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Indoor Tropical Island
fons writes "The huge construction dome of the now bankrupt zeppelin maker CargoLifter, has been turned into an indoor tropical island. For about 20euro a day you can swim in the sea, take a walk in the rainforest or go to a beachparty. While it is snowing outside, it's a always a pleasant 25C on the island. And there are no tsunami's. It's bigger than Biosphere2 (it fits the Eiffeltower) but there's less sunlight. Would you spend your vacation in there? The Germans don't seem to be very eager."
25 Degrees is too cold!!! Now if it was 77 Degrees, then we could talk turkey.
It would be better if they had the whole ceiling lined with cloud pictures to simulate clouds instead of seeing steel.
Quick, someone call Pauly Shore!
Untill the nudist version? Surely this would be the simplest option and stop the retards going "I SAW SOME GUY NUDE ON THE BEACH PAST THAT SIGN SAYING NODISTS! I WILL SUED THE CITY FOR IT!".
It would be a safe (As in child molesters can't get in) and private (yet still free and among nature). It seems the perfect solution to a problem we don't even have (sort of..).
I like muppets.
Yeah, I'd spend my vacation there! Unfortunately, Survivor has booked the whole place for the 387th season. You pay for your ticket, then they vote you off. The title is slated to be Survivor: Rip-Off Island.
Would you spend your vacation in there? The Germans don't seem to be very eager.
Everybody knows that a real German's idea of a vacation is invading Poland.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Site is already really slow.. save them some bandwidth
e ngl/fotos-opening-e.htm
http://www.my-tropical-islands.com.nyud.net:8090/
The thing I like about travel is getting a taste of a different culture - calypso music, new kinds of frozen cocktails, ethnic food, historical sites. Whenever I go on a trip I always stop at a museum or two. Climate and scenery are not all there is to a vacation. So this is definitely not for me.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
An abitious project to bring back some of the most amazing and majestic technology humanity has ever concieved... turned... into... a ... theme park...
I remember this feeling. It's the same feeling I had when I was a young nerd, trying to save up enough money for a 4 generation old computer, watching my clients use their top of the line $5,000 machines to play solitare....
Next youre going tell me they are using space shuttles for tourists; and advanced cybernetics for robotic pets...
Ladies and gentelmen: The dark side of capitalism.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I was imagining some sort of technical marvel like the Truman Show set with realistic looking sky, sun rays, jungle you could get lost in and most importantly an actual island with water all the way around (i think thats still the definition of an island?). Instead I see something that looks like a cross between a sports hall, a tacky cruise liner and some kind of theme park but without the rides. The whole thing looks very dark and dead, they atleast need retina-burning spotlights or something to hide the ugly structure? The jungle is just a load of trees with a linear zig-zag paved path! and I bet they won't let kids climb the trees for safety reasons, if I was 8 I would be pretty pissed off.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They've had something like that for ages:
http://www.gluckman.com/IndoorBeach.html
I really think the biosphere 2 people got it wrong by trying to recreate all the various biomes of the Earth in one building. That, and the whole issue with the concrete reacting with their atmosphere says to me that they really didn't plan very well. I'd like to see someone try to make a contained ecosystem that is engineered with the sole purpose of keeping some humans alive and comfortable. I wonder how many species of plants and animals would be necessary for such a thing.
It seems like it could be a lot simpler than what Biosphere 2 tried to do, and a lot more likely to be successful. It would also be beneficial in helping us figure out what we'll need for long-term space missions.
. .
I think what really gets me is how flip people are feeling they can be about this in the West. Yes, Slashdot is global, yada yada, but it's readership is, for the most part, centered outside the affected area and in the United States in particular, so I blame us.
I live in New York, and what struck me was the global outpouring of sympathy after September 11, which killed 3,000 people, and it was months before anyone felt comfortable enough to to discuss anything but the horror.
But now, just a week after 118,000 parents and children and brothers and sisters have been drowned in a single moment, we start making fun little tsnumai references to set off an article on an indoor beach. That, and going to our climate-controlled indoor beaches are all part of our healing process, I suppose.
Sorry, I have a pretty high threshold, but that makes me ill.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
30 years after its cancellation, Cosmo Kramer will somehow managed to find the set for the TV show "Survivor" sitting intact in a dumpster. He will set it up as an indoor tropical island in his apartment, and invite his guests over for "challenges" and to be "voted off the island". Since the episode involves a high likelihood of Newman competing naked, I don't think I'll be tuning in at all.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you don't mind the German descriptions you can get the same (and a few more) picturesh tm
n ing-e.htm
on the German site (has a different IP, so should work as a mirror):
http://www.thetropical-islands.com/fotos-opening.
(English version (with less pics) is also available:
http://www.my-tropical-islands.com/engl/fotos-ope
Ha, Animats was more right than he even knew!
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
They definitely need to do something to hide the roof! Maybe line it with reflective screen and have a projector in the centre that projects a sky map to it? Of course, I don't want to know what kind of light source you'd need.
Would be a bit tricky to match the projection with the roof geometry, but can think of some cool thinks to do.
Flights from Germany to Ibiza are about 100 Euro.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
therefore this is definitely not within the male definition of tropical island.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
A three hour tour.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Germans ain't got no beach. So what if they've now 'got one' in a bubble, it still ain't no beach. That said, its still frickin' cool
And
[If it weren't for my perfect German job, I'd be back home on the beaches tomorrow, sheesh..]
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I think if they catered to young kids who wanted to get piss ass drunk, they might succeed.
Seriously. Take a look at Cancun. It's not that less artificial.
since octopus become octopi
That isn't the issue the parent was complaining about, it was the use of an apostrophe to indicate a plural. "'s" indicates possession, not multiplicity. It's one of my pet-peeves, too. How often do I want to strangle a store owner for having a sign that says "Thank's!". Ugh!
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
I think of a beach full of middle aged German men all wearing their favorite Speedo swim wear.....I think I will pass.
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
What happened at Kalkar was FAR worse - far more money was invested (i.e. wasted) by various governments. Read all about it here. My parents paid the extra "Kalkar tax" (to pay for the reactor) for years and years, and now it, too, is a theme park. And not even a nuclear theme park, it is simply a health spa. I know, I visited while you could still see most of the reactor and equipment...
Oddly enough, this is in Germany as well. Makes you wonder...
It's not that making life enjoyable is bad, on it's own.
It's when there are other things that *ought* to be getting done, but we're too busy using *the same technology* to make life enjoyable and *not* doing those things.
Case in point: Space Tourism
I'd *love* to be a space tourist. If it ever gets down into my price range while I'm healthy enough, I will. But if we get *so* preoccupied with space tourism that we don't think or prepare for comet/asteroid detection and deflection, that's bad. If tourism prevents exploration, that's bad. At the moment, I don't think this situation exists. In fact, I think space tourism will make people *more* conscious of the things we ought to be doing in space, and more supportive of them.
But preoccupation with entertainment at the expense of real goals is something to watch out for.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I agree with this, but in defense of the insensitive, I think many people (especially young people) have no way to fit a disaster of the scale of this tsunami into their frame of reference.
Humor has always been a way to deal with things you don't understand and can't grasp. In Africa, there are tribes in which the normal response to seeing something unimaginably horrifying - like a pile of dead, decaying human bodies - is to laugh. This is not amusement, it's a reaction to the incomprehensible, a way to deal with it. In the West, there's a veneer of cynicism over this response, but in the end joking about something like this is an acknowledgement that there's really not much else to be done about it (aside from actually donating or dropping everything to fly to the affected areas).
That said, people should be more aware that their offhand comments can seem incredibly insensitive to people who are more directly affected.
That price only sounds bad to Americans because the Dollar is doing really badly against the Euro. It's Not that bad for those of us in Europe.
The exchange rate is even better for me here in the UK, my pounds buy me a ton of stuff at Thinkgeek!
A latent existence
I suspect this is a case where it's going to take some time to work out the kinks, and hope the owners took that into account when doing their business plan.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this become successful - eventually. I also wouldn't be surprised if that didn't happen until the debt had been restructured, and possibly through transfer to new ownership.
Just my .02 worth...
---
For my other .98, check here :-)
i've been there last thursday for about four hours. At that time, about 5.000 other people did the same. On some days between the holidays, the dome had to be closed due to overcrowding (max. 7.500 people at the same time). The visit was the birthday present for my girlfriend (together with a musical visit later that day).
The dome is extremely impressive. The size dwarves everything i ever seen before. I'm familier with large halls (productions sites) due to my connections to AIRBUS, but those are much smaller. The Statue of Liberty would fit inside the dome upright. The mentioned Eiffel tower would fit only if laid down. The tropical feeling suffers from the size. Only lower 10m (30feet) contain some tropical stuff (houses, plants, pools), the remaining dome looks still industrial. It seemed a little dark to me, i would have prefered more and warmer light.
The temperature inside is as warm as advertised. Both pools were overcrowded and queuing up was required for nearly everything (food, toilett, entry, cashier, changing cubicle, etc.). Prices are very fair. Overall rating would be a "B". There a quite a lot places to improve, but i hope the "Tropical Island" will survive.
For geeks: Every person entering the dome receives a card with a RFID chip. This card is used to pay food, drinks, etc. The RFID chip even operates the lockers (instead of a key). On exiting the dome, you pay according to the bill for your RFID card. Unluckily they had some trouble with this process. So it was up to "What did you have?" and paying what you told them.
The dome is open round the clock; i would recommend to visit it during the night, when there are less visitors (there were too many small children for my taste). You can even rent a tent for inside camping ;-).
If anyone is interested, i can add links to images and a short video later.
Regards, Martin
Look, 9/11 was 'a tragedy', but its been a worse tragedy that the entire American Nation 'completely changed' afterwards.
... and reject nationalistic jingo-ism, in all its forms.
I'm not American. To me, Americans taking offense at someone feeling '9/11 is irrelevant' is more offensive. The U.S. gov't, and its people (and its psycho-techno-militant-industrial complex) used 9/11 'as an excuse', with 'the emotions of the people' toyed with all so well, oh so cleverly, to produce the results desired: wanton invasion, and promotion of warfare, on a global scale.
What I wish is for America, and its nation of consumers, to Chill The Fuck Out, realize that the New World Order is upon you, and forget about nationalistic pride in the face of the human condition.
The Tsunami [(c) 2000 Mad Magazine] taught me that the notions of nation are irrelevant in the face of natures fury. And I choose to follow natures path over mankinds irrelevent discourse, any day
9/11 was a farce. Anyone getting upset over it is an idiot.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You know what's amazing to me?
The fact that I've read every post on this thread and there isn't a SINGLE "news for nerds" comment in the lot.
No questions about how it works.
No questions about why the zeppelin co. failed and whether or not it really could succeed (for cargo).
Hell, not even a comment about Beowulf clusters of these things
Not to be a lemming here but is slashdot the new Fark? I used to come here to be a fly on the wall as people much smarter than me debated the science, engineering, programming, and overall impact of "news for nerds". Well, the news may be for nerds, but the comments are for children.
Where are you my old-ass slashdotter friends? And I mean that in sincerity. If anyone knows, please let me in on the secret so I can get back to reading about things I enjoy instead of the constant whining and/or political slant.
Thank You.