Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Happened to me (Score 4, Interesting) 104

This year's renewal of home insurance cam with all kinds of new stipulations.

One was satellite photos from Google Earth with areas of my roof circled where they suspected some damage. I was able to have a conversation with my agent and the underwriter and tell them when we last replaced the roof, and assured them that we had been on the roof recently (Christmas lights) and got them to back off. It sounded like they were using some machine analysis looking for odd stain patterns.

My take is that the industry as a whole is trying to improve the quality of their assessments and risk exposure.

Comment Re:let's be clear here (Score 1) 173

This is a great insight. As easy and fun as it is to pile-on, calling someone stupid, or even calling for *killing* people as some here have suggested, there is a systematic failure that needs to be addressed. Not so much your bridge example, but road designers have standardized on the continuous Jersey barrier sidewalls for roads so that when drivers are going off the road they get a more benign collision that keeps them on their own side of the road. Contrast with exposed pillars with gaps in between (a-la Princess Diana crash) where an excursion ends in a head-on fatal crash. They recognized that they can't make drivers any better, but they can make the environment safer so that momentary lapses are much less consequential.

Slashdot Top Deals

Don't sweat it -- it's only ones and zeros. -- P. Skelly

Working...