Oh, I totally agree. Humans are pretty substantially color challenged even among the vertebrates as there are other species like turtle, and even fish that have much more sophisticated retinas than humans.
I'm truly confused as to why such a feature would evolve with seemingly no benefit.
Color vision is a distinct evolutionary advantage in a number of settings. As I said before however, regular mosquitos have some form of color vision with two photopigments. Bees have three photopigments that are tuned up into the UV portion of the spectrum so they can better identify pollinating flowers. For mosquitos, perhaps a little color vision would help them to better identify easy meals like pink apes rather than tougher meals like animals with lots of hair....
Regular mosquito species are dichromats. In other words, all mosquitos, like many insects that I know of have color vision. Some insects like bees are actually trichromats (like humans), but have their photopigments tuned higher up in the spectrum. So, super mosquitos having color vision is no different than regular mosquitos, unless they have developed a third chromophore which the article does not state.
Neuroscientists in the epilepsy and learning and memory communities have known for years about the nervous systems ability to rewire and remodel in response to deafferentation. In fact, the reluctance to believe in this by other members of the neuroscience community (vision community) led to some two decades of misunderstanding of retinal degenerative diseases until we came along and demonstrated conclusively in the retina that remodeling also occurs. The deal is that neurons need input. They either get it via glutamatergic signaling or calcium mediated signaling in normal circumstances. When those signaling mechanisms are disturbed, neurons either rewire seeking additional input, or they die.
Ya, I still reminisce about wire-frame FlightSim as well. Ya, playing that game on the AppleII, MicroSoft was the bomb.
More like subLOGIC or Bruce Artwick was the bomb. As I recall, Flight Simulator was originally created by Bruce Artwick nee subLOGIC. The version of Flight Sim I played on my Apple ][ was a subLOGIC product and I believe Microsoft purchased it from subLOGIC for the same reason they bought Bungie. They wanted Flight Sim to show off the new graphics capabilities of the new IBM PCs much like they wanted Halo to show off the X-Box. I don't know if the subsequent Bruce Artwick Organization was a formal/informal subsidiary of Microsoft or if it was a consulting gig, but Bruce stayed on to do Flight Sim for some time. Anybody know where he is/what he is doing?
Yeah, you know what would be *funny*? If Microsoft licensed OS X.......
No, seriously..... OS X runs on Intel now, and Apple is working hard on compatibility layers for multiple OSs and it is the slickest, most stable, most beautiful mainstream OS out there right now. It would be especially funny as back some years under Gil Amelio, Apple actually looked at licensing Win NT for the new OS when Copeland was in horrible shape. Thank gawd that never happened or Apple would be where SGI is now (or worse).
Hey, you know that Microsoft has used Apple as their R&D arm for years now, right? Why not just formalize it?:-)
In all fairness, I am not saying that Microsoft can't do it themselves, I'd just like to see a return to the good 'ol days when Microsoft made good, solid applications and were not trying to be all things to all people. They used to you know...... I am thinking of the early versions of Excel (Multiplan) and Word on the first Macintoshes along with Microsoft MacEnhancer, Chart and Basic.
Although one has to wonder what is going on when Microsoft's programmer team for Windows is in the several-thousands and Apple's development team for OS X is around 300.
Furthermore, if you know what you are doing, you can influence the polygraph any way you want it (trust me, I teach neurophysiology to medical students). There are other methods of lie detection that are harder to spoof such as the P300 method (cortical evoked potential at 300ms delay in normal persons signifying recognition) being investigated, but even this method has it's problems in that you cannot discriminate why someone may elicit a P300. I would also suspect that interpretation of fMRIs can also be confused by someone who "knows" how to lie. The trick is to avoid delivering "tells" that are physiologic manifestations of deception and build yourself a reality behind the lie. I've said it before, but the truth is that there is no foundation in physiology that mandates that one has to reveal anything when stating something that is not in fact, the truth. A good liar will be able to deceive the device and more importantly, the interpreter of the device because they are able to LIVE the lie.
From your linked website: If SM4 becomes a reality, EVA astronauts would perform a number of tasks not only to keep Hubble operational until at least 2013, but to expand greatly the scientific power of the telescope.
It is my understanding that funding for this mission is in doubt. The White House already cut funding for this servicing mission once back in 2005 and NASA was able to find the impetus to recover, but with the current NASA budget, I am being told by friends at JPL that it is not looking good. Of course the team is still making plans just in case, but they are *very* worried.
Hubble servicing project (tentatively STS-125) scheduled for 2008, as per Wikipedia.
That reference came from a Washington Post article in April, 2005. Since that time, NASA has had their budget cut for almost all science missions that have nothing to do with putting man on Mars.
But don't let that get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed, nonsensical political rant.
There was nothing in my post that was not factually based. The reality is that given the budget management of the nation, there is simply not enough money to do basic science missions if we send people to Mars.
Gee, too bad the Bush administration cancelled all maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, dooming it to a slow death. Of course this whole science thing is overrated, right? In all honesty though, there simply is not enough money to take care of all of the costs given that the Bush administration wants to send men to Mars to the detriment of many, many science missions at NASA.
It's not just college students. No, the iPod has absolutely become a phenomenon that I was thinking was perhaps restricted to college students and those of us Apple geeks that were early adopters (I had an iTunes music server made out of an old Powerbook as soon as they released iTunes). However, my thinking has essentially been completely corrected with all the travel I was doing over the past year giving talks and such. On every trip, I saw white earbuds connected to iPods and just last week on the Washington, D.C. metro subway, I counted twenty people in my car alone coming back from the Pentagon who were using iPods of various types, three people with Powerbooks/MacBook Pros and two people with brand new Macbooks. It was amazing and given the performance of the stock market over the past couple of weeks, made me feel much better about the shares of AAPL that I purchased.
So, my question is fundamentally..........WHY? Other than to simply start solidifying platform specific requirements for websites and other such nonsense, i see no compelling reason why we should even give this a second glance. Besides, Microsoft does know that compression algorithms already present in JPEG can go further than they typically do resulting in smaller, yet more distorted images just like their "Microsoft format" JPEG, although I will allow that some of their approach is a bit more flexible than the current JPEG standard.
But the fundamental issue is that if Microsoft was being truly open and supportive of commonly used standards, this compression format would not require any click through agreement whatsoever to implement and would not require Windows Media Photo.
Steven Wells, quoted in the article as saying "Licensing can kill this" is absolutely correct.
I'm not against all consumption, or even against all conspicuous consumption, but when it gets to the point where there's no longer even any pretext I think it shows a lack of character.
Then you should not look into the latest retirement package of the CEO of Exxon. He received a $400 Million package that works out to what...... over $1,095,000/day over the past year?
Rather than reference the classic movie starring Sydney Poitier, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, I imagine this would be a more appropriate dialogue.
Rove: "Sir, Hu is going to be attending a dinner at one of your biggest campaign contributors houses, Mr. Bill Gates."
Bush: "Who?"
Rove: "Yessir, Hu."
Bush: "No, I'm asking you..... Who's coming to the US to have dinner with Geeky Gates?"
Rove: "That's right sir, Hu."
Bush: "...............Daggummit Turd Blossom! I'm asking you who is coming to the US to have dinner with Geeky Gates?"
People who have no idea HOW SOMETHING WORKS, are no longer allowed to use Slashdot as an outlet for their ignorant ranting.
You do have an ID in the mid 600000 range, so you have not been around here long, have you? Slashdot is one of the biggest rantspaces on the Internet. That said, I understand exactly how the process works as explained below.
Those domains displaying domain parking pages are OWNED. That means someone exchanged goods, services, or currency for property. The property was the registration of the domain name. Still with me?
OK, that is perfectly understandable. Do you have any idea of how these companies "OWN" these domain names? Of course you do as you are trying to use/justify this same model to make money for yourself. For others here that may not know, they buy them up in bulk and find any and all possible relevant combinations of names in the hopes that someone will find a need for that name and then exchange again, more money to buy that domain name at a later date. Simple parasitic business with no real contribution to anything other than lining their own pockets.
1. After registering a domain, your nameservers typically default to some that the registrar provides.
Yes, and that drives more revenue to the domain name registrar who can then run statistics on how much traffic that name gets which then allows them to "valuate" that domain name for cost increases for ownership.
2. These at-the-moment "unused" domains, which number in the millions, get between a little and a LOT of traffic that would otherwise go nowhere.
See above explanation to 1.
3. An enterprising registrar sees this as an opportunity for offsetting costs, and profit (see: capitalism).
Yes, yes.... capitalism. I'm all for it, but hopefully that capitalism actually does something that contributes to society.
1. Someone registers a domain, and puts a program like the aforementioned on it to drive revenue - either while developing a site for it, or they simply are doing so well with it that it is "maximized". (Lingerei.com is an example)
Or.... statistically more likely and factually born out by the evidence, they simply sit on the domain and let it lie fallow until someone comes along that wants to buy it.
Well, if you really are willing to hand over the $1200, then that would be funny. It might be even funnier if you posted as someone other than an anonymous coward. As it is, it's a troll, but here, I'll rescue you and make it funny.... someonewhogivesashit.com isalready registered to someone in the UK (go figure).:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I totally agree. Humans are pretty substantially color challenged even among the vertebrates as there are other species like turtle, and even fish that have much more sophisticated retinas than humans.
Do y'all eat a potatoe with your dinner over there, too? :)
Funny....., but no. Dan's just illiterate along with a few other choice individuals currently in government.
Reference please? Because my publication reference book sitting here tells me that the UK spelling of "mosquitoe" is acceptable.
It is? Wonder why I've been buying Mosquito repellent in England then (for a quick trip abroad).
Look on the container..... Where is it made? My understanding is that most repellent (with DEET) is made in the US.
Indeed. So Quayle must have been using the British spelling of "tomato" as well.
:-)
I thought that was potato? At any rate, some Americans are *affected* like that.
I'm truly confused as to why such a feature would evolve with seemingly no benefit.
Color vision is a distinct evolutionary advantage in a number of settings. As I said before however, regular mosquitos have some form of color vision with two photopigments. Bees have three photopigments that are tuned up into the UV portion of the spectrum so they can better identify pollinating flowers. For mosquitos, perhaps a little color vision would help them to better identify easy meals like pink apes rather than tougher meals like animals with lots of hair....
Did Dan Quayle write this summary?
As much as I would like to make fun of Quayle, mosquitoe is the British spelling much like colour is the British spelling of color.
Regular mosquito species are dichromats. In other words, all mosquitos, like many insects that I know of have color vision. Some insects like bees are actually trichromats (like humans), but have their photopigments tuned higher up in the spectrum. So, super mosquitos having color vision is no different than regular mosquitos, unless they have developed a third chromophore which the article does not state.
Are there any potential ways to accelerate the rewiring process?
:-)
Yes, there are and I also believe that there are ways to take advantage of and manipulate the process....
You can see a CT image of Terri's brain taken in 1996 here. Scroll to the bottom.
You are right in that Terri's case was substantially different.
Neuroscientists in the epilepsy and learning and memory communities have known for years about the nervous systems ability to rewire and remodel in response to deafferentation. In fact, the reluctance to believe in this by other members of the neuroscience community (vision community) led to some two decades of misunderstanding of retinal degenerative diseases until we came along and demonstrated conclusively in the retina that remodeling also occurs. The deal is that neurons need input. They either get it via glutamatergic signaling or calcium mediated signaling in normal circumstances. When those signaling mechanisms are disturbed, neurons either rewire seeking additional input, or they die.
Ya, I still reminisce about wire-frame FlightSim as well. Ya, playing that game on the AppleII, MicroSoft was the bomb.
More like subLOGIC or Bruce Artwick was the bomb. As I recall, Flight Simulator was originally created by Bruce Artwick nee subLOGIC. The version of Flight Sim I played on my Apple ][ was a subLOGIC product and I believe Microsoft purchased it from subLOGIC for the same reason they bought Bungie. They wanted Flight Sim to show off the new graphics capabilities of the new IBM PCs much like they wanted Halo to show off the X-Box. I don't know if the subsequent Bruce Artwick Organization was a formal/informal subsidiary of Microsoft or if it was a consulting gig, but Bruce stayed on to do Flight Sim for some time. Anybody know where he is/what he is doing?
Yeah, you know what would be *funny*? If Microsoft licensed OS X.......
:-)
No, seriously..... OS X runs on Intel now, and Apple is working hard on compatibility layers for multiple OSs and it is the slickest, most stable, most beautiful mainstream OS out there right now. It would be especially funny as back some years under Gil Amelio, Apple actually looked at licensing Win NT for the new OS when Copeland was in horrible shape. Thank gawd that never happened or Apple would be where SGI is now (or worse).
Hey, you know that Microsoft has used Apple as their R&D arm for years now, right? Why not just formalize it?
In all fairness, I am not saying that Microsoft can't do it themselves, I'd just like to see a return to the good 'ol days when Microsoft made good, solid applications and were not trying to be all things to all people. They used to you know...... I am thinking of the early versions of Excel (Multiplan) and Word on the first Macintoshes along with Microsoft MacEnhancer, Chart and Basic.
Although one has to wonder what is going on when Microsoft's programmer team for Windows is in the several-thousands and Apple's development team for OS X is around 300.
Furthermore, if you know what you are doing, you can influence the polygraph any way you want it (trust me, I teach neurophysiology to medical students). There are other methods of lie detection that are harder to spoof such as the P300 method (cortical evoked potential at 300ms delay in normal persons signifying recognition) being investigated, but even this method has it's problems in that you cannot discriminate why someone may elicit a P300. I would also suspect that interpretation of fMRIs can also be confused by someone who "knows" how to lie. The trick is to avoid delivering "tells" that are physiologic manifestations of deception and build yourself a reality behind the lie. I've said it before, but the truth is that there is no foundation in physiology that mandates that one has to reveal anything when stating something that is not in fact, the truth. A good liar will be able to deceive the device and more importantly, the interpreter of the device because they are able to LIVE the lie.
From your linked website: If SM4 becomes a reality, EVA astronauts would perform a number of tasks not only to keep Hubble operational until at least 2013, but to expand greatly the scientific power of the telescope.
It is my understanding that funding for this mission is in doubt. The White House already cut funding for this servicing mission once back in 2005 and NASA was able to find the impetus to recover, but with the current NASA budget, I am being told by friends at JPL that it is not looking good. Of course the team is still making plans just in case, but they are *very* worried.
Hubble servicing project (tentatively STS-125) scheduled for 2008, as per Wikipedia.
That reference came from a Washington Post article in April, 2005. Since that time, NASA has had their budget cut for almost all science missions that have nothing to do with putting man on Mars.
But don't let that get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed, nonsensical political rant.
There was nothing in my post that was not factually based. The reality is that given the budget management of the nation, there is simply not enough money to do basic science missions if we send people to Mars.
Gee, too bad the Bush administration cancelled all maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, dooming it to a slow death. Of course this whole science thing is overrated, right? In all honesty though, there simply is not enough money to take care of all of the costs given that the Bush administration wants to send men to Mars to the detriment of many, many science missions at NASA.
It's not just college students. No, the iPod has absolutely become a phenomenon that I was thinking was perhaps restricted to college students and those of us Apple geeks that were early adopters (I had an iTunes music server made out of an old Powerbook as soon as they released iTunes). However, my thinking has essentially been completely corrected with all the travel I was doing over the past year giving talks and such. On every trip, I saw white earbuds connected to iPods and just last week on the Washington, D.C. metro subway, I counted twenty people in my car alone coming back from the Pentagon who were using iPods of various types, three people with Powerbooks/MacBook Pros and two people with brand new Macbooks. It was amazing and given the performance of the stock market over the past couple of weeks, made me feel much better about the shares of AAPL that I purchased.
So, my question is fundamentally..........WHY? Other than to simply start solidifying platform specific requirements for websites and other such nonsense, i see no compelling reason why we should even give this a second glance. Besides, Microsoft does know that compression algorithms already present in JPEG can go further than they typically do resulting in smaller, yet more distorted images just like their "Microsoft format" JPEG, although I will allow that some of their approach is a bit more flexible than the current JPEG standard.
But the fundamental issue is that if Microsoft was being truly open and supportive of commonly used standards, this compression format would not require any click through agreement whatsoever to implement and would not require Windows Media Photo.
Steven Wells, quoted in the article as saying "Licensing can kill this" is absolutely correct.
Or another one of my faves: "Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
B. Banzai
Quotes:
"Back off man!...... I'm a scientist".
or....
"Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are. "
I'm not against all consumption, or even against all conspicuous consumption, but when it gets to the point where there's no longer even any pretext I think it shows a lack of character.
Then you should not look into the latest retirement package of the CEO of Exxon. He received a $400 Million package that works out to what...... over $1,095,000/day over the past year?
Rather than reference the classic movie starring Sydney Poitier, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, I imagine this would be a more appropriate dialogue.
Rove: "Sir, Hu is going to be attending a dinner at one of your biggest campaign contributors houses, Mr. Bill Gates."
Bush: "Who?"
Rove: "Yessir, Hu."
Bush: "No, I'm asking you..... Who's coming to the US to have dinner with Geeky Gates?"
Rove: "That's right sir, Hu."
Bush: "...............Daggummit Turd Blossom! I'm asking you who is coming to the US to have dinner with Geeky Gates?"
Ad nauseum
Okay. New rule
No.... No new rules. We have enough, thanks.
People who have no idea HOW SOMETHING WORKS, are no longer allowed to use Slashdot as an outlet for their ignorant ranting.
You do have an ID in the mid 600000 range, so you have not been around here long, have you? Slashdot is one of the biggest rantspaces on the Internet. That said, I understand exactly how the process works as explained below.
Those domains displaying domain parking pages are OWNED. That means someone exchanged goods, services, or currency for property. The property was the registration of the domain name. Still with me?
OK, that is perfectly understandable. Do you have any idea of how these companies "OWN" these domain names? Of course you do as you are trying to use/justify this same model to make money for yourself. For others here that may not know, they buy them up in bulk and find any and all possible relevant combinations of names in the hopes that someone will find a need for that name and then exchange again, more money to buy that domain name at a later date. Simple parasitic business with no real contribution to anything other than lining their own pockets.
1. After registering a domain, your nameservers typically default to some that the registrar provides.
Yes, and that drives more revenue to the domain name registrar who can then run statistics on how much traffic that name gets which then allows them to "valuate" that domain name for cost increases for ownership.
2. These at-the-moment "unused" domains, which number in the millions, get between a little and a LOT of traffic that would otherwise go nowhere.
See above explanation to 1.
3. An enterprising registrar sees this as an opportunity for offsetting costs, and profit (see: capitalism).
Yes, yes.... capitalism. I'm all for it, but hopefully that capitalism actually does something that contributes to society.
1. Someone registers a domain, and puts a program like the aforementioned on it to drive revenue - either while developing a site for it, or they simply are doing so well with it that it is "maximized". (Lingerei.com is an example)
Or.... statistically more likely and factually born out by the evidence, they simply sit on the domain and let it lie fallow until someone comes along that wants to buy it.
Here's $1200. Go buy someonewhogivesashit.com.
:-)
Well, if you really are willing to hand over the $1200, then that would be funny. It might be even funnier if you posted as someone other than an anonymous coward. As it is, it's a troll, but here, I'll rescue you and make it funny.... someonewhogivesashit.com is already registered to someone in the UK (go figure).