Excuse my rant....but this needs to be said....

First of all we have the crime....10's of thousands murded every year (never mind the rape, robbery and hi-jackings)...we have the traffic...at least 10 000 people are killed on South Africa's roads every year...

Now, we have no power !
Eskom, our only power provider in the country (and the government owns a piece of it), started their nonsense last year, saying they do not have capacity for everyone, so during peak times, and when some or other power station has to go down for maintenance, we have "Load Shedding". This is essentialy a period where they switch you off, not just a few people, but whole areas, towns etc. at a time. But now they are seriously in trouble, as our biggest power station (a nuclear one as well) is offline for maintenance...
Oh yes, but they do have a 7 (yes seven) year plan to try and fix the problem and build more power stations, cause ours are now too old !!
So, thanks to the planners and politicians who stuffed this up, we have to put up with no electricity for long periods.
Yes, Eskom has on their website, a nice whole schedule etc., but they can change without notice, and they are switching off so much, so oftern, we now have problems when they switch on..it causes more problems...
e.g. I had now power Saturday night for around 2.5hrs. Not a big deal. Then on Monday they switched off at 12pm, blew something when they tried to switch on at around 2:30pm, cause we only got power back at 1am on Tuesday! oh, then they switched it off at 8am again, and gave us power after 2pm! We see what happens today...but this is happen ALL OVER the country...

Never mind the impact on businesses...
And as an domain admin for a large company with a lot of remote sites to look after, we have a whole new set of headaches...

It gets even better...We are hosting the Soccer World Cup in 2010 ...with no power (remember we have to put up with this for 7 years) ...

Some sites:
www.iol.co.za
www.eskom.co.za
www.ecr.co.za you will find quite a few rants on this site from people...

So, we appologies to all our fans if we are currently not as active on the site as we are expierencing some technical difficulties...It has already delayed the Weapons Pack release, which you can now find on moddb, look in the annoucements thread....

as the saying goes...
TIA - This Is Africa !

So THATS what happened on the weekend,things like this make me want to go running around with a large object beating the crap out of big corperation people,like bill gates,smashing their feet(you honestly don't think I'd flatten their heads right?)for not managing their companies right.

Argh this is really sad

it is sad.. and we only have to wait about 8 years before things start to nomalise.. but in the meantime, demand will grow even further.. then they'll need more power stations..

Perhaps some kind people here will donate for a generator but then S.A also makes it difficult to get money here.. ugh!

"Powers On! Everyone run for you machine before it's off again!"

This is a joke. A sad, pitiful, infuriating, joke! Those worthless mother f**king pieces of chiken f**king s**t really don't want anyone to get anywhere in this godforsaken hell hole!

In the mean time (between now and when they go to hell), we have a problem that needs solving.
We could really use some donations for a UPS and generator.

Of course the stupids fks at Eskom won't implement any solutions... They could switch off all these unneccessary lights, robots, freeloaders and Zimbabwe!
But of course, here in SA there is a national policy to do rediculous, unreasonable, stupid things and then to stubbornly hold onto your stupid action and refuse to change anything no matter how overwhelming the evidence of its retardedness. And of course all the burden required to sustain said stupidity is loaded on the already hard pressed consumer.

Oh and yes, I forgot to mention I am so f**king PROUD you a***oles!!!

Ah..yes Eskom...oh well what can you do... OH!! wait i know, Grab the biggest most blunt object you can find and BEAT BEAT BEAT and don't stop BEATIN!! until there all DEAD!!!

Oh yeeeesss and ontop of what SB and DC have mentioned they also have the ordacity to tell you to turn off unneccessery lights, apliances and other stuff you want..... GODDAMN Mother F***ing A holes...

Donations would be cool.... Because they wont be fixing any of their F**king stupidity any time soon....

May all you VERY lucky tourists enjoy the hospitality of SA's wonderfull power problems during the 2010 Cup... Oh and if you intend to visit do be sure to bring the BIGGEST F**KING FlAMETHROWER YOU CAN FIND!!!!

Seven years?! Well, that's the goal. Just wait until there are setbacks, unforseen consequences, etc.

So, if someone is in a hostiptal with a coma and is hooked up to a respirator, that person would simply die because this monopoly corporation is playing tic-tac-toe with the power grid?

Let's hope things will get better in a near future ! This shouldn't happen in the 21st century

Many things shouldn't be happening in the 21st century, war, genocide, terrorism, global warming etc, but we got them cause humanity is an odd creature, who likes to ♥♥♥♥♥ itself over.


Oh well, real sorry to hear that, those companies should have looked into it way before.

It's funny, when I was a child (late 80's early 90's) I was really looking forward the year 2000, 21st century !
I thought it would be great, most sickness would have disapeared, we would have flying cars, we would have incredible things against polution, most machines would have been working with sun energy, etc...

So, now, what is 21st century ? Maybe even worse than the 20th one !
And I feel all those (political) problems will get even worse in some years...

well, its a little after 7:30pm here, and i'm sitting in the dark again!
at least cellphones still seem to work! although it takes time to type all this

mankind is a virus....it destroys everything eventually...

I bet a good solid Bonus Pack could likely make working on BW a little more feasible. If they can get a generator and a UPS system, they'd be able to work without frequent power outages, but those things ain't exactly cheap, and paying for the petrol to run the generator isn't a very cheap thing to keep up with.

So who's up for an extra bonus pack real quick like?

Aye. As soon as I get EuroGold, expect me to sponsor quicker than the Dark Star's saw can kill a bot. Oh, by the way, how do I create a poll? I'd like to see which of the concepts are most popular.

It seems you have more to worry about in SA than just the power company

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321785,00.html

Sorry, this was supposed to link to story regarding the next possible SA president, if your interested click it any ways and type in the pages search engine "Zulu" . Then click on the article The 'Bring Me My Machine Gun' Campaign ...

Oh, don't even get me going on that one....that's whole thread on it's own....
(but we see what happens when he faces his corruption trial later this year, hehehehe)

And our Police commissioner has resigned as head of Interpol (how the hell did he that in the first place) and is also facing a whole bunch of charges...goes to court end of this month....

ok, now back on topic.....

Generators are nice, but they come with problems as well...firstly most generators do not give the proper power output to work electronics and computers (they output a square "sine" wave, not a pure sine wave), and the ones that do, are hellish expensive...

True, hellish expensive ...

You should have Wind Mill, while it's VERY expensive, it does not polute and in the end, can prove itself to be a big save (after many years).

I want my own Wind Mill Gonna play "who wants to be a millionaire ?" !!!

Couldn't a generator be used to charge a UPS system though? If nothing else, maybe it'd give enough juice to be able to safely shut down during power outages? As well as possibly take away some of the problems from a sudden powerup.

No, they break most UPS's. You need a UPS designed to handle input from a generator.
We had to go through this whole process at work...e.g. our computer room is supplied by mill power (I work in a large mill that generates it's own electricty), but backup is a generator, which all feeds through a UPS for safety and that switch over time...even the aircon for the computer room is covered in the solution (but then again it is a lot of equipment and there is critical production related involved).
We have a simliar setup for other needs.

We're in our 8th day now of power cuts...
The country is up in arms and fed up, but it's all hot air and no action

I am very happy I'm paying all that money to have this website in a very fancy data center in Dallas, Texas.

Ah, I see. Thats gotta be rough...

I certainly hope this won't be lasting in such an extreme state for much longer, it seems like almost all business would slow to a crawl. Produce and perishables can't be safe to buy or eat in these conditions.

Sorry to hear this..hope everything works out nicely in the end.

Ah... What a load of crap... Now what are we supposed to do...
The future sure looks bad, what with "Give me my machinegun" going to be president. Hopefully he'll end up in jail before hand, but I wouldn't bet on it...

I'll kee working on my own power solution. Just need get the inveter to give me nice sine wave. I wonder just how much Eskom's power is sine anyways...

A windmill is not a cheap solution, cause you still require amountain of batteries and a hellishly expensive inverter... And the windmill it self won't be cheap...

Looks like SA is quickly sliding into its position along-side all the other pathetic African countires...

And if you think about it logically, it really does look like humanity is a virus... It spread, consumes, destroys and multiplies...
I at least believe that a human being has great potential, just the vast majority are not living up to it...

Well, I'd certainly like to see (parts of) BW ported to UT3, among other things. I don't think I could single-handedly sponsor a generator/UPS combo, though... Maybe 1/3 or 1/2, if it's a really cheap model.

Btw, the descent of SA reminds me of a certain Titanic quote... Ismay: But this ship can't sink! Andrews: She is made of iron, sir. I assure you she can and she will. It is a mathematical certainty.

I'm guessing 10 or so years from now, SA will be much like Zimbabwe. Runaway political correctness isn't just ridiculous and insane -- it's a destroyer of countries, and ultimately civilizations.

Not ALL of humanity is a virus...

there are still are people out there who care about this Like me and the countless others here.

Well said SX ! Though poeple who cares are in minority compared to the one who don't care

Right on. Humanity is not a virus, it's a STD.

Thats the sad and unpleasant truth, I'm afraid...

It always amazes me how so many people can be thankful for their god blessing them with such a wondrous life, or thanking their god for winning some petty award or sporting event, yet that god seems to do so very little for so many others...

And what DC says, that Man has so much potential, I agree 100% with him. Its unfortunate that that potential only seems to show its face after so many are hurt and killed from some form of disaster or another.

It's easy to use the name of God everywhere

Some have a lot of luck, some have never... But those who have luck should help those who haven't instead of showing off !

Yeah, it's always funny when people 'thank' God/Jesus/Allah etc. when they survive some kind of accident or disaster, like a plane crash or an earthquake. Guess all those people, infants included, who didn't make it were all vile sinners who deserved to die in the most horrible ways possible.



The 'natural order' is the biggest disaster of all, and only rationally applied technology can set us free. Man's potential is practically infinite; whether he'll ever (fully) realize it remains to be seen, though.

Move to America or Europe. I realize that's easier said than done, but rolling blackouts for the next 7 years sound like a good motivator to me. As for power, what about solar energy? It's expensive now, but it looks like it'll become more viable in the next few years, so maybe that's something to look forward to.

Sure America and Europe aren't perfect but at least you'd have power 24/7 99% of the time. But since I was born in America I wouldn't realize all the crap you'd have to go through to become a citizen.