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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?"
This country is turing communist.
goo.
I like Python and I agree that the whitespace having any meaning other than readability is bad. Brackets are easier to deal with than all the indentation level problems I've encountered in Python.
It's especially bad when your idea of what a tab is (ie 8 characters) vs mine (4) is.
I also don't like the tendency to output extra spaces in your output for you. I know there are ways to avoid it but it's not something you should have to avoid.
Oh, come on, moderators...
A) This is really funny.
B) This is slashback for christ's sake.
C) I might have goofed up the URL...try this one instead.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Funny you should mention that. I was reading Andrei Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design, a perverse festival of C++ templates, as I read your post!
BTW, the bald, naked saint would rap your knuckles with his staff for using the less type-safe python.
Gun registries don't kill gun ownership, governments do. There is not any clear line between a registry and seizure any more than there is a clear line between firearm ownership and unjust killings. That is to say: either one makes the other more possible, but in the end, it's a finger that pulls the trigger.
Not to mention that in any situation where the U.S. government had the will and power to begin seizing firearms, firearms would be useless as a tool of resistance, with or without a registry. Ask David Koresh.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.