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Comment Re:People with artificial lenses can already see U (Score 5, Interesting) 137

Turns out the biological lens of your eye blocks UV light, but if you get an artificial lens, your retinas can register UV light.

There's some natural variation....

This has been understood for some time. As others have mentioned, various military orgs have used teams with varied color vision as a way of "seeing through" camouflage. Biologists have suggested that the variety in human color vision is adaptive, giving our hunting ancestors' teams an improved chance of spotting spotting prey against various backgrounds, and the addition of dogs (with their very different color vision from ours) improved this teamwork. This is all hypothetical, though, since (as far as I know) it hasn't actually been tested scientifically.

Back in high school (in the 60s), I had a science teacher who did a good illustration of it all. He made the usual demo of a spectrum using a prism, on a sheet of white paper. Then he had students come up and mark the visible ends of the spectrum, covering up each student's marks with another sheet of paper before the next student made their marks. The result was two columns of dots that didn't line up at all; their variants was around 10% of the width of the spectrum. I'd made marks that I could identify, and saw that my UV mark was right at the average point, while my IR mark was one of the farthest out. This explained some things I'd already noticed about the ways that different people saw colors.

This has been known to the photography industry since color film was first produced. Different varieties of film (and now CCDs) have different sensitivities, and different photographers have different preferences for brands of film based on this.

One of my funny personal anecdotes on the topic was once (in Jr High, as I recall), I asked some visitors why the front-left panel of their car was a different color than the rest of the car. They gave me a funny look, then said the car was all black, which everyone else present agreed with. I objected that only that one panel was black; the rest of the car was a deep red. This got me more funny looks, and the fellow who owned the car said that the car had been in a minor accident that damaged the front-left panel, so it was replaced. After that, my family thought I had something called "black-red color blindness" (which is odd, because I was actually the only one without that defect ;-). I was taken to an optometrist, who verified the "condition", but assured my parents that it wasn't a significant problem, and didn't need treating. Actually, there was a simple treatment: glasses that block near-IR light, and I've accidentally got several sunglasses that do just that, making for oddly muted reds.

As I got more into photography, I eventually noticed that my eyes have slightly different color vision, with things looking slightly bluer in the left eye and slightly redder in the right eye. This seems to be extremely common, actually, though most people don't notice it until it's mentioned and they start trying to spot it in different lighting condition. (Hint: It's often easier to spot in lower-light conditions, and difficult in full sunlight.)

Comment Re:Really Big Deal (Score 1) 78

I think it would actually have gone much harder for SpaceX if a F9 had exploded before Antares. Orbital is not going anywhere and will get another chance to send their payload to the Space Station. The investors in SpaceX aren't going to be flighty, and neither Air Force nor NASA are going to close the game because of an explosion, given their history.

ULA doesn't have much chance to use an explosion to their benefit without dredging up the status of their Russian engines, the multiple Delta explosions and the old Atlas one.

Comment Re:Wouldn't be a problem for Shuttle or DreamChase (Score 1) 78

Why fly like an airplane when your mission is only to get to the ground in a soft landing? It makes the spacecraft more complicated. And it's no bargain if you have an airplane-like craft with no go-around capability like the Space Shuttle.

No building have room for elevators if they needed runways.

Comment Re:Really Big Deal (Score 4, Insightful) 78

Please come down from whatever overheated state you're running. He did address what you wrote.

Yes, there can be unknowns. Fixing that sort of stuff is how we got from the Wright Flier to the 747.

What I don't think is likely is that the first stage will come down and they will find out sorry, there's space-rot we didn't know about before and reusability just isn't a possibility. Especially after lots of experience with the Space Shuttle.

Comment Really Big Deal (Score 5, Insightful) 78

If ULA has the slightest bit of sense they will announce on Monday that they are pursuing re-usability. But the last I heard was that they would pursue cheaper disposable elements.

If SpaceX actually lands on the barge and flies the first stage to orbit again it's a really big deal, because it radically changes the economics of getting to space. No matter what the payload is for this demonstration. I don't know if they would get that far with this first stage, but no doubt with a later one.

Comment It's Really Radio! (Score 4, Informative) 106

DSL sends radio frequencies over twisted pair. Lots of carriers on lots of different frequencies. Radio stations actually interfere with it, for this reason some DSL systems are known to perform better in the daytime! DSL also puts out broadband radio noise.

Coaxial cable leaks too. When I lived on Long Island, I used to be able to receive it with an antenna! But it generally leaks less.

Fiber to the home is a much better option, but many locales are not being built out for it and will never be. Where I live we have ATT fiber to the neighborhood, and the last 1000 feet are copper. And it's slower than coaxial cable.

Comment Re:LEO is Not Forever (Score 1) 49

Yes. And there is a photo of a 25-year-old guy holding a light aluminum frame that you can use to make a "satellite". Why is he not photographed watching a launch? Because he hasn't gotten any launched yet.

Why is his radio using the AX.25 protocol with G3RUH modem, which tends to fail as a satellite link, rather than Karn's more recent satellite modem which can stand long fades as your satellite tumbles and its antenna points away from Earth? He and "RadioBro" don't seem to know better.

Why don't they tell you that you'll need your ham license, when the frequencies the radio is sold for obviously would require that?

So, a lot of stuff not real yet. But perfect fodder for a fluffy "innovator" story.

Comment LEO is Not Forever (Score 4, Insightful) 49

Note that most small satellites are launched into low Earth orbit and that the orbit decays quickly. There is not a continuing issue of space junk for such payloads, nor do they cross the Van Allen radiation belts so rad-hardness is not as much of an issue.

It'll be very nice when we can launch one for $30K, but that day is not here. When I see AMSAT getting launches at that price, I will believe it.

Comment Re:Yes, it's free. Also, the patent system sucks (Score 1) 198

Explicit language might modify what would otherwise be there only by an implicit doctrine.

In general, a licensor can modify their own terms. So, if you are using the GPL on software to which you hold the copyright, and you add some sort of exception, it applies. You can't do it to other people's software.

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