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De-obfuscation of the term Entropy and its relevance to computing
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Computational Entropy

Posted 07-20-2017 at 01:28 AM by Gyroman
Updated 05-23-2021 at 08:38 PM by Gyroman (Capitalisation of title)

Hi.. I'm an old Dos/Windows 3.1/Fortran/Basic..
Fairly competent engineer.. who needs Linux and simplicity.!

Some may say those two words are not really compatible, but actually in use I have found Linux to work well. Not much better than my Widows XP but without the INTERNET MALWARE.. Python was nice but had a nasty surprise but I'll leave that for another time.. there is a deeper issue here.

You may be wondering what has 'entropy' to do with Linux and more broadly modern computing.. Let me just say a great deal more than you think. Hence the blog..

The last problem which precipitated this was my wife's Mac Book.. trying to get 'legacy' Skype to function on her Leopard OSX 10.4 system.. It just gives a blank white screen.. I have found the necessary start up file corrections (I think).. but I couldn't find the file itself.. Problem was solved by using up to date Android on small HP pad.. back to 'entropy'..

Well I'd better get onto the 'deeper issue'.. It's the pernicious, subtle and devious diversion of understanding of the relationship between entropy and energy. In short THERE IS NONE! By which I mean there is no general or universal or fixed relationship between them that can be applied to every system under obwervation. The whole scam appears more directly in the form of a number of publications or Youtube videos under title's like "Entropy is Not Disorder". Ludwig Boltzmann proved otherwise.. Before you start shouting about the units of entropy as J/K (Joules per degree Kelvin) from the Clausius expression for the change in entropy of a system measured by the sum of heat transferred into or out of a system divided by the temperature let me just point out:

Joules/Kelvin = Energy/Temperature (E/T) but T = average Energy per Particle = E/Number of particles (E/N) so
J/K = E/E/N = N [please note the energy term just disappeared!] So we must conclude (contrary to even the latest lectures by MIT's head of Mechanical Engineering) Entropy has NO UNITS! It is in fact just a NUMBER.
Thank you (for now)
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Comments

  1. Old Comment
    Quote:
    Some may say those two words are not really compatible
    I hope your "two words" aren't referring to "competent engineer" -- I like to pretend I am one of those!

    Anyway ...

    I don't know anything about skype, but you will get more help if you post a question under one of the forums rather than in a blog entry, such as the Other *NIX forum under Linux Forum.
    Posted 07-22-2017 at 02:20 PM by flshope flshope is offline
  2. Old Comment
    Thanks.. Ha Ha.. and yea easy to recall the failures the not so great moments.. but I would add 'inevitable' even 'unavoidable' before failure.. which is really what this blog is about.
    Posted 01-17-2018 at 07:59 PM by Gyroman Gyroman is offline
 

  



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