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World's Tallest Building To Open Monday
dtmos writes "The Burj Dubai ('Dubai Tower' in Arabic) is scheduled to open to the public on Monday. Its height, claimed to be 824.55m (2,705.2 feet), but believed to be 818m (2,684 feet) — either way, more than half a mile — makes it far taller than Taiwan's Taipei 101, which had been the world's tallest skyscraper at 509m (1,670 feet)."
Right in time for the Dubai economy to start tanking.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This is the tallest manmade structure in the world, freestanding or otherwise. The previous record was held by a TV mast in eastern North Dakota, which took the lead when a mast in Poland fell down if I am not much mistaken about the history. This building has occupied floors higher than the world's tallest TV mast. The only thing possibly taller would be offshore oil rigs, but I can't remember how those stack up against it. A very impressive accomplishment, so long as it stays standing through Monday.
Too bad it was built with slavery...
They sure put a lot of effort in the Citadel and City 17 sets for the upcoming Half-Life movie...
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The three sides of the building have different heights due to the differing ground levels.
For a long time, the unofficial height was 808m. However this then switched to 818m, and now finally 824m as different entrances were chosen as "ground level".
The problem is that the building is part of a massive development that includes quite a bit of landscaping. Thus the definition of ground level is somewhat fuzzy. The real base of the building is an enormous concrete slab a few stories underground.
That the building is more stable than their web server... Damn request time out every time.
Need an ISP in South Africa?
It's an impressive achievement. I'm glad they got it finished before the economy tanked. Dubai is overbuilt, and many of the sillier projects there will never be completed, but Burj Dubai is a prestige location and will probably be rented out successfully. It's partly a hotel and residential building, not just an office tower.
The Empire State Building was built during the Great Depression and wasn't fully rented for years.
The principle of building up is right, however. Higher population density makes for better public transportation, more services available within walking distance, and nicer, more pristine outdoors spaces.
50 years ago, Dubai (and Abu Dhabi) was nothing more than a small mud brick & stone town in the desert.
Once oil was discovered, the revenues were used to fund explosive development...
BUT the emirates did a terrible job of planning.
There are highrise apartment buildings everywhere, but no parking.
They have incredible population density, but no sewage system to speak of.
Anything you see that is green must be watered constantly or it'll die.
Dubai is a rather good example of how not to build a city.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They have incredible population density, but no sewage system to speak of
Gee thats interesting. So how...
Never mind.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
- dubai doesn't have oil
- dubai is very western-oriented
- dubai is not a country
- dubai has been largely isolated from regional tensions
got that?
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The USA once was dominant in metrics like this. Now, our leadership position, being pissed away for so many years by inept leadership and increasily divisive politics, has been compromised in many areas.
In education, we rival the 3rd world. There is actually serious discussion about teaching so-called "Intelligent-Design" as a part of our Science curriculum! Our math and science scores are near the bottom, and are actually beaten by 3rd world countries in many cases.
Our production and manufacturing idustries have been bleeding red ink for decades. Once the pinnacle of the 1st world, we now sardonically compliment our own quality. Our upper-middle and upper classes don't buy our American-made cars.
Our leadership in Science development is tanking fast. From our until-recent ban on stem cell research funding, and our generally soft support for "basic Science" research, to our cancelling funding for the SSC supercollider, we've sent the message to the scientific community - support is elsewhere!
Tallest building in the world is a pissing contest, that we led for a long time in the last century. We've not only lost it, but our vain attempt to regain it in the so-called "Freedom tower" is mired in controversy, bad design, and travesty, bungled so badly that it's the architectural equivalent of the "mission accomplished" poster of GWB notoriety.
I'm an American, and it's really, really sad to watch my nation slowly collapse in on itself.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Does anyone else suddenly feel the urge to play SimTower? Is it just me?
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
already happened http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pGp1LX8yZY
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I don't know of an organized terrorist group that would be both capable and interested in knocking it over.
Are you kidding? Haven't you heard about the various muslim factions that consider each other heretics?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Every night, the stuff is pumped out of municipal septic tanks by a half-mile long convoy of trucks, which then dump it in nearby storm drains. It all ends up on the beach.
I told you not to tell me that...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In case you haven't noticed, The Onion only publishes fictional news as a form of satire. Nothing in it should be taken seriously.
Digging holes is WAAAAYYYYY more expensive than building stories (with "normal sized buildings").
A 10 story building costs more than a 5 story building mainly because the taller building needs a deeper fundamentum in the ground.
Yeah, I've always wondered what sort of people are happy to work at the top of buildings like this.
I'm not scared of heights in the slightest, but I have to say I'd feel a bit nervous purely because of a lack in the faith of the stability of a building like this with the strong winds and earthquakes the area is prone to coupled with the fact it was built using nigh-on slave labour which isn't exactly going to give you the type of worker that particularly cares about being thorough or doing a good job. Not to mention this is quite a symbol of modern capitalism in a region known to have many people with a severe distaste of capitalism.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine it'd be easy convincing people to rent or buy the upper floors of this thing.
Given a proper infrastructure in the surrounding area, tall buildings can certainly lead to a more efficient transportation system. When a building reaches a certain size however, the transportation system inside the building starts to become a problem. How tall can a building be built before all the space gets eaten up by elevator shafts?
Just as Phoenix, Arizona is. Building cities in deserts is just not a good idea, and exploiting the environment to the absolute maximum it can take is bound to fail in the long run.
-- Cheers!
Huh, no shit.
Building cities in deserts is just not a good idea, and exploiting the environment to the absolute maximum it can take is bound to fail in the long run.
Tell that to the Israelis. Either they really DO have Yahweh on their side, or it's not as hard as you're implying. I'm gonna go with the latter.
Would it be cynical of me to say "I KNEW IT!" - I've been pondering /theorising over the past few months when I think of Dubai of how quickly the place has boomed, everything is an incredible, ridiculous rush to try and convert their economy from oil to tourism.
Surely correct planning is being simply thrown to the wayside. I mean I have no facts at all to back me up here, however - I have to at least ask the question, how well built is the Burj Dubai?
Is it safe? Are the facilities reliable? - for example my work building is 38 stories and has 2 'service' lifts for cleaners / staff to move between floor besides the regular lifts. I firmly believe they should've built 3 service lifts, most cleaners are waiting 2 to 5 minutes each time they change a floor.
Now that's only a small basic example but has these kind of finer details been thought of in the Burj Dubai? I have to wonder, how's the water pressure? Sewerage system, network cabling, security, heating, energy efficiency in this building? (etc etc etc, you get the idea)
The entire place really is just an insane example of how to spend cash, it's totally not self sufficient (They have an indoor ski slope, how much energy does it take? Seriously.... is it on sustainable energy?)
I don't mean to throw chip here, because western culture is pretty stupid and wasteful often but I see some real tacky shit over there, it seems like 'we have money, let's do the biggest!!!!!!!!!' (exclamation marks required)
I'm curious to see the place but mroe from sideshow freak kind of angle and I'm terrified if I ever went there, I'd say or do something taboo which would land me in jail for 4 goddamn years - frankly I think their tourism industry is doomed with such dopey laws.
There are special parachutes for this (which will probably open when jumping from a not-so-high-building), but i'd suspect that given the height of this tower any "normal" parachute will do. http://www.fallschirm.de/index-Dateien/Page932.htm (it's in german, i came across this one not so long ago)
The practice of recruiting people in their country of origin with promises of wage X, bringing them to your country, "losing" their passports and then paying them "X minus a lot", is where the "almost-slavery" bit really comes in....
Kaspersky AV when going to http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/ shows the following: "detected: Trojan program Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.ewi" Be careful...
scheduled to open to the public on Monday.
And scheduled to enter receivership on Tuesday.
Trucks carrying around sewage from septic tanks really baffle me.
I tried googling it, but haven't found a single reason why centralized sewage system was never built, are there specific regional/geographic factors, like the lack of water, or it's all due to stupidity of the local government?
The entire place really is just an insane example of how to spend cash, it's totally not self sufficient (They have an indoor ski slope, how much energy does it take? Seriously.... is it on sustainable energy?) I don't mean to throw chip here, because western culture is pretty stupid and wasteful often but I see some real tacky shit over there, it seems like 'we have money, let's do the biggest!!!!!!!!!' (exclamation marks required)
You could just as easily be describing this place.