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Comment: already done (Score 1) 54

by technosaurus (#45538163) Attached to: Google Launches Voice Search Hotword Extension For Chrome
#!/bin/sh
# Brad Conroy's public domain speech processing tool (lite version)
computer(){
    case $1 in
        open)shift; which $1 && $@ || text2speech "I can't find that program.";;
        disregard)exit;;
        *)text2speech "I can't handle the $@ command yet.";;
    esac
}

pocketsphinx_continuous $SOMERANDOMOPTIONS |while read ROW COMMAND ARGS; do
case "$ROW$COMMAND" in
    [0-9]*:computer)$COMMAND $ARGS;;
    [0-9]*:dictate)[ "$DICTATE" ] && DICTATE="" || DICTATE=true ;;
    [0-9]*:*)[ "$DICTATE" ] && echo $COMMAND $ARGS >>$HOME/dictations
esac
done

+ - UK spies continue "quantum insert" attack via LinkedIn, Slashdot pages->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In the academic literature, these are called "man-in-the-middle" attacks and have been known to the commercial and academic security communities. More specifically, they are examples of "man-on-the-side" attacks.

They are hard for any organization other than the NSA to reliably execute, because they require the attacker to have a privileged position on the Internet backbone and exploit a "race condition" between the NSA server and the legitimate website. This top-secret NSA diagram, made public last month, shows a Quantum server impersonating Google in this type of attack."
Link to Original Source

+ - LeVar Burton on Google Glass

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "While he acknoiwledged thart technology needs to keep going forward, LeVar Burton didn't seem comfortable with the idea of using Google Glass. '"It disturbed me. I was skeptical... [and] I'm a person that's very open to technology." That's the reaction LeVar Burton, the man best known from Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation, first had when encountering Google Glass backstage at Engadget Expand. Burton, a self-described edutainment pioneer, acknowledges the disruptive power new technologies can have on media and culture — after all, he did help transform television into a worthy educational tool/babysitter with his PBS program. But even with that storied success, and his company's current inroads into digital with an iPad Reading Rainbow application, Burton still had a "knee-jerk" response when confronted with Glass. Although his celebrity status and the resulting paranoia could have something to do with it.'"

Comment: They could use ammonia... (Score 1) 108

by technosaurus (#45329021) Attached to: Fuel Cell-Powered Data Centers Could Cut Costs and Carbon

They could use a contained ammonia system to both cool and power the place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator/ The refrigerator in my RV can use 3 different heat sources to cool the contents (AC,DC and propane)

Combine it with a multistage turbine generator with a separate natural gas powered stage and you have a working regenerative power system.

For that matter, you don't even _really_ need to use the ammonia, you could just pipe the natural gas directly across the cooling surfaces after it expands (and thus cools) from the gas line... but they aren't already designed for such things, and what works with what you have in place is often more economical.

+ - Open-source advocates to government: Let us help you fix healthcare.gov-> 1

Submitted by sunzoomspark
sunzoomspark writes "As computer experts hired by the U.S. government scramble to fix the much-maligned healthcare.gov website, a corps of independent kibitzers is chiming in from around the world, publicizing coding flaws that they’ve discovered and offering suggestions for fixing them.

Much of the constructive criticism is coming from members of the “open source” community, a passionate but loose-knit group that advocates openness and collaboration as a means of writing better computer software. Their desire to help solve the federal government’s website woes in part stems from an early decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to make the healthcare.gov code available for examination – a promise that was never fully fulfilled."
Link to Original Source

+ - Offshore Wind Farms Just Need a Little Stagger to Generate More Power-> 1

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes "Neat rows of wind turbines dot seas and oceans across the world. But setting offshore wind turbines in straight lines may limit their power production, according to a new study.

Whether wind farms are on or off shore, there is a tradeoff between getting maximum energy from each individual turbine and packing a greater number of turbines into the space. As each turbine pulls energy from the wind, there is less energy in the downstream wind, which causes array losses for the entire wind farm. (Turbines not only affect their immediate neighbors, they can also affect other arrays miles away.)

But there may be a simple solution to boost energy production without expanding the boundaries of offshore wind farms. Researchers at the University of Delaware found that staggering turbines in the ocean can improve annual power capacity by 13 to 33 percent. The study appeared in the September issue of Geophysical Research Letters."
Link to Original Source

Comment: NASA's engineering is dictated by laws of physics. (Score 1) 786

by technosaurus (#45258963) Attached to: Why Can't Big Government Launch a Website?

While the software rules are dictated by the laws of Congress.
The rules governing the management of these projects (The FAR) is set up for waterfall style management, but the requirements were closer to an agile timeline and the government project managers live in fear of the court battles that just about any minor change can cause. Many contractors have figured out that if they underbid the project, they can make up for it in changes due to "unforeseen conditions" that in actuality, they have already seen and priced out.

Comment: Show me the metrics! (Score 1) 394

How hard can it be to track bug reports and vulnerabilities back to their initial commit to determine whether or not they were corporate-sponsored.

It would be interesting to see what companies provide the highest quality contributions and where un-sponsored individual contributions rank as a group.

When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.

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