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Comment Re:Halifax too! (Score 1) 161

by aggles (#45191615) Attached to: Connecting To Unsecured Bluetooth Car Systems To Monitor Traffic Flow

So in every area, they have a good estimate of how many cars have Bluetooth and have it turned on? For example, our household (HS senior, college sophomore, my wife and I) have 4 cars total and only one of them has Bluetooth. It is turned on. But, the rest of us have BT headsets - which are not in pairing / discoverable mode. So I guess they only "see" one of us on the road?

They don't need many samples to determine road speed conditions. On a busy highway, even if only 1% of the cars have bluetooth discovery enabled, there will be valid data. More valid as the sample size increases. Similar technology is used in airports to understand the speed of the people moving thorugh the security line.

Submission + - Using data analytics in education could create a new class of have and have-nots (citeworld.com) 1

Submitted by mattydread23
mattydread23 writes: Every student learns differently. Some educators are starting to use data analytics to figure out how to tailor teaching techniques to individual students, rather than using the "one size fits all" approach. But Alec Ross, a senior advisor on innovation at the U.S. State Department, worries this would create a new class of haves and have-nots. Speaking at the Schools for Tomorrow conference last week, Ross said, "A lot of what I see is the ability to productize and commercialize very intensive assessments of individual limits. So what I imagine is parents getting their kids essentially a $30,000 educational checkup where they extract enormous amounts of data about the kinds of learners their children are, the kinds of education deficits they have."

Submission + - 5 Benefits of Cloud Computing for Small Business (firstbloger.com)

Submitted by havishowen
havishowen writes: Cloud computing is all the rage, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for every business. While the cloud has been dominated by larger businesses, corporations, and enterprise companies that require secure data storage and constant access, small businesses and startups have many of the same needs to a smaller degree, making the scalable cloud an affordable option.

Submission + - About 20% Of New Titles On Steam Support Linux (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Dega704
Dega704 writes: There is some interesting news over at Phoronix regarding the state of Linux support among game developers.

"Phoronix reader Casper Gielen wrote in with some interesting information that may have been overlooked by other Phoronix readers. Casper wrote, "While browsing the 100 newest releases on Steam I noticed that 20 supported Linux. That's quite a lot. Of the 18 games under "coming soon" 6 support Linux. That's even better, which suggests that it's not just a lucky day but a real trend. Only 13 of the best selling games support Linux, but even that is a rather nice number."

So right now 20% of the new releases support Linux, 33% of the current "coming soon" titles support Linux, and 13% of the "best selling" games advertise Linux support. Those wanting to check out the games for yourself can visit store.steampowered.com and click on the various tabs.

These numbers are only likely to rise given Valve continuing to push more game developers to support Linux, SteamOS and Steam Machines will drive game developers and gamers to the Linux-based operating system, and Valve continues to work on new initiatives to help developers in moving their games to Linux — e.g. continued Source Engine optimizations, LLDB improvements, joint work on a new Linux debugger for game developers, etc.

Submission + - Nuclear Fusion Energy Research Inches Closer To Elusive Break-Even Point (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Fusion energy has proven an elusive goal — a running joke is that humanity is 20 years away from a practical power plant, and has been for 60 years.

That could be changing, said John Edwards, associate director for inertial confinement fusion and high-energy-density science of the National Ignition Facility.

In a recent piece published in the journal Physics of Plasmas, Edwards said NIF scientists are getting closer to reactions that produce more energy than they need to get going, and added that the obstacles to realizing nuclear fusion involve engineering problems rather than basic physics."

Submission + - World Solar Challenge starts one day from now (worldsolarchallenge.org)

Submitted by SustainableJeroen
SustainableJeroen writes: On Sunday morning (Australian time), October 6th, 40 solar-powered vehicles from 24 countries will depart from Darwin and make their way south along the 3000km Stuart Highway towards Adelaide in the 2013 World Solar Challenge. About half of the vehicles compete in the Challenger class, the class which features what many people will recognise as typical solar racing cars: flat, UFO-like vehicles, built exclusively for efficiency and speed. For the first time, however, much more practical vehicles will race each other in the new Cruiser class. These vehicles will seat two, three of four people and be road legal.

In both 2009 and 2011, Michigan University Solar Car Team finished third, Nuon Solar Team finished second and Tokai University finished first. The fastest vehicles will be expected to reach Adelaide on Thursday or Friday, depending on the weather.

Comment Legit uses? (Score 3, Informative) 189

by aggles (#44537379) Attached to: Londoners Tracked By Advertising Firm's Trash Cans
Several airports in Europe are using the same non-associating probe technique to figure out if enough security lines are open. By knowing the time from pre to post security location of a MAC address, they can tell how well traffic is flowing. Since people beyond security, on average, spend several Euros per minute, it is better for the airport to minimize the security delay. Good for passengers too.

Comment It is not that bad (Score 1) 285

by aggles (#44153337) Attached to: Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share
Yeah, metro is useless, but there are some nice aspects to Win 8, like the new task manager. I installed a fan controller (TPFC.62), which boots me to the desktop once it starts. Finding drivers can be a challenge, but so far, I have what I need. I'll go to 8.1 as soon as it is ready.

Comment A record was set - so what? (Score 1) 757

by aggles (#41411507) Attached to: Rapid Arctic Melt Called 'Planetary Emergency'
There has been plenty of news about it, but what's the call to action? Maybe we should get ready for major winter snows in the US Northeast, like happened the winter after the last record was set? There is increasing acceptance that the rise is human accelerated, but there is no common wisdom on what can stop it or even the degree to which the rate of change can be slowed down. What we see here is just another snapshot of the ride towards a warmer planet and we'll have to deal with the impact as it happens, what ever happens.

Comment Big rains - bigger culverts (Score 4, Interesting) 416

by aggles (#40608823) Attached to: Is Our Infrastructure Ready For Rising Temperatures?
The civil engineers around here are replacing any culvert that needs it with the bigger size, so that the increased run-off can be handled without washing out the roads. They assume 500 year events are now 100 year events and 100 year events are 30. 10 year events can happen at any time. Makes sense to me.

Submission + - Why groundwater use may not explain half of sea-level rise (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Sir Realist
Sir Realist writes: A recent Slashdot scoop pointed us at a scientific study that claimed that 42% of global sea-level rises could be due to groundwater use. It was a good story. But as is often the way with science, there are folks who interpret the data differently. Scott Johnson at ars technica has a good writeup which includes two recent studies that came to remarkably different conclusions from mostly the same data, and an explanation of the assumptions the authors were making that led to those differences. Essentially, there is some reason to think that the groundwater estimates used in the first study were too high, but thats still under debate, so its worth reading the whole argument. Scientific review in action!

Submission + - I need a job change

Submitted by rolakyng
rolakyng writes: Dear friends,

I've been working as a software developer for past 4 yrs and making the same 23$/hr. I asked my boss several times to increase/match my pay to the regular market rate and I keep getting BS that everything is on a freeze or I've to prove myself. I'm pretty pissed that they gave me a promotion without a pay raise. Now my duties alongwith coding in C# and SQL include SAP, Sharepoint Development/Support. I work very hard and am very dedicated to my job but I don't want to work here anymore as my talent is not recognized and appreciated. I've good programming skills in C# and little bit of C++, a lot of jobs seem to be in C/C++/JAVA. I was wondering if I should learn these programming languages and GTFO of this company. It just pains me that I perform beyond expectations without any reward and still get the "Depending on your progress we'll decide on your salary raise".

Thanks for listening to my rant
Rolakyng

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