I always push for the ISO 8601 time formats. I like seeing YYYY-MM-DD on my time stamps. Wish this was the industry standard for logging, file systems, etc.
What I hate how the US has Saturday/Sunday split on the weekend. Who really thinks, Oh its Sunday start of the week!
Monday is really the start of the week, right after the WEEK END, and that's how I like my calendars displayed. Monday thru Sunday.
Except a week has two ends and they fall at the ends of the week, Sunday being the first day of the week and Saturday the last according to the Greco-Roman tradition. There are/were Monday starters in most of Eastern Europe, China and Mongolia. Swahilli start on Saturday as they base a day on sunrise and not sunset.
Historically, a day was defined as 1 earth rotation.
And that's where you went wrong. Historically, a day was one sunrise to the next. Yeah, a celestial event. So, anything smaller than that when it was first used was arbitrary(*) and we've been trying to make them make sense since.
(*) Read this very carefully as you quoted only part of it. "Between 1000 (when al-Biruni used seconds) and 1960 the second was defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day". So, that means before the year 1000 the second did not exist as a defined standard; and may not have existed at all; still fuzzy on that. The minute I have not been able to dig up information on as to when it was first conceived. What you then quoted were modern (Late Common Era) definitions of what a second is, not where it came from and why it first was a "second". Their origins may not truly be that arbitrary as they did emerge from some systematic approach that required their existence, true. But why 60ths? Was a minute always that long? Time is a weird thing that we should always be asking questions about. So is "spooky" action at a distance. Effing Einstein!
IMHO, time standards are all relative. Everything is measured relative to some celestial event: e.g., the sun rising and setting, the Earth going around the Sun, the Moon going around the Earth, the position of constellations in the sky, etc. As long as you know the origin point relative to what standard you're using and know the celestial event method used for the standard, the conversions would not be that nightmarish. Now, the degree of precision would be based on the accuracy of the origin information relative to your converted calendar and the precision of the calculation used for tracking the celestial events as originally used in the old calendar (as modern measurements of these events may introduce additional drift). So, the precision of the conversion would also be relative to the application. For accountants it would be REALLY important. For paleontologists, not so much but a little helpful.
ADDENDUM: The second is the only time measurement that I think is completely arbitrary. They have been trying for years to standardize it on some element's radio active property (cesium-133, I believe) to give it credibility, but as far as measurements of time go, the second is probably the most ridiculous. I still think it was invented by the Dutch East India Company (or the like), as it was most likely only useful to ship's navigators before anyone needed a time division less than an hour to do anything, or need be reminded by a bell.
IMHO, time standards are all relative. Everything is measured relative to some celestial event: e.g., the sun rising and setting, the Earth going around the Sun, the Moon going around the Earth, the position of constellations in the sky, etc. As long as you know the origin point relative to what standard you're using and know the celestial event method used for the standard, the conversions would not be that nightmarish. Now, the degree of precision would be based on the accuracy of the origin information relative to your converted calendar and the precision of the calculation used for tracking the celestial events as originally used in the old calendar (as modern measurements of these events may introduce additional drift). So, the precision of the conversion would also be relative to the application. For accountants it would be REALLY important. For paleontologists, not so much but a little helpful.
Went looking for info on your post and found this instead. The cost of consumer products goes down due to increased advertising. Makes sense when you think about it. Demand goes up as more people are informed, supply matches or exceeds demand and an equilibrium point is reached beyond which prices drop.
You really shouldn't be surprised about that. "Why should I pay if I can have it for free?" is the thinking of the day, and legality, ethics, and morals don't even enter into the thinking. If morals and ethics do enter into the thinking, it is immoral and/or unethical to want to make money off your work.
Did you just contradict yourself? I ask because you seem to be blaming the "Why should I pay if I can have it for free?" behavior on the lack of morals and ethics, then say that it is immoral and unethical to expect money for work (product) or services rendered. Now I would argue with a great deal of recorded history on my side that charging (even in barter if not in currency) has been at the heart of trade since trade existed. Ye ole adage of "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine." What I am driving at here is, are you advocating licentious behavior or just plain theft?
In the case of web advertisements vs pay wall let me just ask if you had a choice of ads and anonymity or pay wall and personal info exposed which would you choose? I am also guessing you are either living in some agrarian technopolis where everything is free and clean, or you're stealing everything you have (food, rent, etc.), or you've no concept of reality whatsoever. Money has to come from somewhere to pay for hosting, bandwidth, business and tax software, phone lines, business cards, not to mention the production of any content. None of that is free and those costs must be passed on to the consumer somehow to at least break even and stay alive as a business.
Personally, I don't mind ads. I do mind when website owners allow for annoying ads (see definition from other posts to the OP by others). Simple text or still graphic ads are not a problem. Most of us old folks are familiar with those from print and know how to deal with them. But, I don't think that getting paid for work is bad. I do think that putting walls and exorbitant fees on content is bad, but I don't think it should be free (as in air) either.
Berkeley is a college town, so a large block of voters are students with no long term interest in the community. So a lot of kooks get elected.
That would be true of any November ballots, if students even vote in large enough numbers. June ballots are not affected since students are out of town. The kooks are voted in because the town is full of kooks. A lot of people have settled in and taken root.
Ok, I can see that neither of you have lived permanently in a college town. Unless students establish residency in the state they are going to school in, and the local municipality where the school is, they cannot vote in local elections. If a student is going to school at Berkeley from Virginia he/she does not vote in California unless they establish permanent residency there, and register to vote there. Most students from out of state (or in-state from another region) don't do that. They use absentee ballots from the state/municipality where they have permanent residence and vote in national/state/local elections relevant to that location, not where they go to school. This is why so many students DON'T vote is because they don't want to deal with absentee ballots or they are too distracted to send it out on time. The "kooks" that elected these idiots are the permanent residents of the town of Berkeley, not the visiting students.
Sad that you didn't know about Trial by Written Declaration.
I don't live in California, which is the only state where that seems to apply. Unfortunately, you are held to the laws of the state that you are in at the time of offense, not the one you live in; unless the two happen to be the same.
... confuses anybody who knows anything about the issue..
I would argue that is the one group that it doesn't confuse. They are already similar with the subject matter. Why would they be confused? It is the layman that would be confused when he starts learning the correct terminology because he has been used to using the words the wrong way.
[rant]
Then, clearly, you are a layperson. I have produced albums. I record digitally and (at the time) produced CDs that contain digital recordings. The misuse of terminology in the article and by the "business sense" (oxymoron) of the word digital is confusing. I understand that it ties back to the legal definition in copyright law, but that definition is intentionally vague and confusing anyway so it covers a broader field of possible litigation for the RIAA and MPAA.
Compact Discs (CDs) are physical media containing digital recordings, but so is a hard drive, a USB stick and technically a paper strip with holes poked in it to represent the 1s and 0s! The misuse of the word digital by the MAFIAA to suit their attacks on end users is not justification for us as technically competent persons to accept. It's wrong. Since laws are based on little technicalities like this it is important to get these technicalities correct-in every sense they are applied. It makes me vibrate when techies accept ridiculously stupid crap like this or-worse yet-defend it.
...except for the use of annoying cliches and the incomplete sentences.
You're looking at the glass as half empty instead of half full here. it's a start....
I know, folks are penny wise and pound foolish with some of the Chrome book.... of course there's a silver lining here - it will make Chrome OS more usable outside of a dumb terminal for the cloud.
An IBM Selectric typewriter is more usable than a dumb terminal outside the cloud. What's your point? What you wrote up there didn't make much sense. It's a start to what? The product failing in the marketplace due to poor hardware specification? A nonexistent application base unless you have internet connectivity? (one app suite ain't gonna cut it) Less storage than a tablet unless you have internet connectivity? Because you inverted the meaning of "penny wise and pound foolish"? The glass isn't even close to half anything. It's got a few drops of water in it from where it was cleaned before being put on the store shelf and the bulls are already in the china shop.
Well put. It still makes no sense because with the exception of the screen it's packed with old or unreasonably spec'd hardware at a ridiculously high price compared to an Apple product (that are supposed to be high priced crap by a lot of/. opinion) that runs a full OS, plus a browser, plus a cloud, plus a lot of other things a real computer can do. Then there's an Android based system with a large app base, extensible, cheaper, more storage (32 GB SSD in the Chrome book Pixel?!?! Seriously?!?!). I could go on with other examples but the amount of negativity is already crushing this thing that one app suite that runs without the cloud is supposed to save this thing?. Not only no, but absolutely no.
If I'm paying extra for a higher speed, how can they throttle my connection, based on an ALLEGED infringement..??
I am not sure why you think your provider can't throttle you because you "pay extra". Are you suggesting immunity because you're rich, or think you're somehow special? There are as many ways to throttle bandwidth as there are bandwidth options. I can change the port speed on a fiber ST connection as easily as on a copper CAT-5, or pump you through a throttling proxy on the ISP end and there you go at 200 baud if I so desire. What you pay and plug into on your end has nothing to do with the other end. Remember, your connection has two ends and either one can be moved or diverted to something slower.
Verizon offers a sweet deal for FIOS if you're a new customer, so you sign up for the Triple Play, pay $80 per month, and then cancel, because you've used up your six strikes...
Then sign up for Comcast, get a sweet deal because you're a new customer, pay $50 per month, and then cancel because you've used up your six strikes...
Wash rinse repeat....
That was the first tactic that sprang to my mind, too. I am guessing that you could wipe out your options pretty fast as I am sure they do not clear you from the six strikes db when you get terminated from an ISP. Not suggesting a central db, but if you get kicked from Verizon for six strikes I would imagine you've burned that bridge and getting a new account with them would be impossible. I need to read the full text of the CAS to get an idea if this and other questions I have are answered therein.
Imagine if you got a speeding ticket and had to pay the court to hear your case where it clocked the car that just blew by you?
[...]
Another good example would be public defenders. Imagine if you had to pay for a public defender, and you'd only get your money back if you were found innocent?
Umm, when was the last time you were in court, win or lose, and DIDN'T have to pay court fees? Especially for a crminal violation like a speeding ticket. I got out of the last ticket I received several years ago, but still had to pay $65 for the priviledge of doing so in the Pulaski County court house. And, last I knew public defenders didn't work for free. They're not free as in beer, they just get paid out of state/federal revenue, i.e., tax money. Trust me, you pay for them.
"Combustion (pron.:/kmbs.tn/) or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can produce light in the form of either glowing or a flame. Fuels of interest often include organic compounds (especially hydrocarbons) in the gas, liquid or solid phase."
By the definition of "Combustion" or "Burning" I will call BS on "this is not burning." The process described here oxidizes coal. He's breaking the initial chemical bonds of coal and adding an oxygen molecule to the carbon atom. For you non-scientific types, oxidation == burning.
This article suggests he's doing it more efficiently and creating less byproducts, such as CO, NOx, etc and making more CO2, which is then captured. It is still "burning" coal.
This process still doesn't address what material has the highest energy/density ratio. That is an exercise for the reader.
Well, an understanding of a chemical reaction would be necessary for you to call BS on my statement, or that of the researchers in question. Not all chemical reactions are combustion/burning. As in, not all rectangles are squares.
you're arguing over fucking semantics man, who cares what you call it, the chemical reaction sure doesn't.
I don't think you know what the definition of semantics is, or you are using the same other-world dictionary that the commenter above used to define a chemical reaction, i.e., it's all burning.
That link is not even relevant to the discussion. An appeal to authority is still a logical fallacy. What if he said that water was flammable if you stare at it long enough? Would that be true too? After all he is an authority so it must be.
This is the attitude that impeded science in the dark ages. It must be pointed out and ridiculed in every instance, not modded +4 informative.
There is no burning. Apparently that is the key innovation.
Coal is oxidized to produce CO2 and heat. That's "burning", regardless of whether you use air or iron oxides as the oxidizer.
Ummm, sorry, I'm gonna have to go with the Ph.D. in Chemistry on this one buddy, and he says it's NOT burning. I would not call your comment, Informative. Uninformed, but not informative. Ooo, that's a t-shirt right there...
Coal powered that finely would be rather dangerous, because it has so much surface area. Exposure to air, any spark could set it off.
Uh, yoohoo, over here! They already use coal dust in existing coal burning power plants. I think they have the processing handling issues down for that bit. And, there hasn't been a major coal dust accident since 1962.
BTW, for those that trashed my 'we need to stop burning stuff' comments regarding how we generate energy. THIS is exactly what I meant. Applause for the researchers. If this does scale and proves out, they should get a Nobel for it!
Slashdot Mirror
I always push for the ISO 8601 time formats. I like seeing YYYY-MM-DD on my time stamps. Wish this was the industry standard for logging, file systems, etc.
What I hate how the US has Saturday/Sunday split on the weekend. Who really thinks, Oh its Sunday start of the week! Monday is really the start of the week, right after the WEEK END, and that's how I like my calendars displayed. Monday thru Sunday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
Except a week has two ends and they fall at the ends of the week, Sunday being the first day of the week and Saturday the last according to the Greco-Roman tradition. There are/were Monday starters in most of Eastern Europe, China and Mongolia. Swahilli start on Saturday as they base a day on sunrise and not sunset.
Historically, a day was defined as 1 earth rotation.
And that's where you went wrong. Historically, a day was one sunrise to the next. Yeah, a celestial event. So, anything smaller than that when it was first used was arbitrary(*) and we've been trying to make them make sense since.
(*) Read this very carefully as you quoted only part of it. "Between 1000 (when al-Biruni used seconds) and 1960 the second was defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day". So, that means before the year 1000 the second did not exist as a defined standard; and may not have existed at all; still fuzzy on that. The minute I have not been able to dig up information on as to when it was first conceived. What you then quoted were modern (Late Common Era) definitions of what a second is, not where it came from and why it first was a "second". Their origins may not truly be that arbitrary as they did emerge from some systematic approach that required their existence, true. But why 60ths? Was a minute always that long? Time is a weird thing that we should always be asking questions about. So is "spooky" action at a distance. Effing Einstein!
IMHO, time standards are all relative. Everything is measured relative to some celestial event: e.g., the sun rising and setting, the Earth going around the Sun, the Moon going around the Earth, the position of constellations in the sky, etc. As long as you know the origin point relative to what standard you're using and know the celestial event method used for the standard, the conversions would not be that nightmarish. Now, the degree of precision would be based on the accuracy of the origin information relative to your converted calendar and the precision of the calculation used for tracking the celestial events as originally used in the old calendar (as modern measurements of these events may introduce additional drift). So, the precision of the conversion would also be relative to the application. For accountants it would be REALLY important. For paleontologists, not so much but a little helpful.
ADDENDUM: The second is the only time measurement that I think is completely arbitrary. They have been trying for years to standardize it on some element's radio active property (cesium-133, I believe) to give it credibility, but as far as measurements of time go, the second is probably the most ridiculous. I still think it was invented by the Dutch East India Company (or the like), as it was most likely only useful to ship's navigators before anyone needed a time division less than an hour to do anything, or need be reminded by a bell.
IMHO, time standards are all relative. Everything is measured relative to some celestial event: e.g., the sun rising and setting, the Earth going around the Sun, the Moon going around the Earth, the position of constellations in the sky, etc. As long as you know the origin point relative to what standard you're using and know the celestial event method used for the standard, the conversions would not be that nightmarish. Now, the degree of precision would be based on the accuracy of the origin information relative to your converted calendar and the precision of the calculation used for tracking the celestial events as originally used in the old calendar (as modern measurements of these events may introduce additional drift). So, the precision of the conversion would also be relative to the application. For accountants it would be REALLY important. For paleontologists, not so much but a little helpful.
Went looking for info on your post and found this instead. The cost of consumer products goes down due to increased advertising. Makes sense when you think about it. Demand goes up as more people are informed, supply matches or exceeds demand and an equilibrium point is reached beyond which prices drop.
You really shouldn't be surprised about that. "Why should I pay if I can have it for free?" is the thinking of the day, and legality, ethics, and morals don't even enter into the thinking. If morals and ethics do enter into the thinking, it is immoral and/or unethical to want to make money off your work.
Did you just contradict yourself? I ask because you seem to be blaming the "Why should I pay if I can have it for free?" behavior on the lack of morals and ethics, then say that it is immoral and unethical to expect money for work (product) or services rendered. Now I would argue with a great deal of recorded history on my side that charging (even in barter if not in currency) has been at the heart of trade since trade existed. Ye ole adage of "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine." What I am driving at here is, are you advocating licentious behavior or just plain theft?
In the case of web advertisements vs pay wall let me just ask if you had a choice of ads and anonymity or pay wall and personal info exposed which would you choose? I am also guessing you are either living in some agrarian technopolis where everything is free and clean, or you're stealing everything you have (food, rent, etc.), or you've no concept of reality whatsoever. Money has to come from somewhere to pay for hosting, bandwidth, business and tax software, phone lines, business cards, not to mention the production of any content. None of that is free and those costs must be passed on to the consumer somehow to at least break even and stay alive as a business.
Personally, I don't mind ads. I do mind when website owners allow for annoying ads (see definition from other posts to the OP by others). Simple text or still graphic ads are not a problem. Most of us old folks are familiar with those from print and know how to deal with them. But, I don't think that getting paid for work is bad. I do think that putting walls and exorbitant fees on content is bad, but I don't think it should be free (as in air) either.
...can they print Roger Ebert a new jaw, because damn, that sucks!
Do I put the stamp on my monitor or insert it into my computer's cup holder?
Neither. It goes on your forehead as a warning to others.
After all, who are we to say that buggy whip manufacturers are any less deserving of our support?
Don't forget the milkmen, the knife sharpeners and the [insert dead tech here] repair shops.
Berkeley is a college town, so a large block of voters are students with no long term interest in the community. So a lot of kooks get elected.
That would be true of any November ballots, if students even vote in large enough numbers. June ballots are not affected since students are out of town. The kooks are voted in because the town is full of kooks. A lot of people have settled in and taken root.
Ok, I can see that neither of you have lived permanently in a college town. Unless students establish residency in the state they are going to school in, and the local municipality where the school is, they cannot vote in local elections. If a student is going to school at Berkeley from Virginia he/she does not vote in California unless they establish permanent residency there, and register to vote there. Most students from out of state (or in-state from another region) don't do that. They use absentee ballots from the state/municipality where they have permanent residence and vote in national/state/local elections relevant to that location, not where they go to school. This is why so many students DON'T vote is because they don't want to deal with absentee ballots or they are too distracted to send it out on time. The "kooks" that elected these idiots are the permanent residents of the town of Berkeley, not the visiting students.
Yeah, I was in a hurry--my bad. I really wish there was an em-dash key on the keyboard, anyway!
Sad that you didn't know about Trial by Written Declaration.
I don't live in California, which is the only state where that seems to apply. Unfortunately, you are held to the laws of the state that you are in at the time of offense, not the one you live in; unless the two happen to be the same.
... confuses anybody who knows anything about the issue..
I would argue that is the one group that it doesn't confuse. They are already similar with the subject matter. Why would they be confused? It is the layman that would be confused when he starts learning the correct terminology because he has been used to using the words the wrong way.
[rant]
Then, clearly, you are a layperson. I have produced albums. I record digitally and (at the time) produced CDs that contain digital recordings. The misuse of terminology in the article and by the "business sense" (oxymoron) of the word digital is confusing. I understand that it ties back to the legal definition in copyright law, but that definition is intentionally vague and confusing anyway so it covers a broader field of possible litigation for the RIAA and MPAA.
Compact Discs (CDs) are physical media containing digital recordings, but so is a hard drive, a USB stick and technically a paper strip with holes poked in it to represent the 1s and 0s! The misuse of the word digital by the MAFIAA to suit their attacks on end users is not justification for us as technically competent persons to accept. It's wrong. Since laws are based on little technicalities like this it is important to get these technicalities correct-in every sense they are applied. It makes me vibrate when techies accept ridiculously stupid crap like this or-worse yet-defend it.
[/rant]
...except for the use of annoying cliches and the incomplete sentences.
You're looking at the glass as half empty instead of half full here. it's a start ....
I know, folks are penny wise and pound foolish with some of the Chrome book .... of course there's a silver lining here - it will make Chrome OS more usable outside of a dumb terminal for the cloud.
An IBM Selectric typewriter is more usable than a dumb terminal outside the cloud. What's your point? What you wrote up there didn't make much sense. It's a start to what? The product failing in the marketplace due to poor hardware specification? A nonexistent application base unless you have internet connectivity? (one app suite ain't gonna cut it) Less storage than a tablet unless you have internet connectivity? Because you inverted the meaning of "penny wise and pound foolish"? The glass isn't even close to half anything. It's got a few drops of water in it from where it was cleaned before being put on the store shelf and the bulls are already in the china shop.
No.
Well put. It still makes no sense because with the exception of the screen it's packed with old or unreasonably spec'd hardware at a ridiculously high price compared to an Apple product (that are supposed to be high priced crap by a lot of /. opinion) that runs a full OS, plus a browser, plus a cloud, plus a lot of other things a real computer can do. Then there's an Android based system with a large app base, extensible, cheaper, more storage (32 GB SSD in the Chrome book Pixel?!?! Seriously?!?!). I could go on with other examples but the amount of negativity is already crushing this thing that one app suite that runs without the cloud is supposed to save this thing?. Not only no, but absolutely no.
Isn't this like saying it's ok to put a webcam in my house in case I do something wrong?
Just wondering where this slippery-slope leads... (shrug)
Slippery slopes usually lead to falls. In this case we are all hoping that CAS and the colluding ISPs fall flat on their faces and fail miserably.
If I'm paying extra for a higher speed, how can they throttle my connection, based on an ALLEGED infringement..??
I am not sure why you think your provider can't throttle you because you "pay extra". Are you suggesting immunity because you're rich, or think you're somehow special? There are as many ways to throttle bandwidth as there are bandwidth options. I can change the port speed on a fiber ST connection as easily as on a copper CAT-5, or pump you through a throttling proxy on the ISP end and there you go at 200 baud if I so desire. What you pay and plug into on your end has nothing to do with the other end. Remember, your connection has two ends and either one can be moved or diverted to something slower.
Verizon offers a sweet deal for FIOS if you're a new customer, so you sign up for the Triple Play, pay $80 per month, and then cancel, because you've used up your six strikes...
Then sign up for Comcast, get a sweet deal because you're a new customer, pay $50 per month, and then cancel because you've used up your six strikes...
Wash rinse repeat....
That was the first tactic that sprang to my mind, too. I am guessing that you could wipe out your options pretty fast as I am sure they do not clear you from the six strikes db when you get terminated from an ISP. Not suggesting a central db, but if you get kicked from Verizon for six strikes I would imagine you've burned that bridge and getting a new account with them would be impossible. I need to read the full text of the CAS to get an idea if this and other questions I have are answered therein.
Imagine if you got a speeding ticket and had to pay the court to hear your case where it clocked the car that just blew by you?
[...]
Another good example would be public defenders. Imagine if you had to pay for a public defender, and you'd only get your money back if you were found innocent?
Umm, when was the last time you were in court, win or lose, and DIDN'T have to pay court fees? Especially for a crminal violation like a speeding ticket. I got out of the last ticket I received several years ago, but still had to pay $65 for the priviledge of doing so in the Pulaski County court house. And, last I knew public defenders didn't work for free. They're not free as in beer, they just get paid out of state/federal revenue, i.e., tax money. Trust me, you pay for them.
Oh, and here's an example oxidation that's not burning, Einstein.
"Combustion (pron.: /kmbs.tn/) or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can produce light in the form of either glowing or a flame. Fuels of interest often include organic compounds (especially hydrocarbons) in the gas, liquid or solid phase."
By the definition of "Combustion" or "Burning" I will call BS on "this is not burning." The process described here oxidizes coal. He's breaking the initial chemical bonds of coal and adding an oxygen molecule to the carbon atom. For you non-scientific types, oxidation == burning.
This article suggests he's doing it more efficiently and creating less byproducts, such as CO, NOx, etc and making more CO2, which is then captured. It is still "burning" coal.
This process still doesn't address what material has the highest energy/density ratio. That is an exercise for the reader.
Well, an understanding of a chemical reaction would be necessary for you to call BS on my statement, or that of the researchers in question. Not all chemical reactions are combustion/burning. As in, not all rectangles are squares.
you're arguing over fucking semantics man, who cares what you call it, the chemical reaction sure doesn't.
I don't think you know what the definition of semantics is, or you are using the same other-world dictionary that the commenter above used to define a chemical reaction, i.e., it's all burning.
That link is not even relevant to the discussion. An appeal to authority is still a logical fallacy. What if he said that water was flammable if you stare at it long enough? Would that be true too? After all he is an authority so it must be.
This is the attitude that impeded science in the dark ages. It must be pointed out and ridiculed in every instance, not modded +4 informative.
So, in your world every chemical reaction is burning? Interesting place. And, saying something is a logical fallacy and then using one to support your argument is both an argument from ignorance and a self-refuting idea.
Thanks for playing, though.
Coal is oxidized to produce CO2 and heat. That's "burning", regardless of whether you use air or iron oxides as the oxidizer.
Ummm, sorry, I'm gonna have to go with the Ph.D. in Chemistry on this one buddy, and he says it's NOT burning. I would not call your comment, Informative. Uninformed, but not informative. Ooo, that's a t-shirt right there...
Coal powered that finely would be rather dangerous, because it has so much surface area. Exposure to air, any spark could set it off.
Uh, yoohoo, over here! They already use coal dust in existing coal burning power plants. I think they have the processing handling issues down for that bit. And, there hasn't been a major coal dust accident since 1962.
BTW, for those that trashed my 'we need to stop burning stuff' comments regarding how we generate energy. THIS is exactly what I meant. Applause for the researchers. If this does scale and proves out, they should get a Nobel for it!
'Nuf said.