Posts Tagged ‘Electronics’

Are We Ignoring The Possible?

Monday, August 16th, 2010

EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) is again in the news, but not the old-world news.  For those who aren’t familiar with what an EMP is, I will explain.  An electromagnetic pulse is a natural occurring event caused by solar storms.  The can also be generated by nuclear explosions above the earth’s atmosphere and by EMP weapons.

While an EMP event, weather man-made or from nature is not deadly to people, the long term affects caused by the aftermath certainly can be.  An EMP wave basically fries all electronic equipment.  Our power grid would be shut down, along with our water filtration and sewage systems.  Transportation of all sorts with the exception of the four legged kind would come to a halt.  Food processing would stop.  There would be no calling 911, FEMA, SEMO, or any other disaster relief organization because the phones would not work.

During last year’s EMP summit, I learned that it would take ten years to rebuild the power grid in the US in the event of an EMP disturbance.  One of the reasons it would take so long is we no longer manufacture the transformers.  The manufacturing has been out-sourced to China.

It has been predicted if a major EMP wave hit the United States, we could easily lose one third of our population.  Our society as we have come to know it would cease to exist, and the picture would not be pretty.  William Forstchen wrote a very good novel called One Second After, which describes one community’s life after such a mishap.

Last week the Senate dropped a plan by Congress which would have prepared the US in the event of an EMP attack.  For more, see www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=188605.

Last year I had the opportunity to participate in the first EMP conference which was held in Buffalo New York.  I am bringing this up now because

Information provided by: HITman Services, a computer and IT services company located in Clifton Park, New York.

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HBO and Showtime vs Netflix and Roku

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

A while back I started looking into alternative options to the HBO and Showtime I get from Time Warner Cable, as that is the cable provider for Clifton Park, NY.

HBO offers movies, some sports, sequels and shows on demand. I  have been a subscriber to Netflix and was aware of the Roku player.  In addition to Netflix, Roku offers; Pandora, facebook photos, mediafly, blip.tv, flickr, twit.tv, Revision3, DreamTV, framechannel, SmugMug, and The Highway Girl for free.  Additional channels which can be purchased are; amazon video on demand, MLB.com, MobileTribe and MHz On Demand.

While I could have setup a media center server, I didn’t want to have a keyboard with the rest of my audio/video equipment.  This also gives me a more streamlined look in my audio/video center.

Setup went well and I create a new macro for my remote which means only pressing one button to have all the devices turned on and set to the proper inputs.  I did have to customize some of the buttons on my remote.

So far I am pleased with the decision to move to Roku and Netflix from HBO and Showtime. The cost of the Roku player will be at a break even in about four months as a result of the reduced Time Warner bill.

Now all I need is time to watch.

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