The resistance of the alternator to turning is proportional to the electricity generated. Add more electrical load, and the alternator is harder to turn.
While that is a true statement, it ignores the fact that internal combustion engine efficiency does vary with the load on it. A running engine with zero useful load is still burning gas so it has zero efficiency. Drawing energy from the alternator to do useful work does cause the engine to operate more efficiently. However, greater efficiency does not necessarily translate into less fuel consumption. I believe it will be more efficient to shut the engine down while idling, and it might be more efficient to use regenerative braking. Both of these tricks are used in hybrids (at least, both are used in the Toyota Prius).
Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary.
Let's not give the impression that regenerative braking is the only factor in hybrid fuel economy. Fortunately you did say "mostly" rather than "only", but that still significantly underplays the other factors. Aside from the aforementioned trick of shutting off the ICE when the car is stopped, how about:
1. You can use a smaller and more efficient internal combustion engine because the electric motor(s) supplement the ICE power for peak loads. In the case of Toyota, an Atkinson cycle engine is used. This is a more efficient design than the familiar Otto cycle, having a longer expansion stroke. But it produces less power for a given displacement, so in a non-hybrid engine with comparable fuel economy the acceleration would be sluggish. The Prius's ICE puts out a maximum of 76 W, but with the additional 67 W from the electric motors at peak demand, it has reasonable acceleration.
2. The engine can spend more time operating in or near its most efficient power band. When that power exceeds the demand, the excess goes to the batteries (but when the car is stopped, the car's microcontrollers will make the decision to shut off the engine instead, unless the battery still needs repleneshing). When the power in this band is insufficient to meet the demand, power can be drawn from the battery, rather than revving the engine up and burning more gas less efficiently. Related to this, the Prius uses a continuously variable transmission, in the form of a planetary gear system called a Power Split Device (possibly trademarked), to achieve a balance between the engine and the car's two motor/generators. I believe Honda also uses a CVT, but its design is more conventional than Toyota's, and I don't know if it is directly tied to fuel economy. I'm not sure if other hybrid manufacturers use a CVT.
[Flywheel] systems were mechanical variants of a hybrid; that is, capturing the energy of braking and storing to use to accelerate the vehicle.
That statement furthers the misconception that hybrids are solely about regenerative braking.
Another compounding factor is the loss of wetlands and barrier islands, an area the size of Delaware having been lost since the 1930s, according to the LA Times.
History shows again and again how Nature points out the folly of men. -- Blue Oyster Cult
So it's your position that "themselves" doesn't add any new meaning to the sentence? Weird. This is what happens when you teach people rules instead of how to write.
Rules have nothing to do with it. It's a matter of identification. GGP was confusing the appositive and reflexive uses of a pronoun.
But, since you asked, in that particular sentence the apposition doesn't add any meaning. This isn't always the case. If I say "The king appeared", I am simply making an objective observation. If I say, "The king himself appeared", my use of the appositive suggests that I consider the king's appearance to be an unusual event. But this is a change in connotation, not in denotation. Moreover, the additional subjective information is conveyed, not by the word itself, but by the fact that I chose to insert it.
What additional meaning did you infer from "themselves" in GGP's sentence, compared to my version?
As for dangling pronouns, when will you folks stop trying to turn English into Latin? English IS NOT Latin! None of these silly rules existed for a bunch of British grammarians decided to model English after Latin several centuries ago. This is bogus.
You are replying to my comment but your last paragraph should be addressed to that comment's parent. I never mentioned the dangling pronoun; I did point out that the suggested alternative was awkward.
Latin's rules came about the same way English grammar rules came about. Latin IS NOT Esperanto or Loglan; it's a natural language. The grammar came about naturally. Later, scholars codified that grammar. You wouldn't find centurions correcting graffiti painters in the streets of the Roman Empire, would you?
I hate people who use redundant words that don't add to the meaning of the sentence (irony intended). Try this: I hate people who "correct" English with some half-baked abomination.
Besides, if you were using the pronoun reflexively, it would be the object of "correct". In your sentence it is being used appositively, but with an awkward result.
I remember one of the software magazines (Windows Sources, perhaps) complaining in an editorial during the months leading up to the release along the lines of "Will everybody stop calling it Chicago now -- we all know it will be called Windows 4.0". About a month or two later Microsoft announced the product name, "Windows 95", but not after this magazine (and maybe one or two others) had used it prominently on their covers. Ah well, they wouldn't be the last people to fall for faulty intelligence.
Amen to that...No digital synth can touch the Moog. As for samplers -- well, I do like the Mellotron sound but it is much more limited in timbre variations, and while you can sample a Moog with a modern digital sampler it would never be the same. A given filter envelope will produce a different sound for every note on the keyboard, and the sampler will have a hard time capturing those nuances.
I wonder if the troll was confusing sequencers and synthesizers. A sequencer could substitute for talent but a synth could not.
May I add a few of my favorites to your list of Moog synth artists:
Yes/Rick Wakeman (Fragile, Close to the Edge, Six Wives of Henry VIII)
Chick Corea (The Leprechaun contains some of the best Moog sounds I've ever heard)
Manfred Mann (Waiter, There's a Yawn in My Ear, from The Roaring Silence)
While many people have mentioned Switched-On Bach, another Walter^H^H^H^H^Hendy Carlos album, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, featuring works by Bach, Scarlatti, and Monteverdi is also worth a listen. Especially for the Scarlatti. I don't know if it's available on CD.
I'm not sure of this one: Did the Alan Parsons Project (the group, not the WMD) use a Moog on I, Robot?
We owe some of the best sounds of progressive music to Bob Moog. He'll be missed but those sounds will live on.
Every item asserted by the above paragraph is untrue. Just an FYI for the casual reader.
I didn't find one untrue statement in gp's paragraph. From the FSF website:
You can use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
If I use some variation of GPL terms in another license, that license is a derivative of the GPL. Thus grandparent is correct in stating that:
It does [allow derivation], actually. -- This assertion is supported by the quoted statement; the derived version must meet the stated restrictions of course but it is still a derivative.
The derived versions must not carry the "GPL" name, though. -- Restates one of the restrictions; GPL refers to GNU so you can't call the modified license "GPL".
Basically, that phrase is there to ensure branding. -- I don't see anything that contradicts this assertion and it certainly is one justification, probably the strongest one.
Otherwise, I could create and release a different "GPL" that could effectively lock people out of some of their rights. -- Yes, if the restrictions weren't there he certainly could do that.
I'm not familiar with the licensing terms for Firefox and I haven't verified gp's statement about that.
... showDesktop(DISABLE_CURSOR); // wait(1);// Windows 3.1 // wait(2);// Windows 95 // wait(20);// Windows Me // wait(200);// Windows 2000 // wait(2000);// Windows XP wait(20000);// Windows Vista if ( ( rand() > 0.5 ) & mouseStationary() ) { showDesktop(ENABLE_CURSOR); } ...
It *was* legal before the Supreme Court decided it was legal. It had never been ruled on before at that level. So the decision didn't really change anything except to make future challenges less likely.
Hey, I don't agree with the decision either -- I would have liked it if the court had set a standard on "public use". But it isn't as revolutionary as you think it is -- it's really more of a missed opportunity.
our brain does not operate at a fixed clock clock rate, as would be required by digital electronics
Never heard of asynchronous logic?
I suspect that asynchronous digital logic doesn't come much closer to modeling the brain than synchronous digital logic. But then, what does my brain know about how brains work, anyway?
It promises a stellar show for star-gazers. Scott Young of the Manitoba Museum Planetarium says the planets in question -- Mercury, Venus and Saturn -- are all big enough to be seen without a telescope.
I always thought it was more of a question of how bright they are, than how big.
Imagine an out-of-focus picture of a point of light. The image will be a fuzzy circle or ring (the latter if the lens is catadioptric).
Now take a picture of an entire scene, this time in focus. If you convolve (mathematical process related to multiplication) the first fuzzy image with this sharp image, you would get an image that looks like you had taken the picture through the original fuzzy lens. It's as if every single pixel in the good image were smudged into an pattern like the first image. The fuzzy circle from the first image is called the convolution kernel.
The corollary of this is, if you use the inverse of the convolution process (deconvolution) on an image taken with the out-of-focus lens, and using the fuzzy circle image as the kernel for the deconvolution, you would get a sharp image.
The trick is that you need to know the correct deconvolution kernel. But for that you only need to photograph a point source (such as a star).
I'm surprised that nobody posted this one yet:
This is a 12-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these...
Excuse me.
Yes?
Did you say 'knives'?
Rotating knives, yes.
Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our tenants?
Does that not fit in with your plans?
Not really. We asked for a simple block of flats.
Oh. I hadn't fully divined your attitude towards the tenants. You see I mainly design slaughterhouses.
Slashdot Mirror
While that is a true statement, it ignores the fact that internal combustion engine efficiency does vary with the load on it. A running engine with zero useful load is still burning gas so it has zero efficiency. Drawing energy from the alternator to do useful work does cause the engine to operate more efficiently. However, greater efficiency does not necessarily translate into less fuel consumption. I believe it will be more efficient to shut the engine down while idling, and it might be more efficient to use regenerative braking. Both of these tricks are used in hybrids (at least, both are used in the Toyota Prius).
Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary.
Let's not give the impression that regenerative braking is the only factor in hybrid fuel economy. Fortunately you did say "mostly" rather than "only", but that still significantly underplays the other factors. Aside from the aforementioned trick of shutting off the ICE when the car is stopped, how about:
1. You can use a smaller and more efficient internal combustion engine because the electric motor(s) supplement the ICE power for peak loads. In the case of Toyota, an Atkinson cycle engine is used. This is a more efficient design than the familiar Otto cycle, having a longer expansion stroke. But it produces less power for a given displacement, so in a non-hybrid engine with comparable fuel economy the acceleration would be sluggish. The Prius's ICE puts out a maximum of 76 W, but with the additional 67 W from the electric motors at peak demand, it has reasonable acceleration.
2. The engine can spend more time operating in or near its most efficient power band. When that power exceeds the demand, the excess goes to the batteries (but when the car is stopped, the car's microcontrollers will make the decision to shut off the engine instead, unless the battery still needs repleneshing). When the power in this band is insufficient to meet the demand, power can be drawn from the battery, rather than revving the engine up and burning more gas less efficiently. Related to this, the Prius uses a continuously variable transmission, in the form of a planetary gear system called a Power Split Device (possibly trademarked), to achieve a balance between the engine and the car's two motor/generators. I believe Honda also uses a CVT, but its design is more conventional than Toyota's, and I don't know if it is directly tied to fuel economy. I'm not sure if other hybrid manufacturers use a CVT.
[Flywheel] systems were mechanical variants of a hybrid; that is, capturing the energy of braking and storing to use to accelerate the vehicle.
That statement furthers the misconception that hybrids are solely about regenerative braking.
Parent: I didn't say it was nice
Another compounding factor is the loss of wetlands and barrier islands, an area the size of Delaware having been lost since the 1930s, according to the LA Times.
History shows again and again how Nature points out the folly of men. -- Blue Oyster Cult
I was looking for Alan Parsons Project jokes myself ("laser" being in quotes in the article's title).
Rules have nothing to do with it. It's a matter of identification. GGP was confusing the appositive and reflexive uses of a pronoun.
But, since you asked, in that particular sentence the apposition doesn't add any meaning. This isn't always the case. If I say "The king appeared", I am simply making an objective observation. If I say, "The king himself appeared", my use of the appositive suggests that I consider the king's appearance to be an unusual event. But this is a change in connotation, not in denotation. Moreover, the additional subjective information is conveyed, not by the word itself, but by the fact that I chose to insert it.
What additional meaning did you infer from "themselves" in GGP's sentence, compared to my version?
As for dangling pronouns, when will you folks stop trying to turn English into Latin? English IS NOT Latin! None of these silly rules existed for a bunch of British grammarians decided to model English after Latin several centuries ago. This is bogus.
You are replying to my comment but your last paragraph should be addressed to that comment's parent. I never mentioned the dangling pronoun; I did point out that the suggested alternative was awkward.
Latin's rules came about the same way English grammar rules came about. Latin IS NOT Esperanto or Loglan; it's a natural language. The grammar came about naturally. Later, scholars codified that grammar. You wouldn't find centurions correcting graffiti painters in the streets of the Roman Empire, would you?
Besides, if you were using the pronoun reflexively, it would be the object of "correct". In your sentence it is being used appositively, but with an awkward result.
Ack, victim of my own sloppy proofreading. Should be "but not before this magazine ... had used 'Windows 4.0' prominently on their covers".
I remember one of the software magazines (Windows Sources, perhaps) complaining in an editorial during the months leading up to the release along the lines of "Will everybody stop calling it Chicago now -- we all know it will be called Windows 4.0". About a month or two later Microsoft announced the product name, "Windows 95", but not after this magazine (and maybe one or two others) had used it prominently on their covers. Ah well, they wouldn't be the last people to fall for faulty intelligence.
I wonder if the troll was confusing sequencers and synthesizers. A sequencer could substitute for talent but a synth could not.
Yes/Rick Wakeman (Fragile, Close to the Edge, Six Wives of Henry VIII)
Chick Corea (The Leprechaun contains some of the best Moog sounds I've ever heard)
Manfred Mann (Waiter, There's a Yawn in My Ear, from The Roaring Silence)
While many people have mentioned Switched-On Bach, another Walter^H^H^H^H^Hendy Carlos album, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, featuring works by Bach, Scarlatti, and Monteverdi is also worth a listen. Especially for the Scarlatti. I don't know if it's available on CD.
I'm not sure of this one: Did the Alan Parsons Project (the group, not the WMD) use a Moog on I, Robot?
We owe some of the best sounds of progressive music to Bob Moog. He'll be missed but those sounds will live on.
Every item asserted by the above paragraph is untrue. Just an FYI for the casual reader.
I didn't find one untrue statement in gp's paragraph. From the FSF website:
You can use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
If I use some variation of GPL terms in another license, that license is a derivative of the GPL. Thus grandparent is correct in stating that:
It does [allow derivation], actually. -- This assertion is supported by the quoted statement; the derived version must meet the stated restrictions of course but it is still a derivative.
The derived versions must not carry the "GPL" name, though. -- Restates one of the restrictions; GPL refers to GNU so you can't call the modified license "GPL".
Basically, that phrase is there to ensure branding. -- I don't see anything that contradicts this assertion and it certainly is one justification, probably the strongest one.
Otherwise, I could create and release a different "GPL" that could effectively lock people out of some of their rights. -- Yes, if the restrictions weren't there he certainly could do that.
I'm not familiar with the licensing terms for Firefox and I haven't verified gp's statement about that.
I'd say you've misunderestimated by a factor of at least 2.405.
Ahh, bite the wax tadpole!
Of course, Microsoft is not headquartered in California but Google is. Case was filed in Seattle though. IANAL so I don't know how that will turn out.
Hey, I don't agree with the decision either -- I would have liked it if the court had set a standard on "public use". But it isn't as revolutionary as you think it is -- it's really more of a missed opportunity.
I don't think it's possible for that question and its answer to be known simultaneously within the same universe.
our brain does not operate at a fixed clock clock rate, as would be required by digital electronics Never heard of asynchronous logic? I suspect that asynchronous digital logic doesn't come much closer to modeling the brain than synchronous digital logic. But then, what does my brain know about how brains work, anyway?
I always thought it was more of a question of how bright they are, than how big.
Kiki Dee?
...or his Cello Concerto.
Imagine an out-of-focus picture of a point of light. The image will be a fuzzy circle or ring (the latter if the lens is catadioptric).
Now take a picture of an entire scene, this time in focus. If you convolve (mathematical process related to multiplication) the first fuzzy image with this sharp image, you would get an image that looks like you had taken the picture through the original fuzzy lens. It's as if every single pixel in the good image were smudged into an pattern like the first image. The fuzzy circle from the first image is called the convolution kernel.
The corollary of this is, if you use the inverse of the convolution process (deconvolution) on an image taken with the out-of-focus lens, and using the fuzzy circle image as the kernel for the deconvolution, you would get a sharp image.
The trick is that you need to know the correct deconvolution kernel. But for that you only need to photograph a point source (such as a star).
If you couldn't tell, then it must not have worked very well.
...and what's that button marked "Preview" for anyway?
I'm surprised that nobody posted this one yet: This is a 12-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these... Excuse me. Yes? Did you say 'knives'? Rotating knives, yes. Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our tenants? Does that not fit in with your plans? Not really. We asked for a simple block of flats. Oh. I hadn't fully divined your attitude towards the tenants. You see I mainly design slaughterhouses.