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Slashback: Rocketry, Pythonation, Scoffing
Besides which, it's the hidden cameras that matter. An anonymous reader adds this followup to the story posted last month about Wired reporter Noah Shachtman's account of sneaking into classified areas at Los Alamos national Laboratory.
"In an email message to all Los Alamos National Laboratory employees, Pete Nanos, the current Director of LANL, responded with information suggesting that the Wired reporter who thought he had broken in to a 'top secret area' had in fact just crossed a cattle fence:
'The Wired reporter clearly did not enter a Laboratory security area. The Laboratory encompasses more than 40 square miles. The security force protects important assets within those boundaries but cannot -- and does not -- protect every square foot of property. Based on the article, it appears the reporter crossed a barbed-wire cattle fence, not a fence that protects a Los Alamos security area.
There is a small security area with several buildings (roughly 400 feet by 400 feet) near the driveway entrance to TA-33. That area is surrounded by a seven-foot-high chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire. A security guard is stationed inside that area seven days a week and 24 hours a day. Clearly, the reporter did not climb that fence.
There are several other buildings outside the security area that are locked for property protection interests. They have no security interests. There are several gates and fenced areas on the TA-33 site, which are there for safety access control, not security.
It's unlikely the reporter would be prosecuted for trespassing; the Laboratory does not have law enforcement authority to prosecute, and none of the proper authorities witnessed the trespass.'"
Perhaps we can have a celebrity deathmatch. hfastedge writes "Ok, now that 2 perl conferences have been mentioned, I've been brought over the edge. Python is a language that is just as old, and arguably better from: most importantly a uniform standard of readability (enforced by using whitespace to delimit blocks (instead of {}), by avoiding overuse of cryptic symbols, and by a culture that strives to keep innovations as "pythonic"), and a rich development community. Anyway, normally, there are Python events in Europe, and a trail at O'Reilly's OSCON. But now, there is a far cheaper event taking place on March 24-28 in Washington DC: http://python.org/pycon/.
Examples of Python in action: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7"
Fly up go phhhhhwwwtttpffffff .... MyNameIsFred writes "Slashdot recently discussed whether anti-terrorism laws would destroy model rocketry. The government has ruled, and the message is clear, "When it comes to the hobby of model rocketry, size does matter. And in this case, the magic number is 62.5 grams. That's the largest amount of propellant a single model rocket engine can have in it and still be exempt from a new set of federal rules that will go into effect May 24." What does this mean for the the big guys in model rocketry, who use engines larger than this?"
The space.com article cited was posted March 6; this posting from the National Association of Rocketry points out the BATF hasn't made it clear whether the regulations will apply to materials already on hand.
Also, this is part of a dispute that's been going on for years then be BATF decided to designate Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant (the same fuel used in the Space Shuttle's SRBs) as an "explosive". The 62.5 gram limit was proposed as a compromise measure by the NAR to a flat-out banning of all APCP engines. This way, people could still enter into the higher-power forms of rocketry without dealing with the BATF's arcane regulations and uneven enforcement.
Then came the Homeland Security act and black powder (gunpowder, a/k/a "BP") engines were added to that list of "explosives", causing FedEx and UPS to ultimately refuse to carry them. There's still a bill pending in Congress to make a "technical correction" to remove black powder motors from that list. It's the subject of a phone and FAX compaign to garner support.
Would removing black powder from the 62.5 gram limit mean we see huge BP motors? Not likely, as the thrust/weight efficiency of BP is low enough not to make that a viable trade-off.
That depends on where you live and how you're travelling. You can't take the morors on an airplane, for example (this has been true for years), but driving is OK. Also, there are small composite motors that are below the 62.5 gram limit but have not been certified in all states (e.g. California) and thus are not legal to posess in those states.
It's a shame -- I'd love to use some of the mini-composite motors -- they have serious lift for their weight.
Welcome to Perlandia. Didja bring your toothbrush, toilet paper and asbestos suit?
But seriously, we go back to the whole whitespace thing... I think Python is essentially a "cleaner" language but that just kills it for me. It's not more readable if you're used to block-oriented languages to begin with. Possibly for newbies.
Dunno. I get turned off to think that if I miss a tab somewhere I'll get a compiler error. A brace, sure. But whitespace??
I think part of the reason Python is so popular is that it is extremely easy to embed it in a C language application. It really changes your view of coding an application: organize everything into low-level highly optimized C code and high-level Python code. Your C language application becomes a toolbox of functionality available from Python. This approach makes your application totally scriptable by default. I usually take this architecture one step further and create an even higher level, eaiser to use interface purely in Python.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I'll bite, troll!
We will perhaps eventually be writing only small modules which are identified by name as they are used to build larger ones, so that devices like indentation, rather than delimiters, might become feasible for expressing local structure in the source language.
--Donald E. Knuth, "Structured Programming with goto Statements", Computing Surveys, Vol 6 No 4, Dec. 1974
Or put more simply: Free your mind, and your code will follow.
I shouldn't feed the troll, but RTFA anyway. Unless your backyard is on the order of a square mile in size, the model rockets you're most probably launching from it aren't covered by the new regulations. Engine sizes A through D are well under the 62.5 gm limit. You need to be using size G engines before you run into a problem, but you need a considerably larger field than the average backyard to launch anything that would require them.
And the brethren went away edified.
Eric S. Raymond has written one of the better Python advocacy articles. His experiences with Python are similar to Frater's. Python has replaced C as my general purpose language of choice.
Actually, the way I read it is this only affects the solid propelant variants. High power rocketeers can still use the hybrid engine format that they have been using for 5 years to get around various transport restrictions. The hybrids use nytrous-oxide as a propelant, with a solid catalist. THe solid not actualyl being propelant. The synergy of the nitrus + catalist makes it stronger, faster, etc.. Check out a link to a hybrid motor maker.
This will certainly make it hard for the really hardcore of use who use the Solids for first stage boost. The hybrids are prefered for 2nd or 3rd stage int he realyl high power areana.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Python is distributed with a script (pindent.py) which can take normal python code and package it in block delimiting comments. So, one could output code without proper whitespace (and with proper comment delimiters), and have it easily 'whitespaced' before execution.
The pindent.py module also contains the class (PythonIndenter) which does the work, making it easy to incorporate in a Python program which is processing other python code.
There are also tools in the standard library to help properly generate python code directly.
In practice, it just isn't a problem.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
The restrictions are for *specific* chemicals - Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant (APCP) and Black Powder. The propellants are combinations of fuel and oxidizers. The restrictions are limits for ONE engine. Engines may be clustered or staged for greater combined impulse. There are still alternatives such as hybrid systems (which use nitrous oxide and a solid material such as cellulose).
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
and mention REBOL.
Cool alternative to Perl or Python.
www.REBOL.com
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Ok, let's face it, our elected and appointed leaders are dipshits. Now, let's look at some facts. Most model rockets are made of what? Cardboard, Plastic and balsa wood. Range of this supposed "weapons" is what, 500 to 1500 feet vertical. So, if you do some number crunching, you get maybe a mile from a rocket fired at a 45 degree angle. The biggest payload I have heard anyone lifting with a model rocket is a uncooked chicken egg. And if I remember right, that didn't always going up very high, and the egg ended up mostly just small shards of shell and scrambled. Also, have anyone tried to aim a unguided model rocket to any degree of accuratcy? You are lucky to get the rocket to land in your own neighborhood after you launch it. Even with bigger engines, the risk to anyone in this country of getting gassed or sickened with bioweapons from a model rocket is just stupid. Make sure you write President Bush about this, maybe something will finally get through his thick skull and leave the hobbies of thousands of people alone. If that doesn't work, we could always egg the White House with the model rockets that carry the eggs!
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
I've worked at LLNL, both with a Q clearance and before it was granted. I've been escorted by guards, but never did they touch their weapon nor behaved in anything like a threating or paranoid way. Mostly they found a comfortable chair and relaxed.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...