10Brett-T - Slashdot User

Submission + - 23 Years of Culture Hacking with Perl (wordpress.com)

Submitted by

Modern Perl

on Friday December 24, 2010 @01:38PM

Modern Perl writes: "Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, reflects on Perl's history of hacking its culture, from subverting the reductionist culture of Unix to reinventing the ideas of programming language and culture in Perl 6 and the verbal aikido used to encourage honest detractors to become valuable contributors. Perl turned 23 years old last week, and Perl 6 is available."

Terry Pratchett's Self-Made Meteorite Sword 188

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday September 21, 2010 @10:15AM from the x4-crit-modifier dept.

jamie writes "Fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett says he was so excited after being knighted by the Queen that he decided to make his own sword to equip himself for his new status... the author dug up 81kg of ore and smelted it in the grounds of his house, using a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fueled with damp sheep manure."

Comment Re:Suicide? (Score 1) 1343

by 10Brett-T on Thursday March 11, 2010 @03:18PM (#31442004) Attached to: Accidental Wii Suicide

But you have to push evenly on the live and neutral pins, otherwise the shutter won't move out of the way. On older sockets you may be able to wiggle something into the earth pin hole to push the shutter back, but that's usually got quite a strong spring.

Shuttered outlets are a fairly recent feature in the US, and homes built before the requirement was added are not required to be retrofitted.

Submission + - Chinese Google Cyberattack Hits Stanford Student (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15, 2010 @05:29PM

An anonymous reader writes: "The 20-year-old is a member of the Tibetan exile community who volunteers for Students for a Free Tibet. She was approached by Google's chief legal officer and head of security in January after it was discovered that someone in China was logged into her account.

Seldon provided her laptop to Google, which inspected it but did not find any suspicious software installed on the machine, though software might have gleaned the password and other details and then disappeared."

Submission + - Using EMP to punch holes in Steel (economist.com)

Submitted by angrytuna on Friday January 15, 2010 @05:19PM

angrytuna writes: The Economist is running a story about group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantage over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (.2 vs 1.4 seconds), and by metal press, which can leave burrs which must be removed by hand.

Submission + - Why Counter-Terrorism is in Shambles (consortiumnews.com)

Submitted by

ScuttleMonkey

on Friday January 15, 2010 @04:39PM

ScuttleMonkey writes: "Early last week several questions were submitted to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the sad state of counter-terrorism in the United States and he has answered frankly, and in-depth. In addition, McGovern also solicited former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley to review his answers and provide her own comments. Ray's largest advice to the intelligence community was to "HOLD ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE. More 'reform' is the last thing we need. Sorry, but we DO have to look back. The most effective step would be to release the CIA Inspector General report on intelligence community performance prior to 9/11. That investigation was run by, and its report was prepared by an honest man, it turns out. It was immediately suppressed by then-Acting DCI John McLaughlin — another Tenet clone — and McLaughin’s successors as director, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and now Leon Panetta.""

Comment Re:The Law of Unintended Consequences (Score 2, Insightful) 1364

by 10Brett-T on Tuesday October 20, 2009 @04:19PM (#29813691) Attached to: Legal War For WA State Sunshine Law

You do understand precedents, right? Little to no retribution against signers of this petition does not prove that signers of a future, unrelated, and perhaps well-supported petition have nothing to fear from some entrenched opponents. It's necessary to weigh the benefit of publicizing the list of signers of any petition against the possibility of intimidation toward signers of it or any other petition.

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