beschra - Slashdot User

Submission + - U.S. Secret Service wants to identify snark (cbslocal.com)

Submitted by beschra on Wednesday June 04, 2014 @12:13PM

beschra writes: The U.S. Secret Service is seeking software that can identify top influencers and trending sets of social media data, allowing the agency to monitor these streams in real-time – and sift through the sarcasm.

“We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that,” Jamie Martin, a data acquisition engineer at Sioux Falls, SD based Bright Planet, told CBS News.

Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?

Submission + - From Ascension Island to Mars? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by beschra on Wednesday September 01, 2010 @04:38PM

beschra writes: BBC writes of "terra-forming" Ascension Island, one of the islands Charles Darwin visited. He and a friend encouraged the Royal Navy to import boat loads of trees and plants in an attempt to capture the little bit of water that fell on the island. They were quite successful. The island even has a cloud forest now.

From TA: [British ecologist] Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way".

Could this actually be a viable approach to terra-forming Mars?

Submission + - Slow acceptance of digital radio in UK (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by beschra on Friday July 09, 2010 @03:49PM

beschra writes: Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) was developed as early as 1981. After launching in the UK 10 years ago, only 24% of listeners listen on DAB. The article credits a good part of the delay to the fact that the technology was largely developed under the Europe-wide Eureka 147 research project. How does government vs. commercial development help or hinder acceptance of new technology? From TFA:

[analyst Grant Goddard says] "If Nokia develop something, they'll be bringing out the handsets before you know it," he says. "Because DAB was a pan-European development, you had to have agreement from all sides before you could do anything. That meant progress was extremely slow." But this alone did not account for the hold-up. The sheer complexity of introducing and regulating the system was also a major factor, Mr Goddard adds.

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