seattle-pk writes "Males are apparently clueless when it comes to interpreting sexual intent from females, according to a recent study (PDF) from Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Men were found commonly to perceive more sexual intent in women's behavior than women were intending to convey. (A campus survey showed that 68% of college females had an experience where a male mistook signs of friendliness for affection.) However, the study also shows that men were quite likely to misperceive sexual interest as friendliness. 'Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall,' according to the article. If you're a male who ever mistook the meaning of a barista's smile, looks like you're not alone."

se7en writes "VeriSign is jacking up prices for the .com and .net domains for the second year running, increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN. 'Assuming that VeriSign continues the 7 percent rise each year (which seems reasonable given the company's history), registrars will be looking at $9.00 for .com domains by the time the current contract ends in 2012 — a 50 percent increase in six years.' Registrars have no choice but to pony up, and chances are they'll pass the pain on to customers."

sean_nestor writes to mention that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took a bit of time recently to comment on last week's announcement that Sun Microsystems would be partnering closely with the NSA for security research surrounding OpenSolaris. Rather than the typical loads of legalese and confidentiality agreements Sun and the NSA are claiming that this move is more about the NSA joining the OpenSolaris community than anything else. I guess only time will tell.

AnonymousHack writes "Swiss and MIT researchers have developed a wearable kit that will capture your every move for mapping onto a virtual character. It's almost as accurate as the camera-based motion capture used in studios to develop games. The team have recorded people's movements in completely new locations — like driving a car — previously out of reach. There is even a video of it in action."

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Some record labels hire outside companies to plant fake files on peer-to-peer sites. Now, labels are turning these decoy files into vehicles for marketing to music pirates by inserting promotional material into the files, such as an eight-minute clip from a Jay-Z concert, the Wall Street Journal reports." From the article: "'The concept here is making the peer-to-peer networks work for us,' says Jay-Z's attorney, Michael Guido. 'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience,' and 'this technology allows us to market back to them.'"

Michael J. Ross writes "Experienced and conscientious Web developers, in their efforts to learn from the mistakes of others and to avoid repeating them on their own projects, tend to accumulate tips and recommendations for the many aspects of successfully creating Web sites. These best practices take the form of bookmarked Web pages, saved articles, downloaded PDF files, scribbled notes on scraps of paper, and hastily created documents that will be better organized one of these days, when the developer's schedule becomes less hectic (sure...). Being difficult if not impossible to find later, these pearls of wisdom are rarely consulted before or during each new Web site project. What the developer needs is a book that brings together as many of these best practices as possible, without being overwhelming. Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists may be the answer." Read the rest of Michael's review.