Hereditary color "blindness" (which can run the gamut from a mild color deficiency to severe color perceptual loss) is most commonly due to defects in the photochemicals in the cone photoreceptors. The milder forms involve shifts in the wavelength that the pigment absorbs the most. The more severe forms involve the functional loss of one photopigment. These disorders are genetic in nature. However, there are also acquired cases of color blindness caused by neuronal damage that is post-receptor, such as in optic nerve disease. Less common is color blindness due to cortical damage, such as achromatopsia.
I'm an Apple supporter (and yes, I use PCs too), but this is just wrong. Apple has incorporated other applications' functionality into their own software, but at least in some cases they bought out the developer's company or hired him. Although in this case they said "send in your resume", they still can easily afford to compensate him and publicly acknowledge his invention. That would have been the right thing to do.
My first computer was a VIC-20. I learned BASIC and assembly language on a VIC-20, then a C-64, then C and 68000 assembly on the Amiga. I remember them all fondly. But I realized that Commodore was doomed when I attended AmigaCon and asked at a Q & A session why the Amiga did not support multiple monitors like the PC or Mac. I was developing medical software for ophthalmology and neurology, and needed to display visual stimuli for the patient on one monitor and electrophysiological data on the other screen. The Commodore representatives laughed at me and said "Why would we want to do anything that the PC or Mac can do?" Indeed. Maybe because they'll be in business in 5 years and you will not with that attitude? This was the ultimate in "not invented here".
Apple may be bundling software, but the difference is that the user is _totally free_ to use competitor's software. I use other browsers, other word processors, and other multimedia software than those supplied by Apple alongside their products. Competitor's software is not crippled. Yet you have no problems defending Microsoft trying to make everybody use only their software. Microsoft was _convicted_ of anti-trust violations in the US and Europe (and is being investigated in other regions too) not because they bundled products, but because they consistently tried to do so in unethicals way that drove competitors out of business.
It is most likely that the optometrist was trying to oversimplify amblyopia for the sake of the patient, and used an unfortunate description that is not accurate. Although amblyopes do tend to have less accurate accommodative systems, this is a secondary (or tertiary) effect of their amblyopia. Amblyopia is a visual cortical disorder characterized by reduced visual acuity, oculomotor anomalies, reduced or absent stereopsis, and (depending upon the etiology the amblyopia) spatil undersampling and aliasing that distorts spatial vision.
Please don't put all optometrists into the same basket, and characterize them all as quacks! Some of the world's leading _scientific_ experts on amblyopia are optometrists with additional Ph.D.'s. Optometrists have been part of multidisciplinary National Eye Institute studies of amblyopia. One of the few research textbooks on amblyopia was written by optometrists. Articles in the premier scientific journal Nature have been written by optometrists on amblyopia. Most optometrists have had courses in the scientific basis for amblyopia and strabismus, as well as binocular visual processing (although, admittedly, the courses have improved vastly in the last 25 years).
I quit my last job due to ethical concerns. My boss was asking me to falsify clinical decisions and had falsified data in a paper submitted to a scientific journal (luckily I knew the editor of the journal and got it rejected). I stayed long enough to keep a promise to my wife to let her finish her degree, then quit even though I had no job offers at the time.
Let me rephrase one thing: When I say that blue is not focused well, I mean that the accommodative (focusing) mechanism of the eye, which changes the power of the lens, does not respond well to blue light. The result is that you're less able to focus (and sustain focus) on blue lights.
The human visual system does not focus as well with blue light. Part of this has to do with the fact that the blue-sensitive photoreceptors are less numerous and tend to absorb light less well. In addition, there are no blue photoreceptors at the center of the fovea, the portion of the eye used for the most critical visual acuity.
Part of the problem with LASIK is that light can be scattered by the cornea (the front of the eye) afterwards. The light that scatters most is in the blue end of the spectrum. The scattered light reduces the contrast fo the image in the eye, and by reducing its contrast, degrades your resolution of its small details.
Not always! I've actually had programs override the system sound level. Imagine my shock when my supposedly muted system came out with a LOUD alert sound in the middle of a program.
I agree. The title is completely misleading. There are one million retinal ganglion cell axons in the optic nerve that would be sectioned and need reconnection in an eye transplant, not to mention the reconnection of the short and long ciliary nerves to innervate the ciliary muscles, etc. Even with recent advances in nerve growth factor and other neuropeptides, this is still beyond current science and more in the realm of science fiction.
As a SlashDot reader AND a Professor at the Southern College of Optometry, I can tell you that my SCO has only a few geeks at it. I'm the only optometrist/scientist/programmer there.
Isn't this post itself a bit racist? Blaming all white people for the wrongful enslavement of Africans? Blaming all Arabs and Jews?
I sympathize with African-Americans, since I've faced racism myself and because the Jewish race itself has roots in slavehood. We remember our roots in slavehood and celebrate our own emancipation every year in the holiday of Passover.
However, my family was still being persecuted in Russia long after the African-American community was emancipated in the US. My family had nothing to do with slavehood and I resent being blamed for it.
One aspect of 3-D displays that people tend to overlook is the increased demand for accurate binocular alignment and accommodative-convergence interplay (that is, the relationship between binocular eye alignment and the focusing of the eyes). Nearpoint tasks such as reading can cause considerable eyestrain if a reader has problems with binocular alignment or focusing, and 3-D displays will only add to the possibility of having such problems. So while some people will be able to use 3-D displays easily, others will do so only with considerable effort or discomfort, while yet others will be unable to do so at all.
Actually, with OS X Server, the Blue Box and a PC emulator, you could run three operating systems on one box.
Right now, Linux has excellent command-line processing, but still needs to make its GUIs, installation and maintenance more user-friendly to gain more widespread use.
If Mac OS X retains both its GUI and command-line processing, it will stand a good chance as consumer-oriented Unix.
When I was a post-doctoral fellow during the late 1980's at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, a scientist named Erich sutter had already developed and employed a on-invasive evoked potential system to allow communication in a completely paralyzed patient. It used nonlinear analysis of the evoked potential to determine where the patient was fixating on a computer screen (which contained an array of words), then fed the selected words into a speech synthesizer.
What's the point of all this "I don't like the Mac, I don't like Windows" crap? EVERY operating system has its strong points and its flaws. Unix is no exception. Let's get off this topic and quit bashing somebody else's favorite computer. If it works for what they need, fine. Instead of bashing the Mac and Windows, why not just look at whatever strengths they do have and make Linux do it better?
Slashdot Mirror
Hereditary color "blindness" (which can run the gamut from a mild color deficiency to severe color perceptual loss) is most commonly due to defects in the photochemicals in the cone photoreceptors. The milder forms involve shifts in the wavelength that the pigment absorbs the most. The more severe forms involve the functional loss of one photopigment. These disorders are genetic in nature. However, there are also acquired cases of color blindness caused by neuronal damage that is post-receptor, such as in optic nerve disease. Less common is color blindness due to cortical damage, such as achromatopsia.
I'm an Apple supporter (and yes, I use PCs too), but this is just wrong. Apple has incorporated other applications' functionality into their own software, but at least in some cases they bought out the developer's company or hired him. Although in this case they said "send in your resume", they still can easily afford to compensate him and publicly acknowledge his invention. That would have been the right thing to do.
Merkwurdigeliebe wrote:
why would it be a negative to fucus on security and SW quality?
"Fucus"? Is this a Freudian slip?
My first computer was a VIC-20. I learned BASIC and assembly language on a VIC-20, then a C-64, then C and 68000 assembly on the Amiga. I remember them all fondly. But I realized that Commodore was doomed when I attended AmigaCon and asked at a Q & A session why the Amiga did not support multiple monitors like the PC or Mac. I was developing medical software for ophthalmology and neurology, and needed to display visual stimuli for the patient on one monitor and electrophysiological data on the other screen. The Commodore representatives laughed at me and said "Why would we want to do anything that the PC or Mac can do?" Indeed. Maybe because they'll be in business in 5 years and you will not with that attitude? This was the ultimate in "not invented here".
Until SP2 comes out, it's still a beta.
Apple may be bundling software, but the difference is that the user is _totally free_ to use competitor's software. I use other browsers, other word processors, and other multimedia software than those supplied by Apple alongside their products. Competitor's software is not crippled. Yet you have no problems defending Microsoft trying to make everybody use only their software. Microsoft was _convicted_ of anti-trust violations in the US and Europe (and is being investigated in other regions too) not because they bundled products, but because they consistently tried to do so in unethicals way that drove competitors out of business.
It is most likely that the optometrist was trying to oversimplify amblyopia for the sake of the patient, and used an unfortunate description that is not accurate. Although amblyopes do tend to have less accurate accommodative systems, this is a secondary (or tertiary) effect of their amblyopia. Amblyopia is a visual cortical disorder characterized by reduced visual acuity, oculomotor anomalies, reduced or absent stereopsis, and (depending upon the etiology the amblyopia) spatil undersampling and aliasing that distorts spatial vision.
Please don't put all optometrists into the same basket, and characterize them all as quacks! Some of the world's leading _scientific_ experts on amblyopia are optometrists with additional Ph.D.'s. Optometrists have been part of multidisciplinary National Eye Institute studies of amblyopia. One of the few research textbooks on amblyopia was written by optometrists. Articles in the premier scientific journal Nature have been written by optometrists on amblyopia. Most optometrists have had courses in the scientific basis for amblyopia and strabismus, as well as binocular visual processing (although, admittedly, the courses have improved vastly in the last 25 years).
No, but you can just throw them into the trash, use another program, and your system will run just fine.
I quit my last job due to ethical concerns. My boss was asking me to falsify clinical decisions and had falsified data in a paper submitted to a scientific journal (luckily I knew the editor of the journal and got it rejected). I stayed long enough to keep a promise to my wife to let her finish her degree, then quit even though I had no job offers at the time.
Let me rephrase one thing: When I say that blue is not focused well, I mean that the accommodative (focusing) mechanism of the eye, which changes the power of the lens, does not respond well to blue light. The result is that you're less able to focus (and sustain focus) on blue lights.
The human visual system does not focus as well with blue light. Part of this has to do with the fact that the blue-sensitive photoreceptors are less numerous and tend to absorb light less well. In addition, there are no blue photoreceptors at the center of the fovea, the portion of the eye used for the most critical visual acuity.
Part of the problem with LASIK is that light can be scattered by the cornea (the front of the eye) afterwards. The light that scatters most is in the blue end of the spectrum. The scattered light reduces the contrast fo the image in the eye, and by reducing its contrast, degrades your resolution of its small details.
Not always! I've actually had programs override the system sound level. Imagine my shock when my supposedly muted system came out with a LOUD alert sound in the middle of a program.
I agree. The title is completely misleading. There are one million retinal ganglion cell axons in the optic nerve that would be sectioned and need reconnection in an eye transplant, not to mention the reconnection of the short and long ciliary nerves to innervate the ciliary muscles, etc. Even with recent advances in nerve growth factor and other neuropeptides, this is still beyond current science and more in the realm of science fiction.
(another vision scientist)
I agree! In 2003, working at a place named SCO is a sure-fire way to be hated on SlashDot. ;-)
As a SlashDot reader AND a Professor at the Southern College of Optometry, I can tell you that my SCO has only a few geeks at it. I'm the only optometrist/scientist/programmer there.
Isn't this post itself a bit racist? Blaming all white people for the wrongful enslavement of Africans? Blaming all Arabs and Jews?
I sympathize with African-Americans, since I've faced racism myself and because the Jewish race itself has roots in slavehood. We remember our roots in slavehood and celebrate our own emancipation every year in the holiday of Passover.
However, my family was still being persecuted in Russia long after the African-American community was emancipated in the US. My family had nothing to do with slavehood and I resent being blamed for it.
Propagating racism is no way to fight racism.
One aspect of 3-D displays that people tend to overlook is the increased demand for accurate binocular alignment and accommodative-convergence interplay (that is, the relationship between binocular eye alignment and the focusing of the eyes). Nearpoint tasks such as reading can cause considerable eyestrain if a reader has problems with binocular alignment or focusing, and 3-D displays will only add to the possibility of having such problems. So while some people will be able to use 3-D displays easily, others will do so only with considerable effort or discomfort, while yet others will be unable to do so at all.
Carmack criticizes the classic Mac OS. IIRC, he was pretty pleased with OS X.
Actually, with OS X Server, the Blue Box and a PC emulator, you could run three operating systems on one box.
Right now, Linux has excellent command-line processing, but still needs to make its GUIs, installation and maintenance more user-friendly to gain more widespread use.
If Mac OS X retains both its GUI and command-line processing, it will stand a good chance as consumer-oriented Unix.
When I was a post-doctoral fellow during the late 1980's at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, a scientist named Erich sutter had already developed and employed a on-invasive evoked potential system to allow communication in a completely paralyzed patient. It used nonlinear analysis of the evoked potential to determine where the patient was fixating on a computer screen (which contained an array of words), then fed the selected words into a speech synthesizer.
What's the point of all this "I don't like the Mac, I don't like Windows" crap? EVERY operating system has its strong points and its flaws. Unix is no exception. Let's get off this topic and quit bashing somebody else's favorite computer. If it works for what they need, fine. Instead of bashing the Mac and Windows, why not just look at whatever strengths they do have and make Linux do it better?