how it works: you install these tubes on your roof facing in the normal direction of the sun (not too many can heat lots of water). You have two tanks for water (both well insulated). The first tank brings water from the mains and has a coil in it. A pump sends ethylene glycol through the pipe to the tubes on the roof and back down and through the first tank. The substance has a high heat capacity, so it can move energy well. You also have another well insulated tank (both can be fairly small) that heats the water conventionally if the solar heat isn't enough. When the difference in temperature between the first tank and the roof fluid temperature is great enough, the pump automatically turns on to heat the water.
I had a chance to see one of these systems here in Seattle. The tubes aren't very big or noticeable (they can be put on the side of the house as well, if you get enough light there). They can produce heat most days (even here in dark Seattle), even when it is below freezing outside (the tubes contain a vacuum, so the light radiation comes in, but there is very little way for the energy to come back out (no convection through atmosphere)).
I can find more info if you like.
Andrew