Speech recongition engines currently don't have the capability of recognizing the identity of the speaker. There is technology that can do that, but it is not part of any commercial speech recognition program.
Currently there is no way to have Hal pop up when you call its name. Hal turns off the speech recognition engine when its not in use to conserve your cpu for other programs. Hal uses a dictation vocabulary which is over 50000 words and this uses a lot of computing power. However, it would be possible for us in future versions have Hal use a 10 word command vocabulary when its closed. This would make it possible for Hal to pop up when called with a minimal using of computing power. We'll keep your suggestion in mind when developing the next version of Hal.
Hal's user name selection is independant of your speech recognitions speaker selection. But that is also a good suggestion for future versions of Hal and we'll keep it in mind.
Robert Medeksza
