I'm not even going to ask where you got the idea that gases "become able to" reach higher temperatures or "hold" more energy at higher pressures, nor how these two statements can be reconciled from the point of view of, for instance, heat capacity. Arguing with crackpots is futile because they treat science as a postmodernist word game instead of a math game. Don't be surprised if I don't reply to your next post; we'll never find common ground and I've got better things to do.
Wow, that's impressive! Being a bitcoin miner and telling yourself you're trying to live in a sustainable way sounds like an olympic-grade exercise in self-deception. And look at these marvelously contrived arguments in favor of it! If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Self-deceive", you would have been on the album cover.
Really? I would think that preventing stuff from being written to the history file is superior to attempting to securely delete it afterwards...
But then what's in your DRAM? (google: cold boot attack). It all depends on your threat model. Does someone really want to get at those passwords or not?
I know what a cold boot attack is, thank you. They're just not very straightforward to execute remotely, and not a very common threat in general. But yeah, your point stands that 'unset HISTFILE' won't protect you against that, so if you're really paranoid, you need to combine it with HISTSIZE=0. And pray that the commands aren't somehow left behind somewhere in memory anyway, which sounds a lot like wishful thinking. Which leads us to the argument that if you really want to prevent your computer from giving away any useful information to an advanced attacker with physical access, you have your work cut out for you.
I honestly don't know why GP did that, but maybe it is because attacking the science has alreadybeentakencareof and all that's left was looking for his motives for doing such bad science?
Also, what the hell does straight or white have to do with anything? Are you Godwinning your own post?
What is it with Americans and taking quotes out of context? Come election season, you see these appearing almost daily on both sides, and they seem to be taken strangely serious too.
In case you didn't know, an out-of-context quote can give an awfully skewed impression, even more so if it is ripped from informal communications. Here is a more complete story, including how a discussion of the papers in question was included in the IPCC report. It concludes with:
Despite being heralded as “the final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming”, Climategate did not even demonstrate corruption of the IPCC process, let alone corruption of the climate science community. In any case, the CRU scientists' influence extended to a couple of IPCC chapters covering only a small part of the large body of evidence for anthropogenic global warming. That mountain of evidence cannot be explained away by the behaviour of a few individuals.
Yeah, small differences commonly suffer from large relative errors, Einstein. The sign is right and the order of magnitude is right, so it's largely correct. We're not all measuring optical wavelengths.
And you're accusing climate scientists of doing crap? You must be that kid in primary school that got all his math problems wrong. Here's a hint:
A. look up the yield of a Hiroshima-class atomic bomb (in joule)
B. find or make an estimate of either the total mass or volume of the major constituents of the biosphere
C. look up the specific heat capacity (if you chose to use mass) or the volumetric heat capacity (if you chose to go for volume) of these constituents
D. the rough 0th order back-of-the-envelope estimate of the hypothetical temperature rise you're looking for is A / (sum of (B*C) for each of the constituents)
And sheesh, to avoid further embarrassment, keep your mouth shut about climate science until you can at least get the most basic high school thermodynamics right. The above is child's play compared to all the physical and chemical phenomena that go into climate models.
Wow. After having exhausti(ve/ng)ly showcased your own ignorance of thermodynamics, I'd expected you to have at least the decency not to frivolously accuse others of "not having the slightest idea about thermodynamics". I'm going to call "troll".
Maybe you got exhausted from fighting the stupid troll, or maybe you have some fancy browser customizations that make the gray vertical lines more difficult to see, but you somehow failed to spot that Eunuchswear was quoting mSparks43 making the idiotic claim about pressure and density, and replying "Moron". So it's really mSparks43 and mSparks43 who have to get together and get their stories straight.
Nah, the poster was merely trying to make a joke about the peculiar property of quantum entanglement that looking at it destroys it. Yes, technically, their point is invalid because you can open the box, look at it, close it up and create entanglement again, but it was a joke. One that whooshed over your and GP's head.
This is getting rather childish, but if you really stand by your story in which I called you a liar, I have to point out that you're calling me a liar as well, by not accepting my statement that my intention was to was solicit clarification. Note the absence of melodramatic outrage about you calling me a liar.
So chill out, take a deep breath and adjust your tin foil hat. What we had here is a classical misunderstanding followed by escalation. I honestly didn't intend my "this here says they aren't" as a sneer - merely as an indication that the information you gave me conflicted with previous information, in the hope you would clarify the discrepancy. (Also note that this was before you formally declared that "dblll" stands for "The Infallible God of All Things Turbines and Commercial Power Generation".) You got ticked off by my question (musunderstandings, they happen) and accompanied your clarification with a deriding comment. I got ticked off by your deriding comment, but since semi-hostile banter is a common occurrence on this site, I simply answered with an equally deriding comment. You got outraged by the latter and launched into a rant. I got annoyed by the rant and launched into an even longer rant. And so forth. Shall we continue or call it a day? Really, feel free to choose either option; nobody's perfect and I'm not vindictive so I will still be modding up your frequent insightful contributions to this site when I come across them, as I have been doing for a while now.
Dude, I didn't even notice you brought up a different number earlier on. Paranoid much? Besides, you know as well as I that a 20% difference is nothing in a discussion about orders of magnitude.
Looks a hell of a lot like "shut up you're wrong because I say so" with a twist of a flawed appeal to authority to me - especially since it didn't say how widespread they are.
Nope - I was soliciting clarification.
You've been hell bent on trying to prove me wrong ever since I casually added a few notes on turbines to your uncertain post replying to icebike.
Again, no, it's all your imagination. I only started getting defensive after you called me "armchair expert". And as long as you don't provide any concrete evidence that the utilities in TFA are using Avon turbines and not the larger more specialized ones I brought up, I feel justified in what I wrote there. Argue the subject matter, not the person.
"Now about your expertise" - as they say "them's fighting words".
I don't want this to degrade into "he started it", but as explained above, that was merely a petty tit-for-tat after you brought the "fighting words" into the discussion.
I don't want to detract from your otherwise very insightful post - you're spot on in describing what is probably the biggest threat to American democracy. I'd just like to point out:
I'm mad a Obama for being a gigantic NSA allowing, drone killing, not holding anyone accountable as the head of the executive branch, why didn't he just push to extend medicare all the way down as an option that people could have bought into as a cheap alternative to private insurance that would have had to improve past that basic level Jebus he didn't even try!
He did try, most definitely. The first "Obamacare" proposal was very close to what you and I would have dreamed of (remember the "publicoption"?). It immediately got vilified and shot down in congress by an overwhelming opposition of health industry shills including a good number of democrats, and was never spoken of again. Months later, the monster that is now referred to as "Obamacare" was born, in an attempt to get at least something through the health insurance lobby that would make life better for "the little guy", as you put it. Whether this attempt was a total failure or a marginal success is for history to decide, but either way, it falls far short of really fixing the ailing American health care system. Obama basically suffered a few spectacular defeats against the all-powerful special interests on capitol hill early on, and "hope" and "change" gradually died off. That's not to justify the drone or NSA stuff, but just to say that despite his flaws, he's not all bad and probably would have effected significant change for good, if he would have been allowed to. Nuance.
As it is, he lost all his political capital by wanting to do things his own way, and has been a lame duck, hands and feet bound by corporate interests, for quite a while. At the same time, the democratic party quietly dropped the pretense of defending the "the little guy" more than the all-out corporate whores on the other side of the isle. This is not pretty and very frustrating to watch, so people start blaming Obama even for the problems that are not his fault.
Wearable bitcoins! Thank you, you're a genius! Surely you won't mind me patenting the idea!
Poe's Law disclaimer: this post is solely intended as a parody of some of the more brain-dead bitcoin-related initiatives we've seen, and is not meant to criticize or endorse parent or bitcoin.
Reality check: you are on an internet message board where techies discuss relevant news semi-anonymously. A message board that happens to have a culture in favor of such things as argumentation, logic, and citing sources, and not in favor of such things as appeals to authority. You might get away with the above touchy-feely rant against your subordinates at work - though it wouldn't make a very good impression and I would recommend growing a thicker skin instead. Here, you're just making a fool of yourself. If you expect everyone to gasp in awe at your words of infinite wisdom and the gospel flowing out of your keyboard, boy, are you in the wrong place. All I've been doing until now is questioning your statements, in a more civilized manner than average for this site. What you could have done is explain why I'm wrong, build up some argumentation, cite some sources I can look at. What you chose to do instead is vigorous handwaving, "shut up and listen because I'm an engineer and therefore the only person here who is capable of understanding these things" and "ooh I'm so hurt that you're questioning my expertise as a person on the internet who posts stuff under a nickname. Well I ever! What a scandal to read such slander on an internet site ridden with expletive-laden rants!"
Sorry dude, I've been brought up to skeptically consider all information given to me, regardless of the source, to analyze it with logic and to seek independent verification of any claims. My training and work as a professional scientist has enforced that, and added to it an automatic reflex to try to poke holes is whatever comes my way. If you can't handle that, cry me a river. The engineers I know do have some notions of explaining their claims and citing sources, and some taste for a good technical discussion or exposition (hint: "shut up, I know what I'm talking about" ain't it).
...bits and pieces taken from the net with little or no understanding of context...
That, my friend, is more than you have provided so far. Feel free to explain why me linking to GE's gas turbines that are advertised for (among other things) peak electric loads at utilities is irrelevant to this discussion. I'll accept a good refutation any day, but "shut up you're wrong because I say so" will get you nowhere. As for wikipedia, if what's written there is wrong, well, have you noticed the site has an "edit" button? It's kinda a big deal for them.
and now you are going the extra step of questioning my expertise
And now I will proceed to go one step further. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Don't you think that is impolite and that you would react in a similar way to someone correcting your casual observations about your field by, for instance, implying that all computer programs are written in Visual Basic when someone has mentioned C?
Not in the least. Knowing the scope and culture of this site, to think that's impolite would require me to have a gigantic stick so far up my ass that it comes out my mouth. This not being the case, I gladly point the person to sources where they can learn why their viewpoint is wrong if I have time. Accompanied with a deriding comment for good measure - after all, this is slashdot. if I don't have time, I just ignore it. Also related.
As for the "And yes, do run on stuff other than kerosene" - my example given above was listed as running on "coal seam gas" and also "small", so your new "corrections" are even more insulting.
Now try the same without the touchy-feely part. If it is I who read your post too glancingly, then that gives you the right to correct me and/or insult my reading comprehension. No need to get on your high horse. Life's too short to feel gravely insulted whenever someone didn't pay enough attention to what you wrote.
Excuse me, I never claimed to be an expert, and worded my posts carefully not to make that impression. Now about your expertise: personal observations often have an anecdotal character. Utilities count in 100s of MW if not GW; the 16MW provided by an Avon engine is small change. Maybe browse this lineup instead. Forexample. And yes, do run on stuff other than kerosene.
It would somewhat surprise me if these large terrestrial/naval turbines had the same stringent purity requirements as their lightweight high-performance counterparts used in aviation. Probably GP is right and these things run on kerosene that doesn't quite meet the standards for being labeled "Jet-A". Which doesn't mean they're fuel-efficient or cheap to operate... burning metric tons of kerosene in large turbine engines won't make for cheap electricity, regardless of its grade.
Who in hell modded this troll? To that person: you're supposed to base your moderation on the merits of the post, not on the person writing them. I've had my differences of opinion with the author, but this is a damn insightful post, and if some aspect of it is troll-ish, I just don't see it, so please enlighten me. There are few things as harmful to slashdot as moderators abusing their mod points to fight petty vendettas.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not even going to ask where you got the idea that gases "become able to" reach higher temperatures or "hold" more energy at higher pressures, nor how these two statements can be reconciled from the point of view of, for instance, heat capacity. Arguing with crackpots is futile because they treat science as a postmodernist word game instead of a math game. Don't be surprised if I don't reply to your next post; we'll never find common ground and I've got better things to do.
Wow, that's impressive! Being a bitcoin miner and telling yourself you're trying to live in a sustainable way sounds like an olympic-grade exercise in self-deception. And look at these marvelously contrived arguments in favor of it! If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Self-deceive", you would have been on the album cover.
unset HISTFILE
Not good enough. You at least want:
$ srm ~/.bash_history
Really? I would think that preventing stuff from being written to the history file is superior to attempting to securely delete it afterwards...
But then what's in your DRAM? (google: cold boot attack). It all depends on your threat model. Does someone really want to get at those passwords or not?
I know what a cold boot attack is, thank you. They're just not very straightforward to execute remotely, and not a very common threat in general. But yeah, your point stands that 'unset HISTFILE' won't protect you against that, so if you're really paranoid, you need to combine it with HISTSIZE=0. And pray that the commands aren't somehow left behind somewhere in memory anyway, which sounds a lot like wishful thinking. Which leads us to the argument that if you really want to prevent your computer from giving away any useful information to an advanced attacker with physical access, you have your work cut out for you.
I honestly don't know why GP did that, but maybe it is because attacking the science has already been taken care of and all that's left was looking for his motives for doing such bad science?
Also, what the hell does straight or white have to do with anything? Are you Godwinning your own post?
What is it with Americans and taking quotes out of context? Come election season, you see these appearing almost daily on both sides, and they seem to be taken strangely serious too.
In case you didn't know, an out-of-context quote can give an awfully skewed impression, even more so if it is ripped from informal communications. Here is a more complete story, including how a discussion of the papers in question was included in the IPCC report. It concludes with:
Despite being heralded as “the final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming”, Climategate did not even demonstrate corruption of the IPCC process, let alone corruption of the climate science community. In any case, the CRU scientists' influence extended to a couple of IPCC chapters covering only a small part of the large body of evidence for anthropogenic global warming. That mountain of evidence cannot be explained away by the behaviour of a few individuals.
Yeah, small differences commonly suffer from large relative errors, Einstein. The sign is right and the order of magnitude is right, so it's largely correct. We're not all measuring optical wavelengths.
Obligatory XKCD.
There we go again, long-discredited climate myth #9.
Also relevant.
Thank you, Randall Munroe.
And you're accusing climate scientists of doing crap? You must be that kid in primary school that got all his math problems wrong. Here's a hint:
A. look up the yield of a Hiroshima-class atomic bomb (in joule)
B. find or make an estimate of either the total mass or volume of the major constituents of the biosphere
C. look up the specific heat capacity (if you chose to use mass) or the volumetric heat capacity (if you chose to go for volume) of these constituents
D. the rough 0th order back-of-the-envelope estimate of the hypothetical temperature rise you're looking for is A / (sum of (B*C) for each of the constituents)
And sheesh, to avoid further embarrassment, keep your mouth shut about climate science until you can at least get the most basic high school thermodynamics right. The above is child's play compared to all the physical and chemical phenomena that go into climate models.
Wow. After having exhausti(ve/ng)ly showcased your own ignorance of thermodynamics, I'd expected you to have at least the decency not to frivolously accuse others of "not having the slightest idea about thermodynamics". I'm going to call "troll".
Maybe you got exhausted from fighting the stupid troll, or maybe you have some fancy browser customizations that make the gray vertical lines more difficult to see, but you somehow failed to spot that Eunuchswear was quoting mSparks43 making the idiotic claim about pressure and density, and replying "Moron". So it's really mSparks43 and mSparks43 who have to get together and get their stories straight.
unset HISTFILE
Nah, the poster was merely trying to make a joke about the peculiar property of quantum entanglement that looking at it destroys it. Yes, technically, their point is invalid because you can open the box, look at it, close it up and create entanglement again, but it was a joke. One that whooshed over your and GP's head.
This is getting rather childish, but if you really stand by your story in which I called you a liar, I have to point out that you're calling me a liar as well, by not accepting my statement that my intention was to was solicit clarification. Note the absence of melodramatic outrage about you calling me a liar.
So chill out, take a deep breath and adjust your tin foil hat. What we had here is a classical misunderstanding followed by escalation. I honestly didn't intend my "this here says they aren't" as a sneer - merely as an indication that the information you gave me conflicted with previous information, in the hope you would clarify the discrepancy. (Also note that this was before you formally declared that "dblll" stands for "The Infallible God of All Things Turbines and Commercial Power Generation".) You got ticked off by my question (musunderstandings, they happen) and accompanied your clarification with a deriding comment. I got ticked off by your deriding comment, but since semi-hostile banter is a common occurrence on this site, I simply answered with an equally deriding comment. You got outraged by the latter and launched into a rant. I got annoyed by the rant and launched into an even longer rant. And so forth. Shall we continue or call it a day? Really, feel free to choose either option; nobody's perfect and I'm not vindictive so I will still be modding up your frequent insightful contributions to this site when I come across them, as I have been doing for a while now.
Such petty things as the "correction" to 16MW
Dude, I didn't even notice you brought up a different number earlier on. Paranoid much? Besides, you know as well as I that a 20% difference is nothing in a discussion about orders of magnitude.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4712855&cid=46076971
Looks a hell of a lot like "shut up you're wrong because I say so" with a twist of a flawed appeal to authority to me - especially since it didn't say how widespread they are.
Nope - I was soliciting clarification.
You've been hell bent on trying to prove me wrong ever since I casually added a few notes on turbines to your uncertain post replying to icebike.
Again, no, it's all your imagination. I only started getting defensive after you called me "armchair expert". And as long as you don't provide any concrete evidence that the utilities in TFA are using Avon turbines and not the larger more specialized ones I brought up, I feel justified in what I wrote there. Argue the subject matter, not the person.
"Now about your expertise" - as they say "them's fighting words".
I don't want this to degrade into "he started it", but as explained above, that was merely a petty tit-for-tat after you brought the "fighting words" into the discussion.
I don't want to detract from your otherwise very insightful post - you're spot on in describing what is probably the biggest threat to American democracy. I'd just like to point out:
I'm mad a Obama for being a gigantic NSA allowing, drone killing, not holding anyone accountable as the head of the executive branch, why didn't he just push to extend medicare all the way down as an option that people could have bought into as a cheap alternative to private insurance that would have had to improve past that basic level Jebus he didn't even try!
He did try, most definitely. The first "Obamacare" proposal was very close to what you and I would have dreamed of (remember the "public option"?). It immediately got vilified and shot down in congress by an overwhelming opposition of health industry shills including a good number of democrats, and was never spoken of again. Months later, the monster that is now referred to as "Obamacare" was born, in an attempt to get at least something through the health insurance lobby that would make life better for "the little guy", as you put it. Whether this attempt was a total failure or a marginal success is for history to decide, but either way, it falls far short of really fixing the ailing American health care system. Obama basically suffered a few spectacular defeats against the all-powerful special interests on capitol hill early on, and "hope" and "change" gradually died off. That's not to justify the drone or NSA stuff, but just to say that despite his flaws, he's not all bad and probably would have effected significant change for good, if he would have been allowed to. Nuance.
As it is, he lost all his political capital by wanting to do things his own way, and has been a lame duck, hands and feet bound by corporate interests, for quite a while. At the same time, the democratic party quietly dropped the pretense of defending the "the little guy" more than the all-out corporate whores on the other side of the isle. This is not pretty and very frustrating to watch, so people start blaming Obama even for the problems that are not his fault.
Sorry I couldn't moderate this "funny" because I posted elsewhere.
Wearable bitcoins! Thank you, you're a genius! Surely you won't mind me patenting the idea!
Poe's Law disclaimer: this post is solely intended as a parody of some of the more brain-dead bitcoin-related initiatives we've seen, and is not meant to criticize or endorse parent or bitcoin.
Reality check: you are on an internet message board where techies discuss relevant news semi-anonymously. A message board that happens to have a culture in favor of such things as argumentation, logic, and citing sources, and not in favor of such things as appeals to authority. You might get away with the above touchy-feely rant against your subordinates at work - though it wouldn't make a very good impression and I would recommend growing a thicker skin instead. Here, you're just making a fool of yourself. If you expect everyone to gasp in awe at your words of infinite wisdom and the gospel flowing out of your keyboard, boy, are you in the wrong place. All I've been doing until now is questioning your statements, in a more civilized manner than average for this site. What you could have done is explain why I'm wrong, build up some argumentation, cite some sources I can look at. What you chose to do instead is vigorous handwaving, "shut up and listen because I'm an engineer and therefore the only person here who is capable of understanding these things" and "ooh I'm so hurt that you're questioning my expertise as a person on the internet who posts stuff under a nickname. Well I ever! What a scandal to read such slander on an internet site ridden with expletive-laden rants!"
Sorry dude, I've been brought up to skeptically consider all information given to me, regardless of the source, to analyze it with logic and to seek independent verification of any claims. My training and work as a professional scientist has enforced that, and added to it an automatic reflex to try to poke holes is whatever comes my way. If you can't handle that, cry me a river. The engineers I know do have some notions of explaining their claims and citing sources, and some taste for a good technical discussion or exposition (hint: "shut up, I know what I'm talking about" ain't it).
...bits and pieces taken from the net with little or no understanding of context...
That, my friend, is more than you have provided so far. Feel free to explain why me linking to GE's gas turbines that are advertised for (among other things) peak electric loads at utilities is irrelevant to this discussion. I'll accept a good refutation any day, but "shut up you're wrong because I say so" will get you nowhere. As for wikipedia, if what's written there is wrong, well, have you noticed the site has an "edit" button? It's kinda a big deal for them.
and now you are going the extra step of questioning my expertise
And now I will proceed to go one step further. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Don't you think that is impolite and that you would react in a similar way to someone correcting your casual observations about your field by, for instance, implying that all computer programs are written in Visual Basic when someone has mentioned C?
Not in the least. Knowing the scope and culture of this site, to think that's impolite would require me to have a gigantic stick so far up my ass that it comes out my mouth. This not being the case, I gladly point the person to sources where they can learn why their viewpoint is wrong if I have time. Accompanied with a deriding comment for good measure - after all, this is slashdot. if I don't have time, I just ignore it. Also related.
As for the "And yes, do run on stuff other than kerosene" - my example given above was listed as running on "coal seam gas" and also "small", so your new "corrections" are even more insulting.
Now try the same without the touchy-feely part. If it is I who read your post too glancingly, then that gives you the right to correct me and/or insult my reading comprehension. No need to get on your high horse. Life's too short to feel gravely insulted whenever someone didn't pay enough attention to what you wrote.
Excuse me, I never claimed to be an expert, and worded my posts carefully not to make that impression. Now about your expertise: personal observations often have an anecdotal character. Utilities count in 100s of MW if not GW; the 16MW provided by an Avon engine is small change. Maybe browse this lineup instead. For example. And yes, do run on stuff other than kerosene.
This here says they aren't.
It would somewhat surprise me if these large terrestrial/naval turbines had the same stringent purity requirements as their lightweight high-performance counterparts used in aviation. Probably GP is right and these things run on kerosene that doesn't quite meet the standards for being labeled "Jet-A". Which doesn't mean they're fuel-efficient or cheap to operate... burning metric tons of kerosene in large turbine engines won't make for cheap electricity, regardless of its grade.
I always wonder what the source and intention of these posts is.
Who in hell modded this troll? To that person: you're supposed to base your moderation on the merits of the post, not on the person writing them. I've had my differences of opinion with the author, but this is a damn insightful post, and if some aspect of it is troll-ish, I just don't see it, so please enlighten me. There are few things as harmful to slashdot as moderators abusing their mod points to fight petty vendettas.