Over the course of several generations, segments of ancestral DNA get shuffled so that individuals have varying sequences. Some of these segments, however, that haven't been reshuffled are called haplotypes. If a group of individuals shares long haplotypes, that means the sequence arose relatively recently in our human ancestors. The DNA sequence didn't have enough time to get mixed up.

"What they were able to show is that the people who have blue eyes in Denmark, as far as Jordan, these people all have this same haplotype, they all have exactly the same gene changes that are all linked to this one mutation that makes eyes blue," Hawks said in a telephone interview.

It is pretty wicked to think that this all came down to one person who 'switched' and proliferated from that point.

Also that first person (Blue Eyes - Case 0) must have really got a lot of action on those snowy winter nights.

Scientists find that blue-eyed individuals have a single, common ancestor  
 

Season 4 begins tonight.  I am pumped.

Over the course of the past few hours I have been slowly but surely making progress on updating a few XNA 1.0 projects to XNA 2.0.  I ran into a few problems, so here are my findings in case anyone searches on the net and comes across this page.

Problem #1 - Getting XNA Game Templates to show up on Visual Studio 2005 (not express):

This was actually quite obvious, once I really thought about it, but worth mentioning anyways.  The basic starter kits that come with XNA 1.0 are not upgraded to 2.0 so far from what I have found.  One thing that threw me off was that when I first installed XNA 2.0 and opened up Visual Studio I expected that the Marblets/Racing game Starter Kits from 1.0 were upgraded also, so I immediately opened VS2005 to start a fresh project up to play around with with Marblets.   Unfortunately whenever I tried to start a new project up with any of these templates from 1.0 I was met with this error:

After searching around the net for awhile, I started to check to verify that all my other project types were still present on the VS2005 selection screen and I discovered this:

Even though the 1.0 templates exist on the selection page now of VS2K5 (remember previous to 2.0 you could not use Visual Studio [non-Express] without some hax) I was never able to get them open.  There is probably a way to edit the solution files to accommodate for this (if you know, please drop me a comment).  So don't try to open those 1.0 kits in VS2K5, even though they are options, start with the ones specifically set aside for 2.0 in the submenu under C#.  I have my IDE set as C# by default, so for other langs, they will probably be under each heading accordingly.

Problem #2: Could not connect to the Xbox 360 from Visual Studio for project deployment.

This one took me awhile to figure out also.  First off, if you are coming from XNA 1.0 and are trying to use the old method of generating keys with the old 360 launcher app, forget it.  I spent a good 45 mins trying to generate a key with the old Xbox 360 XNA Game application only to FINALLY realize, that there is a new Game Launcher Application that needs to be downloaded from Xbox Live Marketplace to sync any XNA 2.0 IDE's and the 360.  I will say that with this new application, they have made things a lot easier on deployment.  As soon as you start this app on the 360 it automatically provides you with a GUID key that you can enter into the IDE (Express or Vis Studio Standard+)  for syncing.  

 A few other hints for people having trouble connecting for game deployment from PC to 360:

 1.) No matter what the documentation says, I was unable to ping the 360 from my dev machine.  I never received a response back and I don't think the 360 is setup to respond to one .  Here is a neat trick though, if you have the most recent UI on the 360, go to the Settings Blade and click on Network.  You will see a green yellow UI element in the bottom corner for activity.  Whenever I would ping my 360's IP from my dev box I would see the Activity (Yellow) light go off.  I am pretty sure they are in step with each other, although I didn't really search around to see if it was documented.   Also, if you have a computer setup with an UPnP software (like Orb, Microsoft Media Center, etc) and can connect to it from the 360's media center I would say that you can also use that as verification that the two systems can at least see each other.

 2.)  Make sure the following ports are open :

Incoming UDP :  3825 / 3835

Outgoing UDP: 1000

Outgoing TCP: 1001

I believe these are the ports at which the 360 needs to verify your XNA memberclub status before it even attempts to connect to your local computer for deployment of applications. 

3.) Make sure you wrote down (or double check your typing) your sync guid correctly.  I had to create 3 of them before I got it right. 0 (Zero) looks like O (Vowel) and 1 (#) looks very familiar to I (Letter) especially on small TV screens.

4.)  Like I mentioned above, The downloaded 360 Interface for Launching/Syncing that I used in XNA 1.0 DID NOT work for me with 2.0 syncing.  You need to download the new Launch/Sync App from Xbox Live Marketplace (Free to XNA Devs).

I will be posting a lot more on my XNA Development, as I start to get some of my game ideas more fleshed out.  I have heard some interesting rumors about some announcements at GDC this year, and if even 10% of it is true, I can't wait. 

Uploaded some new pics to Flickr.  Trying out the Lightbox Thumbnails. Click Photo to see larger vers:

"I am one of these people. My condo has dropped in value from $520K in 5/06 when I bought it to $350K now. My ARM payment will probably go up $900 per month in June.

"Despite all this, I would be willing to stay if the bank would refi the loans to a 30 year fixed, but since I'm not a 'hardship' case they'd apparently rather foreclose. I guess the only way I could qualify for loan mitigation is to get my boss to fire me, stop making payments, and wreck my credit. In fact, my bank won't even talk to me until I miss a couple of payments.

"I have purchased a cheaper place in a nearby area now, while my credit is good, and will stop making payments on house #1 after house #2 closes. I know the foreclosure will be on my credit for 7 years, but I will have saved a lot of money.

"I realize I agreed to the deal when I signed the mortgage papers, but I am within my rights to walk away from a bad deal and suffer the consequences, just as many corporations write down billions of dollars of debt, lose money for their shareholders, and lay off people as a result of their bad decisions.

"I don't really understand why people view a business decision by a homeowner as a terrible moral lapse. However, when large lending institutions, with access to more sophisticated information than any consumer could imagine, make mistakes affecting thousands of people worldwide, they are not excoriated and vilified with the same righteous zeal."

French bank Societe Generale said Thursday it has uncovered a $7.14 billion fraud - one of history's biggest - by a single futures trader who fooled investors and overstepped his authority.