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Comment Re:Newton is a classic example (Score 1) 808

despite the fact that the human eye doesn't see it as particularly distinct from its neighbors

Color is culturally based. It's not so much that the human eye doesn't distinguish the color, but that our culture doesn't treat it as a distinct color. For example, Russians have distinct words for light blue and dark blue, segregating them into distinct colors where English speakers tend to just see 'blue' and not distinguish as much on hue.

There have been several studies about how perception is influenced by language. It's not that the eyeball works differently in different cultures, rather that the arbitrary lines our different cultures have between regions of color space determine how we define various colors.

In Newton's case, it's possible that Indigo was a separate, well-defined color region that we've since lost in common usage. The color still exists, we can still distinguish it as unique when placed between it's neighbors, but on it's own we'd probably just call it either blue or purple. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia is wrong about the history of ROY G BIV and Newton's fondness of the number seven, just that language defines our perception of color simply because in English, we have common words for those colors. Seven is pretty arbitrary, but so is three (RGB), four (CMYK), or five (Hexachrome). It all depends on why you're categorizing colors. This isn't even getting into gamuts or color theory. The human eye is based on red, green, and blue receptors, but that's just a physical adaptation to allow us to see all colors in our visible spectrum. We're more sensitive to some colors over others, but there's no reason we couldn't see indigo as a distinct color other than that in our culture it's not all that common to distinguish it as separate. There's no reason there should be six arbitrary colors in the rainbow rather than seven, eight, ten, or twenty.

Take teal, for instance, another rarely-used color. Some people will call it blue, others green. Still others will just call it teal. Our language doesn't change the color itself, just how we categorize it.

The idea that there are only seven distinct colors (or any arbitrary number) is silly when you take language out of it and just apply numerical values to colors. What color is #fc0? Yellow? Orange? Orangish-yellow? What is the exact wavelength of 'red'? What color is at 450nm? (Hint: it's somewhere between yellow and green). The seven traditional colors of the rainbow are all about 20-40 nm apart except yellow and green, and red and orange. There really should be a color in between, and in some cultures there are.

Comment Re:what about packet loss? (Score 1) 515

I wasn't targeting anything, just pointing out what the OP said. You can dispute his data, but it sounded to me that for the exact same machine (with the only difference being the OS), Vista had no packet loss and Ubuntu did. I don't have a horse in the race so I don't care either way, but from other posts in this thread it sounds like other people are experiencing this problem as well. If you are correct about a 'ropey' driver, then perhaps the stock Ubuntu driver for those particular cards is ropey and should be updated.

Comment Re:what about packet loss? (Score 1) 515

You've either got a weird sense of humor or you didn't understand that the GP wasn't judging either Vista or Ubuntu as an OS, but that compared to Vista's 0% packet loss (which is fine), Ubuntu's 95% packet loss sucks big time. Moreover, GP never said anything disparaging about Vista, which you imply.

If I've missed the joke, please explain it accompanied by *whoosh* noises.

Comment Re:I worked 9/80 for 4 summers (Score 1) 1055

A long time ago I worked 4/40 but the days off were staggered Monday/Friday such that every other weekend was a four-day weekend:

M-T-W-Th + four day vacation + T-W-Th-F + regular weekend

Knowing that I would only ever work four days in a row made it easier to get through the week, and having four days off in a row gave me plenty of time to nap. I really liked that schedule.

Comment Re:stupid question but..... (Score 1) 563

This brings up the question of who controls the data in those medical files, me, my doctor, or the government? What if there were erroneous data in my medical file, from either incompetence, maliciousness, or outright identity theft? I'd want the process to be easier for me to manage than, say, expunging damaging erroneous information from my credit history.

Comment Re:What natural setting? (Score 1) 439

In the wilderness you can rely on your ears and even your nose to help alert you to danger. In the city the only thing you got are your eyes. and that does in fact stress out the brain because it no longer has any ability to spread around the processing.

I rely on my ears in the city all the time to let me know where cars are while I'm biking in the street. Ears are almost as effective as a rear-view mirror in city traffic. Moreover, why would only using your eyes to alert you to danger stress the brain? I don't buy your 'spread around the processing' argument--if that were true blind or deaf people should be more stressed out by their missing sense and that's just not the case. If you're in a dangerous environment, you will feel stress. The question is, do people really see a city street as all that dangerous? I don't.

Plus Humans are not Herd creatures, and we honestly are uncomfortable in a herd.

Just because you're agoraphobic and/or an extreme introvert doesn't mean everyone else is too. Besides, the fossil record says that humans are group animals.

most of my "AHA!" moments are when I am out in the wild

Most of my 'AHA' moments occur when I've been working on a problem intensely and then take a walk for five minutes. That usually allows me to attack the problem from a different direction by thinking about other things.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy being in nature to relax, but the reason I'm relaxing is because I'm not stressed out about work and other problems of daily life, not because I somehow belong in the woods instead of the city. I can also relax by hanging out with my family and friends at a party.

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