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8.9 earthquake hits Japan

earthquake.usgs.gov

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Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#101

Post by patio11 »

zeugma wrote: post #100
veidr wrote: post #56

An interesting thing I noticed was that all cell phones were completely useless for a pretty long time following the quake. That's normal, but one difference this time, compared with several years ago, is that most people I know no longer have a landline phone at home. People were queuing up for like 20 minutes to use the one old green plastic coin-op pay phone accross the street. At first, I didn't think to use a ph…

Isn't that strange ? I mean cable should be more easily broken than airwaves, no ? Is it because the landlines in Japan are designed to resist and the cell phone tower got power disruption ?

It's because everyone in Japan started sending SMSes to everyone they knew practically before the shaking stopped and that DOSed the network. This happens fairly regularly (e.g. for a few minutes after midnight on New Years, when a large portion of Japanese people send well wishes within the same 15 second window).

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#104

Post by mkramlich »

yena wrote: post #50
bradly wrote: post #40

Interesting to view of all 5+ quakes the past 3 days http://cl.ly/3G0f0t0d1C2Z381s3O31 . Loads of activity in the area. Is that kind of activity common, or could that have been an indicator that there was a chance of a major quake?

It's not normal at all. Something was building up

I strongly suspect it's related to the strange stories we've been hearing about a so-called Monster Island.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#105

Post by patio11 »

senthilnayagam wrote: post #98
patio11 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problems Japan does not have #1: insufficient spending on public works projects In Case Shit Happens, because shit happens so often that when people in several dozen countries say shit they're speaking Japanese. Can I tell you my favorite outsourcing story? Apologies for those who've heard it (and yes, this actually happened): India: We can't log into the test server. Patrick: Then you didn't set it up right. India:…

what is the point?, and cant that be just another name instead of India?

I thought it would be an amusing story to relate regarding our disaster preparedness: don't worry about us, we're so on top of this we have disaster warning systems built into the class schedule portals college kids access from their cell phones. It's amusing because out outsourcing operations in India were... less successful than they could have been because of frequent... inefficiencies in communication and pervasive... opportunities for improvement in engineering skill levels.

No, company policy and common sense would not let me tell you the names of the engineers I had that conversation with. You can read it as "An Employee Of A Japanese Megacorp's Indian Subsidiary" if that makes you feel better. I'm assuming most people understand I do not actually mean everybody in the country.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#106

Post by JoachimSchipper »

nostrademons wrote: post #44
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sirens are common. Cell phones? You'd just overload the network.

There's just such a system for several municipalities in the U.S - the reverse 911 system, which robo-calls your home or cell phone in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. I just signed up for it in Mountain View CA, and my mom got a reverse-911 call for the Boston water main break this winter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_911

Yes, but how many people signed up for that? The parent proposed contacting everyone, remember...

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#107

Post by koski »

The Tsunamis caused by this that might hit Taiwan etc. can be huge (5 to 10 meters). Or then just 10 cm high. How ever it's moving now 800km an hour.

The destruction is terrible (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhj2ge_violent-seisme-d-une...)

I cannot explain in written how sorry I feel for the people living in the area.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#108

Post by cdavid »

Hope everyone in Japan is doing ok - I guess I am lucky that I am out of the country precisely this day, but now starting to get worry about people I know. It is a bit scary to think that an earthquake felt in east of Japan (tokyo, sendai), and also in Osaka where I live, almost 500 km west from there.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#110

Post by NZ_Matt »

veidr wrote: post #56

An interesting thing I noticed was that all cell phones were completely useless for a pretty long time following the quake. That's normal, but one difference this time, compared with several years ago, is that most people I know no longer have a landline phone at home. People were queuing up for like 20 minutes to use the one old green plastic coin-op pay phone accross the street. At first, I didn't think to use a ph…

I experienced this after the Christchurch earthquake. Without electricity cordless phones are also useless. Our national communications company put a message out asking everyone to bring in their old corded phones so they could be sent down to Christchurch.
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