Undersea Cables Damaged By Earthquake 91
ColoradoAuthor writes "The horrific earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in Japan have caused widespread damage to undersea communications, according to data collected by telecom industry sources. Initially, it was thought that the damage to the cables that connect Japan and Asia to each other and other parts of the world was limited, but new data shows the extent of the problems."
Re:yeah.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the telcos who surely need tens of billions of dollars in government aid to repair the cables, surely!
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Yeah, because underseas telecommunications cables are only used for the Internet. They couldn't be used for, say, telecommunications.
Who cares if the news can get out? Who cares if family members can reach each other? Who cares about coordinating rescue and relief efforts?
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That's nothing. Have you read some of the comments on "news" sites? I was reading an article on a paper's website about the US looking to provide some assistance to Japan and the comments tended to be something like "serves them right, we should let them die for WWII!".
Fortunately, they're allowed to breed and vote the same as everyone else. Uh . . . hurrah. :/
A better prime directive... (Score:3)
Here's an idea this conversation reminds me of... let's not hold people responsible (either in personal retribution or for fiscal remuneration) for the sins of their progenitors unless (1) they actively glorify them, *AND* (2) they rise to the level of genocide, war crimes, or population displacement.
There are enough living warlords and genocidal assholes that we don't need to go looking for dead ones.
That would be a much better Federation Prime Directive than the one they came up with. Much more tied to I
Pearl Harbor? (Score:3)
Pearl Harbor just made me hate Americans... One American, specifically... Michael Bey.
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That's nothing. Have you read some of the comments on "news" sites? I was reading an article on a paper's website about the US looking to provide some assistance to Japan and the comments tended to be something like "serves them right, we should let them die for WWII!".
Yes, and those comments are nothing compared to the comments on the Chinese websites. The US remembers an attack by a foreign military against a US military target, albeit a sneak attack. The Chinese remember the rape of Nanjing.
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You said: " When I went through boot camp, they tried to drill it into our heads that the Japanese were these terrible, warlike beasts who would eat our children and pillage our women if they could. They kept harping on the Bataan Death March and other atrocities."
They still do that. Now it isn't the Japanese, but there's always someone. I think they don't think they can motivate soldiers unless there are sub-human "bad guys" that we have to save someone else from.
For whatever reason...
Re:yeah.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hundreds of thousands of people trying to see if their loved ones are safe, IS THE INTERNET UP, everywhere?
Re:Does this mean the hentai is down?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about that.
In a couple days some of them might have tentacles of their own, so...
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Wow....political correctness is really going pretty far these days. I mean, EVERY time there is a tragedy or crisis, these type of jokes come out.
Anyone remember the Challenger explosion and the jokes that followed that?
What does NASA stand for?
Need Another Seven Astronauts
Tasteless? Sure...but that's just human nature, gallows humor. Are we not too "PC" to allow this anymore?
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Gilbert is just another comic who has seen a niche and is working aggressively to prevent anyone else from crawling into it with him. He's The Loud, Obtuse Idiot. People are actually making jokes about how Ross is The Old Comedian. Carlin recently gave up The Dirty Old Man, but it'll be a while before anyone really attempts to own that again, or maybe it'll just be some time before they can get away with it.
Or in other words, Gilbert is never funny, and he knows it.
Re:"new data show" (Score:5, Interesting)
I know how awkward it sounds, but it is plural.
No. It's not. Data is not the plural of datum. Data is a substance.
Much as you can't have too many rice, you can't have too many data. You can, however, have too much rice/data, and too many grains/points of rice/data.
A datum is a single data point. Data itself is unquantifiable until you are talking about the specific points of data. When the sentence says "New data shows...", it is clear that the data in question is akin to information, knowledge, insight, measurements, etc. to every single person on the planet except the guy who took the measurements.
Data is singular.
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The photons and electrons in the cables have "substance", while a photon has no mass it has measurable properties and electrons have mass.
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Try the dictionary next time.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data [merriam-webster.com]
Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns (as they, them); and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun (it). Both constructions are standard.
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Try the dictionary next time.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data [merriam-webster.com]
Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns (as they, them); and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun (it). Both constructions are standard.
Nice, a succinct answer to the data/datum "controversy" that seems to upset many nerds...
Godzilla (Score:1, Funny)
This is a government cover up, we all know it was actually Godzilla that caused it!
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I...I....so excite to be here!! Funny American man learn me how to tell joke!! [youtube.com]
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Too Soonami?
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This is a government cover up, we all know it was actually Godzilla that caused it!
Your post might be funny if a.) The timing didn't suck, and, b.) it contained a humorous punchline.
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Your post might be funny if a.) The timing didn't suck
I agree. That comma should definitely have been an ellipsis. However, it could also be argued that you simply read it badly.
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When did I say it was funny? It's only funny until someone gets hurt. [google.com]
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No the timing was just fine, you're just an uptight douche.
Yes, I'm an uptight douche who doesn't think godzilla jokes are funny during an on-going nuclear crisis. Sue me.
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Godzilla always comes in times of nuclear crisis. It's what she does. Get over yourself.
Not to mention that the "nuclear crisis" exists only in the minds of the media. Here's [thedailybeast.com] a realistic assessment from an MIT prof. Some heroic Japanese workers pumped enough seawater on the overheated core to keep the problem from becoming any worse than Three Mile Island. With any luck the death toll will be the same. here's [wakwak.com] a real-time Geiger counter in Tokyo if you want to follow along.
Meanwhile, real relief effor
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So, we agree that the timing's bad. Cool cool.
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Eh? I wasn't taking issue with your claim that Godzilla jokes aren't funny in a time of nuclear crisis (though I don't agree), but with the claim that this is a time of nuclear crises. It's not - nothing all that bad has happened, and realistic-worst-case nothing all that bad can happen. The media coverage is a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.
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People are worried and it's an on-going thing. For this reason, whether or not the media is blowing it out of proportion doesn't affect my view that the timing of that joke sucks. I don't know why anybody's fixating on that part of my post for the simple reason that the quality of that joke was so poor that even Paulie Shore could have come up with something better.
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Ahh, but a "fake" crisis is exactly the right time to be making jokes. The purpose of the human humor response is to deflate tension and prevent overreaction.
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Sure, but not so quickly after so many people died.
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Well, yeah (Score:3)
citation provided. (Score:5, Informative)
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The entire island of Honshu [wikipedia.org]? [[Citation needed]]
Seriously, if the entire island was moved 8ft, then I suspect the damage would be far greater and more widespread than it is.
Re:Well, yeah (Score:4)
The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.
From CNN [cnn.com].
Japan's recent massive earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded, appears to have moved the island by about eight feet (2.4 meters), the US Geological Survey said.
From AFP [google.com].
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British Geological Survey is reporting up to 13 ft. to the east. Revisions will probably settle down and start agreeing in a couple of weeks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12732335 [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.slate.com/id/2288382/ [slate.com]
Remember folks, the piece of earth that moved can be larger than the country sitting on top of it. In the case of Japan it almost is. When you jog a table it doesn't break your dinner plates in half.
http://crack.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/updates/louie/kobe/kobe-sci.html [unr.edu]
last paragraph: 'earthquake science is primitive' (Score:1)
i mean, they can make measurements & all that, but they really have no idea what causes the earth to shake, beyond their primitive understanding of 'plate techtonics'.
Re:last paragraph: 'earthquake science is primitiv (Score:4, Informative)
You know there are two solstices each year, right? And that the quake hit two weeks ahead of the middle of the two? Stick with the perihelion theory, it works better in this case.
#badscience
Re:last paragraph: 'earthquake science is primitiv (Score:5, Informative)
From that wikipedia list: 12 of the largest quakes on record occurred between December and March, 4 in November, and only 8 were between May and October. So... What's so important about the winter months?
Nothing. You've offered a 4 month window out of 12 months, and showed us 12 of the largest quakes out of the top 24 landed in that period. You'd expect the mean to be eight, if quakes are completely random. I ran a t-test separating the quakes listed on your wikipedia page by 4-month groups, making your december-march one group, may-july another, and august-november the third one. Assuming the null hypothesis that quakes are completely random, the two-tailed P value for that sample was 0.5242. ie, Not statistically significant at all.
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I'm on an email list of a guy that watches worldwide earthquake reports. He commented on the New Zealand quake, and gave a 'heads up' for the Ring of Fire.
Ken Ring is just a crank. [sciblogs.co.nz]
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The entire island of Honshu [wikipedia.org]? [[Citation needed]]
Seriously, if the entire island was moved 8ft, then I suspect the damage would be far greater and more widespread than it is.
USGS: Earthquake in Japan Moves Honshu Island 2.4 Meters [worldnewsco.com]
yeah its broke... (Score:2)
.. go fix it. No need to sit around and get all freaked out for one more foxnewsin' reason. Just fix it and move on.
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If tsunami hits east coast somewhere close to Pennsylvania and rolls over west coast next to LA or Seattle, then spam will go down.
Who'd have guessed... (Score:5, Funny)
The Konami code appears to be the code to disable Japan in real life.
(I'm going to hell for this...)
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Aquaman weeps some more...
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Disaster (Score:2)
It's both a natural AND a virtual disaster.
Leaking packets... (Score:2)
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porn to try a junk shot to stop it....
I see what you did there.
Just Look at All the Redundant Paths (Score:2)
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No worries, in the cable map of Japan there are all manner of redundant paths out of the country.
Really, compared to the misery of hundreds of thousands in the NE, the IT situation is of no import.
Even if the drop in data transmission was due ENTIRELY to damage to the cables (which it almost certainly isn't), I'd have to say that being operational at 85-90% of former levels is pretty damn good given the situation. I'd dare say there is a VERY long list of things that needs to be fixed more than those cables.
This is not to say that data flow is not important -- for one thing, it keeps people who have nowhere to go from getting cabin fever -- but when your house is on fire, you don't worry about the fa