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Venezuela Falling Behind 414

Posted by chrisd from the hz-donut dept.
Christopher Frank writes "Seems Venezuela's lack of power has finally caught up with them! MSNBC has the story: 'If you thought Venezuela's political crisis seemed to be dragging for an impossibly long time -- you were right. In a bizarre mass-malfunction, Venezuela's clocks are ticking too slowly due to a power shortage weakening the electric current nationwide. By the end of each day, the sluggish time pieces still have another 150 seconds to tick before they catch up to midnight.'"
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Venezuela Falling Behind More

Venezuela Falling Behind

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  • Marketing Spin... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lpret ( 570480 ) <lpret42 AT hotmail DOT com> on Friday February 28, 2003 @02:15AM (#5404209) Homepage Journal
    "Come to Venezuela, where time runs a little slower, the alcohol flows smoother, and the oil doesn't. In Venezuela, we pause for the last 150 seconds of every day to think about what a great day it's been in our country! Airplane fares are cheap!"

  • corrections! (Score:5, Informative)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @02:16AM (#5404218) Journal
    It's not the lower power / current / whatever. It's the lower frequencies on the AC lines.

    And besides any quartz clock won't be affected anyway. The ones that will suffer is those bedside alarm clocks you plug in - those red / green ones that are oh-so-common in the US.

    Any idea why there are 0 of them in Japan? Japan runs on 50Hz east side and 60Hz west side, which would make clocks like that completely fall over itself. (something about buying geneator equipment from siemens (europe) for the east side and from US for the west-side - and stuck)

    Interesting, but I don't think it's really that much of a "news." should at least up the "it's funny" icon

    • Re:corrections! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday February 28, 2003 @03:07AM (#5404391) Homepage Journal
      The clocks that will slow down are:
      • Digital ones that use the 60 Hz power frequency for their timing signal, rather than another oscillator like a quartz crystal.
      • Mechanical ones powered by the AC line, not a wind-up spring or battery. Pretty much all of those use a synchronous motor that locks itself to the 60Hz AC wave.
      The wind-up kind, and any clocks that run exclusively by battery power, won't be effected.

      By the way, quartz isn't the only material that can act as an electronic tuning fork. Early electronic clocks actually used mechanical tuning forks. Ceramic resonators are used, rather than quartz, in less precise applications. And piezoelectric crystals (which is what the quartz ones are) can be made of other materials, you can even make them from cream of tartar! Look up Rochelle Salts.

      Bruce

      • Are there really clocks that use the 60Hz frequency?

        I stood watching a turbine spinning last week and it didn't stay at 3000rpm constantly (50Hz). Surely a sundial would be more accurate.

    • Re:corrections! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Friday February 28, 2003 @06:27AM (#5404828) Homepage Journal
      It's not the lower power / current / whatever. It's the lower frequencies on the AC lines.

      The two are related. All those generators interconnected to each other via the power lines, turn together in synchronized motion. If the sum of all power consumption is not matched by the correct rate of energy input (ultimately, torque applied) to the system, those generators will necessarily slow down.

      The AC frequency is directly determined by the rotational speed of the generators. The magnetic field of the rotor induces that AC current in the stator windings as it turns, so the speed of rotation must be maintained if the AC frequency is to be correct.

      Why they don't disconnect some loads (eg, rolling blackouts) to keep the consumption balanced with their energy input is a good question?

      The really interesting thing about power grids is how the all those generators work together in synchronous motion. Every single one of them turns at the same speed and all those rotors are at (almost) exactly the same angular position at the same instant (or equivilant angular position in the case of different generator designs with different numbers of windings). If any one generator goes not receive enough torque applied, it acts as a motor and the rest of the grid supplies power to it to keep it turning in sync motion with the rest.

      The power grid, as a whole, must be very carefully managed to keep the energy input (torque on the generators) balanced with the consumption of all the loads. If it is not managed properly, as appears the be the case here, the frequency can drift. That's actually a very big problem, not just because of all those clocks and old televisions using the line frequency for timing, but because all those transformers and motors attached to the grid were designed to operate at the specified frequency. As the frequency lowers, approaching even somewhat closer to DC, the magnetizing currents increase. That puts a lot of extra stress on all those motors and transformers. Very bad.

      • Actually this is something that the US do during the war. There are bombs that are nothing but carbon filaments. They are dropped onto enemy electric lines which shorts out the lines - and with a near 0 load, the generators spin out of control, and kill people in the powerplant when it busts open / bursts into flames.

        Actually it's a first stage attach to knock out power without using bombs. I still say it sucks for the people working at powerplants (when the generators suddenly explode), but pretty interesting.

        • They are dropped onto enemy electric lines which shorts out the lines - and with a near 0 load, the generators spin out of control, and kill people in the powerplant when it busts open / bursts into flames.


          Even power generating facilities have equipment protecting switchgear. Very large circuit breakers. They open within a cycle or two-- very quickly. There won't be any damage to generating equipment, but there won't be any power transmission either until the lines are cleared.
        • This sounds pretty sensational. Do you have anywhere you can point us to that shows this particular weapon or discusses its use? I'm pretty ignorant in military affairs as it is, but I've never heard of this one. It would seem a bit difficult to target a power line with a bomb such as this.

          • Re:corrections! (Score:3, Interesting)

            by warpSpeed ( 67927 )
            It would seem a bit difficult to target a power line with a bomb such as this.

            Actually it would be quite easy to do (in theroy, I have no first hand knowledge of this). All you need is several hundred or thousand strands of carbon filamnet, and airborn dispersial mechanisim. The "bomb" will just explode over, or nearly over the power lines, preferably high voltage lines, since they are not covered with insulating material. Current technology allows for this type of bomb. The filiments, having been dispersed in the air will float down and land on the wires. The filiments will either short out between the wires or from wire to ground. With high voltage lines it not that difficult to get the current to flow to ground. Even if 99% of the carbon filiments do not hit the wires, the remaining 1% would probably be enough to quickly cause an overload on the line, and flip the big circuit breakers.

            The real benifit of this it that the power grid is quickly overloaded, the saftey equipment trips to pretect the generators, and no real perminant damage happens to the over all system.

            This takes out the enimies ability to distribute power for a short period of time without long term damage to the over all system. Perfect for an invading force.

  • EVERYTHING THAT HAS to do with time-keeping has slowed down.

    So, basically what we're dealing with here is an entire country suffering from a sort of prolonged "Time Out" syndrome like Zack would sometimes cause on Saved By The Bell. Clearly, the problem will not be solved unless the Venezuelan government actively pursues an ingenious solution by Screech Powers.

  • From the better-late-than-never-dept (Score:5, Funny)

    by blurfus ( 606535 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @02:22AM (#5404246) Journal
    But in a nation that rarely starts on schedule, ...

    That my friends, is an understatement.

    How do I know this? Well, I am from there ;o)
    Excuse me, I must go a have a nap before I finish this post...

  • finland leads the world in overclocking [muropaketti.com]

    and venezuela leads the world in underclocking? ;-P

  • Variable Frequency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sanat ( 702 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @02:28AM (#5404269)
    The town of Highland Illinois had a company that made motors that shipped all over the world. At night the local power company would slow down the frequency from 60HZ to 50 HZ for testing of the motors and then catch up all the clocks in town by running at 62HZ for 5 times as long as the elapsed test sequence. This whole process had to be completed before people had to get up for work in the morning.

    This was about 20 yesrs ago so things have probably changed by now.
    • Thats a little hard to believe... All they would need to get 50hz power would be AC-AC converters. I can't imagine getting a few converters would cost LESS then hiring people to test motors at nigh. And that's assuming the power company could even generate 50hz power ...

      Still, stranger things have happened.

      • Re:Variable Frequency (Score:2, Informative)

        by SN74S181 ( 581549 )
        I did contract work this past year at an appliance control manufacturer where they test the timing motors. There are commonly available power converters for test purposes. Program in a frequency over HPIB and run your tests. It's not hard to believe that years ago something like this would have happened, but not today.
    • This was about 20 yesrs ago so things have probably changed by now.

      Yeah, with NAFTA, they probably moved the factories to Venezuela.

  • Little known fact about Venezuela (Score:5, Funny)

    by infonography ( 566403 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @02:29AM (#5404279) Homepage
    Due to magnetic irregularities in regard to the south magnetic pole water swirls counter clock wise. Since there are negative magnetic waves there the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (Venezuela) manages the atomic clocks that synchronize the world. If the atomic clocks go out of sync then this could spell disaster on a international scale. Some one Who knows about the dangers of Time should be dispached at once. Lord knows what could happen if some evil learns to Master time.

    • Re:Little known fact about Venezuela (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're right! Quick! Send for Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart!

      Or.. perhaps.. yes.. no need to panic. Looking closely at the photo accompanying the article, I see a blue police call-box lurking in the background..
  • Do people in Venezuela pay attention to their computer clocks, atomic clocks, etc? Does this effect the digital clock in your, microwave, for example? I personally don't have any analog clocks in my place that are plugged into a wall socket.

    --sex [slashdot.org]

    • Digital clocks often use the 60 hz AC signal for sync because it is usually much more stable than a crystal.

      Crystals are affected by many factors such as temperature, external vibrations, and it is more expensive to make them accurate than to just rely on the AC clock. In the US at least, the 60 hz AC is extremely stable in the long run.

      Crystals used for clocking simple computers really don't need to be very stable, it doesn't matter if the computer runs at a few hertz either way, as long as the whole system is following the beat of the same drum.
  • An air traffic controller casually told Reuters that his office corrected its clocks every few days or months, without incident so far.
    Does this scare anyone else?
    So the moral of the story... don't fly to Venezuela :)

  • First post (Score:5, Funny)

    by Adar ( 33202 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @02:52AM (#5404348)
    First post...FUCK, I'm an hour late. Goddamn clock.

  • Ever notice... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Pettifogger ( 651170 )
    Ever notice that your alarm clock, microwave, stereo clock, etc. is never very accurate? The voltage and frequency do vary depending upon the load on the grid, the generation facility, usage in your home, and so on. Of course, major variations will screw things up and US voltage is pretty consistent, but it's the little variations that throw your bedside alarm off a few minutes every so often. Though slightly off topic, If you want accuracy, get a good (36,000+ vph) mechanical wristwatch, or even better, one of the old Bulova Accutrons. If you're not familiar with the Accutron, run a Google or eBay search for them; they were a HUGE hit with the geek crowd back in the Sixties. They were used as timing devices in the Apollo program and in satellites, too.

    • About the old electric clocks... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by anubi ( 640541 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @03:21AM (#5404430) Journal
      Yeh, over the short term, they can vary. But I know they do try to make up for lost time, as they do count every cycle and make up for lost cycles. The concept of using power lines as a timing source was popularized back - in the 1910 time frame, by the Telechron [clockhistory.com] company.

      These are extremely reliable clocks. I still have one. Mine was made in Ashland, Massachusetts (USA) in 1941. Its still running. Keeps good time. I did have to change the line cord though.. the old one's insulation got so brittle that just bending the wire would shatter the plastic. They did not make decent flexible insulation in those days.. but the motor itself is still fine.. its alternating layers of winding and wax paper. No brushes.

      Internally, they are shaded-pole induction motors, which use the reversals of the incoming power to generate a rotating magnetic field, upon which a magnetized rotor follows in exact sync. If the power goes off for an hour, the clock loses an hour. It restarts when it sees power again. Its not the most efficient clock though, it uses about 10 watts of power.

      About every appliance clock that had hands or those little digital "flappers" used this design.

      For what its worth, a lot of the old record players used a larger version of the same motor that drives the clocks - and it was used as a cheap means of spinning the turntable at 33, 45, or 78 RPM by means of selecting a different radius on the mechanical friction-drive transmission that drove the turntable from the motor spindle. It was a simple thing - basically a little moveable rubber-rimmed wheel that rested on one of three different radius areas of the motor spindle, then drove the inside of the turntable from that. Very inexpensive, yet robust. ( but a bit noisy - a little drive noise always was present, and we used "wow" and "flutter" to describe the low and high speed mechanical aberrations of turntable rotation).

      Probably more than you wanted to know about these things.. but I thought I would toss it in for anyone interested.

    • Heres why. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PrimeNumber ( 136578 )
      Most clocks, I don't know about you but I use have two digital plug in clocks, they both use AC power rectified from a step down transformer to DC power using a classic 'bridge' rectifier, then use a voltage regulator chip to smooth out and regulate voltage to a much smaller but consistent DC voltage, typicaly 3-12 volts DC. The older 780x series of voltage regulator chips were good, but the more modern chips are much better. The amount of power on the grid fluctuates every day, however the frequency doesn't. Which, for older mechanical clocks would make a difference because an AC motor rotates in a direct relation to the input voltage frequency. For the type of clocks most people use it would make a difference because the chips inside use a steady DC current, which brings me to my next point.

      The problem that is likely causing your clocks to get off sync are cheap and shoddy timing circuits. An example of this would be the shoddy clock chip on the old IBM clones. This chip (Intel 8253) has a very low clock tick-resolution ~18.2 times a second, which was fine for polling a joystick, etc on the older boxes, but is terrible for accurate time-keeping. Most digital watches have millions of 'clock-ticks' per second.
  • Ok, I admit it, I'm puzzled now.

    I completely understand the reason why those clocks which use the 60hz (or 50Hz) AC as a timebase go slower. It only makes sense..

    But could someone please explain to me how reducing the frequency of an electrical grid provides more power to the grid, assuming nothing else has changed? The article says they reduced the frequency to ensure they had enough power.... This kinda stuck my brain in an "Error does not compute" endless loop...

    In the US at least, the powerline frequency is actually a function of how fast the generators are turning in the power plants - specifically 3600 RPM which comes out to 60 Revs/Sec or 60 Hz. The way I understand the article is that spinning the generators SLOWER results in more power? For some reason this seems counter-intuitive to me. What am I missing?


    • Slower speed = uses less fuel = more power because they don't need to shut the generators off everyday (i'm guessing). Then again there may be some other reason for this, I'm no AC genius by any means.

      Oh, and no pun intended. I mean, we all know the A.C.s know everything. ;-)
    • Quote from the article:


      The river powering a major hydroelectric plant in southeast Venezuela lost force due to a severe drought in February 2001. To prevent blackouts, the country slightly lowered the frequency of the current.


      Just by going on the information in the article, my guess is that one side-effect of slowing down the generators is a lower frequency for the current. Why would they slow down the generators? Because slower generators use less water.

      Presumably they calculated the amount of water feeding the river and made sure that the generators used no more water than would cause the river to get too low, thus preventing the generators from stopping, thus avoiding blackouts.
    • It's been a while since I've studied anything electrocal. However, your power lines have non-negligible inductance. Lower frequence means less voltage drop across the inductor. You also get some hysteresis losses (non-ideal inductors) which will be reduced by lowering the frequency. The first factor doesn't actually effect energy efficiency, just your ability to consume electriciy (voltage just doesn't dip as much when you can't keep up). The second factor directly reduces the percentage fo power lost during distribution. Back in HS, they told us that power was brought into the minneapolis area from power plants in the Dakotas via DC transmission lines to minimize losses. DC is better for distribution, but it's much cheaper to build an efficient and powerful AC motor vs. and equivalent DC motor. The same goes for generators.
    • By slowing down the generators, you convert the mechanical energy of their decelerating rotational inertial mass into electrical power. Quite similar to regenerative braking in electric cars. Now, once steady-state 50Hz is obtained (having dropped from 60Hz) I don't know how you could continue to get an energy boost; I'd have to look that one up.

  • Oil Curreny War To Blame For Problems (Score:5, Informative)

    by muscleman706 ( 654133 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @03:06AM (#5404386) Homepage
    The link below discusses not just the Iraq war, but the how oil is tied to the world economies at a very low level and how Venezuela is in some sense at the heart of the matter with their use of oil as a fiat currency in lieu of the US dollar among their latin american trading partners. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html Although completely suppressed by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is an oil currency war. The real reason for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves. This essay will discuss the macroeconomics of the `petro-dollar' and the unpublicized but real threat to U.S. economic hegemony from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency. The author advocates reform of the global monetary system including a dollar/euro currency 'trading band' with reserve status parity, and a dual OPEC oil transaction standard. These reforms could potentially reduce future oil currency warfare.

  • I've found the source of your problem (Score:3, Funny)

    by dscowboy ( 224532 ) <drugstore.cowboy@gte.net> on Friday February 28, 2003 @03:12AM (#5404404)
    "'I wake with the sun,' said Rene Osurna, who works at a shipping company. 'And if you're two minutes late to the office, and everybody else is too, there's no problem.'"

    You work at a SHIPPING COMPANY and you don't care what time it is?! Are you on powerful anti-depressants? If you're two minutes late to the plane with your packages, there IS a problem.

  • Going the Other Direction... (Score:4, Funny)

    by kevinatilusa ( 620125 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @03:18AM (#5404423)
    The book "Legends of Caltech" tells of students who played a trick on their math professor as follows: The Professor (Tom Apostol) gave very carefully scripted lectures designed to end precisely in the time allotted. For a few weeks, each day students would go in the lecture hall before class and 1) Change the clock to run 10-15% faster. 2) Set the clock backwards a few minutes so it caught up at the beginning of lecture. When the Professor (who didn't wear a watch) noticed himself seemingly falling farther and farther behind, he tended to get more and more incoherent as he tried to finish the lecture which he "knew" he had enough time to do.

  • DOJ Press Release (Score:5, Funny)

    by dscowboy ( 224532 ) <drugstore.cowboy@gte.net> on Friday February 28, 2003 @03:35AM (#5404463)
    The Country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government.

    The nation and it's inhabitants were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws.

    Venezuela pled guilty to conspiring to violate federal copyright laws by illegally "modifying" the digital time-keeping mechanism of clocks. Under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Clockwork Act), the modification of clocks to display an unauthorized time is illegal, no matter what American or non-American police state you live in. "If people were allowed to make their clocks show whatever time they wanted, it might allow them to read a time that the manufacturer never intended, like 14 o'clock" declared Ayatollah Ashcroft in a press conference today. "Not only is that illegal, it's wrong, and naughty. Next thing you know they'll be bathing in the nude or teaching women to read."

    As a result, the country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government. The country and it's people will immediately be put to their rightly intended use: the production of inferior quality candles to be used in Catholic rituals.

  • info (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcbevin ( 450303 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:47AM (#5404623) Homepage
    there was an attempted coup, in which the US was allegedly involved.

    whether involved or not, Bush was pretty delighted at the replacement of the elected president with a dictator. and there were at least talks between the white house and the coup plotters in which the white house obviously didn't do a very good job in discouraging the coup plotters.

    for a collection of references to articles giving a good background on this issue, see my website [bevin.de] (comments, additional info much appreciated).

    also provided on the same page is a history of similar coups over the past 50 years in Latin America which occurred to governments in response to actions similar to what Chavez has been doing (land reform, nationalisation of oil/industries). basically anything to alleviate the poor majority. it is this historical pattern which gives the biggest indication that the CIA may be behind it. however, the difference in venezuela is that the CIA supposedly stopped performing these coups.

    perhaps the failure of the coup indicates how much harder it is for them to pull them off today (they have to be much more careful to leave no fingerprints, as the public is much less likely to support them without the cold war excuse).

    • Re:info (Score:2, Troll)

      by Dusabre ( 176445 )
      Next post try using capital letters. And perhaps note that most of the population wants Chavez out and he is refusing to hold a referendum as required by the Constitution he himself wrote. He may have been elected but he's a dictator now.

      • Re:info (Score:2, Informative)

        by mcbevin ( 450303 )
        As far as I've read, Chavez is not objecting to the scheduled referendum, just the opposition's demands that he immediately hold one - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2724855.stm .

        'The Venezuelan Government has rejected an opposition call for a vote on a constitutional amendment to allow the term of President Hugo Chavez to be cut short.'

        'However, the government said it endorsed another plan - to hold a binding referendum on Mr Chavez's presidency after August.'

        'We're proposing what we always have: referendum after 19 August as laid down in the constitution," Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel said.'

        I don't believe that Chavez is perfect, but he has done a lot of good for the poor majority of the country, and he did win the last election with a landslide. He is also lot preferable to the people trying to replace him (i.e. the coup leaders, who in the three days they had in power managed to establish a dictatorship).

        If people in America started demanding Bush hold an election tommorrow would it make him a dictator to say 'wait till the next scheduled elections'?

        Again, for more info see my website [bevin.de].
  • I had no idea that plug-in clocks worked this way! Am I just reading all these posts incorrectly or what? You mess with the input electrical power of a digital clock and 'time' speeds up or slows down???

    What about power regulation circuits? What about. . . I don't know. I guess it makes sense in a variety of . . , but that's a whole can of conspiracy even I am hesitant to open this early in the A.M.

    Well. . .

    Maybe just a peek. But, bewarned; this is unfinished thinking. Not yet certified by the Lad's Fantasti-Corp proving ground and safety testing facilities. . .

    So. . , time is moving faster these days. Have you noticed? Sure you have. But, of course, if you're like the average bear, you've chalked it up to shifting perceptions resulting from growing older and such. When you were a kid, those long summer days back in the 70's just seemed to mosey on forever. (Anybody born in the 80's, sorry. You don't have enough reference to play in this thread, and frankly you got gyped out of a good childhood. But don't feel bad! You got those Ninja Turtles, right? They were cool. Sort of. Whatever. My condolances. You'll get another chance in another life.) Anyway, when I was a kid, Time was really nice and slow! I even remember getting confused trying to count how many years had passed since Star Wars came out. We'd get mixed up because we kept counting the summer holidays as a whole year. A legit error, in my books. Damn! You could get so much stuff done in a day back then!

    Not like these days, boy! Holy smokes, I get up, eat breakfast, take a shower and it's already lunch time! I do maybe two things, work like a bastard right till bed time, (getting almost nothing done), and that's it Bob! That's the day. Gone in a flash. And I certainly don't think it's just a matter of perceptions. (Well, technically, everything is a matter of perceptions on a certain level, but that's not what I'm talking about here.)

    Time always speeds up before the end, according to a variety of schools of thought. Heck, even the bible in all it's propagandized, muddied, corrupted and manipulated paragraphs describes the days being shortened near the end. --Though, I prefer the Star Fleet reasoning; Ahem. "To explain the Time Differential we are experiencing, the analogy of a sea shore is an apt example; The water is being sucked out as the Wave approaches." Or something pseudo-technical. Screw it. Blast 'em with the photon torpedos and let's get the hell out of here while everybody's confused.

    Oh, best of all! (This is just hilarious!) Even the king of tow-the-line science geeks, buddy boy, Jay Ingram over on Canada's Discovery Channel, did a short piece on how Time is speeding up. Can you believe it? It's getting so damned noticable that they had to pull out their big guns!

    Of course, Jay-boy put the expected spin on things, (Perceptions. What was the word they came up with. . ? Hm, gone now. But it was a very clever and chalk-dusty sort of phrase at any rate), and with the time-tested propagandic, "Trust your warm and safe Educational Authority Figures, Kids!" video production qualities stamped on the segment, pencil neck Jay signed off on yet another piece of "Nothing to see here, Citizen," documentary, and stalked away with that quiet yet moody air of job disatisfaction he has been displaying ever since the mid nineties when he landed the job of Science-Boy Anchor. --I wonder if perhaps on a deep level he realizes that he's shoveling shit for the Man, and despises himself for it. The world may never know. Or care.)

    Anyway. . .

    So all the clocks are rigged, eh? That's almost too juicy an idea to jump on! So I don't think I will. --Cuz, while time is a certainly deeply rooted function of awareness, and while having a round, numbered face pounding away the seconds with rhythmic All-Seeing enforcement, might serve to hold this rapidly unraveling reality in place for a short while longer, (while the power elite pack their underwear and finalize their highly unlikely escape plans), I just don't think that Time is at the beck and call of a nation of wrong clocks.

    Still. . . It's a neat idea, in a Twilight Zone kind of way!

    And when it comes to battling geeks, I bet Rod Serling could kick Jay Ingram's butt any day of the week. That's the power of imagination, baby!


    -Fantastic Lad

  • Great Scott! Someone find the Doc he will know what to do!

  • Hold on a second! (pardon the pun) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SystematicPsycho ( 456042 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @06:58AM (#5404904)
    Do most of the people in Venezuela plug their clocks into power sockets? Hello? Does that make much sense? Most clocks run on batteries. I think the article attempts to mislead.

    Another great piece of pathetic journalism, causing the not so intelligent people in the world to have a conversation about something that doesn't and wondering when they'll find another great story from MSNBC.
  • Yep, that's right. To hell with Occum's Razor I say - that's a much more interesting explanation than thier A/C frequency slowing down. See, this is what happens when everyone grows up on TV and video games - no imagination. Sad.

  • Venezuela (Score:3, Funny)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @08:47AM (#5405225) Homepage Journal
    ... is the best place to stay at the end of the world. It will come several hours late.

  • Are you sure that Einstein was right? (Score:3, Funny)

    by PaddyM ( 45763 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @08:53AM (#5405267) Homepage
    Is this another example of special relativity? Or just another example of clocks malfunctioning which might lead one to believe that "time slows down".
  • I don't have a clock you insensitive cl...

    ...oh wait.
  • An air traffic controller casually told Reuters that his office corrected its clocks every few days or months, without incident so far. "Yes, it's been happening here. But we correct the clocks every three months and there's no problem," he said.
    The clocks lose 150 seconds a day. If the air traffic controllers waited three months to fix their clocks, they would be over 3.75 hours behind the correct time. Either they are not being affected by the same 150 second drift, or the air traffic controller is misinformed about the period of clock recalibration.

  • *Lightbulb over my head comes on* (Score:4, Funny)

    by ryanvm ( 247662 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @10:02AM (#5405859)
    Oh man - this gives me a sweet idea. I'm going to start bringing a generator to work and hooking it up to our power grid. We'll all be going home 15 minutes early every day.

  • Comments from a real Venezuelan (Score:5, Informative)

    by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @10:03AM (#5405864) Journal
    Yeah, i am Venezuelan, so to explain the power issue:

    IT'S A YEAR OLD. It has got nothing to do with the political crisis. The problem is, is that about 90% of the electric power comes from a dam in south east Venezuela called "Guri" which of course depends on rain to generate electric power.

    Well, each year it rains less, so we have less electricity. In other to save some of it, the cycle has been reduced from 60 hz to about 59 point something.

    Therefore the clocks are falling behind... But hey, we can always use ntpdate right? ;)

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