Sorry, friend, but you've spouted complete rubbish. You got the bit about pigment mixing vs light mixing correct, but then you use it completely incorrectly to describe the visual process. First, color vision is a light mixing process. It has to be, because the only stimulus from which to determine color is the color of the light that enters the eye. Thus, the cones (color photoreceptors) in the retina must be sensitive to RGB, not CYM. Second, the color associated with a photoreceptor is the color it's sensitive to, not the color it appears. Thus, the red photoreceptor is sensitive to red, green to green, and blue to blue. If one were to look at them, though, they would probably all look red, because the color vision protein is just one protein out of the many in each photoreceptor. Third, vision is an absorption process, not a reflection process. The absorption process causes a conformal change in a protein (the energy of the photon is used to change the shape of the protein), which is detected and stimulates a neural response. Reflection does not generate any sort of physical change, thus it doesn't make sense for vision to be a reflective process.
A disclaimer: www.jetpress.org is the website of the Journal of Evolution and Technology, published by the World Transhumanist Association. Upon skimming the contents, it's more like a cultural studies journal like Social Text than a scientific journal like Physical Review, so it may or may not be correct about all the scientific details.
Re: Lets get this out of the way
on
20 Years of Virii
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· Score: 2, Informative
People get pedantic insisting that 'data' be used as a plural in English, but the same people never use 'agenda' as a plural.
"Data" is plural. "Datum" is the singular. (2nd declension neuter)
"Agenda", on the hand, is singular. "Agendae" is the plural. (1st declension feminine)
Agreed...I found all the editorializing within the story text to be quite distracting. Hopefully a more objective duplicate story will be posted soon...:-p
I'm not sure if this is the case at Florida State, but I believe at many universities most of the money that the football program brings in stays within the football program, so the argument that football funds the rest of the university is pretty flimsy. In any case, I'm pretty sure that most of the funding for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory comes primarily from grants from the National Science Foundation and other grant-awarding institutions, not from FSU football.:-p
The limitation on building true holographic video systems is bandwidth. The Spatial Imaging Group at MIT's Media Lab has already built two working prototypes of a holographic video display system. The problem is that you need a SGI deskside workstation driving the display in order to get 25x25x25mm images at 20 frames per second. Stereoscopic displays are a much more practical approach to 3D display because they require much less computation, although they lack the coolness factor of a true 3D holographic image floating in space.
You're thinking of a physics for non-majors course at the University of Virginia. The instructor, Louis Bloomfield (author of How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life), used a program to check the final papers for that course for plagarism, and came up with a disturbing number of positive results.
But certainly his liability would be lower for the consequences of his negligence than for the consequences of actions that he takes willfully. A big problem here is that the RIAA assumes that everyone willfully shares copyrighted music, when in fact they may just have been negligent.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with the tuition hike is that it was forced upon the Arizona state universities by budget cuts made by the state legislature, who pretty much did it to see if they could get away with it.
Possibly even in the case of MIT. There is no question that MIT is a good engineering school, but MIT is not the best school for everyone, including some of the U.S.'s brightest budding engineers.
It's pretty much been MIT, Stanford and Berkeley in the top 3 for a while now. Caltech is also up there, usually around #5. Carnegie Mellon has one of the best computer science programs in the U.S., but their programs in traditional engineering disciplines (mechanical, chemical, electrical etc.) are definitely a tier below the top 3. Harvey Mudd and Rose Hulman are ranked seperately because they don't have a doctoral program.
One should keep in mind that U.S. News's ranking metric is "Let's ask a bunch of deans how they would rank these schools in these categories on a scale of 1 to 5." In other words, the rankings aren't as meaningful as people try to make them. Finally, the #1 school isn't necessarily the best school for everyone, and many other factors--financial, social, etc.--should be considered in choosing a college.
If I recall correctly, Arizona has the 2nd or 3rd least expensive in-state tuition in the U.S., so one really shouldn't complain even if (s)he were paying tuition.
It says a great deal about a society that values irrational consumption of alcoholic beverages as a virtue to be sought after.
I think the excesses of college partying reflect more on the irrational attitude towards alcohol that the U.S. has inherited from the Puritans and from Prohibition. It makes no sense that you can be old enough to be conscripted to die for your country, but not old enough to buy a beer. When you try to prohibit people from doing something, they will do it in excess of what they would have done otherwise. Bootlegging and the growth of organized crime proved this during Prohibition, and college partying proves this today.
Early Decision is not as binding as it sounds. I know of people who reneged on their Early Decision admissions to Ivy League schools in order to matriculate elsewhere.
It's pretty true in EE as well. A fair number of movers and shakers graduate from prestigious engineering schools, but correlation should not be mistaken for causation. And I'm glad to hear that some people in the medical profession understand what it takes to be a good physician, because too many premeds seem to think that the most important qualities for an aspiring physician are rankings, MCAT scores, and resume stuffing.
From events like the ACM programming competitions, the Putnam mathematics examination, and the American Solar Challenge, I would feel confident saying that the University of Waterloo could compete with any technical school in the U.S., including MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Berkeley.
You should qualify that statement as #1 among schools without a doctoral program. It not much of a race if you disqualify MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. right off the bat...
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, friend, but you've spouted complete rubbish. You got the bit about pigment mixing vs light mixing correct, but then you use it completely incorrectly to describe the visual process. First, color vision is a light mixing process. It has to be, because the only stimulus from which to determine color is the color of the light that enters the eye. Thus, the cones (color photoreceptors) in the retina must be sensitive to RGB, not CYM. Second, the color associated with a photoreceptor is the color it's sensitive to, not the color it appears. Thus, the red photoreceptor is sensitive to red, green to green, and blue to blue. If one were to look at them, though, they would probably all look red, because the color vision protein is just one protein out of the many in each photoreceptor. Third, vision is an absorption process, not a reflection process. The absorption process causes a conformal change in a protein (the energy of the photon is used to change the shape of the protein), which is detected and stimulates a neural response. Reflection does not generate any sort of physical change, thus it doesn't make sense for vision to be a reflective process.
Depends. I went to college in Tucson, Arizona, which is where all the Ospreys crashed.
If memory serves correctly, it was a mid-80's Japanese car. Does the glove still fit?
A variant I saw in Tucson was a red bumper sticker that said "If this sticker looks blue, you're driving too fast!"
A disclaimer: www.jetpress.org is the website of the Journal of Evolution and Technology, published by the World Transhumanist Association. Upon skimming the contents, it's more like a cultural studies journal like Social Text than a scientific journal like Physical Review, so it may or may not be correct about all the scientific details.
"Agenda", on the hand, is singular. "Agendae" is the plural. (1st declension feminine)
And people say Latin is useless...
Have you read the Register before? It makes Slashdot look like professional journalism... :-p
Agreed...I found all the editorializing within the story text to be quite distracting. Hopefully a more objective duplicate story will be posted soon... :-p
I'm not sure if this is the case at Florida State, but I believe at many universities most of the money that the football program brings in stays within the football program, so the argument that football funds the rest of the university is pretty flimsy. In any case, I'm pretty sure that most of the funding for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory comes primarily from grants from the National Science Foundation and other grant-awarding institutions, not from FSU football. :-p
Christina Aguiliera...meh... :-p
The limitation on building true holographic video systems is bandwidth. The Spatial Imaging Group at MIT's Media Lab has already built two working prototypes of a holographic video display system. The problem is that you need a SGI deskside workstation driving the display in order to get 25x25x25mm images at 20 frames per second. Stereoscopic displays are a much more practical approach to 3D display because they require much less computation, although they lack the coolness factor of a true 3D holographic image floating in space.
You're thinking of a physics for non-majors course at the University of Virginia. The instructor, Louis Bloomfield (author of How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life), used a program to check the final papers for that course for plagarism, and came up with a disturbing number of positive results.
But certainly his liability would be lower for the consequences of his negligence than for the consequences of actions that he takes willfully. A big problem here is that the RIAA assumes that everyone willfully shares copyrighted music, when in fact they may just have been negligent.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with the tuition hike is that it was forced upon the Arizona state universities by budget cuts made by the state legislature, who pretty much did it to see if they could get away with it.
Possibly even in the case of MIT. There is no question that MIT is a good engineering school, but MIT is not the best school for everyone, including some of the U.S.'s brightest budding engineers.
It's pretty much been MIT, Stanford and Berkeley in the top 3 for a while now. Caltech is also up there, usually around #5. Carnegie Mellon has one of the best computer science programs in the U.S., but their programs in traditional engineering disciplines (mechanical, chemical, electrical etc.) are definitely a tier below the top 3. Harvey Mudd and Rose Hulman are ranked seperately because they don't have a doctoral program.
One should keep in mind that U.S. News's ranking metric is "Let's ask a bunch of deans how they would rank these schools in these categories on a scale of 1 to 5." In other words, the rankings aren't as meaningful as people try to make them. Finally, the #1 school isn't necessarily the best school for everyone, and many other factors--financial, social, etc.--should be considered in choosing a college.
Actually, education is really something that you give yourself. School, teachers, etc. contribute, but you do the learning.
If I recall correctly, Arizona has the 2nd or 3rd least expensive in-state tuition in the U.S., so one really shouldn't complain even if (s)he were paying tuition.
Early Decision is not as binding as it sounds. I know of people who reneged on their Early Decision admissions to Ivy League schools in order to matriculate elsewhere.
It's pretty true in EE as well. A fair number of movers and shakers graduate from prestigious engineering schools, but correlation should not be mistaken for causation. And I'm glad to hear that some people in the medical profession understand what it takes to be a good physician, because too many premeds seem to think that the most important qualities for an aspiring physician are rankings, MCAT scores, and resume stuffing.
Actually, I'm an American, and apparently one of the very few who isn't tainted by hubris. :-p
You got me there! :-p
From events like the ACM programming competitions, the Putnam mathematics examination, and the American Solar Challenge, I would feel confident saying that the University of Waterloo could compete with any technical school in the U.S., including MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Berkeley.
You should qualify that statement as #1 among schools without a doctoral program. It not much of a race if you disqualify MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. right off the bat...