So many times I've read US comments on Slashdot regarding privacy and how awful it is in the UK because of our camera coverage.

Ha! You were getting stiffed the whole time too! You weren't even getting the remote chance of video evidence to protect the innocent, just a blanket government surveillance of your online activity to protect against a largely government-engineered threat.

Now that we're both screwed, can we quiet-down on the finger pointing across ponds, and start pointing elsewhere?

or someone with a sense of humour.

I don't understand how you've been upvoted for reinstating a point I've already agreed with.

Just because it's a lesser impact doesn't mean it's not an interesting one.

Yup, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has a growing list of environmental regulations that apply to every ship in the world.

Most people will be surprised how good oil companies are when it comes to employing decent, environmental sound ships for their projects. Generally the majors don't have their own fleets now, so charter in tonnage, and have very high standards and a ridiculous number of inspections for the vessels they employ.

Admittedly, this is largely because they have caused some huge catastrophes in the past.

Tankers represent 2% of Samsung's current backlog according to their IR report.

If we take super tanker to mean VLCC, that's anything over 200,000dwt (ULCCs are around 320,000 dwt, so I'm being generous). If they were churning out 100, that would be 20,000,000 dwt per annum.

According to Braemar Seascope, global tanker deliveries for all tankers over 27,000 dwt peaked at just under 55,000,000 dwt in 2011, with around 32,000,000 dwt in deliveries expected this year, not accounting for slippage. Samsung are not producing 100 super tankers a year.

Deletions from the fleet are under 10,000,000 dwt per annum. Overcapacity is already bad, I'm glad we don't live in the world that documentary was covering.

That's not how shipbuilding works. The cheapest labour is not a way to success. Chinese yards are generally not as successful as the Korean and Singaporean yards that pay better, are more efficient and more advanced.

Ship owners can ill-afford to have shoddily-built ships anymore, especially in the tanker sector if they're looking to work with the oil majors.

... and therefore, we shouldn't consider the impact of the floating facility on the environment around them.

I agree, Prelude is a good idea and from what I understand is by a way the lesser of two evils, I am still interested in the effect it will have on the area it's deployed in.

Commenter specifically said the area around it, not the whole ocean.

You don't bed down subsea apparatus, anchor the largest floating structure in the world, start offloading shuttle tankers full of LNG and transport supplies and crew for such a installtion without affecting the surrounding ecology in some way.

I for one welcome the curiosity of the original post over your off-topic twitter-bashing and (hopefully) deliberate misinterpretation of the commenter's point.

Prelude has three 6,700 horsepower thrusters for weathervaning. Mightn't be the best way of getting it around, but if they can pivot the bugger about the mooring turret, I'm sure they could move it around in some dreadfully slow and awkward fashion.

Interesting question - the mooring points are likely to have a direct impact wherever they're attached to the seabed, as will all of the subsea equipment and the engineering work to secure them in place.

The platform itself will, I imagine, have a minimal impact aside from noise and vibration. There have been whispers of regulating ship noise and vibration for the protection of the marine environment at IMO for some time, but nothing has come forward yet or is likely to in the next couple of years.

There will be increased marine traffic from shuttle tankers and crew/support vessels, but oil majors are largely pretty careful about the vessels they employ, especially for a project with as high profile as this.

Once it's in place, I doubt we'll ever hear too much about prelude, unless it goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Sounds like motion sickness/seasickness. The way I had it explained to me was that it was a mechanism to deal with poisons. Your senses give conflicting information on balance and what you're seeing, or the input is just plain alien, so your body reacts by assuming you've been poisoned and it hits the eject button.

    Not preaching this, happy to be told otherwise. Luckily if it is similar to seasickness, three constant days of it should see you straightened out.

    Better find a handy place to hotkey all of my abilities ready for Azeroth. Perhaps I could hardwire them into a suck bucket? Moisture sensor at the bottom linked to feign death might be a start.

My other half has very little interest in games beyond puzzle games on her mobile or FB, but my four year old son has a great time watching me play Minecraft. I never envisaged being forced to play video games by my child, but I'm sure as hell not complaining. He enjoys watching me create buildings and machines and I make a point of using the game to help with his reading and some problem solving.

He independently plays games on his tablet, and we often take turns on games like Angry birds and Cut the Rope. I don't think he's quite capable of grasping wasd and mouse yet, but I can't wait until he does!

TL;DR - Why not try seeing if your kids like video games?

Amazed you didn't go for the Chrome example - didn't google drop Google Chrome in results for certain keywords last year after it was revealed they were paying for blog posts?

Are they chilling in that they will cause the idiots prosecuting to chill the fuck out?