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Power Outages Strike East Coast
fordp writes "CNN, CNBC and others are reporting that major power outages are happening just after 4:00PM EDT in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, Toledo." There are reports of a Con Edison transformer on fire on 14th Street in NYC, and lots of people stuck in trains and elevators. CNN is reporting that it is, according to power officials, most likely not related to terrorism, because you know you were wondering. The Niagra Mohawk power grid is overloaded, which feeds electricity throughout the northeast U.S. and into Canada. Update: 08/14 21:06 GMT by P : The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure.
..You don't have to worry as much about port 135 being open.
IM going looting. Need one of them there apple g5s!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
FP Here in the MN with Power..
Is this a terrorist attack? I understand that doing something like this would completely shut down the US economy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Some reports have suggested that Boston, MA, US was affected. Downtown is operating normally.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Hrm...no power problems here in Lexington, MA or Haverhill, MA. All of the UPS boxen have been perfectly happy!
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
If I had power I could First Post.
Which one of these guys wrote about the last huge US blackout? Anyone remember?
And in other breaking news, a great chorus of laughter could be heard clear across the country, apparently originating from California.
On a conf call with some co-workers - they started losing power intermittantly just over an hour ago.
Mayor Bloomberg was just on the radio and said that the Con Edison transformer on 14th Street in NYC is not on fire. It just release some black smoke when it shutdown due to the grid overload.
Nice try though. Send generators to NYC please.
easier to try and get FP when lots of people don't have power! bwahaha
Did they move the city or something?
That would explain why out NY WAN went down...
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
The Niagra Mohawk power grid systems are based on Linux.
This article detailing using semiconductors to mitigate large scale grid power surges ran in today's NYTs.
All the evidence points to a natural overload.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Is the power grid controlled by Windows?
Mayor Bloomberg is reporting on CNN that the black smoke some people have seem coming from the Con Edison plant is a result of an automatic shutdown process that was triggered by an outage at Niagra Mohawk Power, which feeds power to NYC as well as the other major cities on the region which have lost power.
They are not sure the cause of the Niagra outage but they do not have any indication of terrorism at this time.
That explains why I'm suddenly unable to access the webserver in Canada for a project I'm working on...
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
I'm in Manhattan right now, near Colombus Circle. All power is out across all 5 boros. No traffic lights, hundreds of thousands trapped in the subway... I'm dialed in through Verizon (wow. good network, right?) on a laptop, through a PBX with a battery backup.
According to the radio, the 14th street power station is burning. Of course, it also is talking about blackouts from Cleveland to Toronto. With no power, my poor tropical fish have less than a few hours to live, and I already hear a crowd in the street screaming, but it's mostly good natured right now.
I'm sorry, this seems like sabotage. I've got 100 gallons of fresh water, and a sword.
And I'm posting on slashdot.
Oh well. I guess I just wanted to say hello. =p
We had an outage for about a second but it came right back. I was going to loot something nice too...
These people look deep into my soul and assign me a number based on the order I joined.
I was watching Modern Marvels on the History channel, randomly, when I noticed that CNN and MSNBC had their news anchors put the war helmets on, and start the 9/11 rant all over again.
I'm not one to say that we shouldn't worry a little, but coincidences happen! Why should we jump to conclusions long before anything really big has happened? Come on now, this is just way too much hype!! When they begin to find evidence of something bad happening, then tell me about power outages.
People stuck in elevators? Please. The power goes out everywhere, let's at least pretend that we're not shaking in our boots, and put some confidence back in our country!
I'm lucky enough to have electricity but I dont know for how long.
I suggest anyone on the east coast, cook your food, prepare for your lights to go out, get your guns ready just in case rioting and looting starts.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Mod the parent up, and get his IP addy.
A huge power blackout hit U.S. cities spreading from New York to Cleveland and Detroit and north into Canada Thursday afternoon. In New York City, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports, including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Thousands of people streamed into the streets of lower Manhattan in 90-degree heat. In Toronto, Ontario, too, workers left their offices after the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour. There were reports of outages in New Jersey and Connecticut as well. Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and had switched to backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
who wants to rule the world?
Here is a link to the solar flare situation there is an X class happening right now! http://sunspotcycle.com/
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
They set up us the bomb!
I gather they didn't learn from the problems California had a couple years back.
The cake is a pie
We had the power brown out here in South Central Michigan, which lasted for a few minutes. Right in the middle of playing a game, fortunately I just saved. I hope this ain't hacker or terrorist related...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Chicago is fi.......
Judging by this chart I'd say a whole lot of people were running their air conditioners today. Maybe that's it?
finally got that extra long extension cable rigged up....
Awesome! 'Any civilisation is only three meals away form revolution.'
This article was posted at exactly the same time that my server at RIT in New York got hit (I currently live in Kansas). I had my website in one tab and Slashdot on the other. When my server stopped responding, I figured one of the sysadmins down there was updating Apache or whatever else can cause the server to go down. But when I refreshed Slashdot's main page, lookie what I find here! :(
:-|
I hope the power comes back on the east coast soon. I want my damn website back.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
BLAME Canada!!!
This is kind of weird. I work at a mid size hosting center and ISP and since we normally run on generator power, we didn't know that there was a widespread power outage. Things started popping up on our monitoring system -- and they all seemed completely unrelated. Of course, it turned out that all the things going red were customers with T1 lines and such, that were in buildings losing power. :)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Justin TimberLake and Christina Aguillera concert postponed.
...as is southeast Michigan.
Thanks to a backup generator the servers are up and I'm posting on Slashdot. Yay disaster preparation!
To: New York
From: Con Edison
Date: Thu Aug 14 13:53:39 2003
Subject: Power Outages
Having the based paradigm that is business, it follows that a year two thousand compliance is going to take the issue off-line. We're making forward progress towards projected by implementing a benefit that is both ethical and massively parallel.
If a riot starts, looting starts, or if this is part of some kinda terrorist attack you are going to feel dumb.
Lets be serious. This is not SCOs fault, its Microsofts fault.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
shit, i better turn off my new overclocked 4ghz athlon!
R.I.P.
Your computer will reboot in 60 seconds.
We experienced a power outage here at the University of Maryland Campus a bit after 4pm as well today. Phones were still operational, but not the doors. The darn electronic locks all locked themselves.
From what I heard, terrorists working for SCO were exploiting port 135 worms after declaring their hatred for IBM on Friendster (of course, they were disguised as John Ashcroft and their accounts were cancelled) and, from all accounts, they were just "testing a random number generator". Where does it all end?!?!?
You know your a geek when your reading Slashdot during a power cut. :-D
He also said that there was no grid overload, it was just being shut down for regular maintenance.
...that this is due to a single fire at a major ConEd substation.
So this one isn't terrorism (so they say), but I'm sure terrorists will be delighted to know that they can throw five major cities into utter chaos by taking out one substation and getting an assist from the domino effect.
~Philly
I report this 20 minutes earlier when it happens and I get rejected....
I find it really interesting that one overload in niagra falls area can do this to the power grid.
Why in the world is it engineered that way? to allow undersized power plants supply a city that overgrew it's power potential?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Got home to find my clocks flashing 12:00... Realized my DSL is out (problems connecting to the PPPoE server), so my ISP still has equipment out.
Tried to call a friend in Manhattan on her Verizon cell phone before I realized everything that was happening and kept getting "all circuits down", so obviously lots of things are messed up.
Watching some CNBC and CNN on the news, people seem to be going a bit insane here, wandering the streets in mobs, etc.
I always wondered what that wall switch was for and today I finally turned it off. My bad. After dinner I'll go turn it back on.
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
to sit back and LAUGH HYSTERICALLY. I hope no one is hurt but I feel NO SYMPATHY for you, and I actually feel a wee bit of redemption for all the crap we had to take out here on the west coast.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Doh! Actually, I and all /.ers hope all are safe and well.
-516
This has absolutely nothing to do with politics, if you are thinking of politics right now, this should show how much you truely hate America.
I wonder how many people believe Bush planned 911. I bet the same people who think me being a Dean supporter matters in a situation when power is going out all accross the country for "UNKNOWN" reasons.
I am waiting for the facts, but speculation is good because you cannot expect our government to give us all the facts, maybe some expert who works at a powerplant will post here and tell us what happened.
When we find out the reasons then we can rule out terrorism.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
NO CARRIER
Litigious bastards
University of Maryland lost power for about tens minutes shortly after 4pm today. Doors stopped functioning.
And geeks like anarchy, right?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Don't believe that sunspots can trigger power outages? Think again.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
X class it the largest class of solar flare.
Solar flares can cause major havoc with power grids.
I've not seen this mentioned anywhere on TV yet...
Should serve as an example to the Department of Energy. The U.S. needs a distributed power generating system ASAP. Lots of small solar and wind generators all over the nation. Every block should have one.
Right now, "officials" are saying this probably isn't terrorism. But I bet it's giving al-Qaeda some ideas.
If an accident can make this happen, I'm sure a cleverly-placed explosive can make it happen much more easily.
And once all those cities are out of power and essentially crippled, the real strikes start.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get some tea on for when the FBI guys come knocking on my door. Does Ashcroft take one lump or two?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
With the generating station right accross the street from my house, my workplace in St Catharines is using a powered backup for its alternative energy.
Kewl.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=51 9&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20030814/ap_on_re_us/blackout
0 03Aug14?language=printer
Massive Blackout Hits Northeastern States
3 minutes ago
NEW YORK - A huge power blackout hit U.S. cities spreading from New York to Cleveland and Detroit and north into Canada Thursday afternoon.
In New York City, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports, including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
Thousands of people streamed into the streets of lower Manhattan in 90-degree heat.
In Toronto, Ontario, too, workers left their offices after the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT.
Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
There were reports of outages in New Jersey and Connecticut as well.
Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and had switched to backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
White House officials were monitoring the blackout from Washington and from San Diego, where President Bush (news - web sites) addressed troops at midday.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
A huge power blackout hit U.S. cities spreading from New York to Cleveland and Detroit and north into Canada Thursday afternoon. In New York City, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports, including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Thousands of people streamed into the streets of lower Manhattan in 90-degree heat. In Toronto, Ontario, too, workers left their offices after the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour. There were reports of outages in New Jersey and Connecticut as well. Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and had switched to backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59083-2
Power Outage Hits Major U.S., Canadian Cities
Reuters Thursday, August 14, 2003; 4:59 PM
NEW YORK - A massive power outage swept across swaths of the eastern United States and Canada on Thursday, leaving sections of New York City, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto without electricity, witnesses said. Subways in New York came to a complete halt, and power was out at all three of the New York area's major airports. Commuter train service also came to a halt, and cellular telephone service was disrupted. The Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Forked River, New Jersey was not functioning, according to people familiar with the plant's operation. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said they did not know the reason for the power outages, but said the department was looking into it.
"The Niagra Mohawk power grid is overloaded, which feeds electricity throughout the northeast U.S. and into Canada."
don't you mean OUT OF Canada? specifically the James Bay hydro project in Quebec???
Rochester NY lost power too, but does the news bother to mention us, noooo, what's a city with 1 million people worth when nyc is down...*sigh*
What if its hackers? WOuldnt that be interesting? Then what, the war on hackers?
Tragek
My power here spiked and I lost cable, and phone (DSL is still up tho..woo hoo!!). We are one of the few spots in NY with power I believe (prob because we are 15 miles from a nuclear plant).
Yes it's a master terrorist plot by Dr. Evil bin laden. He will now demand one meeeeeeellion^H^H^H^H^H beeeeellion dollars to turn the power back on!
Me thinks people are too paranoid, and that's really something coming from a semi-conspiracy theorist.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Someone queue the Barry White, its Baby Making time. Or for those less inclined, or lacking a significant other, I guess you could always cower in a corner with no /. and no quake, and no email :)
most likely not related to terrorism
In related news, the door of the loo at SaintJohns Library being cracky is not a case of terrorism (we know what you we're thinking)
Seriously folks... this is the FUD M.Moore is talking about. Even if one is 100% sure no terrorism is involved, the media can't resist mentioning it, thus keeping the public constant aware of the danger of terrorism.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
a friend who works on their site is online at 5:03 EST and said they're all fine. she's just busy feeding the web with updated info (even at a time like this, we can't get enough of kobe...)
side note: as a former long islander, i'm proud of my fellow new yorkers in manhatten, who're staying calm and helping each other out. they're not jaded or tired out, they're just using their heads and acting rationally. stay strong and everyone in those areas, stay cool
Rock!
Shuts down your TCP 135 port quite effectively, I'd say.
Great, now all the terrorist wackos who watch
the news can see how fragile the power grid
around here really is.
From the Drudge Report: Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and had switched to backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
... prisoners ... don't they have mechanical backups? For one, to keep the people in, but for another, to let 'em outta their cell if they hafta for whatever reason.
Power outage
I though backup power (battery, generator, some sort of big industrial UPS, whatever) for elevators was in the building codes for most places by now, even if it's just enough to get it to the nearest floor and open the doors. I haven't heard a "stuck in an elevator" story in years.
--- Ban humanity.
Cheers,
Ian
Amazing.. I didn't even think about this possibility. Interesting!
This is my sig. The post is over.
Skynet has us by the balls now!
No sign of problems in Chicago...
from ny times, pay, blah Power Outages Reported Along East Coast By THE NEW YORK TIMES Power outages were reported today throughout the Northeast. Blackouts were reported north to Toronto, south to Maryland and west to Cleveland, Detroit and Toledo. The cause may have been an overload of the Niagara-Mohawk power grid, according to radio reports. Radio reports said that subways and the Long Island Rail Road were among the modes of transportation not operating in New York. With lights off inside city buildings, people are streaming out onto the streets of Manhattan. In Manhattan, Penn Station and subways are reportedly being evacuated. Radio reports thousands and thousands of people are on the streets wandering around, but no panic or disorder is being reported and traffic is said to be moving through Midtown Manhattan. "We don't know when Con Ed will power up again, but we do know it will take some time." Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, said. Mayor Bloomberg said that Con Edison officials had told him that the New York City power grid was shut down, as it was built to do, to avoid beig damaged. "People should go home, or stay with friends if they live far outside the city," he said. He also said that the city was calm.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
This happened in Canada not New York. Until I hear the gov of Canada say this is not a terrorist attack, or an act of sabatoge and until we actually see exactly what happened in plain English, There is no evidence to prove either way, its just the governments official speculation vs our unofficial speculation.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Comming from a country like India, where power outages are almost a daily occurrence, its amazing to see how much the US is dependent on a continuous power supply. People in California are not the only ones laughing.. mwhahahahahhah
I was suspecting a problem with the monitoring system when I continuously got pages for 15 down sites in our WAN.
:) At least someone is happy in this situation :)
When I catched that all those places where in Ontario and north-east of US I expected somethng like this on news website.
Now my ferret is playing with the page that vibrate constantly
The officials said the outage is a natural occurrence and not related to terrorism. (cnn.com)
Oh, it's just a natural occurance for one of the most populated areas of the country to lose power. And it's not terrorism either? What, is it GW's fault (like everything else)? WHEW! I can go back to sleep now.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
It's absolutely *not* related, since it's in Dallas, but I'd like to point out that QuakeCon 2K3 started up at approximately the same that the power in NY and elsewhere went out.
:-)
Guess those 60000W PSUs might be a *bit* excessive, eh?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I think it's an off-topic troll. I don't think this can be considered "news for nerds" and not "stuff that matters". If you don't have an UPS, you're not a nerd, As simple as that....
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
Oh horror!
Could it be terror?
After the incident with the tower
We can't even lose the power
--
Will work for bandwidth.
Downtown Crossing is still A-OK.
/. is keeping me.)
(I gotta get outta' the damned office, but the fat pipe connection and
1977 Power Outage
It's still moving. Erie, PA, flickered when it happened and just went out (5:10 PM Eastern). It's on the lake between New York and Ohio, so it's on the cusp of whatever grid we have here in Pittsburgh. I think I'll go turn off my air conditioning.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
The benifits of working for a cable company/ISP with deisel generators is that I can post this message with a province wide power outage. :)
Ahh yes, nerdiness
No, I wasn't. There have been lots of power outages, and not one due to a terrorist attack. Sheez, 19 guys with boxcutters manage to pull off one lowtech operation, and suddenly everybody thinks they're supervillains.
That's funny... you're so paranoid about government misinformation that you would rather trust a post on Slashdot from a supposed "powerplant employee".
Life in Orange County
Remember the TV series "CONNECTIONS" by James Burke - the segment was titled The Trigger Effect, read all about it here.
t 1. pdf
http://vms.cc.wmich.edu/~dlouhy/scitechsu03/uni
I expect Bush to adress Congress tomorrow. He will tell them that the US needs to be able to provide for its own strategic electricity supply. Airco is a national security priority. Therefore Canada will be annexed by the end of the week.
Canadians that object will be labelled terrorists and put in camps where they will be working on new pipelines, new electricity lines and clearing out forrests. All others canadians will be subjected to pay the USA's debt as a thanks for now becoming part of the world's oldest democracy.
Use Adsense for Charity
Didn't anyone notice the time the blackout happened? 4:11pm! That's 4-11! OH MY GOD! THE TERRORISTS WANT INFORMATION!
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I bet those $500.00 toll booths are chugging away.
Americians build two reliable things well.
Weapons and slot machines.
for a terrorist who goes by the name 'Trinity'.
four-oh-four
What?
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
Admiral Ackbar called me and said... "It's a trap!"
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Fascinating, in a slightly morbid fashion....watching live coverage on the other side of the world (Norway).
Sky News, etc., showing New York and power plants.
At least they're saying it's absolutely NOT terrorism, and are being worried about the hot weather and the poor souls trapped in subways and things.
It all seems somewhat surreal (my apologies to those affected!).
the world gets smaller and smaller.
.sig? No.
I just heard thunder outside. Perhaps it's lightning that caused the outage? No, wait... I'm in Texas... that's probably not it.
You know I heard about this new virus affecting Microsoft servers. Do you think that might be it? I know it took out a large portion of SprintPCS causing them to be unable to service my customer needs. Do you think it could be this virus?
Waterloo, ON is without power too.
Who SlashDotted the East Coast?
Sanity is overrated...Being CRAZY is much more fun!!!
I feel sorry for the last guy to plug something in when the overload occured. Can you imagine plugging your toaster in and taking down power for the east coast? I'd feel pretty guilty about it, unless I meant to do it, in which case I would feel 1337.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Wouldn't links like this be more useful when emergencies pop up?
Bowling Green OH still got power...suck that Toledo.
++mse61--
The sound of a few million UPSs beeping because they have no juice!!
OK, that was a joke, but a bad one. WHAT if this is the start of yet another terrorist attack against USA??? No jokes now, please. Until we know what's going on.
I can't wait for the lawsuits to start flying on this one... Once the power comes back on of course...
... if that's your best, your best won't do... - Twisted Sister
When did Toledo, OH start housing Toronto?!
This sig no verb.
Imagine what would happen if this was a direct result of the MSBlast virus...
I am in Buffalo, NY and parts of the city are out. I just left work because we had no power, but we have it at my house! Thank God I didn't lose my uptime!
$ uptime
5:13pm up 273 days, 5:34, 1 user, load average: 1.02, 1.03, 1.00
Al-Qaeda cells received instructions to set their A/C to deep-freeze at precisely 3:52 PM.
It's a good way to see if your NOC actually has those backup generators after all . . .
((Attempt to be funny in a serious time like this))
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I was listening to the NHB (www.nhbradio.com) radio stream out of NJ and it suddenly went down.
Niagara Mohawk Website
Supposedly the electric company that started it all.
I am betting 10 that it was an MS system that bought this down. Any others>
In other breaking news, I have just scratched my ass. There is no evidence of terrorist involvement at this time.
Clearly with road traffic systems and other transport infrastructure badly affected, let's hope the emergency planning kicks in clearly to give precedence to health and emergency services to be allowed to proceed while the grid is restored.
We're thinking about you folks again from over this side of the pond. I guess there's going to be hell to pay for this one.
That was a great demo: "Hey, watch it shut itself down when I pull out the plug!"
???
John
This article from Reuters explains a little:
New York Official Says Power Grid Overloaded -CNN
Thu August 14, 2003 05:04 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A New York State official said the Niagara Mohawk power grid overloaded on Thursday, causing a massive power outage, CNN reported, and New York Major Michael Bloomberg said it was likely a natural occurrence. "It may be well into the evening before power comes back on," Bloomberg told the U.S. cable television network. He said smoke from a Consolidated Edison Inc. plant in the city was due to the plant's automatic shutdown, not to a fire, as had been reported. He said, "I can tell you 100 percent sure that there is no evidence as of this moment whatsoever of any terrorism." A massive power outage swept across swaths of the eastern United States and Canada on Thursday, leaving sections of New York, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto without electricity, witnesses said. It was not immediately clear whether the Niagara Mohawk problem caused the wider outage.
I'm typing from 30 miles southwest of Boston. I've heard reports that Boston is affected; but here in the suburbs, we're not having any problems.
It's worth noting that, no matter what caused the initial problem: The results we're seeing are exactly what happens when the populace fails to concern itself with potential problems. We Americans, even today, suffer from a serious case of "It'll-never-happen-to-me." Experts have warned for years that our power grids had dangerous "pressure points," where small problems could cause massive failures.
Unfortunately, when we hear the phrase "potential problem," we hear the first word and never bother to listen to what follows. "If it's not a sure bet, why worry about it?" Well...here's why.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Who needs terrorists? We'll do it to ourselves. Infrastructure maintenance interferes with short term profit, so it gets minimized. Welcome to the unregulated market. What will this cost us? I hope this doesn't turn grim.
I have EE friends who have been predicting a failure like this because the power companies are competing with each other not to maintain the infrastructure.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
there will be a baby boom next june.
Have fun folks
Of some interest, the internet in North America seems not to have been affected much.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Fortunately isn't winter season. I hate to use the fireplace, makes me feel so 20th century.
Seriously, major failures of interconnected electric distribution systems are usually very complex events and it takes a long time to track down the root causes.
sPh
Klaatu borada nikto!
0xfeedface
Am I the only one who notices that theres a shortage of information? Ok so its not terrorism, what exactly is it? A freak accident? Well how did it happen? I'd consider this a MAJOR accident.
If my power goes out and I dont have a clue why, I'd be pissed, wouldnt you?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'd like to see it. I dont want to hear government people telling me stuff, show me the evidence, tell us wtf just happened. Then people wont ask if its a terrorist attack.
Sure, just go down there. Hopefully you'll get shot and then we don't have to read your idiotic posts anymore.
In case you missed it, sparky, they did say. "Natural system overload." You know... like too many people using too much power. It's overloads the system.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
inside this building there is a level where no elevator can go and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places, hidden places, but one door is special. One door leads to the source...etc... Now that the power is out we have only five minutes to find the door on that floor.
Right after 4:00, the building I work in at the University of Maryland (CSS building, if you know the campus) lost power. I wonder if it's related.
I want to request that stories/categories be a many to many relationship, that way stores like this could be put under "USA" and then they wouldn't be shown on my slashdot page, as it is it seems hardly any stories get classified as this!
Now don't get my wrong i'm sure a power outage is quite exciting, if i lived their, but i don't - so aside a few webservers going down i don't want to know - thats why i ticked the "don't show stories about USA".
Why is it so hard for the Slashdot admins to classifiy stories about USA as USA! and that counts for the countless storeies about kinky lawsuits. I don't mind the odd SCO story or two - hey they are funny, but i don't really need to know about every USA sentric lawsuit, mmkay?! The world is bigger than the USA, and i'm tired of my news being saturated by a relitivly small portion of the world population.
Exammple: one nite i watched the BBC World news and the ABC "World" news. The BBC had one story on england, and the rest on the rest of the world, isrial featured heavly i believe. the ABC had ONE count 'em ONE story NOT on america. Why keep the pretence people - we all know its not world news if its only about one country. Sure its an interesting country and makes quite a bit of news, but please, keep some BALANCE! its not like its the largest country in the world.
riki
"Maybe with some divine intervention, the next version of Microsoft's OS will actually be good." - Linus Torvalds
Holy cow... Is your name Sean Kemp?
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
I may be mistaken, but if the cause of this is a grid overload, wouldn't that make the outages "brown-outs", and not "black-outs"?
When there is not enough power to be distributed properly, and consequently power shuts off in certain parts of the grid, I believe it's a brown-out.
But I could be wrong.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
The power company obviously had Linux running and had to pull the plug because of SCO.
oh, and I blame SARS as well.
...went down and then back up in about 10 seconds. Really screwed up our dyanmic IP allocations for a while.
And it's *obviously* terrorism. Any out-of-the-ordinary event not instantly explained is terrorism!
(...sounds like a regional grid overload to me...)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Does anyone know if the verizon cell-phone network in Syracuse, NY is working?
Cause thats what Im doing RIGHT NOW :-D
btw I thought they where supposed to fix this bullshit when the power went out in the 70's??? if the same thing happened AGAIN who dropped the ball on retrofitting the power supply to let it grow with the rest of the usage
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
"Natural Causes" says CNN, but I think it's the Blaster Worm affecting all those embedded windows systems....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Doesn't it take a few days for the solar wind to make it from the sun to the earth?
http://iloveny.state.ny.us/
Find Boba / bubble tea in your zipcode.
otherwise I wouldn't be able to type this.
So you Americans want to tell me, that everything is hanging on one grid and depends on one source?
lol. you deserve it.
As a Californian it's now my turn to laugh after all you East Coasties were mocking us for our power outages.
Ha Ha!Im in Detroit and connected thru a SprintPCS phone using a snapsync cable to my laptop.
Reaching back into /mnt/archive in my brain, I recall something from my history textbooks in 7th or 8th grade... regarding the huge northeast blackout of the 60's. Basically, after that, they changed things so that nothing like it could ever happen again.
Never say never, or the big guy upstairs will screw you over on that one.
*blink* *blink*
Well, that's one way to stop P2P.... No Power==No Piracy
...and in English for all us non-Gibberish speakers?
That was classic intercourse!
I guess we have short memories, since something similar happened on the West Coast in the mid 90s.
I believe it was either 1995 or 1996, IIRC.
Power was out for hours throughout California and parts of Oregon and Washington (I believe parts of Arizona and Nevada were affected as well).
It sucked, but it wasn't the end of the world.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Frankly, the reason why Fox News is #1 in ratings, which is a new fact to me anyway, probably has a lot more to do with the fact that Fox News presents FALSE information.
Yes, I remember watching their baloney Iraq coverage. They were talking about it like we were taking on an alien race on the moon using newage space technology. (Light Sabers, Lasers, etc. were implied)
If they're not taking advantage of hysteria, than I really don't know who is. Fox News is, quite possibly, the worst source of news on the planet.
A wrecked Ducati... security video of a chick in black leather..
TAKE THE OTHER DOOR NEO! SCREW TRINITY!
Let the looting begin!
If there had been some X class flares, it would be possible; but spaceweather is only showing a max of a C3 [not really bug] in the last six hours. C6 in the last 24.
With only C level flares, I really doubt it is the flares. They would have had the X level listed if it happened.
Aparently all of foxnews.com's updaters are in in the NE. Their site hasn't been updated since a few min before the blackout started.
Good thing we are getting our info from CNN
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.. there goes my Uptime. :(
Wow. Who would have thought that ConEd was running the grid on unpatched Microsoft servers.
Are just the "major" cities out or are all the areas between them out too ? I guess it is not as interesting to broadcast a small town with a power-outage, but I'm not sure from what I've heard if the power outages has somehow only affected major cities or if it has affected everything.
I saw him and Rea Perlman go in there eariler today! This is the sign, the US / Canadian war is on.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
How is it idiotic to want to SEE the evidence?
Anyone can come and say "Well we have the evidence but you cannot see it"
If you think this is a serious issue you want to know what happened and why.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
> Does Ashcroft take one lump or two?
:)
Field Marshall Ashcroft doesn't take the lumps, he GIVES the lumps. Best you remember that, boy.
"The name's Ashcroft...Housewares."
I saw a major drop in online customers on our monitoring system, I call our telco and he tells me that from Toronto to Ottawa, there's no longer any power, which I can confirm by the non longer responsives CPEs.
Ouch!!
have you been defaced today?
From NY on diesel.... :)
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
The Architect.
Even if this was a terrorist attack, the government would not admit it right now. They have been given clear orders. They are told to deny any possibility of terrorist attack if something like this happens.
Anyone remember the reports (regardless of how accurate) of an increase in births 9 months after the 1965 NYC power outage? I call dibs on this outlandish prediction. Someone in NY better be "getting some" out of all of this.
No.
Watch what happens in the wake of this... every news program on the planet is going to talk about how "inadequate" the power system is and how we need MORE, MORE, MORE power. Nowhere will you likely hear anything in the mainstream about CONSERVATION. That's a four-letter word in the eyes of the current hyper-consuming society.
Hey, at least they don't have to worry about Blaster spreading. :)
Westford, MA (out on 495 south of Lowell) is still good...
If you want to watch the MSNBC web feed without using their crappy IE popup, use media player to openr eam.ne t/D/1181/8828/v0001/reflector:23180
http://a1181.l882824180.c8828.g.lm.akamaist
(no spaces in there)
By a happy coincidence I came home just in time to see my computer rebooting. I was able to restart the movies I was seeding via Bittorrent without bytemonsoon even noticing I was gone. Yay serendipity.
So slide-rule - do you drink coffee? You have got to try Klekolo. They're on Court street between Main and Broad. Once you try their brew you'll never want to go anywhere else. If you already go to Klekolo, I probably know you (and what you drink) -- I'm the barista till 4pm most days.
We've got power here. My servers in Philadelphia, PA and Rochester, NY are running fine too.
Trinity did it. She exploited the ssh hole after using NMAP on Con-Ed's computers, broke in, and shut it down.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
After viewing various news reports, I for one, can't help wonder if the blackout was caused by the MSBlast computer worm and/or its varients.
Do any of the power stations, in particular in New York City where it's thought the blackout originated, rely on Microsoft products for their critical services/networks; are the private networks truly protected?
Ron Bennett
Hello All!
:)
It's very strange, becose there is a "united energy system" or something like that should be in U.S. ( We have this system in Russia, and I know that "whole-country energy systems" are available in other countries ). In case of damage of any powerplant, electricity should came from another powerplants via global electricity lines. It's like Internet
Incompetence strikes again. Welcome to the first world, where croynism, nepotism and patronism rule.
Isn't it great how billions will be lost but the responsible, well paid, people will be nowhere to be found.
Isn't it funny why we never question leadership?
I was thinking Enron! What's that? Wrong year? Oh.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
This isn't the first time folks: The Great Northeast Blackout of 1965
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Check out NE power grid real time info, it shows a MAJOR drop off in current flow to NYC at around 4:15, and it's still declining ...
Real Time Market External Interface Summary
If this thing goes on into the night, I'd put money on a baby boom in the area 9 months from now. :P
~Laserone
http://www.LaserBlog.com
... we blame the worm! i see it now: M$ finally screws us all, worm kills power to north east. :-/
n/t
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
- Hot day with tons of ACs running. Check.
- The "magic smoke" being released from one or more power substations. Check.
- Instant power shutdown as a domino effect of overloaded substations occure. Check.
Really, this isn't even the first time something like this has happened at NYC (and surrounding area). A huge power outage just like this happened in 1977. Also, just a couple of years ago several STATES lost power for a short while.The power still works, even though the heatwave has put the biggest strain ever on the grid (for lack of production, most of the electricity being nuclear, and nuclear power plant heat the water from rivers, and the upstram water is already too hot).
Let's all turn on our lights at 4:13pm.... shh... don't tell anyone
</tinfoilHat>The outage may not be due to a terrorist act, but it's a perfect opportunity to carry one out...
AFAIK, there's no reason to ASSume terrorism. Granted, official reports at this time are unreliable, but I don't see any reason to assume the worst.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
If so, now is a good time do figure out if the ones located in NY you were looking at, are prepared for such problems. :)
I'm kinda laughing now, because CNN was reporing that this might have been caused by the latest Microsoft Security flaw.
It's not every day that you could start to blame Micro$oft for a national meltdown of the power grid.
BTW, Mods, this is a ha, ha, funny, if anything.
I disable sigs...do you?
With so many ISPs, tech companies and major companies using Diesel power generators, it makes you wonder what happens in a huge power outage like this. If this goes on longer than 36+ hours, some of those generators will run out of gas. When they do, will the diesel fueling stations be working since there is no power? Will there be a short term diesel shortage this week as a result of the sudden increased demand (probably not). But it is possible that not everyone will be able to be fueled in time if it goes longer than 36+ hours.
Welcome our new LoTek alien overlords.
I don't see why you can't see it, or why you assume you can't. This did, of course, just happen, about an hour ago. Everyone connected with running the power grid is probably just a little bit busy right now, so you might give them say, any time at all to fully diagnose the failure and get the details out in some organized fashion.
You're free to ask if it's a terrorist attack, but if you want the right answer, with all the reasoning filled in, wait a few days. Ask while it's still going on and the best you can expect is "Doesn't look like it. Gotta go." It doesn't mean, or even suggest, that they are hiding anything.
How about "happened before"?
The Con Edison Power Failure of July 13 and 14, 1977
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
And be sure to send in Hillary Rosen first!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Just wondering, but why? Never been to LA, have you?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
We have a fair amount of locally produced electricity in Massachusetts, at least in some of the old mill towns. Yeah, we get the occasional small outage, but we're mostly isolated from these regional thingies (the folks at the plant are really good about watching out for these messes and taking us off the grid).
I'm in Banff, Alberta, Canada and the power just came back on here as well. The spread of the outage was amazing!
In other news, power companies are quoting $10,000/kwh for emergency power, which NY state will be obliged to pay under contracts signed by the previous administration. This will lead to a recall election for the governor.
Anyone else notice the web seems a lot faster without all those eastcoasters takin all the bandwidth? ;)
no comment
...TWICE. (Well, one wasn't quite this big...)
There was the 1977 NYC only outage, and the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965. The latter seems similar to the present condition.
Why in the world is it engineered that way?
In the event of a large scale failure, you can have huge surges and sags in the power grid. The effect then spreads out over the grid and reaches other power stations and equipment. Those systems see it for the problem it is and automatically shutdown to avoid damage. ("Shutdown" might be a bit of a euphemism; it could be something as simple as a very large fuse blowing.) We are talking about systems with hundreds of thousands of volts and an ungodly current capacity here. It's one thing if your CRT gets hit with a surge and smokes. At a major power plant, it could be like a bomb going off. Far better to have a major outage that takes a few hours to clean up, then a cascade failure that does lasting damage everywhere.
It is also worth pointing out that Niagara Falls provides a huge amount of power to the surrounding regions. A failure there could mean a serious loss of capacity.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Lots of people where switching to gprs on their phones in newyork, we got an alarm that that cpu jumped on some NY nodes. Everyone switching to mmode to see what CCN had to say.
;)
So one good thing, our Basestations are up, so keep on surfing slashdot, wirelessly.
As long as we don't get routed near Detroit this time...
Alex
...sucks anyway. why don't they use the westinghouse patents and equipment that they put there to begin with? i mean, at least Tesla's stuff worked.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Redundant, but hey too much data is never a bad thing.
Everything in our office (Bedford, MA) is running fine.
I'm in Rochester- my work has power, but not much else. My server at home went out, so I'm assuming power is out there too.
I'm sorry, but for all of the media wonks saying this doesn't appear to be terrorism, I think they're just trying to keep the masses from going nuts. I think this *is* a terrorist act. It's entirely too 'coincidental' for my tastes. And notice how close it is to the 2nd anniversary of 9/11 (within a month).
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I was on IRC when this happened, 8 people timed out. I thought, wtf a netsplit? But my channel has only one server. So I figured something big was going down.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's fucking NIAGARA you bunch of no spelling skills engineer geek morons. Jesus.
You all seem to have Viagra on the brain or something.
The transportation will probably slow down and productivity will go way down yhe next days (depending on lenght or the outage).
The good thinh though is the warm weather. If the weather stays warm the next days, ehh, well you all know what happens when its hot an air-conditioners don't work.
That could be A Good Thing (TM) because it will shrink pension costs for both the state and many bussinesses. In turn will this lead to a higher percentage of the population working which will be good for the economy.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
Yes but this is not the hottest summer in history. Also the overload happened in CANADA not the USA, so how did it spread here? Why didnt we build some kinda backup? You'd think that now, after 911 we would have known better than to get all our power from one place in Canada.
Yes this isnt the first time, I know its happened before, however in the year 2003 and after 911 you'd think that this kinda thing should not happen and if it does happen you'd think we'd be given information on why it happened immediately.
When our government doesnt know for sure, this is bad because it causes people to fill in the blanks themselves. Not everyone trusts the government, so when they say "Its not terrorism" but then they dont know for sure what it is, they'd have been better off not saying anything at all.
Yes its possible that power can be overloaded, but why today? Why in 2003? This is not the hottest summer in history, and also I thought after 1977 they would have changed things to make this domino effect more difficult.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So that means EVERYONE is conditioned to think "Terrorist attack" anytime something unforeseen like this happens? Sounds like some heavy brainwashing has happened to US citizens in the last two years.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I do concur with this. Utilities and the infrastructure should be non-profit corporations where any excess is put back into the infrastructure. I've been saying this for ten years. Power deregulation is for the birds. There are some areas where capitalisim doesn't work. This is one of them.
I live in the Bronx on Holland and Rhinelander and I have seen several instances of looting. I hope they get the power back on soon.
The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure.
Actually the smoke was from the Mayor's handlers trying to spin the fire story so as not to cause panic.....
I think it would have been better for the Mayor's minister of dis-information to have done this on television with a flaming transformer in the background.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I use Verizon Wireless (I live near Albany, NY) and cannot dial out on my cell phone, nor can I get calls (it dishes out an 'all circuts are busy' double-time busy signal), so anyone trying to get ahold of a loved/cared/liked/missed one via their cell, it might not work.
Anyone know the extent of this outage for cell phones?
I better use my ration before I lose it, so I'm going to get out my circular saw.
Somebody is so fired.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
the last paragraph reads:
"We are going to have a situation where people are going to have to walk a long distance. They need to be careful," Bloomberg said. "Our advice is to go home, open up your windows, drink a lot of liquids."
I would have to assume they mean beer- cause that's what I drink after work and with no power to go home to I'm sure the neighborhood bars are doing well.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
No.
There would be no cars or anything else working if it was a pulse weapon. Not to mention if the pulse was large enough to take down an area that large a goodly portion of the organic material around the target site would most likely be incinerated.
Y2k and terrorism are no where near as catastrophic as simple bad planning and lackadaisical execution.
Is the chance that yet another critical system somewhere was running and un-patched Windows network.
:)
Maybe terrorists infiltrated Microsoft a long time ago and thats why they suck so much now
Or it could be the hot weather.
So this one isn't terrorism (so they say), but I'm sure terrorists will be delighted to know that they can throw five major cities into utter chaos by taking out one substation and getting an assist from the domino effect.
... so that the authorities CANNOT dismiss the attack as an accident or other 'natural' occurance.
Indeed. And if it were sabatage or a terrorist strike, the would still tell us it was an overloaded substation the blew (and it may well be. After all, they do overload and blow from time to time).
Which is probably one reason bin Laden had several planes kamikazee at the same time, and why a well organized al Q'aeda strike is likely to involve multiple targets
Of course, with the power grid that could still be ignored (claim it is a domino effect from an outage higher up the chain, and dismiss the five or six burning facilities lower down), but my hunch is that this time it is probably an outage of the kind that arise every few decades. However, I fully expect that, if and when there is a terrorist strike on our infrastructure, this is exactly the kind of story the authorities will feed us.
Which means that aging infrastructure decay and failure will appear indistinguishable from sabatage and terrorism for the next few years, until and unless the bad guys up the ante. Which, thanks to this fact, we can probably expect.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
How is it idiotic to want to SEE the evidence?
Unless you are forensics, you never see the evidence. Demanding to see the evidence doesn't matter, because you are not important.
Anyone can come and say "Well we have the evidence but you cannot see it"
Anyone can say, "Here's some evidence." It doesn't mean that it's factually true unless you investigate it yourself. Have I lost you yet?
If you think this is a serious issue you want to know what happened and why.
I do know what happened. A blackout occured due to power-grid overload. The power-grid overloaded due to too much strain or hardware failure, which will be determined after the investigation finishe. At that point, you will be informed via news outlets.
Why is that so hard to understand? Do you really get better results by jumping on a soap box and sounding like an under-ecudated loon?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Most UPS systems won't power an aquarium filter for long, but you can use an UPS to power an air-pump. An airstone on the end will keep water circulating, preventing any O2 problems in the tank.
The other problem a power outage causes is that the bacteria in the filter that do the bio-filtration will die during the power outage, and when the power restarts, all the waste will get pumped into the tank.
So, power an airstone from an UPS (or get a simple and cheap battery powered airpump), and break-down and clean the filter so that when it comes back on, it doesn't pollute the tank.
Just heard an interesting comment on CNN that they are "not ruling out the possiblity that the outage might have been caused by the worm which affects all Microsoft Windows operating systems. More investigation will be required..." Should have joined the Penguin movement a long time ago...
Niobe have succeeded, Trinity shut down back-up generators, and Neo is ready to enter that certain door located in one of the NY skyscrapers (and conviniently filmed in Australia ) :)
Trinity being overprotective shut down a few extra blocks, just to be sure power does not come back up at the wrong time...
Hyperom.com
The entire east coast suffered a blackout today when a crucial Con Edison webserver came under attack. Authorities say this is the work of a fringe, but severely commited, internet community known as "Slashdot".
/.'d.. Wh3r3's teh p0w3R"
When asked for a comment on why the would such mayhem, the only response "WTF, d00d ITZ
Lansing, MI is out. I'm posting from Michigan State University which has its own power station.
I remember seeing something on the history channel on an engineering disasters show about the same thing happening in 1965. Supposedly some shoebox size box at a substation died and the substation automatically disconnected itself from the grid. I'm no power expert, but supposedly this caused generators at other stations to become overloaded and they disconnected themselves to avoid damage. This just kept cascading until the whole grid went down. I wouldn't be suprised to find out that the same sort of thing happened here. The system performed as designed, but no one imagined the consequences.
ParTAY! Bloomie's buyin!
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Wooohoo!! That's a helluva Internet Worm!
do() || do_not();
Magic smoke is usually blue-ish and stinks.
... I'm sure glad that i didn't get that job as an engineer with the power company!
Berto
damn christians, you squash one and 30 million come back.
forget it.
Heh, ITV is reporting that
Computer experts are investigating whether a worm that takes advantage of a flaw in the Windows operating system might be to blame. [last paragraph in article right now]
I mean, wtf?
May we live long and die out
Mayor saying... Canada is responsible... err.. yeah. They are waiting on power from Canada.
Hmmm... I feel a South Park episode brewin'!
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Of course the Con-Ed transformer is not on fire. Neither is the ridiculous claims that five major US cities are without power. I can show you that my new apartment in Manhattan has power. Anyone who tells you differently is a fool or a liar!
While we're not having power problems here in downtown LA, I just saw 5 unmarked emergency vehicles go by with lights and sirens blaring, followed by the SWAT van. For not being related to terrorists, it sure has someone here spooked.
::digitac
Then again, maybe it was an add for the movie...
When THEY go 2 straight weeks without power in the heat, like all of my city (memphis TN) just had to deal with a few weeks ago, then I'll read the story. I could care less if a bunch of people have to reset their clocks.
All of greater cleveland is without power..
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
"CNN, CNBC and others are reporting that major power outages are happening just after 4:00PM EDT in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, Toledo." .NET security initiative. Power will be restored as soon as we have a secure version of Windows".
In Redmond, Bill Gates has declared "We have taken all the steps necessary to prevent the MSBLAST from doing damage. Similar steps were taken in California to prevent Code Red. It's all part of our
There was a point in time when if you were stuck in an elevator, you were screwed. Then many years ago, they put in those elevator-phones. Now everyone has cell phones (myself included).
It's a somewhat amusing thought to picture what it's like in NY right now as an elevator full of execs are whipping out their cell phones. Who are they calling? Their loved ones? Their co-workers? Maintenance? Nope, probably their lawyers. I bet NY is a cool place to visit.
-Valiss
Why do I give a shit about people losing power 3,000 miles away? noone died.
...and didnt this happen like 7 years ago on the west coast? i recall something like this prior. ...and what does this say to potential terrorists that we can't even keep our system up and how fragile it is?
Thats all anyone keeps talking about here at work.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
finally got those christmas lights workin.
Where? Where are you going to get the power to feed huge cities like New York and Toronto on the short notice of 2 years? The US simply doesn't have it in those areas. They don't have the huge amount of hydro electric power like Canada has. The only way to come up with something quickly (since 9/11 as you say) would be a nuclear power plant. Good luck getting that one even passed! Coal? I'm not sure if they even build new coal burning plants anymore.
The US relies heavily on Canada for power, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
Conserving power is ludicrous. There is an unlimited supply of power in the Universe. Why should we even *consider* conserving it?
We need MORE POWER NOW! I want cheaper, more reliable power. I want a nuclear plant next to my house, better yet, in my basement, for my own personal power usage.
Conserving water, makes sense, we only have so much h2O, although it'd be better to invest in purifying our current supply and recycling water.
So, again, WHY? WHY SHOULD WE CONSERVE POWER????? WHY WHY WHY????
my power bill is $180-200. I keep my house at 72-75F, even when it's 105F outside. IF the power company gets 35% more expensive here then it will be cost effective to generate my own using propane and a generator.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Can somebody pick me up a TiVo when the looting begins? I'll pay for shipping.
Everybody Wang-Chung tonight!
Forget that: It's not funny because we're in the middle of a serious heatwave, and these power outages are going to put large numbers of people, particularly the elderly, at risk. Electricity is far more vital to people's lives than, "It lets me read Slashdot."
Please spare a thought for th
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
see a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9707/12/blackout/" for old CNN article on blackouts of 68 and 77. Riots in 77. Baby boom nine months later in both cases, if memory serves. (invest in diaper makers?)
For the geographicall challenged, the areas affected are known as the "New England" States and the "Great Lakes Region". To New Englanders, it's specifically the "Northwest Corridor".
I am on the "East Coast", and my power didn't even blink. But then, I just shut down my Slash beta server a few minutes ago, so I may have singlehandedely spared NC from a power outage.
I wonder if some ISPs had problems with this blackout...
Is there a downtime of some webservers?
"There are no power outages, you are being subjected to the lies of the infidels. As I speak, my wife is in the tanning salon and my aquarium fish are doing just fine".
You are one dumb fuck. First, Canada and the US share lots of electrical power. We don't have completely separate grids, as that would be much more expensive among other things. Second, this IS the hottest summer on record in several places. Not ALL obviously, but some. My hometown recorded the hottest July ever on record.
Oh, and it's called a grid for a good reason -- because it is one! When one station fails, others in the grid take up the slack and nobody notices. But in a time of severe heat and A/C stressing the system, one (or two, etc) stations going out CAN create a domino effect. See, usually a grid makes the system more reliable, but this is one instance where it can hurt more power customers.
Stop the conspiracy/terrorist bullshit. If evidence comes out later to support it, fine. But natural overload is the logical conclusion otherwise. You just seem to have them backwards.
We'll soon start to read the stories of all those "bright" facilities/IT people who had their generators all tested and working perfectly, but forgot to make arrangements for fuel re-fills
Or we need to figure out some way to decentralize our source of power, we depend on Canada for almost all our electricity, and this isnt good.
Whats a solution?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Does anyone know the links to check on the status of the national power grid pre-9/11 this was on the web?
Without this correction, the parent of the parent looks pretty dumb.
The idea, though, is pretty cool! -- double entendre unintended, but delightedly espoused.
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
I suppose we now know where California governor (for a few more weeks) Davis spends his summers.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I believe the cell doors are like those doors where people buzz you in, theyre always locked, and the buzzer actualy unlocks the part of the frame hiolding the bolt. SO if power fails, it stays locked, but you can always open it with a key.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
See chart
>> The Niagra Mohawk power grid is overloaded, which feeds electricity throughout the northeast U.S. and into Canada.
Uh, don't the Canadians send power to the North East?
WTF? Only 3.2 million Kazaa users!
Could this be an RIAA plot to eliminate ~1 million file traders?
It's the other way around bucko...Canada depends on us for electricity. That's why they tie into our grids at the NW Corridor.
But you're right. We need more nuclear reactors...preferrably IEC Fusion ones.
Everyone will take credit. You'll see Hamas, PLO, Al Queda, Sinn Fein, the Bloods, Cryps, Freemasons, and a few Little League teams take credit for this.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
You guys all know this happened before!m l
http://blackout.gmu.edu/events/tl1965.ht
History repeats itself and in some of the same cities. You would think almost 40 years later we would know how to stop this from happening.
The instant I heard about this, I started to wonder if there is a graphical ping utility, that has some preset locations built into it (so you could essentially watch over the U.S., or whatever country you want). I imagine it resembling something like a system ping monitor for a local network, but graphical and obviously much larger scale. Does anyone know if something like this exists?
My second thought was that this whole situation eerily reminds me of the movie Canadian Bacon...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Oh, no! I'm without power! How can I ever feel safe again??
I mean, sheesh. I don't know what kind of spoiled babies we have everywhere else in the nation, but I've been used to a blackout or two a year where I live, and I'd be surprised if yankees with their increased snowfall and ice didn't have more. I just had to deal with a 12-hour power loss 3 weeks ago thanks to a storm-felled tree.
If it was a terrorist attack, it's a pretty shitty one.
http://www.cmpco.com/about/system/blackout.html
Ooops. The most powerful nation in the world, with the most advanced economy and the best universities (all that according to numerous slashdot posters' frequent assertions) can not even run a simple power supply system without freuquent large scale outages.
Aren't you US guys not a little embarassed to have a power systems which ranges sligtly in front of, say, Swaziland, in terms of reliability ?
c'mon, it's time to recall Bloomberg.
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
unfortunately, it's not on their site any more. It was titled: "Terrorism 'Not Likely' Cause Of Fire At Local Laundromat".
I like how everything links back to terrorism. It's really a rational approach to news reporting.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
NO CARRIER
This collapse was predicted years and years ago. When I was working for a power equipment manufacturer (transformers, relays, switches, capacitors), marketing was playing this sort of thing up to the utilities.
As equipment gets old it becomes less and less efficient. This includes the transformers that bring the power from high voltages to low voltages to your home, and the generators that produce the power. AND it includes all those Air conditioners that are running in hot weather.
No-one has been able to afford to bring new generators online recently. And probably not to upgrade/replace old less efficient equipment. And I'm sure most people haven't bought new ACs either because of the economy.
It wasn't so long ago that something similar happened to Chicago during a heat wave there. And we all remember a few years ago that California had rolling blackouts because the grid couldn't handle the power. And NYC suffered similar blackouts for the same reason in the 60s and 70s I believe.
Unfortunately since its such a large grid its going to take a while for it to come back up. You have lots and lots of main power generators. Each one has to be brought back onto the grid one at a time. Each one has to be synced to the current AC 3 phase system within 5-10 degrees of what's there or when that generator comes on it might cause all the generators to drop out. Syncing a generator takes time and patience.
Then you have to bring the consumers back on. Every time you bring a new section on you have a hell of alot of inrush current as Air Conditioners and motors start up. This is why your lights dim a bit when you turn on certain pieces of equipment. Imagine the dimming you get as 1000 Air conditioners come on at once. If its too much a relay might trip off and the grid might collapse under the strain as a generator falls offline. And yes this is a real meaning to the word offline, the generator is not on the power lines anymore.
It will take time for everything to come back up, and con-ed isn't going to rush it. They will take it up in stages, make sure that everything is ready to go before bringing up the next stage. A collapse this large can happen again and again if they rush. But it might be quicker, the reports don't saay how big the failure was and how many generators fell offline. It could just be that all the distribution substations tripped, but I doubt it. For this to be so widespread the generator protection relays probably all fired off and took their generators off the power grid.
Don't you just love cascading failures? Overloaded power grid; all the generators are close to their shut off point. One fails, all generators go into the range of shutoff, and off they go one right after the other. They probably all fell offline withing 30 seconds, and will probably take 3 days to come back on fully.
Software Engineer & Writer of Military Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog: petermwright.com Twitter: WrightPeterM
All those poor people that can't read slashdot... Won't somebody please think of the childeren???
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
Apparently the power company didn't pay for it's SCO licenses :-)
... my looting shoes ..
Absolutely, hilarious. The anchor on CNN just mention that some people are wondering if it was related to the "computer worm" that's going around. Beautiful. I blame MS for a lot, but a power outage? Ha!
BTW, Pudge, thanks for drop-kicking yet another individual spouting FUD in this thread.
The generators run on smoke. If you let it out they quit running...
Yeah, it'd be nice if they did some upgrading of the grid, but then, most of my software failures happen immediately after upgrades so that may not be the best idea either...
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Enough said.
Vernon (hartford area) is OK, but South Windsor (the next town over is not...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I work for Lufthansa North American division out here on Long Island NY, and we lost power arround 4:20pm (I wander... :) But we still have power, since we have a generator and lots of fuel! We also (as you can see) have internet. Most people are trying to get home, but cant, since trafic lights and public transportation is out. People working in Manhattan are simply walking home. I wander how long this will last. I am sure the damages will run in millions of $.
Free speech is getting expensive...
WOW! What if we could not read it's not on cnn.com or hear it on every major news channel!
On Fox News, it looks like there are more people lined up to take the ferry than the entire population of the county I live in.
In the local town, some high school kid will occasionlly shine a spot light on the electric eye that controls all the street lights in town. Then the streets go dark for a little.
Maybe some New York City high school kid figured out where New York City's electric eye is.
i told those guys before hand.. Don't use AMD processors on cluster grid. As i was expecting, processors got overloaded and invoked automatic shutdown....
Never believe me, I am a liar!!
bin
look siG is kool
As anyone who saw the first episode of James Burke's original series Connections or the comedy movie Canadian Bacon would know, this is not first time New York has been involved in a major blackout. "While the [power] grid, which remains intact today, has proven to be highly effective, the night of November 9, 1965 serves as a reminder..." (Scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "At 5:27 p.m., November 9,")
If someone else has better links, please post them. This is just the first one I found.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Hopefully we can start breaking ground at the new nuke sites real soon now. We need more redundancy in the power grid, and just building more coal plants would be awfull.
The unofficial
In unrelated news, SCO (formerly Caldera; NASDAQ: SCO) announced today that major sections of the Northeast, including all of New York, have had their license to use Electricity(tm) revoked. SCO accused Everyone(r) of using SCO-copyrighted methods of power grid scaling, and warned that without a license from SCO, use of Electricity(tm) could be in violation of the law. Darl McBride, of SCO, was repoted to have said, "Users of SCO Electricity(tm) will be happy to know that single-user licenses for Electricity(tm) can be purchased, no questions asked, for $699."
I got nothing.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Do you own a warehouse made out of tinfoil to hold your collection of tinfoil hats?
...welcome our new energy conservationist masters.
This is a major problem when shopping for a UPS for aquariums. While you can find good UPSes that don't have this problem, they are more expensive than usual. Plus, this is the kind of thing that most amateur aquarium owners wouldn't know about. I was actually going to post something to this effect.
More of my rant:
http://www.mailtown.org/geeklog/article.php?story= 20030814144536624
-ted
I'm in North Chicago. I lost a switch during the power spike.
MRTG Graphs of the temperature from an above.net data center in NYC.
It's too damn hot for that, unless you've got a swimming pool. And if you do have a swimming pool, and you're doing that and don't know when the filters will come on, eeeeewwww.
They decided to declare the Laws of Physics invalid since they conflict with U.S. legislation.
Verizon, still got full phone, and internet. Considering New York is right in the center of this blackout, seriously. God damn, good show, Verizon.
Good!
I wonder how many people were undergoing LASIK surgery at the time the power went out? Doh!
Someone has to pay when the City That Never Sleeps takes a nap.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Or is it because of mars in opposition?. Nonsense!!
GAH! That's why it's a good idea to save power -
I spend roughly $30/mo on power and that's in the heat of the summer.
If I had to pay $180-200/mo for power... you'd better believe i'd be turning a few things off.
And THANK YOU for mentioning water conservation as a good thing. I live in Colorado and I'm sure you heard about the wildfires last summer due to severe drought... it really is a big issue here and everywhere else. PLEASE CONSERVE WATER everyone!
no comment
Anyone running off of battaries charged via solar, wind, etc. who is in an effected area? I don't mean generators either, I imagine there is at least *one* person who is perhaps running a couple energy efficient bulbs from a modified stationary bicycle and I'd like to hear from them :)
It really is too fuckin' ironic.
Do we blame Bill Gates or do we blame the guy who wrote the worm?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Damn, if only my power was up, it would have gotten here in time.
There is also the Enron factor. A couple of years back when Cheney gave Enron the green light to manipulate the California energy market California was making deals to buy any capacity it could
During the period the market was being manipulated the cover story was that it was California's fault for not allowing new plants to be built. Power plants have a major lead time so the only way to get generator sets for new power plants to be built in the West was for NYC to give up the generator sets for a bunch of gas turnbine systems planned to be deployed in the East.
Thank Bush, Cheney and their big friend 'Kenny boy' Lay for putting the interests of Enron before the national interest. First they screwed California and now NYC may well be getting hit by the unexpected results.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
errrr, why is this on "News for Nerds"? 95% of the country is unaffected.
its machines u fools... they r taking their revenge. man vs. machine --- fight to death. They started with our most important weapon POWER!!
my computer started behaving abnn92u54092q what the 555o845090234211!!
hE3[3=[3[[[p
bin
look siG is kool
Well, Aren't the Amish Laughing their Buns off now?! You know they will be making an example out of this for decades... Horse and Buggy would have *my* bet right now....
Erie is still dead and most all of PA I hear. Ah I think my pc at home has prob rebooted a hundred times by now. Im at a hospital and things were goin up and down left and right.
"I'm hoping a network as important as this would not be running windows. If it is running Windows, I hope Bill Gates gets sued for billions over this."
How about suing (don't we have enough of that already?) the power utilities stupid enough to run critical infrastructure on Windows? Or anyone else for that matter?
Both Barabasi's Linked and Duncan Watt's Six Degrees have interesting stories about how small failures can snowball into large failure like this one apparently is.
Of course, here in the midwest I'm sure everthing will be just fi
From what I am getting, one power plant goes down... then local power starts sucking off of remote plants in order to supply itself, and they go down... which dominoes down the line?
Now, would it be possible to just cut off the original station that caused the failure, then start bringing everywhere else (which should still be able to supply for their own demand) back up?
What I find really amusing is that this same situation occured almost fifty some-odd years ago when a transistor went bad up at the Niagra Power station and NY and Toronto (The biggest cities) were without power for some god-awful amount of time. That I find amusing.
Actually with Mars being so close it will give people in big cities a very rare chance to see this site without all the light polution by which they are normally surrounded.
"I hope Bill Gates gets sued for billions over this."
Ever think about growing up? The patch came out 3 weeks ago.
fuck you... this was all caused by Commander Taco plugging up the 3rd floor toilet.
Our cable scrambled a bit and there was a flicker, but we're oke in the suagus/revere to boston strip...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Small is Profitable - the hidden benefits of making electrical resources the right size or words to that effect.
Basically, if you distribute the system it's less prone to breakdown, and that's now economically feasible using things like microturbines and solar power to provide, say, 35% of the power of a city.
AND it's actually profitable to do so for about 200 reasons involving maintainence, grid losses and risk and capital management.
For the chapter and verse on why the power grid has these problems, check out Brittle Power - full text online at this URL.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
We pay the governments salary, how can you say the people arent important?
This isnt a murder case, I'm not asking for forensics, I'm asking to know what happened.
Thats what the news is for.
I do know what happened. A blackout occured due to power-grid overload. The power-grid overloaded due to too much strain or hardware failure, which will be determined after the investigation finishe. At that point, you will be informed via news outlets.
You might be right, but how do you know for sure when you dont have any evidence of what happened?
We know a blackout occured, we suspect its because of an overloaded power grid.
So why did the hardware fail? Was it the MSblaster?
And no, I'm trying to get quicker results because the news isnt saying shit. I'm hoping the local engineer on slashdot can explain.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...Only, not.
Seriously, when I read the power outages I stopped for a few seconds and started thinking about what could be the explanations, and I terrorism never even crossed my mind.
Am I just stupid or have others thought about that too? Maybe it's because I'm European?
Either way it's interesting.
That's the problem, they let the magic smoke out. Don't they know it stops working when you let the magic smoke out?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
i (the world) cant stop laughing, try spending money on a decent infrastructure instead of on death rays and bunker busters.
good to see GWB is doing you proud, now im off to go looting
enjoy !
... I think even Wisconsin would have problems :P
We wouldn't have these kinds of problems if everyone produced their own power. I would think geeks, of all people, would be into having self-generated electricity. Check out Home Power Magazine Solar Guerrillas to see how it can be done, even in urban areas.
Just heard on the radio. NYSEG is taking down their whole grid shortly to restart it. They say it could be down for up to 4 hours. I'm going to the store to get some cold beer, ice, weenies and charcoal.
Er, that's not why your lights dim. Back to Electronics 101 with you!
cool. so the terrorists have won, you're terrified. well done
Now for a quick opinion on air conditioning. Is it just me, or have people confused refrigeration with air conditioning? Crikey. I walk into some large supermarkets, stores, restaurants, etc., and I have to watch my appendages for frostbite. Where I work, the hotter it is outside, the colder it is inside. Some staff have resorted to wearing sweaters, sweatshirts, and run space heaters!
It's just my opinion, but if you can't live at least around 72 degrees (and is a dry, conditioned 75 that bad?), then you should consider a move beyond the polar circles for the summer.
Actually I'm thinking that remote-controlled electric power meters would help here. Turn off all the nodes at the end. Gradually bring the generators back online, then gradually switch on the load so that everything isn't overwelmed.
It's time for the government to rise up, point a finger and yell: "It's all Microsoft's fault!" Man we've waited for that forever! :)
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
I'm not a Windows user, my computer doesnt crash randomly.
I know how my computer works inside and out, Hardware failures do happen, but they are very very rare, and you'd think that with all our money we would upgrade out hardware before it fails.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure."
Letting the smoke out is an effective way of shutting down a system.
"Derp de derp."
Belong to us...
That was the most coherent post I've ever seen on slashdot.
The baby boom bit is an urban legend
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Not so by a lightyear. Grayout Davis's socialist-state energy regulations prevented utilities from bringing needed peaking power onto the grid for economic reasons - they couldn't pay the outside energy suppliers. Environmental regulations, NIMBYism, and utility cost cutting policies in general are mostly to blame for power shortages and "old equipment syndrome." It's a no-brainer. Higher demand - less supply. You can't take excess capacity offline for maintenance if you have no excess capacity.
I, for one, wellcome our new Amish overlords!
You can't take the sky from me...
Wild speculation such as yours is precisely why people overreact and panic. There has been NO evidence or reporting that the FBI suspects this. You, as usual, are talking out of your ass again.
We pay the governments salary, how can you say the people arent important?
Power companies are government regulated corporations. Remember Enron? Are you 12? Do you have any concept on how regulated utility commissions work?
Besides, you don't matter. You could disappear of the face of the earth, and nobody will miss your tax dollars. So don't play the "I pay government salaries." I'll mail you back your fucking quarter.
This isnt a murder case, I'm not asking for forensics, I'm asking to know what happened.
So... everybody is telling you what happened but that isn't good enough? You do know the definition of insanity, right?
And no, I'm trying to get quicker results because the news isnt saying shit. I'm hoping the local engineer on slashdot can explain.
Yes, I'm so sure that someone who actually is involved with the power plant process has the time to post to Slashdot right now. My best guess is they are just a touch too busy to worry about your dumbass curiosity.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Alle amerikanen zijn zeurpieten....
especially those with an UPS
They cant choose one person to speak to the news people?
Come on!
You are right it may be too soon to ask, I just think that the news broadcasts should get at least ONE engineer or expert on to talk about what happened.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
According to the site:By understanding power quality, you can protect your electronic equipment, keep your business running, and avoid equipment losses and the associated costs of downtime. Niagara Mohawk offers this segment to help you identify power quality problems and find the right solutions for your needs.
So it is just a matter of a litte while before expirenced staff members will rush to the rescue and have you up and running again in no time.
seems to me that some guys started a little early then the rest.
Keynote Systems (Quote, Company Info) said it is currently monitoring the situation. As of 4:50 p.m. Eastern, the online monitoring firm reported the Internet is performing normally and major Web sites in the U.S. are also performing normally, although a few of the news Web sites are showing slightly-longer download times.
C'mon people, I'm trying to download Medal of Honor off Overnet, get it up!
Hahaha Deregulation bites doesnt it ROFL
Suffer.
And what, in your comfortable, urban lives has prepared you for this?
Wild speculation is precisely why people overreact and panic. There has been NO evidence or reporting that the FBI suspects this. You, as usual, are talking out of your ass again.
Sorry, your information is a little out of date.
1) Generators run their units with minimal loads
to keep in sync, so that when it's
time to ramp up, sync is not an issue.
2) The grid doesn't have to be brought up with
all generators and exchanges linked, they
can be brought up as islands and rejoined later.
Stop being so pissed, Sure it just happened, I'm asking for an Engineer to go on TV and speak to the world telling what they think happened. Just one engineer. I dont want the mayor, or some regular tv guy, but an expert.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Go Neo, we only have a short amount of time until the grid comes back up!!
...
Why can't it be like the movies? *Oh wait, they didn't want the grid to come up*
I'm in Pittsburgh, PA, and as of 6:17 PM EST, I can not reach cnn.com. Traceroutes die in a NY domain router. I was able to reach cnn.com up until at least 6:00 PM EST.
May we never see th
I work in beautiful downtown Newark, NJ, and I live about 10 miles SW of Newark. I caught a 4:11 train (a diesel, fortunately) out of Newark Penn Station. It was very possibly the last train to leave before the power died. It took us an extra ten minutes or so to get home because of "signal problems" but since this is NJ Transit's usual excuse for running late, I didn't know about the outage until I had the radio on in my car.
My town still has power but several cities/towns on all sides of us don't. No good explanation for this; maybe we just live right or something.
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn...
So now we know to what extent SCO will go to stop it stock from trading.
Who says the FBI is investigating to see if it was caused by MSBlaster? Besides you I mean? According to your posts in another thread, it's actually terrorism, but being covered up.
The only thing I've heard from anyone in any position to know anything is that it appears to have been a simple overload resulting in a cascading failure.
We probably won't know excatly what happened for a few days. In the mean time, why are you making stuff up?
...before the late 1800's the entire Northeast suffered a blackout that had lasted for hundreds of years.
Congratulations /.'ers CNN is down
5:19PM
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I think you are making an interesting point. If you don't believe what is reported on the news, how can you really know what happens in a case like this?
A lot of times, one news outlet will claim a government cover up, another news outlet disagrees or just reports something totally different. With all of the accounts of various stories, how is one to know what to believe?
That's where I see a lot of people starting to pick their news outlets based on their political prejudices. For example, if you are more liberal, you're more likely to get news from NPR, Salon, The Nation, etc. whereas a conservative is more likely to listen to Fox News, Clear Channel radio, etc.
So, even if we have that reaction, but we still want the truth and we still believe that "the Truth is out there". Getting to that truth becomes difficult and you never really know when you have arrived.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Motherfucker, fuckhead.
Fuck you taco. Go fuck your homo lover Bill GAtes.
..somebody really pissed off the BOFH this time....
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Especially if you use Windows, and someone gives you a virus. This is why we have anti virus software to stop cyber terrorists.
However, imagine running some of the most important computers in the world, and it mysteriously reboots and the whole country shuts down, you know that alot of people want to stop your country, do you rule out terrorists? No.
Just like if your website is always registering hack attempts you expect it was a hacker when things go wrong with the site.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Perfect time to find something with 75x power to view it with. I'm in freaking Vegas. There's more than just a LITTLE light pollution here. Damn reliable Vegas power grid!
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Actually it was a hysterical thing to say and regardless of your situation the humor bit has to do with the stupid 9-11 conspiracy theories...not the attacks themselves.
Lighten up.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
A rough esitmate of the people in the area affected is probably between 30 and 50 million. When the power went off, most of them didn't go around turning off their light switches, TVs, air conditioners or whatever else was running. Not to mention traffic lights, street lights, subways etc.
So even if the power is fixed or alternate sources are routed in, turning the lights back on is really hard. It may take a while, even if they already fixed the original problem.
But blackouts aren't all bad. In the 1965 NYC blackout, My dad walked five miles across Manhattan to check on my Mom, and ended up proposing. So all you east coasters, pull the batteries from those laptops, check on your friends and neighbors, and go make some stories to tell your kids, when in happens again in another thirty - forty years.
Doing my part to piss off the religious right.
In 2000, NY state and NYC officals used the 1996 triple-digit-heat-related blackout in the West Coast as one of their major points to lure Californian businesses over to their state, in additional to the faked-power crisis then. The matter is that all power grid(s) in the US is antiquated and unprepared for unexpected heat/cold changes like this. Leave a lot to wonder what would happen if Al-Queada starts to stare at the power lines for a while.
Oh the karma.
And this is from ABCnews article
Please, it is near 90 degree F.
For those trying to find info about that area.
here
Here
and
Here
It's actually a conspiracy involving the RIAA. The Blaster Worm and this power outage are actually the RIAA's latest attempt at trying to stop online file sharing.
NeoChichiri
http://www.neochichiri.net
Reporter Shepard Smith at JFK airport said over the Fox News network that airport maitainance workers were delayed in fixing the generator because they were initially denied access to it because they could not be cleared to access the generators without the metal detectors being powered.
You're far more likely to just have a weird bug than a terrorist attack.
-n
http://www.remix.net/
Now it't time to buy some Transmeta stocks...
I might have missed it browsing through the comments, but I was wondering, where is the obligatory comment:
Why is this story on slashdot? Who cares about a power outage in the United States, I live in Europe. Slashdot is soooo U.S.-centric.
Oh brother!!!
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
I'm not saying I matter, and I'm not saying you matter, I'm saying we matter. The Government exists to protect US, this is their primary focus, when something goes wrong its their job to fix it, and tell us what went wrong.
I have every right to ask questions, its my country.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
In most cases, such an incident would be immediately followed in the mainstream media by a report on the response of the stock market. In this instance, I do not believe that we will see such a report.
In Soviet Russia Power Unplugs YOU!
&& aemula C. ab stirpe interiit
www.foxnews.com has finally posted a breaking news headline about this... ...aren't they in NYC?
I was looking at all the pics of the NYC people straggling out because the power was off. Man, NYC people have to be the worst absolute fucking pussies in the world. Lemme tell you how I had it here a couple weeks ago. On July 22 at 4AM, Memphis got hit by 100 mile straight line winds. It destroyed (you read right, DESTROYED) 75% of the the power infrstructure. I slept through the thing like a newborn babe. Trees were down everywhere, street lights out. This happened in the South, where it really gets hot. I was without power for 12 days. These pussies in NYC, you get a small outage, they are panicking and freaking out.
Thats just the problem, I dont believe the news, the news is getting to be so far right of far left, that its too political to believe. I get my information from the internet.
I do not believe some gov official just because they say its so, I need evidence, I need to see an expert tell me what happened, not the mayor.
I actually dont get my news from NPR because I know its slanted just like fox news. Instead I actually gather my own evidence and decide for myself.
I dont understand why people get mad when a person asks questions about what happened. So its not terrorism? Well what is it?
IF the government is so clear that its not terrorism they should also be the first to tell us what exactly happened, or else they shouldnt make a statement at all until they KNOW what happened.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yeah, this is what happens when a craving for popcorn and toast hits New York.
MONK: we're the most powerful country in the w- *fzzzit* WTF?"
MONK: LOLZ
* MONK has quit IRC (Read error: Connection reset by peer)
Machine9dotNet
The country is us, its the people. Not the land, not the technology, the people.
So I dont understand what exactly you are trying to say, its not registering.
The country is made up of people, and the people arent telling me to go to hell, you are. You have that right, but this doesnt change the fact that I also have the right to ask questions. You dont like it? Stop reading my posts, you dont have to like me.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
We have the livenews for the power outages back on (just like we did with all the other top stories, like the "War on Terrorism") and 9/11. It's the CNN feed.
It's available on: irc.striked.org #livenews
Top headlines: "Microsoft knocks out east coast power grid to prevent DDoS attack on windowsupdate.com"
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
According to my Dad (who lives near Norwich, which is between Utica and Binghampton) they never lost power, but they did have a brownout for about 55 minutes. Several local TV stations did lose power (mostly from Binghamton).
-- Argel
They finally found a way to take down a lot of all those evil pirates all at the same time! Haha, too bad I'm in the Southeast!
You, sir, either owe me the cost of a new keyboard, or need to come over hear and clean the coffee out of the keyboard yourself.
That was the funniest damn thing I've read all week.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
My family in northeast Pennsylvania inicate that they have not have any power problems.
Interesting note: Chicago is also on the same grid as NYC, Detroit, et al..
I know it sounds strange, but I'm sort of sorry that I'm not in New York for this (I moved to Boston 25 years ago). Yes, I know that it's a monstrous pain in the ass for everyone and even has the potential for injury and loss of life (e.g., heart attack from climbing stairs), but both blackouts I've been in ('65 and '77) were interesting experiences.
I was five years old for the first one and scared out of my wits when the lights went out. It was an early evening in November, around 5:30 PM, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor, watching TV (the Winchell-Mahoney hour). Lights, television, even the streetlamps outside went out. My first thought: "Mommmmmmmmm!!!!!".
We ended up walking over to my aunt's house a couple of blocks away and eating the cake that my mother had baked that day. That was our dinner. Blackout cake. She never made it again after that, but I remember with all the flickering candles it seemed like someone's birthday.
My father got stuck on the subway for 36 hours, though. Bummer for him.
When the '77 blackout hit, I was living with my father on the 15th floor of a building on East 96th St. I'd just gotten home from my summer job and turned on the radio. The DJ was complaining about the turntables running too fast (overcompensating for low voltage?). Looking out my bedroom window, I saw the blackout roll uptown: the Empire State Building went out first, then the rest of Midtown, the Upper East Side, and then us. It was a hot, humid night and you could see the occasional flash of heat lightning.
I checked on my neighbors, an elderly couple, before heading down to the street, where I bartered a couple of cold beers for a handful of candles. People were bewildered, wondering if the Indian Point nuclear plant had blown, or if the Rooskies were attacking. It took about an hour for the looting to start north of us and for most of the night there was an endless parade of NYPD patrol cars headed uptown, four or five cops in each, all in full riot gear.
I don't want to downplay the millions of dollars of damage that happened that night, but my neighborhood was pretty peaceful. It was like an instant block party, people sharing food and beer and the occasional joint, oldtimers (I guess that's me now) talking about the '65 Blackout (which, like today, started at the Mohawk grid and covered roughly the same area).
Fifteen flights up was nothing for me back then; I ran track in high school.
A couple of years ago my neighborhood in Boston lost power for 36 hours. Nothing big, maybe 25,000 households, but I was bereft. No cable, no Internet, just a battery-operated radio and, of course, candles. Off the grid.
But it was educational. I never realized how dependent I was on technology and the network, how much of my time is spent in front of the silicon devils (TV and computer). Thirty hours with nothing but books and an acoustic guitar for entertainment. When the power came on, the first thing I did was fire up a web browser. It was like a refreshingly cool shower of meaningless information after having to sit and stew with my thoughts.
Shit. I think I'll go to the basement and throw the main breaker. Just for old time's sake.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Everyone make fun of east coasters before the power is back on
There was a guy who was speaking live to the ABC news desk who was saying to log onto www.thankyoufortakingmycall.com for instructions on what to do once power is restored. I just went there and its a site about prank calls to live television shows??!! Why would he suggest that instead of just turning on the TV anyway?
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
that doesn't make it a particularly funny or nice thing to say.
Actually, I thought that joke was pretty nice and really funny.
" No. Many of us realized that it is august and bloody hot, and an outage was likely. Lots of major problems occur w/o terrorism being a likely cause."
This situation just emphasizes the dangers of a centralized power infrastructure. Imagine a finer-grained power generation and distribution network. Using fuel cells for individual neighborhoods, tailored for the individual loads. Harder to disrupt, be the cause man-made or natural. Cheaper, and less resistance from environmental groups (bury them underground). The hot water generated could even go to homes. Network all this in a sharing/load-balancing manner. And yes fuel cells can run a large building.
Live on ABC News, some prankster got through to Ted Koppel and ranted for a good two or three minutes about getting people to hit "thankyoufortakingmycall.com" when the power comes back on.
The site appears to be committed to pranking live call-in shows like Larry King or Fox News. Koppel kept the guy on, thinking he had real information, meanwhile, the caller told people not to wander around the subways, warning them of dangers like "something out of Beauty And The Beast". I assume he meant the old TV show, not the Disney movie.
Anyway, it was pretty funny.
thankyoufortakingmycall will probably be slashdotted soon, but it was damn funny while it lasted.
Or just have the guys on poles just turn back on 1 stret/neighborhood at a time, which is, not suprisingly, exactly what they do. :)
maybe we should let skynet sort the problem out..? Better bring 'er online.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
All the networks are whining about 11 million people out of power. The feds are jumping to help. California had 42 million people without power for an entire summer and the press yawned while Bush ignored us.
Buy a flashlight New Yorkers, get over it.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I think it was the 2nd biggest hack in history. Thanks Kevin!!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I suspect it would have to do with the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) and other safety critical systems. What if something goes wrong, say the steam generator blows up, and the plant stops producing power. How do you cool the reactor and do a safe shutdown if the grid is also down? The safe approach would be to start shutting the reactor down before you end up in an unsafe situation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
anyone else hear Ted on ABC get befuddled by a caller referencing the URL in the subject line?
North American Electric Reliability Council
Princeton Forrestal Village, 116-390 Village Boulevard, Princeton, New Jersey 08540-5731
August 14, 2003 Power Outages - Announcement
Starting at about 4:15 PM EDT, major losses of electric load occurred in the northeastern U.S. and Canada in the Eastern Interconnection.
No cause is known at present, but the outages do not appear to be the result of a terrorist attack.
The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New York City, northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do not know if these blackouts are related for sure, but it is likely.
Con Edison in New York lost its entire system, it is not known when service will be restored.
Immediate outages totaled about 28,000 MW, at this time 5-10,000 MW remain out of service.
The power in Ontario is being brought back on line through connections with Manitoba.
In Ohio, Perry Nuclear plant went off-line. Major transmission lines were out of service at the time of the disruption. It appears that ten nuclear plants went offline, probably as a result of fluctuations in frequency.
Preliminary indications are that the problems may have started in either Ohio or the Niagara Falls area.
Although the event was felt throughout the entire Eastern Interconnection, the south and midwest were unaffected.
NERC is having regular conference calls among the NERC reliability coordinators and will provide additional information as we know more.
We do not know the cause of the disturbances at present but will continue to evaluate the situation throughout the rest of the day and evening.
5:40 PM
I'll bet the bums are making a killing.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Ooo, wow, you can distrust authorities, how mature. It has been what, three, four hours since the news began to surface and you are already making up conspiracy theories. Since you are the one making the accusations, perhaps you should provide the evidence, hmm?
my power bill is $180-200. I keep my house at 72-75F, even when it's 105F outside. IF the power company gets 35% more expensive here then it will be cost effective to generate my own using propane and a generator.
Instead of generating electricity from propane, you could try solar or, likely a better idea, finance some replacement windows for your house/apartment. The energy savings will easily offset the cost over five years, and your first combined electricity bill + window payment will be lower than your former electricity bill.
My power bills in Boston never ran more than $75/month in the summer, and after CA the NorthEast is the most expensive energy market.
'GET OVER IT'
Wow, Just heard on the radio a State of emergency with a 9pm curfew has been declared. The Sheriff and police will arrest ANYONE on the streets. So much for my looting spree. Broome County (Binghamton Area) is in upstate NY BTW. The Funny Thing is I still have power.
It is spelled Niagara!!!
There is an unlimited supply of power in the universe
Not so. The amount of power available in the universe is the difference between the area of the largest potential energy and the area of the least potential energy. When we generate electricity we move energy from areas of high potential energy (uranium, coal, etc.) to areas of low potential energy (our houses). This continues until the uranium has exactly as much potential energy as our house, at which point we can't do anything more. This will continue throughout the universe until the entire universe is one giant region of uniform energy. This is all suggested by the second law of thermodynamics.
Admittedly, this will be several trillion years in the future, and the human race will likely be extinct, or will have evolved into star children or whatever (for my favorite scenario, read "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov). But you did say the universe has "unlimited" energy, which is false. And it never helps to be prepared. =D
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Of course you realize I had no intention of offending.
How about this instead:
"The North Eastern Power grid went down faster than Ben Affleck at a strip club!"
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Your sig refs recreational drinking, and I lost my favorite homeroom teacher on the road to it. Who's the callous bastard now?
Some of you fellow Slashdot'ers might find this interesting.
I live in British Columbia, west coast of Canada, and we have a publicly owned power company called BC Hydro. However our provincial government, which is very pro business, has been making moves to privatize this public utility by selling off portions to private companies.
The most recent branch to be sold off was to Accenture, a Bahamas based (i.e. tax shelter) spin off of Enron. If you don't remember Enron, here are some highlights: one of the biggest bankruptcies in US history, massive corporate crime, a major contributor to the California energy crisis due to power brokering, a major political contributor to one George W. Bush's election campaign and one of the script writers of Bush's current US Energy policy.
One of the major arguments of our provincial government's privatization campaigns is that companies can run these utilities far better and at lower cost to the consumer than can public institutions.
Well, I'm wondering, how many of you the east cost have seen your power bills going down. Don't every one raise there hands at once.
Now the reason I point this out is I see a direct coloration between the movement to have Open Source Software being deployed in public infrastructure Vs. Closed Source, and Public run utilities, such as water and electricity, Vs. Private Market Driven Operation.
I think most people who frequent Slashdot don't need an explanation in why an OSS solution should be the only standard for a democratic government. Just as I think they can see the rationale for publicly accountable organization running the fundamental utilities that support society, consisting of both Business and the People. However I think no one really understands the extent that Business now has in dictating government policy, and shifting that policy from serving the people to creating profit at the expense of the People, You and Me, whether we are American, Canadian or any other nationality. Health care is a prime example. The Struggle between Linux and Microsoft in India is another.
1) Generators run their units with minimal loads
to keep in sync, so that when it's
time to ramp up, sync is not an issue.
Mostly true.
Gas turbine plants are made for peaking, and can supply whatever is demanded within a second or two- but their capacity is limited.
Many of the baseline load plants, steam plants, take sometime to change power output. Nuclear power plants are the worst.
I just started working at a nuclear powerplant, so my understanding may not be fully up to speed, but here's what I know so far:
When our plant is disconnected from the grid (not easy, because we have three lines running out on seperated paths, but it happened last year), we have a whole lot of energy in the system, and no place to put it- so we trip the plant. that basically means that the control rods drop into the core within seconds of being disconnected from the grid, and the plant starts to cool down.
We have in-house diesels to safely shut down the plant with, but they can't put out the voltage or power required to run the largest motors in the plant, which are needed to start power generation back up. Essentially, we need to be connected to the grid to start and run the plant.
These large motors, combined with everything else, use up about 3% of our plant capacity. I don't think we can run at 3% capacity, but I'm not positive. Basically, even if we knew ahead of time we where to be disconnected, I don't think we could ramp down the plant far enough to run only house loads off the main generator.
Short version:
1) A nuclear power plant can't start or run without being connected to the grid.
2) Once connected, they take about a day to get up to full power output.
3) Nuke power plants are typically a grid baseline load- meaning they're the last to have to cut production in the face of reduced demand. Nuke plants account for 20% of our electrical consumption.
2) The grid doesn't have to be brought up with
all generators and exchanges linked, they
can be brought up as islands and rejoined later.
4) Generators can only keep in sync when the grid is there to sync to. If the grid is disconnected, one plant starts, and everyone syncs to that. But I don't believe it takes very long to sync, maybe minutes. Though it is possible that if it's only one plant per 'island' they could drag the sync back to match with other islands.
That's all based on the assumption that other plants work roughly the same as Seabrook Station in Seabrook, NH. I do not claim authorative knowledge.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
.... to get laid.
All the new stations are wanting to connect this with MSBlaster worm. You think that it is even possible? --dan
Seabrook, I assure you, is at full power. I work there.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Are you really that Stupid, or are you just another Republican shirker? I bet you are the latter.
FACT: The power plants existed, ENRON and other electricity brokers flat out refused to allow those plants in California to be started, even when the rolling blackouts became a daily event throughout the Bay Area and Southern CA. Even when The Governor of California went to ask the White House to intervene, Bush/Cheney backed ENRON, even though all the evidence pointed to the fact that the supply was being heavily manipulated. This was PROVEN when ENRON finally collapsed under the weight of its own debt.
FACT: ENRON manipulated the market, with falsified transfers of power out of the State, then back into the state, and totally falsifying their records, DELIBERATLY to reflect transactions, then charging the State for all the transactions involved at a cost approximatly 4000 times the original contract cost. This cost the State nearly 40 BILLION dollars, and the odd thing, thats almost exactly the same amount of money California is in the hole for, and the GOP is using as a lame excuse for a recall. Pete Wilson, a former GOP Governor is heading the campaign to put Arnold in the Governors office in Sacremento. He is also the man who pushed for the State Electricity utilities to be "deregulated", (that means sold off to the highest bidder) The only single person that should take the blame is Wison, not Davis. Davis was not even in public office when the Utility was sold to ENRON.Get your facts right man, or just quit lying about things.
Stupid Humans.....
Come on people, you can't be surprised that there are some who are jumping to conclusions about terrorism. Just look at the FACTS!
8 + 14 =22
9 + 11 = 20
So what? This event, on 8/14 happened two years later than 9/11, which is why the number is coming out to be two more than the sum of 9/11. Which means we can expect another attack on 7/17 two years from now... and I'm sure someone will be able to dig up a prediction from Nostradamus that verifies all this, after the fact. Get to work!
(Please, please, please, tell me you know I'm joking.)
Now those Esperanto-by-mail courses will FINALLY pay off!! MWWOOHAHAHAH.
Go fuck yourself. Additionally, get a sense of humor while you attempt that magical feat.
I could believe it too. In power stations running Windows there is a well known error reporting device known to insiders as the "BSOD," or "Black Smoke of Death."
I can't find a decent job and I even know the difference between "wander" and "wonder". I wonder if I wander around enough, if I'll find one. Next lesson: They're,Their,There
Climb down off the cross, bucko. Tasteless humor is a time-honored way of dealing with unpleasant situations. I also had friends and relatives who died in WTC. I personally spent some time in the hospital, 'cuz my building was a bit too close. Yet I have enough sense of proportion not to get all huffy about one stupid joke.
Yeah you're emotionally wounded, you're traumatized. Fine. But know what? Other people are not going to coddle you or step carefully around you for the rest of your life. People are going to talk about the disaster, and they're going to say inconsiderate things, and some are even going to joke about it. If you let them upset you this badly, you're only going to drive yourself insane.
A wound will never heal if you keep picking at it.
> Conserving power is ludicrous. There is an unlimited supply of power in the Universe. Why should we even *consider* conserving it?
Actually, there is a limited supply of power in the Universe. Those first two pesky Laws of Thermodynamics pretty much cover it: energy is neither created nor destroyed and entropy increases with every reaction. Basically, you cannot make engery just move it. When you move it you lose some. Perhaps we should change this to: American priorities to MORE EDUCATION NOW!
I wonder how long it will take the Liberals to blame the Bush administration for this.
Hahahah, +1 Informative. Best moderation ever.
NO CARRIER
Massive virus attacks the internet. Over several days, computers compromised across the country. Massive power outages occur.
Nuclear holocaust and the nightmarish Rise of the Machines to follow.
If power plants ran Windows, I think we'd see outages every few hours at least.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I've been wondering for a long time what it would be like if lots of people had solar power on their homes. And whether or not this kind of thing could be lessened if we could create a parallel power grid. Who care's if mine goes down for minute, I can just borrow some power from my next door neighbor. Implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.
...not that anyone *cares*.
It's a gift. Some folks might actually be able to see Mars tonight. This will be the first time in ~40 years that some will get to see the heavens!
Enjoy!
Stoptional
When you don't buy a SCO license!!!
To me, it's a function of capitalism. PUSH PUSH PUSH the product out the door, damn the testing. Next product. No one seriously thinks about security, enough safty, or such.
Just like exporint tech jobs to India. Now we've begun exporting datacenter jobs. Does anyone remember that Pakistan and India have nearly gone to war repeatedly, and both have nukes? What will happen if we do get into the distributed app age, and the servers and programmers all go up in a puff of smoke? companies only think about the short-term bottom line, not caring about affects 5-10 years down the road.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
So far nobody's come up with an explanation that I've read, but I'm thinking either too many people with A/C (which I think would have been diagnosed already) or solar activity, which has taken out the grid in eastern Canada before...
I just plugged in my brand new 3.4 bazillion gigahertz "Binford Tools PC"..
The instructions said to scream "MORE POWER" as I press the on button for maximum effect.
My bad..
insightful ?
try +5 funny
The world is flying in for the looting? I thought the airport was down?
hmmm...
But all of the hot dog vendors are still here, drinking beer no less!
damn it. i knew those duracell bateries wouldnt last long.
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
Slashdotters are repeating it left and right.
WHO CARES? Sure, this could be worse and if it were terrorism, maybe it would seem more menacing, but honestly, 35 million people are still without power, thousands trapped in elevators, subways... whew, I'm so glad we can all focus on what this is not.
Maybe its a blessing in disguise, a chance to evaluate the performance of contingincy plans, etc. Perhaps its a wake-up call that real money should be spent protecting our power infrastructure. But lets focus on what this is, who it affects, and what can be learned from it, rather than placing so much emphasis on what it is not.
important computers in the world and it RUNS WINDOWS you deserve to be killed in a slow and very painful way :) No questions asked, no excuses taken, there is no reason why ANYTHING CRITICAL should be left unsecured, or on a windows system which is as good as left wide open....
:) I plan on seeing M$ mail products out the door on this one :)
Note even our companies highly critical sub-systems don't run windows, and we are just a bank. Nor do we run IIS anymore thanks to M$'s last great security outing
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Entropy only increases in a closed system.
Fatal creationist arguments.
Prove that the universe is a closed system and I'll agree that enregy is limited.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
THERE IS FIRE!
did this guy ever go to summer camp?
I live in Plattsburgh, NY...right in the middle of this blackout. Half of the city is blacked out right now. In fact, I'm home early from work since the mall lost power. But, everything is fine here at home... We don't get our power from Nyseg, or Niagra Mohawk, we're on a local electric co-op...and we've still got power. I'm amazed. Happy, but amazed.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
i think the virus mite have go in to there computers and shut them down witch shut down the grids
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Conserve water! According to CBS, Cleveland will have water for only two more hours if the power is not restored. And that estimate was made half an hour ago. The water system apparently needs electricity to pump the water.
The power outage shut down nuclear power plants??? What the hell are those things for?
Short answer: If they have no place to put all the power they generate, they have to shut down.
My plant generates 1207 Mega-watts (which rounds to 1.21 gigawatts... hehhehe), and we only use 40 MW for in house loads- about three percent of our total output. We cannot ramp output from 1207 MW to 40 MW instantly, if we can at all (I'm new, so I still have much to learn. The only option, then , is to unplug everything and blow as much of the energy into the ultimate heat sink (ocean) quickly.
Once the plant goes offline, it takes about a day to start back up again- and we can't start without being connected to the grid, because our diesels only put out 12 MW at 4160 Volts. This is enough to shut down the plant safely, but far short of the 40MW (most of it at 13600 Volts) needed to run the seven big motors that are needed for circulating the reactor coolant and dumping waste heat into the ocean. Even if we could run off of only one waste heat and one reactor coolant motor, we'd still have to hook up the plant wiring in a creative way to do that, and it would take a long time to convince the NRC that was a good idea.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I empathize with those affected with the current power outage. The only problems WE had were putting on extra layers of clothing to keep warm and no hot meals for a few days. What do you do when there's no way to keep cool?
Aritle Link
Japanese news sources have gone on record that the catastrophic power failure that has stricken New York and other major metropolitan areas in the Eastern U.S. have nothing to do with Godzilla. Sources in Japan are claiming that Godzilla was safe on Monster Island and the hard stomping lizard monster was not involved in the blackout.
According to one spokesman at the JGL news service, Gogi Asobi, "Godzilla and all of the monsters, including Mothra and King Kong were all safe behind our defenses on Monster Island." This has ended speculation earlier in the day that either terrorism or Godzilla had been behind the blackout.
Rumors started flying shortly after the blackout that there was a possible link between Al-Qaeda and Godzilla when black smoke in the shape of a mosque were seen billowing from a power plant at 14th Street and Avenue C in Manhattan. Eyewitnesses had reported that at the same time the head of Godzilla could be seen in the East River, and that in fact he could be seen holding a shoulder mounted surface to air missile. New York Mayor Blooberg could not be reached for comment.
Maybe they could try some of these ideas in order to get power back temporarily where needed.
So, I live in Alaska. If I conserve water, how does that help Colorado? Are you going to pay to have it shipped down there?
You've chosen to live in a desert. Learn to deal with it.
See what I've been reading.
>>Was it the MSblaster?
"The CERT Coordination Center said it also did not appear to be related to the W32/Blaster worm or other computer intruder activity." clicky
As soon as I heard the statement that the black smoke wasn't caused by a fire - I started thinking about what else could have caused it...
Maybe when the generators halted (sync;sync;/sbin/shutdown -n NOW ?) they had brakes which engaged that basically sacrifice themselves to stop the spinning turbines ASAP? Burning brakes could explain it...
Wonder how much it costs to replace THOSE things... I bet Midas doesn't give any warranty on 'em....
Looks like a few people were knocked off line. Look at the Internet Traffic Report site. I wonder how else the net was effected, and if there are any other sites that would reflect this.
WORM BITES BIG APPLE
headline reads.
-opie and mikey
Although I am the original AC, I also wish I had mod points :-).
I got on the Niagara Mohawk Website and reported the outaged. They should be getting to work on it any time now.
Aliant, the phone company/isp/general telecom bozos in eastern canada... http://www.aliant.net, except their mail server is in toronto, and is now completely offline. Yeah, local company, local jobs my ass.
What conspiracy theory? I didnt come up with any theory, I just said I want to see some evidence.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
pwned!!
-emergency shutdown
-black smoke emitters enable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
What you need most is that Nuclear plants have ways to keep working when their connections to the Grid are broken. If they can't output electricity to the grid, the plants have to power down, because the electricity can't go anywhere. And Nuclear plants will take more than a few hours to cool down enought to be started up again.
At least 9 nuclear plants are power-down right now, it's all that electricity that won't be able to rejoin the grid fast enough to normalize the situation.
A niagra falls power grod overloaded and shut down
Someone should have told them.. you aren't supposed to get those things wet.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
The requirement to resync out grids is just daft! They aught to be decoupled via DC like they do in Europe (France & England I believe).
This would also avoid such a wide spread blackouts since the shutdowns can be isolated within smaller grids.
Oh well, hopefully few die due to this.
In the meantime I'm investing in diaper manufacturers....boom baby boom!!
1 - Yes it was designed to facilitate in creating a militia. However defense of ones neighborhood also falls under the job of the militia members.
2 - "Gun Culture".. bah... that is just a typical response from outsiders that don't truly understand how this country works and the freedoms that some of us strive to protect. Its not a "culture" as you put it. Regardless of what admendment we speak of.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/08/146228 &mode=thread&tid=126&tid=158&tid=172&tid=9 9
Who thinks this guy is saying I told you so?
Linux is for those who hate Microsoft. BSD is for those who love Unix.
"Jesus fucking Christ"
Excuse me, but does "fucking" begin with the letter H? I don't think so. I'll give you two more guesses what his middle name is.
All the more reason to use the Boeing Salt thermodynamic plants. They can absorbe the excess power and give it back when needed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Id be interested as to which major services are down, things like Mobile phones, Tv stations, Websites
So come on people list those downed services....
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
They found a blue screen at the Niagra power station that said press any key. :)
...100% of the people have power here. Plus they aren't bigoted idiots like you either. Nobody here ran screaming into the street when the power was off, like they did in NYC.
uh....Henry? no no i got it Hank!
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
I suppose those with Segways are smiling now.
Power's back on, as of approximately 7:30 PM EDT in Rockland County, NY. (Suffern)
I'm following the news reports on this site:
http://mike.911net.net/~coolerq/ne-power.php
I'll try to keep as up to date as possible.
As an aside, CNN just reported that the Canadian Prime Minister said that a lighting hit at a Niagra Falls power plant started this. That would be the answer to your previous question of "why today".
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
"Yeah, all I have to worry about is my house getting looted when the sun goes down. "
The people who run smelters will have something to worry about. You don't want your aluminiumn or iron hardening in the furnace.
As a father of 3 kids under 18 months...
That's a lot of kids. I hope they're adopted. If not, ask yourself "why?"
(I'm not saying there's not a good answer to that question, but at least ask yourself...)
if you're lucky and the power stays out for long enough, you might be able to enjoy the night sky for a change.
I know that nuke power SUPPLIES about 20-25% of our nations total power. Yes nuke plants do use "outside" energy to power the water coolants, but 20% of our nations power!! I dont think so, maybe 0.02% if that. There are only about 100 nuke plants in the USA, I find it impossible to believe that they use that much. Check your facts.
..........FULL STOP.
Let the Zionist infidels bask in their illusion, but I triple guarantee you: there are absolutely NO power problems at all in the Five Boroughs.
I am not scared, and neither should you be! We will defeat the enemy spreading such rumors and use their own shoes to butcher them!
Real Iraqi Information Minister QuotesThis just in, SCO now claims they own the patent on power grids. The electricity companies unable to pay the royalties had to show down the network.
Power is still out here. Good thing we have generators and batteries!
they better hope their UPS batterys aren't acting up :-P
You whack a capacitor in to smooth the square wave into a sine wave.
I thought the "grid" was, basically, composed of consumers and producers of energy. I know that there is a balancing act between supply, demand, and the requirement to balance the loads within line segments, but it was my understanding that as long as there were consumers for your energy then you could generate it.
That's an oversimplification, I know. But I don't understand this case: A major power producer goes offline, but the consumers don't. Why can't the remaining producers take up at least some of the slack?
www.howstuffworks.com might have some good information, but I don't have any direct links.
The grid is composed of three parts: producers, transmission, and consumers.
Now when a major plant goes offline, typically other plants do take up the slack, so you've got the right idea. For example, in October, Seabrook station will go offline for refueling, and no one will notice, because we're paying other plants to generate the electricity we committed to. The excess peaking capacity of the grid goes down, so there's a smaller margin for peaks, but brownouts are largely avoided.
Now in comes the transmitters: It's often referred to as 'The national electric grid' but that's not quite correct. The system is capable of transmitting power from Maine to California, and Florida to Toronto, but there's a lot of sub-grids with sometimes minor connections between them, and these are typically open- there might be a small connection for keeping sync, so they can close on demand.
Each inter-grid connection can only carry so much current- the lines would heat up and start to sag, substations would catch on fire, that sort of thing. This can't really be tolerated, so when a connection's capacity is overloaded, the breakers pop open and the 'donor' grid just gives a big 'fuck off' to the recieving grid.
So when this happens, it starts to ask even more of the other grids it's connected to, increasing the chance that it will cause an overcurrent trip on these other lines.
These connections can also be manually opened and closed by the grid controllers- in NH, the control room is in manchester, and I think it's run by a company called ISO. An overcurrent trip may require a lineman to visit the substation in question, i'm not sure.
Now, every plant except nuke plants runs lower than it's actual capacity to keep some peak demand reserve, so in general, they can pick up the slack when one goes down. Each powerplant does have it's limit, though. If demand on a particular plant exceeds it's capacity, the voltage will drop, and the plant will likely trip on undervoltage, or a grid connection might trip, or the plant operators might shut the plant down to preserve the equipment. (Most things in my powerplant like to run at one-steady state speed. Since voltage is proportional to speed, lower voltage means the main generator and turbine slow down. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, it's no fun)
Shutting down one plant will of course increase demand on other plants. So I'm sure you can see by now that once a cascade starts, things can really start to go to shit.
This is ideally avoided by having ridiculously over-rated transmission lines, and grid excess generation capacity well above the output of any one or two or three plants. However, I don't think we've really beefed up our transmission lines since the 70's or 80's, and new powerplants are often stalled or killed by NIMBY's and groups like greenpeace who haven't the slightest clue how a nuke plant works, how it's different from a bomb, and how many robust safety systems there are between the radiation and the public.
We've been setting ourselves up for problems for sometime now. It's time to build new power plants, and beef up transmission lines, cause demand sure as hell won't recede.
Corrections to my statements are welcomed from people with more than my meager two months in the power industry.
**Nuke plants typically run at full power
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Mud slinging isn't any more effective in California than it is anywhere else. Its just that the stakes are higher in the largest state in the US. I'm not defending campaign tactics, I'm just saying its not a behavior exclusive to California, the US, or the 21st century.
Quebec is decoupled through DC too, which is why we weren't even slightly hit.
Who turned of the water?
My wife and were on the way into the city for a mini-vacation. I said to my wife,"I know you hate AM radio, but I have to turn on 88 CBS to see if there's anything going on that we need to know about." As my one friend says, "WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!?!" :) We were still passing the Princeton area so we were quite a distance from the city. By the time we got close to the Lincoln Tunnel the media was reporting general pandemonium throughout Manhattan.
/.er would have just had to sit back and say, "wow". It was pretty intense.
So instead, we bailed and went to the office I've been working at. It's the North American and Asia/Pacific data center for my customer, so they have incredible backup power systems. They had already switched over to the building-wide battery backup and were in the process of firing up the three two-story tall diesel engines to keep the power. Any true
Intelligent Life on Earth
I'm in maine, and power's working fine here. Is there a map of the affected areas?
There is an unlimited supply of power in the Universe
A few people have tried to prove you wrong with flashy theories of themodynamics and such. I don't know nothing of them, and I don't care if they're right or wrong. Even if there was unlimited power in the universe, there ISN'T unlimited power and resource of earth. So yeah, there ought to be better ways to produce energy.
Maybe my wording was unclear- Nuke plants do produce about 20% of the power we consume.
m
There are only 104 nuclear powerplants in the US, you're right on that.
However, These plants have 1-3 reactors at each site, each producing roughly a gigawatt of electricity- enough for a million homes.
So you've got at a minimum, 150 gigawatts output of just these 100 powerplants. Take your electricity bill, and figure out your average hourly kilowatt usage. Now divide 150 GW by your average consumption.
Do you still think I'm wrong? Or does it kinda look like nuclear power could run every home in the United states by itself? (Of course, if we wanted to run businesses and industry, we'd have to bring all the other plants back on.)
check
http://www.nei.org/ http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power.ht
http://www.seabrookstation.com
Seabrook is where I work, and How stuff works says 15% for the US, the US department of energy says 18.6%, both of which are close enough to the 20% I stated.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Wireless for the Powerless :)
:) See what happens when you hook up all those wireless :) I think somebody needs to upgrade their power plants and not their TV shows. Think of all the shows that air live from NY that are offline :) I'm sorry your ratings aren't high enough for us to waste the power we need to show reruns of Blues Clues and ST: TNG.
We could host brown out parties
AP's to a 100 year old power grid
this sig is classified..how about yours?
What is the differnce in setups between the west and east coast? This kind of thing never happens in Los Angeles.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
This sounds like it might be a deliberate cable-to-broadcast gateway. There was something similar in the apartment I lived in 2nd year of college.
However, I think ours was accidental due to lousy wiring of the cable. I got CNN, TBS and a few other channels through the air without paying. The reception wasn't clean, but it was watchable. There was also a strange noise on part of the FM radio band. These signals totally disappeared if you drove beyond spitting distance of the apartment.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I gotta admire the stamina, to be able to do the hottie (incidentally this is a word for hot water bottle round here), and hump the water cooler in the same panic.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
That's what we get for being first movers on the electricity thing. All that old copper from the 19th century is out of date. In Asia and other developing parts of the world, all the electricity is cellular.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
And we all remember a few years ago that California had rolling blackouts because the grid couldn't handle the power.
Apparently, however, no one can remember the far more similar outage on the west coast in 1996. Nine states, several hours without power, the same cascade failure effect. Of course, I don't know if the media dealt with it the same way, since I had no electricity at the time.
It's not suprising that an oil-fired plant in emergency shutdown would produce smoke. It's one of Con Ed's older plants, and local residents have beem complaining about it for years.
Our radio station is running a competition about who you'd least like to be trapped with, and who you'd most like to be trapped with.
and I could imagine pairings where one is trapped with his favourite dream, and the other is trapped with her nightmare.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
August 12th 2003
August 14th, 2003
In that context, I think this qualifies as a really bad bug. [smile]
Ubersoft is a reasonable decent satire of MS, of course.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It is maybe a fire in a pennsylvanian nuclear power plant that started it all. (leaked from a canadian politician)
I don't know how it plays here, but my power from the base plants is transmitted by DC. The pwoer goes 800 miles in DC lines, and is transformed to AC 50 miles from downtown Minneapolis. Of course there are other power plants, some local, but that is the major source of my power. So the generators don't themselves need to sync up with local power, just that inverting plant. (I have no idea what the right term for it is)
Contary to popular belief DC is better for long distance power transmission, the belief started because it is difficlut to achive the right voltages with DC. For those who care, there is a limit to how much voltage you can put in a wire before other things happen. With Dc your peak voltage is the voltage, and you can transmite V*A watts, while with AC peak voltage is still the one that counts, but you normally measure volts RMS, and in particular your power is Vrms*A. (or something close to that, real power enginners will find fault with the above, but agree it is close enough)
What we really need is a whole bunch of power plants to make a distributed power system.
Imagine a beowulf.......ahhh......never mind......that joke is so old!!
Oh geez, I'm sorry.
I plugged my flux capacitor in, and it takes 1.21 gigawatts to charge. I knew I should've called the power plant first...
Aren't you US guys not a little embarassed to have a power systems which ranges sligtly in front of, say, Swaziland, in terms of reliability ?
No, we're not embarassed. While you smarmy Euros were perfecting your power grids, we were busy saving your candyasses from the Germans two times in 31 years. If anything, you Euros should be embarassed that you couldn't fight the Germans as well as the military of a country who can't even seem to run a simple power system.
I laugh when I see the news of this heat wave that is baking Europe. 3,000 dead in France, because finally something is killing the French that doesn't stop when they surrender. The question is, is the heat killing them, or the stench of all those seldom-bathing, filthy French people?
Cool, now I know what that's from! (It's sampled in Desert Storm by Orbital.)
Im in Long Island...
kicking it modem and laptop style!
100% Insightful
I remember a story of a Californian who decided to live "off the grid", using alternative energy (solar power I believe). His kids got teased at school... until everyone's house in the neighborhood lost power - except his.
So, is this the United States' way of showing Iraq that we aren't intentionally keeping them in the dark?
Back then (2000, I guess), the world was much less paranoid and we couldn't even imagine that was caused to sabotage or terrorrism.
Instead, we thought that the world was about to end....
Heat pollution.
If nothing else, too much power generation and use will cause major problems due to heat output. Our climate is quite senstive, and it's surprising how small changes need to be.
T-shirts! Get your t-shirts! Tell people where you've been by wearing a t-shirt!
Our air conditioner just clicked back on and I'm getting reports that power is restored to big swaths of Central New York...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
A long range video down a stretch of road in NYC with lots of traffic lights as the power comes back on. :-)
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Every normal shutdown procedure should come complete with billowing clouds of black oily smoke.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
I live near Albany NY and power was out around 4pm. Came back on around 9 or so. Amazingly no accidents on the major road near me.
On the bright side (no pun intended) today I met more people in my appartment building than before, as everyone was outside.
From what I've seen on TV coverage, they showed the source of the black smoke. Looked to me like a refinery or something with the safety flare-off stacks burning. I live in the heart of petrochemical alley down along the southern Mississippi River, and believe me, whenever there is a widespread power failure, they all do the same thing.
There are many stages to the processes that turn oil into gasoline, plastics, and other petrochemical products. Whenever there is an upset to the process, such as a power failure, complex systems (on backup power, of course) are designed to shut down the plant in a controlled manner to prevent a catastrophe, and many times that involves venting unprocessed flammables to safety flare-offs to be burned off.
About 7 years ago, a transformer failed at a major substation over by where I live, plunging a large area into darkness. Within seconds, a series of loud explosions were heard at a nearby plastics plant. People living in the area were panicking because they thought that the plant blew up, but the TV and radio newscasters calmly explained (to those who could recieve the broadcasts) that it was part of the safety shutdown procedure, that the loud booms were caused by safety pop-off valves and what looked like burning Iraqi oil wells was the safety flare-off stacks burning.
Here's a link to guidelines to living off the grid. The most notable quote:
R&S is to blame ... I tell u ... R&S ...
http://people.howstuffworks.com/power.htm/printabl e
A link to help us understand power grids...
Just got back from Six Flags New England (SuperMan Ride of Steel/Best coaster in the world DEFINATLY... this ride ROCKS !!!) and from around 3:10pm onwards they were having problems with the Superman coaster (I've got pictures of a stuck set of coaster cars on the pull track as you start the ride...), they did get the coaster working again, but it stopped very soon afterwards... :(
We decided to go to the Hurricane Harbour, and possibly try Superman afterward on our way back, but that did not work as planned, as the fastlane/q-bot said that the ride was shutdown.
On exiting the park, I dropped off the fastlane/q-bot around 5pm, and you talk about a room full of very angry and pissed off punters... all wanting refunds as they had apparently at 4:50pm shut down ALL the coasters in the park, those who had just purchased q-bot's recently or had only been on one or two coasters (many of these had the "standard" q-bot!) were wanting refunds... the stream of poeple leaving the park was now growing and the talk comprised of foul mouthing the Six Flags park/fastlane employee's and basically anything else that took their fancy!
Personally, possibly since my friends and I had been in the park since opening, we all had a blast, Superman 5 times within in a row within like 30-40 mins (gotta love the gold q-bot, never waited longer than 4 mins for ANY ride in the park!), and left the park just as they shutdown the rides due to some unknown problem at the time...
I came home to see the telly in my local Boston area full of the coverage of the major blackout, so I guess we were lucky, unlike those stuck in the subway system in NYC!
You know, at the time of this posting, there are 990 comments at 1+ which kinda raises the question; Are there more slashdotters or are more just comming out in times of trouble
Unfortunately, Digitally Imported is down because of the blackout :(
Looking at the data
here
You'll notice (Map is in GMT) that near the time there was the outage there's also a gap in the map. Not sure if it's a graphical fluke or an actual spike it did not read.
Also
Near the same time auroral dataplots as seen below
here
There's another 2 surges in activity near those times the power outage was to occur.
It still could of been lightning but only more so powerful since it's known that lightning extends far up into space and it's possible the grid actually met up with the some bend in the van allen belts due to a buffet from a solar flare which they're talking about M to X class flares possible from a sunspot facing the earth.
More info can be found at
http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/
http://sunspotcycle.com/
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/today.html
I had to take down the gird to disable the highrise rigged with explosives so that I could talk to the Creator. I hope you understand.
The One
I'll look for a citation on that, thanks. If you have it, please send it on to me. I like to have good data.
Highest rates isn't everything. How much energy were companies selling as well? It's certainly disappointing that there would be profiteering, but that's still not a crime of the magnitude of manipulating the market for a public utility, and there is no shortage of evidence that Enron did just that.
The administration and more specifically the FERC claimed that there was no manipulation of the CA energy market. In fact, the Enron and their front companies (possibly with the collusion of others) did manipulate the market, as has become clear from investigation and the testimony of Enron insiders.
I do remember a (LA municipal?) utility district was criticized because they sold power to the state at a high cost. However, LA was in danger of having power problems too, so it isn't unlikely that they might have to replace any power they sold.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
everyone, including slashdot, gets their panties in a wad about a stupid power outage. Big deal. I don't care that small portions of the east coast have no power.
for most posts to one /. story?
I wonder how many people were putting in a light bulb or plugging something in and wondered what the hell they just did...
BTW, power is JUST fine in Texas ;)
Interesting, the US has 3 major power grids. The Western, The Eastern and Texas. Here in California it was proven that Texas power companies manipulated the market and caused the blackouts of a few years ago, and drained our budget surplus. Seems odd that the East and the West suffer power outages, and Texas, who holds the keys to the grids and friends in the White House, sits pretty.
hmmmmmmmmm............
I always assumed that the purpose of a grid was to make sure that power is supplied even to a location whose local station went down. But now it seems just the opposite: a station goes down, the grid goes down. Could someone please explain what I'm missing here?
Since you mentioned the blackouts in New York, I see two things happening. 1. Someone will make a song about it, probably a rip off of Billy Joel's Miami 2017. 2. In about 36-40 weeks, population along black out areas will experience a proliferation of births; experts will be baffled.
Theres a pretty good photo album of all the news coverage today.
4 2
Available at:
http://hackingthemainframe.com/gallery/albun
I know that SCADA networks run on Wintel based machines and use RPC services. I'm wondering if the power grid didn't actually get hit by the updated RPC/DCOM worm thats been going around.
It is my general feeling that the power failure could be SCADA related. If it was an attack or an accident I do not know, nor do I think the appropriate information will ever be released to the public.
Just my speculation, I'm not trying to start any conspiracies here.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
just got power!!!
*phew*
A while back, I saw something on the Discovery Channel a while back about this.
Currently, there are two water tunnels bringing water into NYC. They are both extremely old, their physical conditions are unknown, and their combined capacity is just enough to meet the city's current needs. They cannot shut one down to inspect/refurbish it. If anything happened to them, Manhattan would probably be unable to support its population due to sanitation concerns.
They are now constructing a third water tunnel, due to be completed in 2020, that will enable them to shut down and refurbish the other two tunnels one at a time. Until then, someone determined to really screw New York's pooch could fuck with either or both of the existing tunnels and essentially put New York out of business for much longer than any blackout.
By 9:00 the lights were turning on in the Albany, NY area. And by 10:00 everything seemed back to normal. I was surprised to learn that many folks elsewhere will have to wait until morning, but then again, the grid around here always seems to be above average in reliability.
I just wish my mail server (located in NYC) would come back online, soon!
My Freakin Blog
... after 10h to get out from there. I was lucky enough to find out about a bus going to Jersey City from the Ferry site, and from there I took a taxi to Harrison where I had taken the Path in the morning, and where I had my car parked.
The most shocking thing has been the total ausence of authorities any where. Basically, the presence of police controlling the situation was minimum. Also, it was impossible to get any reliable information from any transport official.
So I wasn't just dissapointed by seeing something like this happening but also by the reactions I saw from the authorities.
...temperature wise that is... online via GPRS modem card looking over the city of Toronto from the balcony... nothing but dark mass where buildings are, emergency beacons from office towers and condos and some contrails overhead from airplanes that have been flying. ...and stars in the night sky - an absolute rarity for any large city.
online - almost 1am Eastern Daylight Savings time and total blackout... gotta be something to say on that.
So, If an american loses a key, does he think it's a terrorist attack?
What about blown lightbulbs? Pen out of ink?
Bad sectors, faulty CD-R?
It's funny from my point of view too see a nation so brave and so scared at the same time.
You're a FUCKHEAD
To the terrorists of Al-Kaeda, the events of the past 48 hours are a neat lesson in how to disrupt American life with minimal initial loss of lives. Blow up a power plant or transmission line!
Let the Americans, so used to cheap and stable electric power, loot and riot in the ensuing blackout! Come on. In the Third World this won't be news.
when you are supposed to use those HAM radios?
I mesured the current of all my appliances a few weeks ago. My Hagen 404 filer (For those who don't know, that's a pretty big filter, in my case for a 78 gal tank) only consumes 25W when operating, less than many modern video cards...
So in theory, the 1250VA UPS connected to my computer could power my aquarium for 25 hours.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Sorry, I calculated with 50W for some reason (it's late). With 25W, my 1250VA UPS could power the pump for a little over 2 days.
my home is about 2 years old, the windows are the energy saver type. It is possible air conditioning is not my major use of power, 3 TV's, 3 kids, and about 10 computers, 3 of which run 24x7...
I like solar power, but upfront costs are considerable. Wind power seems more attractive to me, but living in the suburbs I've been told I can't throw up a 100' high windmill...
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
A woman was lying in her hospital bed recuperating after an intense
....
..... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BABY ??????
12 hour delivery of a bouncing baby boy.
Moments later the hospital room door opened, and in walked
the delivery nurse carrying the baby boy
SUDDENLY the nurse THROWS the baby on the floor, kicks it up
against the wall, picks it up and TWIRLS it around several times
and THROWS it against the wall....
Well, just bewildered, the woman gives out a loud SHREEEK and
hollers MY GOD
The Nurse chuckles a little to herself 'April Fools', she says...
He was ALREADY DEAD !!!!!!!!!!
I wonder how many dead hardcore Diablo 2 characters this one is good for. I also doubt Blizzard would do a rollback. :)
This would be a great case mod. Software controlled pyro or smoke generation built into the case. Freak out your mom (most of you guys still live at home right), impress your geek friends (all two of them)!!
implies: (according to www.m-w.com), necessary consequence.
If A could be true but B is not true, than A is not implying B in that case, which would invalidate the statement A implies B.
Proper usage of the word 'implies' would be something like: A square implies a rectangle.
A necessary consequence of a square is that it is a rectangle. But this doesn't mean that all rectangles must be squares. But this also doesn't mean that not all squares are rectangles.
So A implies B is neither:
"B only if A"
"A is a sufficient condition for B"
Perhaps the other poster meant "B if A", instead of "B only if A"
And before anybody chimes in that they are the same:
If that were the case there would be no such thing as IFF (If and only If)
Its late, and I wasn't thinking straight. I reread your post, and you are correct. Time for me to go to bed :p
That's exactly how it works at our plant, only I've only seen it done in the simulator on a diesel generator. I'm not sure how long it takes to adjust the speed of main generator, so I guess a couple minutes.
Funny thing- we had to load one of our diesel generators during a test run a few weeks ago, but lost voltage control. This meant we couldn't tweak the voltage of the DG up a little to take on grid load, and it was just spinning idle. So we used the main generator to drag down the ENTIRE NEW ENGLAND GRID a few volts to load our pissant 6MW diesel generator.
Now that's power. heheheh
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I've been off for 12 hours!
Other places have had power for a while,
first the big industry got power,
then the major financial districts.
i'm in a suburb of toronto, in a light residential area.. so we got power last of all.
What? Me? Worry?
I am STILL in my rackspace. I was here when all the overhead lights went out.
First reaction: I see happy LEDs, whew.
Second Reaction: when the overhead lights came back on seconds later, you see 10 techs looking at their hands as if the ethernet cables they plugged in caused the problem! Funny.
This is the most comfortable place in Manhattan right now. Sleeping here on Sun cartons and bubble wrap in the AC due to zero transport home to CT.
Verio's got all generators working, and should weather this. For this I am eternally grateful. Let's take a moment to praise the folks who plan for this kind of problem in our data centers!
Guess what's on TV? (at 4:16 am, cbs channel 2)
Exactly what you said would not be:
"People are buying food and water for strangers when the shop keepers aren't just giving it away for free. People are taking in their friends and coworkers and giving them a place to stay for the night if they can't get home. People are sharing their cell phones so strangers can call home and let their families know they are alright. I saw a man walking with candles to the houses of older members of his church to make sure they were alright and had what they needed to make it through the night. What is going on right now is the true American spirit and it crosses all racial, social and economic lines."
An interesting thing about the 2nd amendment is that it does not specifically mention guns or firearms, but "the right to bear arms" Ask your self what are "arms"?
Turns out pretty much everything from swords to tanks. I want my howitzer!
I think a funny outcome of the battle for the right to bear arms is likely to be that we will always have the right to own guns but soon (if not already) guns will go the way of the bow and arrow or sword. Primitive technology. But because the fight has centered so strongly around guns, it will make it easy to keep the constitutional definition limited to certain types of firearms when our military and police forces will have moved far beyond them.
The power distribution everywhere in the western world is done using high voltage 3-phase AC systems.
They fail, if
a) the frequency slips or
b) if the power balance between production and demand gets to big.
The reason for all the hazzle of AC distribution is that it's simple to change voltages via transformers.
With modern power electronics, transformers will no longer be needed.
A DC distribution grid will be much more stable since the only reasons to take a generator off the network will be overload or overvoltage.
There is no frequency to lock to. There is no syncronizing phase when the generator starts production again.
At times with high demand, the DC grid voltage will drop. Surplus production will push up the grid voltage.
Circuit breakers can be set to turn on at a certain voltage, that automatically will turn on demand when the grid voltage can drive the load. Low priority areas can have the high-voltage switches, high priority areas have low-voltage switches.
Combine this with a varying price: Low voltage = high price, high voltage = low price and you'll get system which can smoothe out changes in the balance between supply and demand.
Will it work? Well, we do have some DC links from Denmark to Germany and to Norway. They are relatively small but power electronics are developing fast.
-- From Denmark
Hmm, seems to be still up. I wonder if New York will be down for 5 weeks like Auckland was.
As an aside, the international red cross is advertising for a new boss in "the economist". Now that's a decent job adverts section (compared to the crap in my local papers).
So we just used candles for lighting, wound up the gramophone (yup we still have it - lovely edison beast) or played the piano, used the hand pump for water (tiring!) and lit the (efficient) wood fire. I'm not sure if it had a wetback (for hot water) or not.
The only pain was the freezer defrosting, since we didn't have an icebox, which means some food needs to be eaten quick (wood barbeque) or wasted.
Smelters of aluminium would be running their own power plant in any case.
Not a single word about changing your consumption habits.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Because it is expensive to produce, high consumption has geopolitical consequences and we have only one planet to pollute before we choke in our own waste. Give me an infinite supply of planets were to live and I may change my mind.
That is WHY WHY WHY!!!!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You surely don;t know how most electricity is produced, otherwise you would not be so happy and unconcerned.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
how long will their fuel last?
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
For the most part, Voltage is dependent on rotational velocity, but remember your generator basics:
In order to make electricity you need a conductor, a magnetic field, and motion between the two.
In a generator of any size, it's impractical for a variety of reasons to use permenent magnets to provide this magnetic field, so the magnetic field is set up on the rotor by a DC voltage. Changing this excitation voltage will strengthen or weaken the magnetic field, thus changing the voltage output, even for a given speed.
Amperage is proportional to applied torque.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Here is the kicker though, When i was a senior in high school, as an electricity student, we went to the bruce-mansfield coal power plant, in WV, (i graduated from a Ravenna,OH JVS) and at that point, the power grid consisted of western PA ohio and WV, and most of our generators were not even fired up, infact we were runningat 1/3rd capacity, now you are telling me in 3-4 years that we have had a 66% increase in power consumption, and don't give me crap about air conditioners and computers, look at the sales figures, we can't possibly be pulling that much more than 4 years ago.
so what you're getting at is that after the '77 blackout, you fired up your web browser..
i don't think there was much of a web to be browsing back then..
According to heise.de there could be well a connection to w32.blaster.. The Niagara-Powerplant belongs to National Grid USA which is a reference customer of Northern Dynamics - a company which provides COM/DCOM-Software for process control. So there could be well a relation to w32.blaster - at least there plants are driven by COM/DCOM...
Bush: a new attack launched against the U.S., time to take some more God given rights away.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
ENRON ENRON ENRON! BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!
Your theory that ENRON caused the rolling blackouts would wash only if ENRON was the sole source energy supplier for the entire state of Kaliforia. They weren't. All suppliers were equally affected with the exception of the few municipally owned power utilities left in the state. The Socialist State of Kalifornia limited BY LAW the amount of profit any given supplier could make. Limited profits.. limited supply... unlimited demand. Do the math.
The power grid in the USA is similar to that of many third-world countries. It is far from reliable and lacks proper power re-routing capabilities. In fact, there is a shortage (pun intended) of high-voltage cabling and the existing high-voltage cabling often needs to be replaced and was initially meant (in the fifties and sixties!) for far lower power distributions.
sPh
hey connecticut lost power too.. looksl like its time for a big UPS now... had to go and restart all the servers this morning..
I'm not a Windows user, my computer doesnt crash randomly.
Well well, I AM a Windows user, and my computer doesn't crash randomly either, trollboy.
"Information wants to be paid"
the facts say otherwise, much to my surprise. While america uses a ridiculous amount of energy per capita (the statistic I had been thinking of, which shows us at roughly 4.5 times the world average per-capita usage), the country is fairly normal in terms of BTUs per dollar of GNP. Consider that the US requires 12,000 BTUs per dollar of GNP, while China requires 46,000 and India requires 31,000. So, while the US is apparently using power as if everyone has their own home aluminum processing plant-- we are at least getting something done with it.
e ngecon.h tm
. cfm?TID=294
Stats on per capita energy usage:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/northamerica/
Stats on BTU/GNP here: http://www.ecoworld.org/Energy/Articles/articles2
I must disagree on your views on conservation, though. While conservation will not remove the need to expand production capacity, there is simply no need to waste power lighting rooms you aren't using, or keeping your house colder than 75 in the summer. I'm not advocating we all live in shacks-- just live like you do now, use some common sense, and don't waste what you don't need. If you feel especially conservative, get some CFL light bulbs, an on-demand water heater, or some new insulation. Nothing life-changing. Just simple, practical stuff.
No TV and no beer makes homer something something.
"I lost three good friends...in the WTC attacks, and you're making jokes about terrorists wanting information? Jesus fucking Christ."
BFD. I've lost 3 friends & 1 relative to brain tumors in the last 11 years. I can still laugh about "head-rot", though. And don't blaspheme: its offensive (or is it okay for you to offend people, but not for people to offend you?)
"Look, I can take a joke like the next guy"
Clearly not.
"but when I heard that NYC had been plunged into darkness due to a massive power outage, my mind immediately thought of another attack"
And do you blame all missing shipping on the Japanese Pacific fleet? Some things only happen once, no matter how big a deal they may seem at the time, or how much political mileage is derived from them
"but you have NO IDEA of the pain that myself and millions of others felt that day and still feel to this day."
If its anything close to the pain caused by listening to Americans bitch about how the world is so unfair to them, how they need "closure", and how we shouldn't mention certain things because it isn't "nice", then you have my sympathies. But I hope your pain is eased by the knowledge that many more innocent civilians have been killed in the US's response to those attacks; and each one of those (admittedly foreign, and therefore worth less than an American) victims has someone just like you left grieving. And while I respect your right to free speech and to say what you want, that doesn't give you the right to insist on everyone else in the world respecting your sensibilities.
Your suffering is no greater than anyone else's. Your ability to deal with it is, however, substandard.
I got an intern on a bike powering my laptop right now.
Adventure City Tours
august 15, 2003 - 9:56am (toronto)
here in toronto, there are portions of the city getting power.
where i am (college and dovercourt), there is still no power.
this was a rare opportunity to observe a city of people
without electricity.
a report of what it was like being here -- actually quite nice.
its the first time i've ever been able to see the stars at night
from inside the streets of toronto. the moon is just past full,
and mars sits there like a jewel to her lower right, with the
whole glittering firmament behind her. it was quite beautiful.
around 4:15pm yesterday, we were all at work, when the screens
in front of our faces went dark, and a big gasp and then a golden
moment of silence, and you could just hear some birds chirp, and
no more fans. then people were wandering about aimlessly -- like
unplugged borg. there was no more point in carrying on, since we
need our machines to produce anything, so the crew was soon packed-up
to go home.
since it was nice weather, the patios along king street the
street lights were out, it was little use trying to get anywhere
by car, so people started walking. at the intersections, some
people were still using light-driven habits, and many others
quickly negotiated intersections by looking across with glances.
its amazing how well people keep going without with simply the
communication provided by LOOKING. i could finally understand
the traffic dispersal patterns of old black and whitee photos
taken in times before traffic lights -- people wandering an
intersection, and negotiating the passage by glances is really
a good experience.
Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now
multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed,
nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air,
space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without
anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably
cheap imitation of it. (G. K. Chesterton)
of course, i wish all the best efforts towards those helping
those who were stuck in elevators, or had emergency situations.
most of us just went down the stairs. one of the programmers
used the light on his gameboy to get down the ten flights.
those in cars were especially afflicted with bad traffic getting home.
but the phones were working, the water is working, and the weather
is fine. a lot of people used this time to start talking with their
neighbours. if you had a case of beer (which couldn't be bought --
since all the tills need power), then you were lucky.
yes, it was strange to see lights out on abandoned and stopped
street-cars, but since things were actually quiet in the middle of
the city for the first time in memory -- you could hear things better,
and you could hear a lot of people talking, and socializing and
laughing with people in the backyards -- many of them lit with
candles. riding bike along bloor street, there was a fellow in a
darkened shop window selling candles with a transistor radio on,
and that's how we found out it was the whole east coast.
you ask, is it the building? the block, the city? progressively
the scope of the blackout became known as people called relatives
outside the zone.
also of note -- it is a lot cooler without the air-conditioners.
without all the air-conditioners drawing power and producing heat,
the overall general OUTDOOR air-temperature is much cooler,
and everything is quite nice. we still don't have power,
so i've not ventured to ride my bike in to work yet.
but right now, the sun is shining, there's no loud droning of
air-conditioners all over the place, you can hear the morning
winds in the trees wafting, and birds chirping, and neighbours
walking around outside talking with each other. i hear they
have power now a couple blocks over from my section in the
downtown core -- maybe i'll be able to dail-in to slashdot,
I'm a rep for canada's largest ISP. And I can say, without a doubt, that due to the fact that we're running out of diesel for our CO facilities. So to conserve power, we'll be turning off the internet for a while.
:)
Thankyou and have a nice day. We'll see you on monday. Maybe
Thats why you can't find a job :) Thanks for the lesson.
Free speech is getting expensive...
My power is on now in Barrie Ont Canada after being out for 18 hrs. They say 50% of Toronto has power but it may go back off any time if there are further problems.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Somebody's reaching here - since when does this third-rate web site represent the "New Yorker attitude?"
*Sigh* indeed.
Somebody should have made his SimCity Homework.
My cities never fall short of power since I fear the riots...;-)
cu,
Lispy
..download speeds are great.
Thanks.
"black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown"
...must be a Microsoft transformer.
"Follow your Bliss." -- Joseph Campbell
West Coasters are pissed because they were hogging all the media action for the past two weeks with Kobe-Ahnold-etc and now their little ride is over.
See, the world's attention is once again back where it belongs - focused on NEW YORK CITY - and with a LEGIT news story, no less.
they say it could last for over a week!
Oops, the address is really 111 8th Ave, the old Port Authority.
"stupid 9-11 conspiracy theories"
Yeah, like some guy in a cave in freakin' stone-age Afghanistan without even access to a shortwave radio pulled off a major covert operation, or that Saddam somehow took time out of his torture-and-pillage-the-locals agenda to assist.
Or, like there were a bunch of muslims on those planes. Let's see, any others? Sure, lots, but that covers the doozies!
If you're really touchy about Operation 9-11, start asking some basic questions.
Of course an UPS can power all the pumps of a fish tank. The air pumps are rated at most at 18-22 W, and the power heads are around the same range. The problem is the heater, the most commons have a consuption of 120 W, IIRC. A few weeks ago here a tree fell over my street's power lines and the UPS (300 VA APS)kept runing fine my fish tank for all the night, without the heater.
At the peak some 50 million people were affected, look at the size of the areas affected.
This is a HUGE power outage.
My father stumbled in last night around 2 am after being called into work shortly after the power failure.
He works for the NYISO - the New York Indpt. System Operator as a senior dispatcher. His job during normal operations, simplified, is to maintain the power grid by balancing loads and demands.
Last night, he and four other experts were called in to rebuild the grid that they usually maintain. The grid is a very particular thing to meddle with -- a few well placed problems can crash the entire thing -- which is why this blackout occured.
Although original reports suggested that line damage in Canada was the cause, my father feels that the problem originated further away: in our mid-west area. A series of events occured nearly simulataneously in Ohio or Indiana that caused several severe spikes in the North American grid. The spike traveled northward, across Michigan, through Canada, and then back into Northern NY state. Because the entire event occured over the course of one minute, the relays built to protect our own grid failed to close the lines between here and Canada, leaving our grid vulnerable to failure.
He and his coworkers went about repairing the grid manually -- in the same style he did for the Blackout of '77 (his father handled the '65 blackout). Generators must be turned on one-by-one (explaining the long period of downtime), starting with the water plants (thank Niagara Falls for providing us with those first starting bursts of power). By the time he left, he had reestablished the grid in upstate NY all the way to Pleasantville, as well as having several lines into Penn., Canada, and Mass. Upon activating the grid around Pleasantville, the junction point for NYC's grid, they had to come to a halt: NYC had yet to establish a small enough grid of their own to connect to the upstate NY one (a connection could crash both grids)... likely this problem occured because of the inability for service workers to reach their particular assignments within the city (traffic issues, et al.).
As for concerns with deregulation: my father previously worked for the NYPP - New York Power Pool - which is essentially the same thing as the NYISO, except regulated. The control room changed a little bit to accomodate the need to communicate with several different power companies at once, but all in all his job stayed the same. In emergencies like this, all of the power companies work together to restore the grid: the effects of deregulation were not felt at all before or during this crash.
The real problem facing our power grids today, my father feels, is the lack of modern equipment running the grid. Old lines incapable of holding the loads necessary, failing generators, and outdated computer systems in other regions all can lead to this sort of problem. However, the causes of yesterday's blackout seem to be only several bad situations occuring simultaneously.
- Brandon Brown
With the continual barrage of national news from CNN, CNBS, MSNBC, USA Today and the like, what is news has changed. The power outage in the north east US is an example.
Living in the West, how does this effect me? Well, not at all, almost. One of my web sites is down because it is hosted in Michigan. Other than that, it does not change my day to day living at all. Yet, when I turn on the TV or the radio, all I hear about is the Great Power Outage. The more local power outage of about 10,000 people that also occured overnight was only mentioned on the radio and not by any of the local TV stations at all.
Not too many years ago we would have heard about something as distint as this Great Power Outage after the fact. It used to take time for "news" to travel, yet now we hear about it as it happens. Given the media's perchant for the sensational, we are continually shown images of horrorific, lurid, terrible, and bizarre things taking place all over the world.
This creates two problems. First, we become convinced that the world is a more awful place than it really is or needs to be. The continual onslot of bad news we get makes us feel threatened, even when the bad news originates thousands of miles away. Even though we understand that these things happen far away, emotionally its the same as if it happened in our home town.
The second problem is the lack of local news we receive. Do we know more about what is happening in Iraq than we do in our own towns or neighborhoods? Do we and our kids know who the former President of Iraq is but can't say who are city, county, state, and national representatives are? Who can effect our lives more, our local leaders or the former leaders of far off places?
Of course national and internation news is important. However, it should play second fiddle to the more important local issues that truly can effect our everyday lives.
Your friend and well-wisher
m0smithslash
http://www.ferociousflirting.com
Oh well, simple solution:
1) Hike taxes to 20%
2) Fast forward time
3) Instant-construct new nuke plant
4) Lower taxes back to normal
5) Happy Sims!
there are 193 fuel bundles.
each of these contain 264 fuel rodlets. Each of these fuel rodlets is 12' long, filled with uranium & ceramic cylinders that are 3/8" in diameter, 5/8" tall, so I think that comes out to about 230 uranium pellets in each rodlet, maybe a dozen less.
So it's roughly a 12' cube (actually more like a squared circle on the horizontal plane, akin to the pixel layout of a lower-case 'o'), with room for control rods, coolant travel, and a few miscelanous other parts. Sub-cooled water at T average = 585 deg F and 2235 psi is passed through the core at 66,000 gallons per minute to extract heat and pass it off to a steam loop that the turbine generator extracts power from.
The exact portion of uranium to ceramic mixture in the individual pellets I'm not sure of, but you should be able to get a good idea- I think it's 5% enriched uranium, 95% uranium, clad in ceramic to make a pellet, then put in a zirciloy tube to form the rodlets. This might be slightly innacurate and I don't feel like looking up the exact info right now.
Hope that helps
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Two years ago, when the power grid engineers saw impending doom, their west coast, hippie ethos prompted them to come up with "rolling blackouts", so everyone would share some of the pain for Enron's profits. Flash forward to yesterday, at a ConEd engineering department... "Hey Stoney. D'em meters is gettin' pretty close to overload." "Fuggedabowdit. If it blows, it blows. F**ck 'em. It'll teach 'em tuh not use so much freakin' juice, maybe."
First of all, New England refers to those states in the North which are part of the original colonies. Maine didn't even exist when the term came into use, so I don't know where the hell you get this tripe from.
Little History Lesson for Yankees
During the colonial era, The Northern Colonies included New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. Territories in the Ohio Valley (such as Kentucky, Indiana, et al) were ceded to the US by Britain after our Independence. These areas were referred to as the Northwest, and the border regions are known as the Northwest Corridor.
By the way, Maine didn't exist as a state until the Missourri Compromise in 1820.
I'm in Manhattan on the east side and we got power back around 3:30 p.m. almost down for 24 hours. Apparently, the outer boroughs got power back earlier - this morning. Then the upper west side got power back, but it was spotty - some guy on the radio was saying, "there's power on 57th St and 10th Ave, but no power on 57th St and 9th Ave, and power on 57th and Broadway, etc." Anyway, it's apparently spotty on the upper east side, but if I've got power back it's over (for me). :-)
Some low points:
- Walking down 25 flights in the office building was a bitch
- Walking up 16 flights to get home using candles for light was worse.
- Eating everything in my fridge was gross.
- It was hot last night, so I didn't sleep much
- Still no cable TV
- Phone is spotty at best.
Some high points:
- With no electricity, I actually read a frickin book, until the sun set.
- Fortunately had a number of candles so hanging out by candle light was nice
- I actually saw the stars in the NY sky - a first.
- it was quite a nice evening last night, very quiet and peaceful.
I think New Yorkers took it in stride. I could see a lot of people just hanging out and taking it as a day off. No panic, nothing crazy. Some guy in the building across from me was having a barbeque and handing out food to his neighbors.
Watching traffic was funny. With no traffic lights, it's was a battle between cars and pedestrians. Mostly people won out. Everyone was very civilized.
Anyway, back to checking e-mail.
OK, Manhattan
Upper East side - no power
Upper West side - power on at 6:10AM
Below the park - on to 42nd street then off until you hit 14th St.
Can't say about the financial district although the village is back up.
What a great day in the city!
Attributing the scale of the shutdown to the domino effect may be correct, but the true cause has been mis-identified by the government/media. The truth? The Microsoft Update web site is swamped, due to the Blaster worm. Someone who was trying to get to the web site got tired of the wait, and decided to reduce the load by shutting down the North-east US. (He couldn't shut down the West Coast, since Microsoft would be shut down.)
The truth is out there...
The United Energy System (EES), created in the USSR, was a complex interconnected automated system, not only joining all power stations over the huge territory of Russia, but also connected into the international energy system of COMECON countries. The system provided reliable and uninterrupted electricity supply thanks to the combined capacity of the interconnected subsystems. At the same time, the system was designed for variable seasonal load changes. Because of that large-scale power outwages were literally uknown in Soviet times.
(translated from here )
Having lived in USSR for 11 years (until it broke up) I can confirm that this was indeed true. While short local blackouts sometimes happened (a house or a few blocks), anything on the city scale was unheard of. But Americans had to face such crap then (some famous blackouts decades ago) and they still do. Behold the wonders of the capitalist economy!
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I've gotta say, I've never been through one of these before, but I've learned a lot about survival prior to the age of ubiquitous electricity. I don't remember the 1998 Quebec ice storm blackout, as it didn't stretch to my home, and I don't remember what the 1989 solar flare-induced blackout was like.
I was slinging computer games when the power died. After clearing everyone from the store and locking down, we hung around the corridor with other sales jockeys before giving up and going home. Called the little lady on a landline, then started the long trek toward home. It's amazing how quickly people can self-organize when necessary--most of the intersections I passed were handled by volunteers directing traffic. Except for a few minutes around the really busy Yonge-Dundas intersection, traffic moved relatively normally. People actually obeyed random strangers because it needed to be done.
It's little surprise that thousands headed for the nearest source of alcohol. When nothing works, get hammered.
I'm amazed to recall that my first concern upon returning home was figuring out which foodstuffs were non-perishable and whether the water still worked. Since it's practically impossible (not to mention illegal) to build firepits in an urban area like Toronto, and finding spare coal or wood to burn is next to futile, I imagine I'd have been chewing on cereal if a variety store hadn't been nearby. I wonder what would happen if the power were to go away for more than a week...
Last thing that stood out for me--the sky, and the quiet! Without the constant background din of urban life--cars, air conditioners, televisions, lights, the hum of transmission lines--I could actually hear people thirty, fifty metres away. And the sky! Stars everywhere, and a bright moon that actually illuminated the ground enough for blind ol' me to figure out where I was going! For the first time, I truly understand the effects of light and noise pollution.
I'm going to be one of about a million people writing navel-gazing articles about life during this short throwback to the non-electric age, but I hope I don't forget what I realized over the past day. I think we'll have to reduce our reliance on technology in every aspect of life if we want to live sustainably anyway, so this was a good warm-up and wake-up call.
I also have some thoughts on modernizing the power grid (short version: distributed microgenerators and a diverse mixture of different generators, heavy on the renewables, saving the non-renewables for emergencies and shortfalls), but that's for another post. Right now, I'm just happy to have seen people visit with their neighbours and hang around outside for a few hours, something I don't see very often here in the big city.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
[Disclaimer: I got out of Naval Nuclear Program in 1986...let's see if I can remember how this goes.]
When the load is removed, the power plant is no longer having energy removed from it.
When the turbines are not converting heat energy to electricity, the heat stays inside the reactor.
When the heat stays inside the reactor, the very-high-pressure-water turns into very-VERY-high-pressure steam.
Steam does not conduct heat as well as water. When the steam reaches the tiny plates that have uranium inside, the heat generated by the nuclear reaction stays in the tiny plates.
When the tiny plates (sometimes called fins of a rod) get that hot, they melt.
When the metal casing of the tiny plates melt, the very heavy uranium falls down into a pile at the bottom of the reactor. ("Meltdown.")
When a bunch of plates melt, all their uranium melts down to the bottom of the reactor, bringing more and more uranium closer together.
The closer together the urianium gets to other reactive ("live") uranium, the more free neutrons there are, therefore the better the chances of a subsequent nuclear fission occurring from that free neutron hitting a U-235 atom. The more and closer the uranium is, the better the proability of more chain reactions.
When enough uranium is piled together, it can reach critical mass, thereby becoming an atomic bomb.
So in a nutshell, it's a little safer to shut the reactor down (by dropping lead rods that absorb the "free neutrons" down in-between the uranium rods) when the load has been removed.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
August 14: When the Lights Go Out on Broadway
August 15: When the Lights Go Out on Broadway, Continued
Mark: But TRUST ME when I say "game has a tendency to take down the Northeast US Power Grid, as well as parts of Canada's" qualifies as SUITABLY CATASTROPHIC.
Phil: Fine, I'll make a patch.
This morning I was standing outside my office after having spent the night there. I looked down the street and noticed that every building west of 5th Avenue had power while we where still in the dark.
I found myself thinking about the power line tool in SimCity. Man, if we just had one of those, we could hook up that block to our block...problem solved!
NY has the most expensive power costs in the nation and we had to deal with this black out.
I wonder what really caused this problem?
It's not what you know; It's what you can find out.
Iraqis have had power outages for several months.
Divine justice that americans should have a taste of them too.
Dude if you think NPR is too far right, you need an ideology adjustment. NPR has the most even-keeled reporting of any news outlet in the US. They actually -support- everything they say. What's more they actually do in-depth reporting.
frankly, i'm kind of scared of what you think is unbiased if you think NPR is too far right
There are lives at stake here!
guess that didn't happen. oh well, we can always wait until after the superbowl.