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Submission + - Radioactive material stolen in Iraq raises security fears (reuters.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Iraq is searching for "highly dangerous" radioactive material stolen last year, according to an environment ministry document and seven security, environmental and provincial officials who fear it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State.

The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing in November from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford WFT.N, the document seen by Reuters showed and officials confirmed.

A spokesman for Iraq's environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns.

Submission + - Judge rules research chimps are not 'legal persons' (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A state judge in New York has dealt the latest blow to an animal rights group’s attempt to have chimpanzees declared “legal persons.” In a decision handed down this morning, New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe ruled that two research chimps at Stony Brook University are not covered by a writ of habeas corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention. The Nonhuman Rights Project, which brought the lawsuit in an attempt to free the primates, has vowed to appeal.

Submission + - Does "Scientific Consensus" deserve a bad reputation? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by nerdyalien
nerdyalien writes: From the article: Fiction author Michael Crichton probably started the backlash against the idea of consensus in science. Crichton was rather notable for doubting the conclusions of climate scientists—he wrote an entire book in which they were the villains—so it's fair to say he wasn't thrilled when the field reached a consensus. Still, it's worth looking at what he said, if only because it's so painfully misguided:

As a STEM major, I am somewhat bias towards "strong" evidence side of the argument. However, the more I read literature from other somewhat related fields i.e. psychology, economics and climate science; the more I felt that they have little opportunity in repeating experiments, similar to counterparts in traditional hard science fields. Their accepted theories are based on limited historical occurrences and consensus among the scholars. Given the situation, should we consider "consensus" as accepted scientific facts ?

Submission + - Python 3.4 released (python.org)

Submitted by gadfium
gadfium writes: Python 3.4 is the latest version of the Python programming language. It doesn't change the language itself, but adds new library features, bug fixes and security improvements.

Submission + - Ugly Trends Threaten Aviation Industry (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post reports, "In the past several decades, the number of private and recreational pilots across the country has plummeted, as has the number of small aircraft being manufactured — trends that some say have been accelerated by increasingly strict federal regulations. If the decline continues, it will spell trouble for entrepreneurs ... Since 1980, the number of pilots in the country has nosedived from about 827,000 in 1980 to 617,000, according to the Frederick, Md.-based Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. During about the same period, data from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association in Washington show that production of single-engine planes plunged from 14,000 per year to fewer than 700."

Submission + - The Quiet Fury of Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Activities, technologies, equipment, or other matters regarding the US Department of Defense are a common topic on Slashdot, both as stories and in discussions. Despite that we seldom see stories regarding the senior leadership of DoD as we do for technologists, the political branches, and lately the NSA. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who served under both Presidents Bush and Obama, has released a rather biting memoir of his tenure as SecDef. The Wall Street Journal has an excerpt: "... despite everyone being "nice" to me, getting anything consequential done was so damnably difficult—even in the midst of two wars. I did not just have to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq and against al Qaeda; I also had to battle the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon, surmount internal conflicts within both administrations, avoid the partisan abyss in Congress, evade the single-minded parochial self-interest of so many members of Congress and resist the magnetic pull exercised by the White House, especially in the Obama administration, to bring everything under its control and micromanagement. Over time, the broad dysfunction of today's Washington wore me down, especially as I tried to maintain a public posture of nonpartisan calm, reason and conciliation. ... difficulties within the executive branch were nothing compared with the pain of dealing with Congress. Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country." — More at The Washington Post

Submission + - Dick Cheney Had Implanted Defibrillator Altered To Prevent Terrorist Attack (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post reports, "Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he once feared that terrorists could use the electrical device that had been implanted near his heart to kill him and had his doctor disable its wireless function. Cheney has a history of heart trouble, suffering the first of five heart attacks at age 37. ... In an interview with CBS’ ”60 Minutes,” Cheney says doctors replaced an implanted defibrillator near his heart in 2007. The device can detect irregular heartbeats and control them with electrical jolts. Cheney says that he and his doctor, cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, turned off the device’s wireless function in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock." — More at CBS News.

Submission + - GNU Make 4.0 Released

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A new major version of the classic GNU Make software has been released. First of all, Make 4.0 has integration support for GNU Guile. Guile is the extension system of the GNU project that is a Scheme programming language implementation and now in the Make world will be the embedded extension language. 4.0 also features a new "output-sync" option, "trace-enables" for tracing of targets, a "none" flag for the "debug" argument, and the "job server" and .ONESHELL features are now supported under Windows. There are also new assignment operators, a new function for writing to files, and other enhancements. It's been reported that Make 4.0 also has more than 80 bug-fixes. More details can be found from their release announcement on the mailing list.

Submission + - How Entrepreneurs Overturned California's Retroactive Tax on Startup Founders (xconomy.com)

Submitted by waderoush
waderoush writes: Startup founders in California can breathe a little easier today — they won't be getting bills from the state for up to $120 million in back taxes. On Friday California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill prohibiting the state from levying retroactive taxes on founders and other small-business investors who took advantage of a tax break invalidated last year by a state appeals court. California Business Defense, a coalition of entrepreneurs, spent most of 2013 trying to reverse the California Franchise Tax Board's interpretation of the court ruling, under which it planned to hit Californians with new tax bills on the sale of small-business stock going back to 2008 (a story that Slashdot picked up on January 24). Two bills on the matter reached Governor Brown's desk in September, one fully restoring the investment incentive through 2016, the other partially restoring it. Brown signed AB1412, the bill granting full relief. 'For a bunch of political greenhorns operating in an environment where political partisanship is at an all-time high, we did all right,' writes Brian Overstreet, one of the co-founders of California Business Defense. 'But it should never have been this hard.'

Submission + - Whirlpool Ditches IBM Collaboration Software, Moves to Google Apps

Submitted by cagraham
cagraham writes: Appliance maker Whirlpool has decided to stop using IBM's "Notes" collaboration software, and instead move to Google Apps for Business. The Wall Street Journal reports that the decision was based on both worker's familiarity with Google Apps, and lessening the IT workload. Because most workers have used (or use) apps like Google Calendar and Google Docs, Whirlpool's IT staff won't have to devote as much time to initial software training. This move lines up with recent enterprise reports, which largely forceast an increasing move to cloud based software. Whirlpool's contract with Google will cover all of their 30,000 employees.

Submission + - Ancient supervolcanoes revealed on Mars (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: A series of Martian craters assumed to have been formed by meteorites may actually be extinct volcanoes so massive that, when they were active billions of years ago, they could have buried Mars in ash.
The craters pepper the surface of Arabia Terra, a geologically ancient region of northern Mars. They appear as several huge circular pits that resemble Earth's calderas, in which magma beneath a volcano drains after a volcanic eruption, causing the ground above the magma chamber to collapse. Using data from several satellites orbiting Mars, researchers mapped Eden patera in detail. In a report in Nature today (abstract), they describe three separate calderas within the depression, along with possible signs of a lake of solidified lava and a volcanic vent where lava could have oozed out.

Submission + - Congress reaches agreement... on helium (npr.org)

Submitted by gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: With just hours to go before a government shutdown, Congress has finally found something it can agree on. Unfortunately, that something isn't a budget: it's helium. the US holds vast helium reserves which it sells to scientists and private industry. According to NPR, a new law was needed to allow the helium to continue to flow. Congress passed it late last week, but only after a year-long lobbying effort and intense debate (and in the end, Senator Ted Cruz opposed the measure). Can a new bipartisanship rise out of this cooperation? Or will hot air prevail on Capitol Hill? *Insert your helium joke here*

Submission + - Saudi Cleric Pummeled On Twitter For Claiming Driving Damages Women's Ovaries (cnn.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CNN reports, "...Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan's widely derided remarks have gone viral ... "If a woman drives a car," Al-Loheidan told Saudi news website sabq.org ... "it could have a negative physiological impact ... it would automatically affect a woman's ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward." ... "We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their children are born with varying degrees of clinical problems." The controversial comments ... were widely interpreted throughout Saudi Arabia as an attempt to discourage women in the country from joining a popular online movement urging them to stage a demonstration by driving cars on October 26. "This is his answer to the campaign," Saudi women's rights activist Aziza Yousef told CNN. ... "He's making a fool of himself. He shouldn't touch this field at all ..." ... Al-Loheidan's words have been ridiculed mercilessly via social media ... An Arabic Twitter hashtag called "#WomensDrivingAffectsOvariesAndPelvises" was quickly created to make fun of Al-Loheidan — underscoring just how widely the call for Saudi women to defy the driving ban has resonated thus far. And while numerous conservative voices have supported Al-Loheidan, many Saudis believe this was an extremely clumsy way of trying to counter the popularity of the October 26 campaign."

Submission + - Google may face fine under EU privacy laws (cmo.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: Google faces financial sanctions in France after failing to comply with an order to alter how it stores and shares user data to conform to the nation's privacy laws. The enforcement follows an analysis led by European data protection authorities of a new privacy policy that Google enacted in 2012. France's privacy watchdog, the Commission Nationale de L'Informatique et des Libertes, in June ordered Google to comply with French data protection laws within three months. But Google had not changed its policies to comply with French laws by a deadline last week.

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