Instead of being built on top of the soil, the whole structure rests on over 300 isolators. These giant bearings let the building move laterally during an earthquake. After Istanbul got rocked by a magnitude 7.4 monster in 1999, and another major quake predicted to occur within the next 30 years, you can see why engineers decided to make this massive building shake-resistant.

As terrible as a massive earthquake would be, it would be incredible to see a building this huge move from side to side. Maybe we will in a future "World's Strongest Man" event. [Wired]

The basic concept has been done in other places, but the idea for San Diego's solution comes from a guy named Adam Englund, and it's definitely not just a floating airport. It's an entire $20 billion business plan. He's dreamed up an airport on an "oil rig -style floating platform" with four stories of space, a total of 200 million square feet of it, which could be used for hotels, restaurants, even universities. An entire floating city.

It sounds insane, but apparently in initial reviews, Englund's plan lacks any "fatal flaws." I'd consider the absence of $20 billion a fatal flaw, but the man's a bigger optimist than I. [Infrastructurist via Stoke Report]

MC207LL/A - K84 BEST BTR- USA
MC238LL/A - MAC MINI 2.26/2x1GB/160/SD/AP/BT-USA
MC239LL/A- MAC MINI 2.53/2x2GB/320GB/SD/AP/BT-USA
MC340LL/A - AIRPORT EXTREME (SIM DUALBAND) - USA
MC343LL/A - TIME CAPSULE 1TB (SIM DUALBAND) -USA
MC344LL/A - TIME CAPSULE 2TB (SIM DUALBAND) - USA
MC408LL/A - MAC MINI 2.53/2x2GB/1TB/NO ODD/AP-BT-USA
MC413LL/A - IMAC 21.5"/3.06/2x2GB/1TB/4670-256MB-USA
MC434LL/A - APPLE VESA MOUNT ADAPTER
MC461LL/A - MACBOOK 60W MAGSAFE POWER ADAPTER - USA

K84 Best BTR? Sounds like a new Bluetooth Keyboard. SIM dualband? Are the AirPort and Time Capsules tying in with cellphones? Apple VESA mount adapter? Since when Apple does that kind of accessory?

The new products will not be earth-shattering material—Apple won't announce anything wowiezowie without an event—but I'm curious about the whole SIM dualband thing.

Update: MacRumors claims that the ""MC207LL/A" product is a MacBook running at 2.26 GHz with a 250 GB hard drive and 2 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM." They say this is unconfirmed, though. [AppleInsider and MacRumors]

DAL164: Hey, do you see something over the... looks like a guy on a paraglider.. almost over the approach, er, the threshold of two-two right?

...

Looks like he hit the ground, dropped something off.

...

Now he's airborne again. I guess is it ah, looks like some guy on a parachute.

The question is: What the hell was he or she dropping? Why nobody has found the dropped object yet—if there was actually anything? Air, land, and sea police searches didn't find any traces of this very stupid and insane person. Or whatever it was, because for now it's just "unidentified."

Thankfully, nothing happened as it climbed higher than 1,000 feet across JFK's busy air traffic. [Flightglobal]

This is Funchal Airport's runway, in the Island of Madeira. It was one of the most dangerous in the world because its runway was just too short for large airplanes. It had to be extended and engineers had two options: Extend the ground base with extra soil and concrete, or build a platform on top of 180 230-foot pillars. The answer just looks spectacular.

And probably as safe as it is scary. [Premier Holidays via Dark Roasted Blend]

For the end user, this means a few things. As expected, the dual-band feature broadcasts on both 2.4GHz (802.11b/g/n) and 5GHz (802.11a/n) frequencies, allowing client devices to connect to whichever standard suits them without forcing the whole access point one way or the other. In other words, different devices could be connected to both g and n network simultaneously.

Guest Networking is a clever feature that essentially sets up a walled, parallel hotspot that provides only internet access, keeping the rest of your network private from connected users—perfect if you share your wi-fi with neighbors, or just run a particularly promiscuous access point.

Otherwise, the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule are almost exactly the same—Time Capsule storage options remain at 500GB and 1TB, for which the prices stay at $300 and $500, respectively. The AirPort Extreme still hovers at a lofty $180, a blow only slightly mitigated by the new features. Both are shipping right now, to the rich. [Apple]

Rumors of new, extra-wireless Time Capsule and Airport units popped onto our radar earlier this morning, following a serious markdown of the existing Time Capsule model. This came just after a picture of the purported new Mac Mini's packaging—a product update that is not only long-overdue, but that has been the subject of a veritable slew of leaks in the last few weeks. All this comes on the heals of a weakly-sourced (but tantalizingly plausible) rumor of a March product update.

Moving on the the heftier products, MacRumors posted a "last minute" spec leak a few hours ago, which details incremental upgrades and price adjustments for the Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Pro. None of purported upgrades are going to blow your socks off, but a Nehalem-based Mac Pro and $100-cheaper, better-equipped Mac Mini would be more than welcome. At posting time the store is still down, but we'll let you know if any of this materializes. —Thanks, Chang (and the other 235 of you, too)!

When the USPS and local police tracked him down and raided his place, they found they found 66 cameras, 31 laptops, jewelry, camera lenses, GPS devices and more. So yeah, how does a TSA screener systematically walk out of the airport with more gadgets than Best Buy—hell, with some gear you can't even buy there—without a single agent ever noticing? I guess if you ever check anything actually valuable, you might want avoid Newark (not that there aren't a million more reasons to avoid Newark). [Gadling via BoingBoing Photo: Flickr/Joel Franusic ]

It's hard to believe that this extravagant plan is actually more conservative than the original, but prohibitive steel costs nixed an even more bizarre structure with almost no support beams and way more skylights. It's always safe to be pessimistic about these kinds of things, but the target date for completion is 2012. [Yanko]

The Emirates A380 model has been placed at the Heathrow Airport roundabout previously known as the Concorde Roundabout—because it had a replica of that plane. It's not made of Lego bricks, but given the fact that it is bigger than my apartment, I won't mind living in one. [Emirates]

Yup, you got it: a cartoon robot with a stylized cartoon laser gun pissed off an airport guard so much that Jake had to swap it before flying. He even asked to speak to a security supervisor, who supported the guard and warned Brad not to put the shirt back on or he could be arrested.

A spokesman for the British Airports Authority said "If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it," and that sounds pretty fair. But this was a cartoon giant gun-toting robot... on a T-shirt, not a detailed photo recreation of a Glock that might be mistaken for the real deal at a quick glance.

Looks like Britain's safe from cartoon robot gun attacks, at least. [The Sun]

The new Terminal 3 has been designed to be energy efficient, allowing for natural lightning—whenever it is possible and the city smog allows, I guess—and packing all the facilities into a single structure, rather than fragmenting them in separate buildings, the building is 17% bigger than London Heathrow T1, T2, T3, T4 and the new T5 put together.

With a total of five floors—two underground— the dragon terminal is divided into three parts: the 3C is the domestic hall, and the main passenger terminal, 3D is the Olympics hall, used for charter flights during the celebrations, and 3E is the international hall. [Archdaily]

Parking
Road signs pointing to garages were said to be misleading, and some signs inside the garages were inaccurate. Furthermore, there were complaints about problems paying for parking and exiting the structures.
Check In
On day one, check in counters were not open at 4am, meaning some ticketholders had to start lining up, causing a backlog that certainly didn't help the launch. By noon, 20 flights had been canceled because of baggage handling problems.

Baggage
Here's the heart of the issue at Terminal 5's launch. The luggage system was designed to be streamlined as a checkpoint for travelers, on the way to the plane.

BAA also enthuses about technology like the baggage drop, which hoists suitcases to an underfloor belt, enabling passengers to walk forward to departures rather than turning around. "It's on the way, not in the way," quips Ms. Kearney.

Exaggerating all of this, the belt system jammed at one point. Sometime on day one, the airlines had no choice but to only check in those without baggage.

To add insult to injury, the Terminal 5 system has also lost the luggage of a passenger who died traveling back from Hong Kong, who is a son of an ex British Airways employee. He said, "To lose the luggage of a dead person is unforgivable."

In the end, British Airways has claimed responsibility for 15,000 bags were stranded at Heathrow. There is speculation that this number may have been has high as 20,000.

Flight Control
Not much went wrong here. Thank god. Last I checked, there were weather related delays, but that's not something you can plan to avoid. But the problems with check ins, resulting from lines and baggage problems, did result in 34 flights being canceled on day one.

Security
"Twenty security lanes promise speedier passage, though domestic travelers will now be fingerprinted."
Since people couldn't get through check in and baggage handling issues, security was probably not taxed.

Testing

In truth, they'll get this stuff ironed out. Eventually.

Terminal 5, by the numbers:

Cost: £4.3bn
Construction: September 2002 to March 2008
Number of passengers annually: 30 million

Phase 1: opening 2008 Terminal 5A and B
50 aircraft stands (total)

Phase 2: opening 2010 Terminal 5C
60 aircraft stands (total)

Terminal 5A dimensions: 396m long x 176m wide x 40m high
Levels above ground: 4

Terminal 5B dimensions: 442m long x 52m wide x 19.5m high
Levels above ground: 3

Multi-storey car park: 3,800 spaces
Sofitel London Heathrow Hotel: 605 rooms (opens June)

Rail links: Heathrow Express
London Underground Piccadilly Line

Check-in self service kiosks: 96
Check-in fast bag drops: over 90
Check-in standard desks: 54

Security zones: 2 (north and south)
Security lanes: 20
Baggage reclaim belts: 11
Length of bag conveyers: 17 km
No of bags processed per hour: 12,000

Number of lifts: 192
Number of escalators: 105
Number of seats: 9,140 (excluding catering outlets)
Number of toilet blocks: 112
Number of toilets: 800
Number of baby change facilities: 32
Childrens' play areas: 3 (for toddlers to 7 year olds)
Number of retail facilities: 112 (including 25 food and drink outlets)

[CS Monitor, Forbes, NYTimes, NYTimes, BBC, Airport-Technology, BAA]

The culprit? Its solid state drive. Which means any notebook with a SSD could've gotten your ass busted by the Feds. Helpfully, they've since distributed photos of what SSD notebooks look like to security personnel, reducing your chances of a friendly cavity search. [TSA Blog via TUAW]