Posts by Hud Dunlap

Bond - Fleming expo opens at Imperial War Museum

Dusko Popov and a man called tricycle

In the book " A man Called Tricycle" Dusko Popov claims to be the prototype for James Bond. The casino scene from Casino Royale is supposed to be from a night when he was dropping off money to a resistance group and Fleming was "baby sitting" to use a term from LeCarre'

Al Gore's green job bonanza - can we afford it?

Re: only global warming is Gores hot air

For the reality of Gore's position on energy usage see http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp. His house uses 12 time the national average. Compare that to Dubya's

Bitlocker hack is easily prevented, Microsoft says

At least microsoft responded

Where is the response from Apple?

On a second note. Most people at work never power down thier laptops. They just put it in sleep mode. From the way I read the hack, that makes all of them vulnerable.

Airline pilot sacked for 777 Top Gun stunt

Re: for the record

Back when I was in college ( 70-80's) there was a report of a fully loaded 747 doing a complete roll. The Auto pilot malfunctioned and by the time the pilot caught it he decided to complete the roll. They didn't even spill a drink. Any Boeing historians able to add details.

UK gov backs Trading Places DNA study

favour of more sophisticated statistical sampling

Yeah I love that line. Actually Clinton tried to use this rather than what is required under the Constitution. Anytime a prominent politician like Clinton wants to use a new technique you can be sure he wants to manipulate the data.

Actually the US does ask more than a few simple questions but that is a statistical sample.

My Father worked on the Census twice and he has some interesting stories to tell. There is a reason why it is not considerd that accurate. But the pol's won't tell you the real reasons.

From Statistics 101 the smaller the sample size the bigger the error.

Germans debut kitesurf-powered autonomous windjammer

Lord Thomas Admiral Cochran

I hope I got that right. I am not good with english titles. I am sure he is spinning is his grave with glee. In his Autobiography he mentiones doing exactly this. It gave a big boost in speed to his ship.

That should make for an interesting "prior art" patent fight.

The transistor turns 60

Let's see the documentation

First off, the reviewer of the patent has to be aware of the prior art. Try a patent search sometime and see if you can find what you are looking for. The reviewers are generlly grad students working their way through college. They don't have the experience to do a good search. Remember this was the paper filing system days.

Maybe the register can publish a link to the patents involved.

Lawyerless eBayer sues Autodesk over garage-sale miracle

Remember the train software?

Awhile back there was an article on the Reg about copyright infrigment on open source software relating to model trains. The court ruled it was a breach of contract case not copyright.

I don't see any copyright infringment at all. And since he didn't open the package he never agreed to the terms.

SexSearch.com gets off on user's underage romp

I am surprised the court didn't cite Texas Precedent

There have been cases in Texas where guys have picked up underage girls at bars and be jailed for Statutory Rape. It doesn't matter that to be in there you have to be 21, that ID is checked at the door by people who's job it is to spot fake ID's, and any member of the staff can ask for your ID at any time.

He still should have known she was 14.

Do a web search for Veronica Lord sometime. With some girls you can not tell.

MIT in Matrix 'Crowd Farm' plan

Wired magazine already showed something similar

Wired magazine has a "pictures from the future" page. It showed people on the bikes at the Gym generating power with displays about how much was generated by each person.

It would be more practicle to run the lights at the Gym this way.

Cell hack geek stalks pretty blonde shocker

beware of porn

I checked out a couple of the cell phone locator sites that I found using Google. These were free and looked very professional, even bringing up a satellite photo and terms of use etc. That is while they were downloading the porn movie.