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Comment Hurricane Insurability? Sovereignty? (Score 1) 124

by Zymergy (#26922007) Attached to: Reclaiming Oil Rigs As Oceanic Eco-Resorts
Not sure if they have calculated the TCO completely?
If State Farm is completely pulling out of Florida for profitability reasons, what makes the developers thing this thing will be insurable?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=State+farm+pulling+out+of+Florida

It also depends HOW FAR off shore it is and if is out of International Waters?? ...then you have to consider going through Customs, and the fact that there is no Police, Fire, EMS or 911 service, etc... A real Insurance Nightmare. I suppose there will have to be signed "EULA" Disclaimers... (under what jurisdiction?) (Though some might try to make it an Amsterdam on stilts, etc... it is possible the rich stoner crowd is not too worried about insurance.)
Microsoft

Microsoft Unveils Windows 7 File-Sharing Beta 230

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-totally-won't-sell-this-information dept.
nandemoari writes "Microsoft yesterday released a trial version of new file-sharing software intended for use with its upcoming and highly-anticipated operating system. The new software allows PC users to swap files with the computers of friends, family, and trusted colleagues along safe, secure channels. Dubbed 'Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant 6.5,' the beta connects the Windows Live IDs of individual users with a Windows 7 account, essentially building a secure link between data stored on a hard drive and information accessible via Windows Live online."
Earth

Reclaiming Oil Rigs As Oceanic Eco-Resorts 124

Posted by timothy from the they're-prettier-than-they-look dept.
Mike writes "Here's an innovative reuse for those old abandoned oil rigs littering the ocean — convert them into eco resorts. Morris Architects' Oil Rig Platform Resort and Spa makes use of one of 4,000 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and transforms it into a beacon of sustainability, re-imagining an iconic source of dirty energy as an eco-haven that generates all of its power from renewable sources."
Image

When Servers Explode 142

Posted by samzenpus from the smash-it-up dept.
1sockchuck writes "Have you ever lost your patience with a server? We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally blow up a server, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video. The Gallery of Exploding Servers documents the sometimes incendiary relationship between man and machine. Those who prefer a kinder, gentler disposition may prefer the guide to Flying and Crashing Servers."
The Courts

Pirate Bay Day 3 — Defense Requests Dismissal 685

Posted by samzenpus from the ninja-lawyers dept.
Hodejo1 writes "Yesterday was a big day for the Pirate Bay when half of the charges against them were dropped leaving only the lesser charges of assisting making copyrighted material available in place. TorrentFreak is following the English twitter feed of the trial in the wee hours of the night, documenting more missteps by the prosecution. 'The Pirate Bay trial is moving forward rapidly and again the day in court has ended early. On the third day the prosecution presented the amended charges. The defendants all called for acquittal while Carl Lundström's lawyer scored points with the already legendary "King Kong" defense.'"
NASA

Europa Selected As Target of Next Flagship Mission 168

Posted by samzenpus from the my-favorite-moon dept.
volcanopele writes "NASA and the European Space Agency announced today that they have selected the Europa/Jupiter System Mission as the next large mission to the outer solar system. For the last year, the Europa mission has been in competition with a proposal to send a mission to Saturn's moon Titan, as reported on Slashdot earlier. The Europa Mission includes two orbiters: one developed by NASA to orbit the icy moon Europa and another developed by ESA to orbit the solar system's largest moon, Ganymede. Both orbiters would spend up to 2.5 years in orbit around Jupiter before settling into orbit around their respective targets, studying Jupiter's satellites, rings, and of course the planet itself. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020 and arrive at Jupiter in 2025 and 2026."
Space

Distributed Project To Classify SDSS Galaxies 35

Posted by samzenpus from the lend-a-hand dept.
Xandu writes "Be part of a human Beowulf by helping classify millions of galaxies from the SDSS at the Galaxy Zoo. From their about page, "Those involved are directly contributing to scientific research, while getting an opportunity to view the beautiful and varied galaxies that inhabit our universe. Why do we need people to do this, rather than just using a computer? The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer. Galaxies are complicated objects that vary in appearance enormously, and yet in some ways they can be very similar. We could write a computer program to classify these galaxies, and many researchers have, but so far none have really done a good enough job. We have not been able to make computers 'see past' the complexity, to reliably identify the similarities that appear obvious to our eyes and brain. For now, and probably for some time yet, people do the best job of classifying galaxies."
Google

Judge Dismisses Google Street View Case 258

Posted by samzenpus from the never-go-against-the-google dept.
angry tapir writes "A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania family against Google after the company took and posted images of the outside of their house in its Maps service. The lawsuit, filed in April 2008, drew attention because it sought to challenge Google's right to take street-level photos for its Maps' Street View feature. Judge Amy Reynolds Hay from the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted Google's request for dismissing the lawsuit because 'the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim under any count.'"
Portables (Apple)

MacBook's "Unremovable" Battery Easy To Remove 476

Posted by timothy from the just-unscrew-16-handy-screws dept.
Slatterz writes "Going just a bit further than your average unboxing, someone has stripped a new 17-inch Apple Macbook Pro to its component parts revealing one or two little surprises. The biggest of which is that the built-in battery is easily accessible, requiring the tinkerer to remove just the 13 Philips screws which hold the bottom cover in place, and the three tri-wing security screws which hold the battery in place."
Networking

5 Powerline Networking Devices Reviewed 153

Posted by timothy from the floor-to-floor dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Most people who can't or won't hardwire for broadband have an obvious alternative: Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, there can be architectural anomalies between floors or even between rooms that can interfere with Wi-Fi signals, resulting in spotty, or even dead, signals. So what do you do? Well, you can try using a powerline device. Computerworld reviewer Bill O'Brien tests powerline units from Belkin, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear and Zyxel, and compares their performance to that of his wired and wireless setups."
Image

Student Arrested For Classroom Texting 1246

Posted by samzenpus from the the-strong-arm-of-the-education-system dept.
A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after she refused to stop texting during a high school math class. The girl denied having a phone when confronted by a school safety officer, but a female cop found it after frisking her. The Samsung Cricket was recovered "from the buttocks area" of the teenager, according to the police report. The girl was banned from school property for a week, and is scheduled for an April 20 court appearance for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. I applaud the adults involved for their discretion and temperance in this heinous case of texting without permission.
Operating Systems

DragonFly BSD 2.2 Released 44

Posted by timothy from the big-essin'-deal dept.
An anonymous reader writes "DragonFly BSD 2.2 is now available. The second release to feature the HAMMER (versioning, among other things) filesystem — now considered production-ready — it includes 'major stability improvements across the board, new drivers, much better pkgsrc support and integration.' Apart from the CD ISO, this release has a DVD ISO with 'a fully operational X environment,' as well as a bootable USB disk-key image."
Cellphones

Is the Bar of Soap Tomorrow's Smarterphone? 141

Posted by timothy from the next-generation-uses-earwax-proximity dept.
Barence writes "Researchers at MIT have developed a gadget that knows whether you want to use it as a camera or smartphone, just by the way you're holding it. So, if you hold the device, dubbed the Bar of Soap, out in front of you like a camera it will automatically bring up an LCD viewfinder. However, if you then switch to holding it as you would a mobile phone, it will bring up a touchscreen keypad instead. The Bar of Soap utilises a three-axis accelerometer and 72 surface sensors to track the position of the user's fingers and its position."
Mars

Mars Winds Clean Spirit's Solar Panels Again 269

Posted by timothy from the like-mom-making-the-bed dept.
Titoxd writes "In a blast from the past, NASA reports that Spirit's solar panels have received a much-needed cleaning courtesy of the Red Planet. The report states, 'The cleaning boosts Spirit's daily energy supply by about 30 watt-hours, to about 240 watt-hours from 210 watt-hours. The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications, so this increase roughly doubles the amount of discretionary power for activities such as driving and using instruments.'"
Social Networks

Twitter Leads Social Networks In Downtime 175

Posted by timothy from the great-to-be-top-of-the-list dept.
illectro writes "A study on site availability by monitoring service Pingdom shows that in 2008 Twitter greeted users with the 'Fail Whale' for more than 84 hours, almost twice as much as any other site. At the other end of the scale imeem and Xanga managed less than 4 hours of downtime for 99.95% uptime. Myspace, Facebook and Classmates.com were the only other sites studied which managed to stay up more than 99.9% of the time."

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