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Medicine

One Night Stands May Be Genetic 240

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-in-your-genes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "So, he or she has cheated on you for the umpteenth time and their only excuse is: 'I just can't help it.' According to researchers at Binghamton University, they may be right. The propensity for infidelity could very well be in their DNA. In a first of its kind study, a team of investigators led by Justin Garcia, a SUNY Doctoral Diversity Fellow in the laboratory of evolutionary anthropology and health at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has taken a broad look at sexual behavior, matching choices with genes and has come up with a new theory on what makes humans 'tick' when it comes to sexual activity. The biggest culprit seems to be the dopamine receptor D4 polymorphism, or DRD4 gene. Already linked to sensation-seeking behavior such as alcohol use and gambling, DRD4 is known to influence the brain's chemistry and subsequently, an individual's behavior."
Censorship

EFF and Dvorak Blame the Digg Revolt On Lawyers 262

Posted by kdawson from the jet-fuel-on-a-fire dept.
enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."
PHP

Submission + - PHP 5.2.2 and 4.4.7 Released

Submitted by daeg
daeg writes: PHP 5.2.2 and 4.4.7 have been released with a plethora of security updates. Many of the security notifications come from the Month of PHP Bugs effort, and range from double freed memory to bugs in functions that allow attackers to enable register_globals, to memory corruption with unserialize(), to input validation flaws that allow e-mail header injections, with an unhealthy sprinkling of other bugs and flaws fixed. All administrators that run any version of PHP are encouraged to update immediately.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Looks to refuel talks with Yahoo

Submitted by
froggero1
froggero1 writes: "Software-but-not-so-much-search giant Microsoft wants to rekindle the takeover talks with Yahoo. According to the New York Post article, Yahoo! has repeatability turned away their offers, but Microsoft hopes that a lucrative 50 billion dollar offer will bring them back to the table. This move would increase Microsoft's web search market share to roughly 38%. But will one company being in control of the second and third ranked search engines have any impact on Google?"
Software

Submission + - Asked to install Pirated Software, what do you do?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I am an IT professional, and due to budget constraints, I have been told to install multiple copies of MS Office, despite offering to install OpenOffice, and other OpenSource Office products. Even though most of the uses are for people using Excel like a database, or formatting of text in cells, other programs are not tolerated. I have been over ruled by our controller, to my disagreement. Other than drafting a letter to the owners of the company on how I disagree with the policy, what else can I do? I would never turn them in, but I am in tough place by knowing doing something illegal. I want to keep my job, but disagree with some of the decision making on this issue.
Apple

Steve Jobs Personally Resolves Customer Complaint 341

Posted by samzenpus from the steve-jobs-my-dishes-need-to-be-washed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Consumerist recently published a story about an Apple customer who went through support hell with a broken Macbook. After escalating the issue up the support chain, and a month wait for his Macbook, the guy gave up and simply wrote Steve Jobs a blistering flame-mail. So, was he surprised when Jobs' executive assistant responded back the next day! He got both a brand new Macbook, as well as his old one to copy the hard drive. The guy also responded in a comment, and he turns out to be a slashdotter! He even wrote a journal entry here about the story."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun joins development of OpenOffice.org for Mac

Submitted by
widhalmt
widhalmt writes: "In a Blogpost a member of Sun Microsystems announces the new effort of Sun Microsoystems to help with porting OpenOffice.org to Mac OS X.

The Open Source Office Suite is well known on Linux and Windows, but lacks support for Mac OS by now. For a long time Sun did not want to join the development of that port but now they will actively push it."
The Internet

Submission + - The Internet of Things: What is a Spime?

Submitted by
CoolVibe
CoolVibe writes: "From the abstract in the talk: "World-renowned Science Fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling will outline his ideas for SPIMES, a form of ubiquitous computing that gives smarts and 'searchabiliity' to even the most mundane of physical products. Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth." It's a very interesting lecture given by Bruce Sterling about something we might see in the near future. The lecture can be viewed here on Google Video."
Biotech

Submission + - a longevity gene found

Submitted by
quixote9
quixote9 writes: "Calorie restriction while maintaining nutrient levels has long been known to dramatically increase life spans. Very different lab animals, from worms to mice, live up to 50% longer (or even more) on the restricted diets. However, so far, nobody has been able to figure out how this works. Scientists at the Salk Institute have found a specific gene in worms (there's a very similar one in people) that is directly involved in the longevity effect. That opens up the interesting possibility that doctors may someday be able to activate that gene directly and we can live long and prosper . . . without giving up chocolate."
OS X

Submission + - Steve Jobs personally resolves customer complaint

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Consumerist recently published a story about an Apple customer who went through support hell with a broken Macbook. After escalating the issue up the support chain, and a month wait for his Macbook, the guy gave up and simply wrote Steve Jobs a blistering flame-mail. So, was he surprised when Jobs' executive assistant responded back the next day! And he got both a brand new Macbook, as well as his old one to copy the hard drive. The guy also responded in a comment, and he turns out to be a slashdotter! He even wrote a journal entry here about the story.

I guess 'Think Different' really does work!

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