Monthly Archives: May 2010

暂别Dropbox并支持国家的半封锁行为

Dropbox被墙了，我估计是因为Dropbox上流传了敏感信息的资料。大家可以关注Herdict.org网站关于域名“dropbox.com”的可访问性报告。以下是我打字这一刻的载图：

Dropbox Accessibility

Dropbox Accessibility

美国那一票莫非是5毛党投的？

由于我是使用Netpas来访问公网的。Dropbox这种国外网站原本也就只有使用了NetPas才能访问，因此修改hosts文件对我来说行不通。GAppProxy又不支持https协议，因此我决定放弃使用dropbox。现在我只有考虑备用方案。

我第一个想到的，是利用我在bluehost上的无限空间（毕竟钱不能白花），但必须要有现成的基于个人域名空间的网络文件同步共享应用，PHP的也好什么的也好，而且还要提供客户端实时同步工具。但是这个好像暂时没有成熟的产品？

第二个方案就是使用最新版本的Opera浏览器。它内部支持文件共享，但还不清楚空间上限是多大，是不是真的能在第二台机下载共享了的文件。由于只有基于云计算的像Dropbox这样的技术才能提供廉价的大空间网络文件备份服务，因此其他类似服务如果不是基于云计算的话，不是空间很小（而且对上传每个文件的大小有限制），就是要花钱。就算Opera能为我提供足够的文件备份空间，可以代替Dropbox，我还有一个代价就是要改变浏览器使用习惯。所幸Opera也是不错的浏览器，跟我一直使用的Chrome比较距离已经算小的了，唯一不习惯的就是快捷链。在新tab打开链接不是用Ctrl+而是Shift+，在后台打开链接不是Alt+而是Ctrl+Shift+。另外，刚使用，不太搞得清楚Opera的插件方面是怎么个形式。

如果以上方案都行不通，我就只能倒退到每天把笔记本背到实验室，用打开两台机器，用SyncToy在一个路同器下的局域网同步文件夹了。这个方法我用了很久，主要就是笔记本太重……

大家还有什么方法可以实现多台机器间资料同步？不要告诉我用U盘来复制覆盖，因为我需要保持同步的文件一共有5Gb，但每天修改了的可能只有几百k，我需要有计算机智能帮我比较文件夹找出需要同步的来同步，包括删除和改名的文件。用覆盖的话，删除和改名的文件只会被保留和积累，导致使用者越来越困惑。

我发现所谓Geek，只是希望使用技术含量高的方式来生活，其深层心态就是爱学习，他们的大脑不惧怕复杂的逻辑关系；相反那些对于什么非要用Chrome，非要用Dropbox感到困惑，安装Windows就用个Ghosts盘的人，大多是不爱学习，不爱思考，怕麻烦的人。对于这些人，他们不会学习和思考课题需要或工作需要之外的事情，这样他们也就不会了解自己没有经历过的事。很多人之所以牛就牛在他们了解很多自己没有经历过的事。如果人的知识只限于自己经历过的事情，那么受限于人的寿命，人的可能性就会大大降低，结果应该是所有人都差不多牛，但事实上并不这样。

在网上看一些博客后面的网友评论，经常遇到这种论调，就是只要认为作者没经历过此事所以就可以不用关注文章的说理；或者根据作者说理的选题来判断作者经历过此事。举个例子，我分析女人如何如何，我就是女人；我分析同性恋如何如何，那“楼主就是同性恋，鉴定完毕”。李银河论述性爱派对，就有人认为李银河参加性爱派对。这样的人是不会使用Dropbox或者非要使用Google.com的。这样的人如果是中国网络用户的大多数，那么就算不用5毛党，政府封锁Dropbox或Google的决定的政治压力都不会太大。如果你希望政府在封锁Web 2.0应用型网站之前能有更多的顾虑，那只能等到以上类形的网友变成少数的那一天。但如果以上这样的人变成少数，那就代表中国教育已经成功了，等于说中国已经“屹立于世界民族之林”了，这时中国的意识形态输出也会足够强大，不必惧怕西方意识形态的渗透，金盾的工作重点就不会跟现在一样了。

目前，就算是喜欢翻墙的少数，我也鲜见在意识形态问题、具体地在“东风西风”问题上有独立见解的。从这些人所共享的GReader条目和Twit来看，他们大多数对那些简单粗暴的“不同声音”趋之若鹜，更不用说不翻墙、不明真相的那些大多数了。所以我预计很长一段时间内，中国开放互联网都是非常危险的，因此也不指望国家不封锁这个，不封锁那个。但我仍希望至少能翻墙。不是说“不同声音”不好，而是说对“不同声音“趋之若鹜”不好。不同声音对形成独立见解是必不可少的，这话其实没说全——全面地讲，应该是“全面的声音对形成独立见解是必不可少的”。但是，光是听“声音”，还不够。还需要做的事情是离开网络，走进图书馆，学习中外历史文化，更种要的是努力形成批判式思维（Critical Thinking）。先要认清“什么（不）是中国人”，认清“中国人（不）要什么”，站在这种高度去评判和利用日常的各种声音，而不是头脑空白，依赖日常的所谓“声音”来形成自己的见解，否则，你作为一介草民，不是被这个愚，免不了就是被那个愚，成为很好愚，被政客利用的集体无意识之一员。

翻墙的空间，自然就是留给上述所谓Geek的，有潜质的人。如果当局继续保持这种半封锁，而不是全封锁，我认为这就是中国当前最合时适的办法。美国人是不需要到图书馆了解美外历史文化的，因为美国没有被外来意识形态入侵的危险，全美国人有着基本一致的关于“美国人（不）是什么、（不）要什么”的见解，他们本国的意识形态教育也不被怀疑。他们目前的任务是把这种国内的共识扩展成为全球的“普世价值”，现在中国人中间确实有很多海归，尤其是包括一些六四余孽，在帮助美国扩展它的“普世价值”。中国则处于转形期，国内都还没有形成“普国价值”，国民对自己所相信的东西都没有自信，甚至还说不出自己相信什么，追求什么，当然活该被“保护”。

如果有一天国内的互联网管制从半封锁变为全封锁，我只能用另一种方式来爱国——出国。但我认为除非进入了战争状态，否则这是不可能的。我相信是远比我们懂历史的人在执政，至于执政目标如何实现，谁也没有现成答案。

此为记。

墨西哥湾油泄漏续——前所未有的深度

发表在我在Nature Blogs上的博客（英文）

Rheology is indeed involved in oil drilling engineering, including enhanced recovery method and spill control. Therefore I thought I could tell quite a lot about the disater in the Gulf of Mexico, until I found that the problem is mainly mechanics — the spill occurs because of the unexpected failure of blow out preventer (BOP). From asking “what is a BOP” I have to extend my knowledge to the whole mechanic aspect of oil drilling engineering. The following texts are the result of my books and webpages ad hoc reading and are not meant to be expert opinions.

Semi-submersed platform

Ocean has the amount of energy and resources that probably define how long in the future can human race last on this planet, energy and resources on the land approaching to the end. However the courage to built positioned bases in the ocean — a huge brave trial — is finally granted by high profits behind the abundance of oil under the seabed (among many other e.g. wind, tidal, etc.).

US was the first of the world to design and practice offshore drilling rigs. As the drilling depth increases, different designs appeared in the history. Deepwater Horizon is a semi-submersed rig, a design known to support the deepest oil well offshore ever known. Allegedly DH has the ability to drill the worlds’s deepest oil well, without using a newer design. No design, however, can be a final one and support an infinite drilling depth. DH may be a sign that the old design, not only the rig but the whole drilling design, after more than a decade of application if not misinformation, has now reached its limit. Or put it in another word, it was the unexplored depth that causes the failure. To answer against my ill-disposed, arbitrary conclusion one should know clearly what cause this event actually and is it unpreventable under the same rig design? or is it unrelated to the rig design?

Dynamic positioning

We all know that first the rig caught fire and then sank. Although up till now I don’t know how the fire started but it could hardly be related to the design of the rig of anything to do with the hardware. because the same design is used elsewhere. However the fire was really a big one. It causes the rig to sink and, catastrophically, offset from its original position. As you can see from the structure of a offshore drilling system, considering the length of the oil pipe submersed in the sea water, the rig must be precisely positioned above the oil well holding the pipe perpendicular to the sea horizon, otherwise the oil pipe must be broken. Before the accident DH was drilling a new main well. That means once broken the oil well has well extra pressure to push the oil out by itself, causing an oil spill accident. Historically offshore rigs were positioned by anchors. With the development of powerful propellers, GPS, and signal processing technology, dynamic positioning — positioning without anchors — played its role in newer drilling rigs including the DH. Under dynamic positioning the real time position of the rig is continuously analysed and fed back to the propeller system with proper commands of new strengths and directions. Because this feedback cycle is delicately maintained by AI rather than physically by anchors, once the signal/control system fail (e.g. in a fire) the rig will be suddenly turned back to a simple unchained flowing boat on the sea. The design of dynamic positioning, although hi-tech, adds risks of oil spilling accident to the system.

The blow out preventer (BOP)

The Wall Street Journal did an excellent explanation about the BOP. The blow out preventer is located at the oil well on the sea bed. As the oil pipe broke at somewhere, it leaves to the blow out preventer to stop the oil from the exit of the well (triggering it perhaps by a dropping signal of flow pressure). According exclusively to BP, however, the BOP ceased to work as expected by unknown reason. News reporters also found from the safety evaluation of DH 10 years ago evidence that BP planned not to implement emergent manual “stop” button for the BOP, i.e. a remote acoustic trigger. It seems that the producer of the BOP was very confident with their product at that time, and successfully convinced its customer BP not to implement additional remote trigger for DH due to economic reasons. All these information represent an atmosphere of over-confidence around the construction of this platform which is to drill the deepest seabed ever.

Historically when the offshore drilling task did not involved very deep sea, people use BOPs with the same design as those used on dry land oil wells. As we drill from deeper and deeper the seabed this simple copying started to cause problems. Under increased hydrodynamic pressure the hydraulic transmission system used for the BOP become more inefficient, limited by the diameter of hydraulic tubes. Thus the deeper the BOP goes down the sea, the slower for the hydraulic transmission system to response, and in the worst condition, the system just fails. Although this has been history and now these problems must have been overcome, the experience tells us that drilling from new depth poses new unexpected factors and challenges. Confidence on the BOP component base on previous success in shallower constructions is faint.

The rescue

Underestimation extended to the rescue phase of this event. As I wrote this post news that the containment domes plan has failed come to my eyes. The idea of using domes is not the first idea, but after the earlier failure of remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs). However, the speed of spilling was already warned of by many source of information before these failures, while BP kept assuring us of the effectiveness of the ROVs, then the containment domes by previous success of these methods, despite public questions whether these would also work under the depth we never have explore.

The ocean is no more accessible than the moon

Offshore projects, although started more than 50 years ago in USA and later in other countries (including China), are still kind of adventures. The most important obstacles — ocean currents, winds and environmental impacts, are currently still out of mankind’s prediction and control. We are proud to say that a small step deeper of the drilling rig is a large step of the mankind, just like what we call about the moon landing project. However, as BP described earlier, although it took full response of the accident but it is not BP’s own fault (from Chinese news sources). In other words, any small fault in this adventure may also be a big one of the mankind, just like what we have in the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Does the US government treat their offshore exploration projects equally well as their moon or Mars exploration projects?

墨西哥湾油灾续三——《新知客》：早就知道的事。

拿到5月份《新知客》后，看到一个之前没见过的栏目——“观察”。题目恰为：《奥巴马为何要吃窝边油》。

《新知客》5月“观察”

《新知客》5月“观察”

5月份的杂志，应该是4月中旬就组版了。因此此文应该是四月初写就的。美国墨西哥湾油灾事件是四月底开始引起广泛关注的。成为新闻热点应该是刚刚5月前后。因此我实在惊异于行内人的预言能力。我这个行外人在博客里写的东西，仅能作为自己学习了解此事的个人笔记罢了。所幸我发现我了解了一番之后，所形成的基本见解跟行内人的看法类似；更庆幸的是我在此次事件关注系列的第一篇文章开头就清醒地认识到：

人人IQ都高，你的价值不在于你比别人聪明多少，而在于你的职业，你的生存环境和阅历的个人性、独家性。想要“独家”，就“独家”在此。如果人人都最大程度地利用自己的IQ，就能在最少的时间里把事情推进到最前沿的程度，任何发展都会因此加速；放在有IQ不用，做那种看译文的懒事，很可耻，跟听信谣言的不明真相群众无异。……

我打的文字，主要是补充这些资料所没有的内容，同时把这些零碎的资料连接成一起。哪怕是这项工作，我价值也是为零的……

所以，可以认为，以下引用于原文的话，其实是行内人早就知道的事情了。站在这些话的高度之上去看待此次油泄露事件（这是起码的），就能感觉到它不仅仅是不堪设想的生态灾难，而且还是不堪设想的政治灾难。好像有个什么名言说人类的政治全都是非理性的胡言乱语，因此人类的愚蠢是注定的。

目前，美国一半以上的石油依赖进口，……（陆地）油田不再像以前那样大量产出……

随着美国人的石油胃口越来越大，以及石油峰值的来临（我注：什么是Peak Oil），事情越来越不如人意。……

……在声称石油储量大约在700亿桶、能满足美国数年（注意，仅仅是数年！）（我注：现在该处某油井正以每天25000桶的速度消散）石油消耗量的墨西哥湾，其中400亿桶储存在没有发现的超深水域，相当于美国石油储备的最后疆界……

……超深水域的绘图和钻探难度无异于石油科技上的珠穆朗玛峰，每一个探索都须付出巨大代价。状如阿尔卑斯山的盐层让地质学家至今还示能准确描绘这里的地质构型，墨西哥湾的暖流和9000多米深的沉积层让精密的钻机随时可能折断，还不必说因为超深水域带来的高温高压危险，以及飓风的袭击，种种因素让墨西哥湾石油的开采成本极高，平均一艘钻船每日营运成本高达50万美元，而一个小小的意外，都可能带来上亿美元的损失。

（要看全文请购买5月份的《新知客》。）

关于从此次事件引申出的消费高度发达的资本主义社会弊端的思考，我在高度在国外一个很活跃的石油话题论坛网站The Oil Drum看到这样的回复：

一人说：Why are BP drilling in GOM (我注：即Gulf of Mexico) anyway? Because Americans like to live 50 miles from work and like to live a consumerist lifestyle too. All of which needs oil, and a bloody shed load too.

So perhaps Obama and all you other Americans should take the plank out of your own eyes before trying to criticize and damn BP. Y’all want the friggin oil… live with it.

另一人回复上文：Because they failed to create low cost, high efficiency photovoltaic panels when governments paid oil companies to create them.

Because industry refuses to provide options for consumers and prefers to use methods like General Motors used to destroy the EV-1.

British Petroleum is run by oil men who know no other product. Since they have no interest in adapting to something else, they seek to extract oil where ever they can still find it, even though it lies in ever more difficult locations. At the fuel pump American consumers do not give a hoot whether their fuel came from BP or Saudi Aramco.

Where’s the electric car that would put oil men out of business?

我又联想到我们国家。《新知客》“观察”文章说美国多少多少比例的石油主要靠进口，说陆上的石油要采光了，看着就好像是在描述中国的国情。大庆等老牌大陆油天正在拼命地研究三次采油复合驱，关心石油的国人一直都在把眼睛瞄准我国的南海，难道那里不正就是我国“石油储备的最后疆界”么？我国其实面临着跟美国同样的问题。

今年2月份，由中国海油投资、我国自行建造的深水半潜式钻井平台“海洋石油981”在上海外高桥造船有限公司顺利出坞，这个东西就是跟现在墨西哥湾出事的Deepwater Horizon同一级别的东西（严格来说更高级，Deepwater Horizon是第5代，海洋石油981据称是第6代，具体什么差别恕我外行）。而此前中海油荣获2008年度国家科技进步二等奖的“中国南海西部海域复杂构造安全快速钻井技术”介绍中也明确提到：

针对中国南海西部海域所存在的高温超压并存、井壁失稳严重等世界级重大钻井技术难题，通过技术引进……使钻井井眼复杂事故率从40%～72%降至5%以下……

而（不知道是不是我犯概念混淆）据媒体报道此次出事的Deepwater Horizon平台，当初正是因为BP评估事故风险为5%，觉得够低了，所以在方方面面免去了价格昂贵但能大大降低此次灾难等级的应急保险措施（包括但不仅限于现在曝露出来的远程触发开关缺如、深海求急技术方案可行性演练等）。5%是一个什么概念？就是每二十次会发生一次！这如此高的风险竟被业界公认为“很低”，背后到底是何等巨大利益驱使如此胆大的冒险成为业界公认？让人更关心的简单问题是：如何避免海洋石油981成为人类下一个Deepwater Horizon？近海工程可借鉴经验极少，这就是此次Deepwater Horizon之灾的唯一宝贵之处。