Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 November 17

= November 17 =

Colorblindness restrictions
I acknowledge that there are various forms of colorblindness. But could a colorblind person have difficulties distinguishing between a yellow and red traffic light? As well, could it be a potential limitation for future careers such as a graphic designer and pilot? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 01:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes (and between red and green), although shape and position of the lights helps. Yes, it is a potential limitation - Colourblind people can get private pilot licenses in most places, providing they can demonstrate they are not unsafe, but military and commercial aviation generally requires accurate colour vision.  You can read the ICAO opinion on colourblindness here. FiggyBee (talk) 01:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * As for graphic design, I could imagine someone being a just fine designer despite having red/green issues—color is important for design, but in many cases it is not as important as a good eye for proportion and a good sense of creativity. Every once in awhile they'd probably do something accidentally outrageous to the non-colorblind but that wouldn't be that hard to correct for if they had an editor. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 05:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * A LOT depends on which kind of colour blindness you're talking about. You have three types of colour sensor in your eye.  Red, Green and Blue.  Any or all of those could be faulty - and they could either be 'weak' (ie producing a smaller visual response than they should) or absent altogether.  So, for example, you might not be able to see red - or you might see red only weakly.  So you could have Red-missing, Red-weak, Green-missing, Green-weak, Blue-missing, Blue-weak or (very rarely) combinations of those (eg Red-weak, Blue-missing).  There are fancy names for each variety and combination.


 * My son has one of the mildest and most common forms of red/green colourblindness, his green sensors are weak, He tells me that he can easily tell the difference between the colours on a traffic light - and not just by their position.  But he does have some clear restriction in the area of red/yellow/orange/green discrimination.  We only found out that he was colourblind at all because I was nagging him for continually leaving his Nintendo Wii game console in 'standby' (or 'pause') mode instead of turning it off.  The console has one of those tricolour LED's that shows Red when it's plugged in but turned off, orange when it's in 'standby' and green when it's fully on.  It turns out that the orange and the red LED colours were ALMOST indistinguishable to him.  I wondered if he was colourblind and gave him one of the many online colourblindness tests - which he failed (he subsequently had the high school nurse run the same test with a proper calibrated set of tests and got the same result).  I think he has a 'weak' green sensor - so colours that are predominantly red but with small amounts of green differentiating them are hard for him to distinguish.  Somehow that messes up his red/orange perception in LED light but not for traffic lights.  It's a subtle business evidently.


 * While I've definitely heard that being colour blind is a limiting factor in aviation - and a problem for graphic designers, it depends a HECK of a lot on which kind of colourblindness you have. There are about a dozen variations - some more severe than others.   In fact, my son's main passion in life is 3D computer graphics - and he's been turning out excellent work in that field since he was 7 years old.   The fact than neither he nor I could tell that he was colour blind for 16 years - half of which were when his major passion was in an area where colour mattered greatly - means that this is not in any way a limiting factor until you come to being able to turn off your Wii!  The ICAO aviation test mentioned above requires you to distinguish red, green and white - which you can do with the most common forms of colour blindness because white contains blue - so if you are missing or weak with either red or green, your blue sensor will still tell you which one is white.  Similarly, inless you are missing both red and green, you'll easily be able to tell the difference between the red and green lights because one or the other would appear much darker than the other.


 * Actually, this discovery of his problem has been greatly upsetting to him - because he worries that it might limit him in a future career - and since it is such a very minor limitation, I really wish I'd never tested him. We've tried lots of practical tests on the computer - and aside from the official colourblindness tests (the ones with the numbers made out of coloured dots), and red/orange/green LED's - it's impossible to fool him.


 * Incidentally, we figured out a way to fix the Wii problem. We taped a sheet of green plastic over the LED.  That filters out most of the red light so the LED is almost dark when it's showing red, a dim shade of green when it's showing orange and a bright shade of green when it's on.  This is plenty good enough for him to distinguish between the three states.


 * But - as I said, some people are profoundly colour blind - and that an entirely different matter.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 15:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi: The men (and some of the women) in my family "suffer" from colorblindness. You should know that the "red" and "green" lights on a stoplight are not pure red and green. They are orange-red and blue-green. That's so we colorblind people can tell the difference. Colorblind people can learn to notice the small differences in colors that others take for granted. I remember as a child getting flipped out by the horizontal traffic lights in downtown Cincinnati, because it was difficult for me then to tell the red and yellow lights apart without the top-bottom difference. I'm pretty sure you can't be a pilot and be colorblind. My grandfather wanted to join the Air Corps during WWII, but was disallowed because of his colorblindness. It was fortunate -- several friends who did join the Air Corps never came back. My grandfather wound up spending the war repairing tanks in England. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * My grandfather too was shut out of the air force during World War II because they discovered he was red-green colorblind. He ended up driving military trucks. --S.dedalus 02:44, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Must have been before they did serious studies on colorblind people. It turns out that colorblind people make excellent snipers -- disruptive camoflage doesn't work on them. --Carnildo (talk) 06:16, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm colorblind, several optometrists have told me and I've done tests online. They've told me I can't drive a train, and I think they said I can't be a pilot either. I was however a graphic designer, a good one I'd say, and coped just fine. The one job I had I told them I had trouble with certain colours, but in the next job I made a decision not to - and so I had to discretely ask for opinions on certain colour matches. I guess it depends on how it affects you. If you outright can't tell the difference between red and green you might have problems, but for other subtle differences it shouldn't rule you out. On the other hand if you had to get a job mixing colours such as a printer or mixing inks - you would absolutely have to have someone check each mix. But graphic design is a lot more than just using colour, it has to do with visual layout, proportions, sizing, and yes an understanding of which colours work well together and illicit certain responses. Rfwoolf (talk) 16:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Colorblindness might actually be an advantage for someone in an artistic field. For one, a colorblind person has to actually learn facts about color relationships that a normally sighted person can take for granted. This is not unique to colorblind people. I remember reading how when they designed what's now called Quicken Loans Arena, Gordon Gund, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers who had been blind for 25 years, vetoed a proposed orange-and-blue color scheme because he knew it would be harsh on the eye. Gund may have just remembered that from his youth, but I bet he also read about colors and people's reactions to them. The other advantage to being colorblind is that if you can't tell apart the colors, you know another 10% of men won't be able to tell them apart either. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 17:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I have a colour problem but the other way - I can clearly see the difference between different batches of paint or coloured materials. Nearly every room I walk into looks like a patchwork quilt. Is there a medical term for this?83.148.88.37 (talk) 21:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-use of Article
My Questions: ++I have taken an article, of about one page, from the Wikipedia and want to use it for distribution, to my clients as a newsletter (printed copies). I have decided to add the URL Address of the page as a reference at the end of the page. In such a case, am I violating the copyrights law? ++If yes, what is the way out?

Nurture (talk) 10:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically, the terms of the GFDL require that the full text be appended to any documents licensed under it. In practice, however, it's generally acceptable to provide a credit tagline at the end of the article. Type in the article name at Special:Cite for a few potential layouts. If the article includes any pictures, it's probably a good idea to add separate credits for them. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 14:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree - nobody is going to bother you for not including the entire text of the GFDL (a couple of pages) with every copy of a one page article - so long as you clearly state where the article came from, that it is licensed under the GFDL and where the GFDL can be found. It's plenty good enough to say something like:
 * "This article has been reprinted from Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) under the terms of the GFDL (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GFDL)".
 * SteveBaker (talk) 14:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, legally it is not 100% plenty good but practically it is. Legally the GFDL says that no only you have to include the entire text, no matter what size of material you are reproducing, but you have to go through the trouble of indicating which version it is from the article history, a list of its authors, etc. Totally, totally impractical for offline dealings, and IMO it's too bad that Wikipedia didn't dual-license under its own more-free license from the start. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * There has been significant discussion about adopting the GNU Simplified License at the next licence update (which is allowed by the terms of the GFDL). I've not read the thing in detail, but hopefully by the time it moves on from the draft stage it'll've redacted most of the unwieldy aspects of the current licence. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 17:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

ASK A LAWYER. Jon513 (talk) 13:57, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Is there a word for fear of flying ladybugs?
I've been scared of them since I was a tiny kid! MalwareSmarts (talk) 16:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yahoo Answers says it's Coccinellidaephobia, though given that all 6 ghits for that word point to Yahoo Answers, I'm guessing someone made it up by tacking "phobia" on to the latin word for ladybug. It's really a very specific form of entomophobia. - EronTalk 17:06, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Find a computer through it's MAC adress
Is it possible to find a stolen computer when it connects to the internet with its MAC adress? Keria (talk) 18:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure only the router it is on sees the MAC address. So yes, you could, but only if the router it connected to is one which you controlled. And even then, the most you could do is say, "Jinkies, someone has connected my computer to the internets!" and maybe deny them internet access. Maybe if you had your router's IP assignment very well set up you could say which internet outlet it was plugged into in your building, but again, that depends on them using it on YOUR specific router. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 20:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, MAC is a physical-layer thing and this information won't exist in the IP layer. You can only see MAC address on the local network segment.  Also I think it's pretty standard these days that MAC addresses can be easily changed by the end user.  Friday (talk) 20:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, I think the MAC address is specific to the network adapter, not the computer, and it is very easy to replace this (or just add an extra one). Only the address of the adapter you are using to connect to the network will be visible to the rest of the network. 130.88.79.77 (talk) 13:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I have an alternative that might work, though... You could write a programme that automatically starts when the computer is booted, and emails you a copy of the computer's IP address whenever it connects to the internet (of course, this assumes that the computer has not already been stolen, and that its new "owner" will not format or replace the hard disk, or carefully check running programmes or the way any firewalls are set up, or install a new firewall, before connecting to the internet).  You could then perform a DoS attack (it seems like this could be illegal depending on where you live), and you might be able to find the approximate location of the computer (like the town it is in). 130.88.79.77 (talk) 13:41, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

need to verify a name of hospital in Africa
I hope that someone can help me to find out if there are Iwosan clinics in Nigeria. Someone told me that there is a clinic in 7 fola coker street Ijebu ode, Ogun state. Will you please verify this place of address? Am seeking a friend thats there and am not sure if is still there and be of that address too.

thanks,

Kenneth Allen Khalln (talk) 22:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Whichever country you are currently in probably has an international exchange service - and might even be free. You call this number, they then call directory services in Nigeria and with all 3 of you on the line they get the number for you. Of course this service can only confirm an address, you might not be lucky to GET an address by just giving them a name - they are usually only happy to give out telephone numbers and confirm an address. Then once you have the this information, it will cost you to make the call. Rfwoolf (talk) 16:16, 18 November 2007 (UTC)