Slashdot Mirror
Venezuela Falling Behind
Christopher Frank writes "Seems Venezuela's lack of power has finally caught up with them! MSNBC has the story: 'If you thought Venezuela's political crisis seemed to be dragging for an impossibly long time -- you were right. In a bizarre mass-malfunction, Venezuela's clocks are ticking too slowly due to a power shortage weakening the electric current nationwide. By the end of each day, the sluggish time pieces still have another 150 seconds to tick before they catch up to midnight.'"
1) Have 90% of your economy in one industry. 2) When you don't like the present administration...go on strike. 3) ??? 4) Profit!
You'll have that sometimes...
It's not the lower power / current / whatever. It's the lower frequencies on the AC lines.
And besides any quartz clock won't be affected anyway. The ones that will suffer is those bedside alarm clocks you plug in - those red / green ones that are oh-so-common in the US.
Any idea why there are 0 of them in Japan? Japan runs on 50Hz east side and 60Hz west side, which would make clocks like that completely fall over itself. (something about buying geneator equipment from siemens (europe) for the east side and from US for the west-side - and stuck)
Interesting, but I don't think it's really that much of a "news." should at least up the "it's funny" icon
My life in the land of the rising sun.
EVERYTHING THAT HAS to do with time-keeping has slowed down.
So, basically what we're dealing with here is an entire country suffering from a sort of prolonged "Time Out" syndrome like Zack would sometimes cause on Saved By The Bell. Clearly, the problem will not be solved unless the Venezuelan government actively pursues an ingenious solution by Screech Powers.
barzelay.net
The leader of the country, Cesar Chavez I believe, wants to turn the country into another Cuba. He is really communist and was elected to a six year term by 80% of the population.
The economy collapsed and now the business, political elite, Army, Navy, and Unions want him gone.
He was couped against for two days last year and he was put back into power by his allies. But they can't get rid of him till August, so they are holding a national strike every couple of months to get rid of him with varying success.
It's the main reason gasoline is so expensive and oil is now $40 a barrel, not Iraq. It accounts for %15 of our supply.
It's not cocaine to the lower posters, that is columbia. Chavez does host some of the rebels, supposedly, but he doesn't really care one way or the other.
That my friends, is an understatement.
How do I know this? Well, I am from there ;o)
Excuse me, I must go a have a nap before I finish this post...
will work for Karma
finland leads the world in overclocking
;-P
and venezuela leads the world in underclocking?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The town of Highland Illinois had a company that made motors that shipped all over the world. At night the local power company would slow down the frequency from 60HZ to 50 HZ for testing of the motors and then catch up all the clocks in town by running at 62HZ for 5 times as long as the elapsed test sequence. This whole process had to be completed before people had to get up for work in the morning.
This was about 20 yesrs ago so things have probably changed by now.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Due to magnetic irregularities in regard to the south magnetic pole water swirls counter clock wise. Since there are negative magnetic waves there the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (Venezuela) manages the atomic clocks that synchronize the world. If the atomic clocks go out of sync then this could spell disaster on a international scale. Some one Who knows about the dangers of Time should be dispached at once. Lord knows what could happen if some evil learns to Master time.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
If you think the American media has been silent, then you need to listen a little closer.
Do a 90 day search for Venezuela crisis in New York Times and you get 1102 hits.
It's mentioned in almost every financial article there is about the price of oil and oil production.
Typing "Venezuela crisis" in Google news brings up recent articles in...
Washington Times
Boston Globe
Austin American Statesman
Miami Herald
South Bend Tribune
Forbes
Troy Daily News
BusinessWeek
Daily Oklahoman
Corpus Christi Caller Times
They mention it here in Portland on the local news everytime they do a piece about the rising gas prices.
If you have missed the coverage, it's not because the US media is ignoring it.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find (quickly) my links to the forums or best analysis I have read about the situation there
Maybe tomorrow I will send you more links (this should keep you busy for a litte bit anyway) ;o)
will work for Karma
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican union activist in the 1960's. Hugo Chavez is the man you want, a man who attempted his own coup in 1992. When that didn't work, he ran for el Presidente. And won.
About 70% of the population is in poverty, the base from which Chavez draws his support. The middle class (and upper class) seemingly hate him, which is why his communist ideas resonate with most poverty-stricken Venezuelans.
> Daily Oklahoman
As an ignorant Venezuelan I have to ask... where the hell is Oklahoma?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
First post...FUCK, I'm an hour late. Goddamn clock.
Ever notice that your alarm clock, microwave, stereo clock, etc. is never very accurate? The voltage and frequency do vary depending upon the load on the grid, the generation facility, usage in your home, and so on. Of course, major variations will screw things up and US voltage is pretty consistent, but it's the little variations that throw your bedside alarm off a few minutes every so often. Though slightly off topic, If you want accuracy, get a good (36,000+ vph) mechanical wristwatch, or even better, one of the old Bulova Accutrons. If you're not familiar with the Accutron, run a Google or eBay search for them; they were a HUGE hit with the geek crowd back in the Sixties. They were used as timing devices in the Apollo program and in satellites, too.
IAAL
[ I am not sure about the numbers (80% or 40%) but it's roughly within the ball-park figures ]
will work for Karma
The link below discusses not just the Iraq war, but the how oil is tied to the world economies at a very low level and how Venezuela is in some sense at the heart of the matter with their use of oil as a fiat currency in lieu of the US dollar among their latin american trading partners. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html
Although completely suppressed by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is an oil currency war. The real reason for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves. This essay will discuss the macroeconomics of the `petro-dollar' and the unpublicized but real threat to U.S. economic hegemony from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency. The author advocates reform of the global monetary system including a dollar/euro currency 'trading band' with reserve status parity, and a dual OPEC oil transaction standard. These reforms could potentially reduce future oil currency warfare.
My DVD and Game Collection Tracking L
"'I wake with the sun,' said Rene Osurna, who works at a shipping company. 'And if you're two minutes late to the office, and everybody else is too, there's no problem.'"
You work at a SHIPPING COMPANY and you don't care what time it is?! Are you on powerful anti-depressants? If you're two minutes late to the plane with your packages, there IS a problem.
The book "Legends of Caltech" tells of students who played a trick on their math professor as follows: The Professor (Tom Apostol) gave very carefully scripted lectures designed to end precisely in the time allotted. For a few weeks, each day students would go in the lecture hall before class and 1) Change the clock to run 10-15% faster. 2) Set the clock backwards a few minutes so it caught up at the beginning of lecture. When the Professor (who didn't wear a watch) noticed himself seemingly falling farther and farther behind, he tended to get more and more incoherent as he tried to finish the lecture which he "knew" he had enough time to do.
These are extremely reliable clocks. I still have one. Mine was made in Ashland, Massachusetts (USA) in 1941. Its still running. Keeps good time. I did have to change the line cord though.. the old one's insulation got so brittle that just bending the wire would shatter the plastic. They did not make decent flexible insulation in those days.. but the motor itself is still fine.. its alternating layers of winding and wax paper. No brushes.
Internally, they are shaded-pole induction motors, which use the reversals of the incoming power to generate a rotating magnetic field, upon which a magnetized rotor follows in exact sync. If the power goes off for an hour, the clock loses an hour. It restarts when it sees power again. Its not the most efficient clock though, it uses about 10 watts of power.
About every appliance clock that had hands or those little digital "flappers" used this design.
For what its worth, a lot of the old record players used a larger version of the same motor that drives the clocks - and it was used as a cheap means of spinning the turntable at 33, 45, or 78 RPM by means of selecting a different radius on the mechanical friction-drive transmission that drove the turntable from the motor spindle. It was a simple thing - basically a little moveable rubber-rimmed wheel that rested on one of three different radius areas of the motor spindle, then drove the inside of the turntable from that. Very inexpensive, yet robust. ( but a bit noisy - a little drive noise always was present, and we used "wow" and "flutter" to describe the low and high speed mechanical aberrations of turntable rotation).
Probably more than you wanted to know about these things.. but I thought I would toss it in for anyone interested.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Consider an economic model of massively concentrated wealth based on control of a single natural resource, and the distorting effects on markets of land, labor, and goods created by a small cash-rich sector, and you'll understand what happened. More or less a classic race-to-the-bottom scenario.
The Country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government.
The nation and it's inhabitants were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws.
Venezuela pled guilty to conspiring to violate federal copyright laws by illegally "modifying" the digital time-keeping mechanism of clocks. Under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Clockwork Act), the modification of clocks to display an unauthorized time is illegal, no matter what American or non-American police state you live in. "If people were allowed to make their clocks show whatever time they wanted, it might allow them to read a time that the manufacturer never intended, like 14 o'clock" declared Ayatollah Ashcroft in a press conference today. "Not only is that illegal, it's wrong, and naughty. Next thing you know they'll be bathing in the nude or teaching women to read."
As a result, the country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government. The country and it's people will immediately be put to their rightly intended use: the production of inferior quality candles to be used in Catholic rituals.
I do not where you get your information but I get it straight from the horse's mouth as my family lives there.
I lived there for 20 years and, as I said, my family still lives there. We have never been well-to-do. If anything, we have always been very-low-middle class (because I could not consider myself poor when I had food on my table -sometimes just two meals a day- and a roof on my head).
My family's situation has not improved! Nobody's standard of living has improved. THEY ARE ONLY GETTING WORSE
When you lose any ability to educate yourself, freedom of expression, your job, social security, inflation and unemployment doubles and the right to use your own money (albeit in foreign currency, but still yours);
how can your claims be believed or even substantiated?
Please educate yourself in the matter before you make such *outrageous claims*
P.S. Let me know if you need actual examples of how things are getting worse over there (In fact the article that started the threat is one of many)will work for Karma
My family is Peruvian, so I know plenty about hyperinflation and unemployment and what it's like: and how it hits the middle class. Peru has the same problem: a history of reliance on the export of raw materials for its economic backbone, and the consequent failure to create a strong, broad economic foundation in other sectors.
I don't know where it is right now, but it used to be on Broadway. *badda-bing*
Money for nothing, pix for free
There was a really good documentary about the 48-hour Coup on Irish TV the other night. These two film makers basically got caught up in the coup against Chavez and so we saw the whole thing play out from inside Chavezs place. I unfortunatly only caught part of it, but heres the jist of it (as told by people who actually saw it
Chavez wanted (wants) to share the money generated by the countries oil reserves with all the nations people, not just the few rich oil barons (as was (is) the situation). In order to prevent this from happening, the rich people bought the support of the armed forces and private national TV stations to convince the people that Chavez was the bad guy. They even tried to insinuate that he had a sexual fixation with Fidel Castro
With 7 of the 8 national stations broadcasting anti-chavez propaganda, the coup started (with the unofficial support of the US Government might i add!). Chavez used the one remaining government station to try and tell the people what was happening.
Unfortunatly, I didn't hear how it ended
A quick search on Google reveals that the same show will premiere in the states in March - find a description here
You can find an excellent article here. Although there has actually been a fair amount of coverage in the media, it doesn't stay in the news long, and most of it does not cover what I would think would be the most important issue to Americans, which is the possible American involvement in the April 11, 2002 coup, and the continual "tacit approval" by both the Bush adminstration and a lot of Western media of the current _management_ led strike and the opposition politics it represents. If you try Googling for information, most of the articles seem to accuse Chavez of mismanaging the economy. I don't know enough about his policies to say anything, but the country has been in steady decline for 20 years, and the seemingly constant political turmoil is probably a big part of that. He certainly is not a communist, marxist, or even a socialist. The economy is very much capitalist, and very much a democracy. In fact, his reaction to these protests seems a lot more measured than what it would be in the US.
Actually, it so happens one of my good friends emigrated from Venezulea in the early 90s. He's pretty proud of his heritage, and a strong supporter of Chavez. Anecdotal evidence might not be scientific, but it still does a lot for me.
there was an attempted coup, in which the US was allegedly involved.
whether involved or not, Bush was pretty delighted at the replacement of the elected president with a dictator. and there were at least talks between the white house and the coup plotters in which the white house obviously didn't do a very good job in discouraging the coup plotters.
for a collection of references to articles giving a good background on this issue, see my website (comments, additional info much appreciated).
also provided on the same page is a history of similar coups over the past 50 years in Latin America which occurred to governments in response to actions similar to what Chavez has been doing (land reform, nationalisation of oil/industries). basically anything to alleviate the poor majority. it is this historical pattern which gives the biggest indication that the CIA may be behind it. however, the difference in venezuela is that the CIA supposedly stopped performing these coups.
perhaps the failure of the coup indicates how much harder it is for them to pull them off today (they have to be much more careful to leave no fingerprints, as the public is much less likely to support them without the cold war excuse).
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
Amusing. While your general point is correct, I would have to disagree with a few things you say there.
'This does NOT matter'
So endless rants on DMCA, Microsoft's evils, the latest tech toy matter more than issues like war and the exploitation of the third world? Maybe this stuff doesn't belong on slashdot, but that it doesn't matter????
'If i wanted to read about the failure of modern civilization to provide resources for its citisens, i'd read stuff at CNN/BBC/Local papers.'
I think if you read the stuff at CNN, local papers etc you won't really be getting much of the story. Want to read why Latin America really is screwed up? Why the CIA overthrew so many democratic governments there (thus explaining why the idea that it tried to otherthrow the Venezuelan govt. is at least plausible), or (just as an example) why the US waged covert war on Nicaragua and still refuses to honour the World Court ruling adjudging it to owe Nicaragua $17 billion in damages, and instead sucks the life out of Nicaragua by strangling it with debt payments. Or a real discussion regarding the war on Iraq. Try finding that on US media etc with their 'selective amnesia'. I do admit however that BBC, which you also mention is better (not being corporate owned always helps).
Forgotten History
Do most of the people in Venezuela plug their clocks into power sockets? Hello? Does that make much sense? Most clocks run on batteries. I think the article attempts to mislead.
Another great piece of pathetic journalism, causing the not so intelligent people in the world to have a conversation about something that doesn't and wondering when they'll find another great story from MSNBC.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
"Take into account that only 40% of the voting population actually casted ballots and you realize that apathy actually got him the chair. "
Now where have I seen a similar situation, maybe somewhere closer to home?
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
He's been "undemocratic" as far as the sector of the population that has been benefitting from the oil boom is concerned, but even many of them realize that they are reaping what they have sown.
What's more, the US gov't praised his overthrow for a day, only to be embarassed by his return. What kind of gov't praises the overthrow of a democratically elected leader?
Same gov't that overthrew Chile's Allende, Iraq's Kassem, Iran's Mossadegh...
Oh...
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Wow, you manage to blend begging the question and an ad hominem attack into a single cruel classist insult.
- Hugo Chavez is a great leader.
- The only people being hurt by his policies are the rich, who deserve it.
- Your family is being hurt, therefore your family is rich.
- Your family deserves what Hugo Chavez does to them, proving that Hugo Chavez is a great leader.
I don't know enough about the Venezuela situation to be any kind of an expert on it, but my inclination is to be mistrustful of Chavez, simply because the only people defending him are whining leftists. "It's okay, the only ones who don't like him are rich people."And has anyone noticed that if poor people ("poor" like those $100K/yr longshoremen) go on strike, it means they're striking a blow for freedom against the vile oppressors, but if rich people go on sttrike, it means they are the vile oppressors?
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
So it was the business people who started rewriting the constitution, enacted 40 economic 'decrees' to basically put economic control entirely into Chavez's hot little hands, subsequently sending inflation up to ~30% and unemployment up passed 20%, and it's them who are building their own extra-legal army just in case the real one turns on him (you say they bribed the military--it looks like they did a bad job)?
And I suppose they have a Hugo Chavez body double who they can put on camera saying "Saddam Hussein is a brother". Yep.
Hurray for populist socialism!
--RMT
... is the best place to stay at the end of the world. It will come several hours late.
Is this another example of special relativity? Or just another example of clocks malfunctioning which might lead one to believe that "time slows down".
Most clocks, I don't know about you but I use have two digital plug in clocks, they both use AC power rectified from a step down transformer to DC power using a classic 'bridge' rectifier, then use a voltage regulator chip to smooth out and regulate voltage to a much smaller but consistent DC voltage, typicaly 3-12 volts DC. The older 780x series of voltage regulator chips were good, but the more modern chips are much better. The amount of power on the grid fluctuates every day, however the frequency doesn't. Which, for older mechanical clocks would make a difference because an AC motor rotates in a direct relation to the input voltage frequency. For the type of clocks most people use it would make a difference because the chips inside use a steady DC current, which brings me to my next point.
The problem that is likely causing your clocks to get off sync are cheap and shoddy timing circuits. An example of this would be the shoddy clock chip on the old IBM clones. This chip (Intel 8253) has a very low clock tick-resolution ~18.2 times a second, which was fine for polling a joystick, etc on the older boxes, but is terrible for accurate time-keeping. Most digital watches have millions of 'clock-ticks' per second.
I don't have a clock you insensitive cl...
...oh wait.
I read Slashdot for the
Try using a US analog clock in a country like Thailand that has 50Hz power. You loose 10 minutes every hour!
Make sure to use a converter as 120v clocks don't like 240v.