The Mind Trap

Sexual Orientation Of Men Determined Before Birth

Reuters: A study has uncovered that the more older brothers a man has the more likely he is to be gay -- but they have to be biological brothers from the same mother, not just older males that the man grows up with. It's important to note that this is a correlation, and the suggested mechanism is just a theory. To whit:
"These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men and indicate that the fraternal birth-order effect is probably the result of a maternal 'memory' for male gestations or births," Bogaert writes in his report in PNAS Early Edition...A woman's body may see a male fetus as "foreign," Bogaert explains, and her immune response to subsequent male fetuses may grow progressively stronger."
If this were true it could also explain why there are more homosexual men than women -- because the immune response is stronger.
There are two ways this could be interpreted. First, that people are born homosexual the same way they are born white or black, so it's perfectly normal. Second, people who argue that homosexuality is a disease will use it to back up their argument, although really the homosexuality is the symptom of a person being considered a disease...
For mine, I haven't seen the report so I don't know how strong this correlation is, it could be nothing. Even if it isn't it's probably over-simplistic. Still, it's interesting conversation fodder when you're bored and want to start an argument...

An Interview With My Boss

SocalTech: For those who don't know what I do, here's an interview with my boss, Rafat Ali.

Understanding Digg and Its Utopian Idealism

PC Mag: I've disagreed with John Dvorak before, but this time I think he's on the mark with the issues surrounding Digg's user-rating system. "Has anyone even thought about the possibility of news manipulators using this "democratic" mechanism? What proof is there that any of these "diggs" are accurate? I have no doubt that they are accurate today because the crew at Digg consists of honest folks, but what happens when Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone runs it? Or when the government of China has its version? ... Can Digg be rigged? And what happens if it ever gets rigged? Would people notice? Or would they just be happy that The New York Times editors are not "telling them what's important?"
And so on. It would be pretty easy to rig Digg at the moment when it only takes a few hundred hits to get to the top...if there were tens of thousands of "diggs" it would be more difficult, but still relatively easy (and cheap, compared to a standard advertising campaign). And I liked this comment: "What would happen to the Digg site if say, Jerry Falwell and his legions, along with the Bush-supporting minions in the red states, flocked to Digg and actively promoted stories, slammed things they didn't like, and in the process drove away the current libertarian users? Digg as a mechanism would still work, right? It would still be democratic, right? Or would it? Is it ever democratic really?"
As Digg gets bigger it will run into the same problems Wikipedia did...

Supreme Court Agrees To Look Into Patent Obviousness

TechDirt: "The Supreme Court has actually agreed to hear the KSR v. Teleflex case that questions what's the standard for "obviousness" in awarding patents." Techdirt has a good post on why this is important, so I won't repeat it...

Is It Wrong To Infringe A Thief's Copyright?

NY Times: I'm sure everyone is familiar with the story of one mans campaign to get back the lost/stolen Sidekick of his friend by posting the name and images of the girl using it on the web as part of a "name and shame" campaign.
The page is here.
The part to do with copyright is that the girl who had the Sidekick, Sasha Gomez, took pictures of herself and other things and sent them to people, apparently unaware that the original owner had set the account to back up everything on the web server -- so when the original owner bought a new device and logged in there were the photos and e-mail address and so on of the new "owner". After Sasha refused to give it back the images were posted on the web...I'm dead-set certain her permission as copyright owner wasn't obtained to do this, so it's technically a case of copyright infringement. It's possible it comes under the protection of "fair comment" or something, I'm not that up to speed with copyright law in the US. So I guess the two questions are: "Is it copyright infringement?" and "Who cares?"

Cool Video Travel Site

ResearchBuzz: "TurnHere is a new site that provides information about places in the US and around the world via short films (hundreds of short films)." 'Nuff said.
TurnHere

Microsoft Drops Ideology, Adds Creative Commons

BetaNews: The basics are simple: Microsoft and non-profit licensing organization Creative Commons have struck a deal to allow offices users to add CC licensing to their documents..."The first document to be licensed through the Office tool is a speech by Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, which will be made at the Creative Commons iSummit in Rio de Janiero, the two companies said."
Microsoft has traditionally been against anything that smacked of being even slightly against copyright, but has recently mellowed its stand, which makes a lot of sense, especially in this case. The Creative Commons license was never intended to be used for the kind of things Microsoft has IP for. However it is intended for the kinds of things that people use Microsoft Office to create, and the ability to specify what an author is willing to allow their work to be used for within an organisation or social group will be very useful.
There's some interesting history on the past antagonism between Microsoft and Lessig here...

Microsoft Loses Office Patent Appeal

InformationWeek: The Guatamalan suing Microsoft for patent infringement has had another victory -- Microsoft lost a federal appeal. There's some dispute over the amount payable though, with the original ruling at $6.1 million and an escrow account MS was ordered to start to cover sales of additional infringing products holding $65 million. The Guatamalan wants a bigger slice of that...

EC Public Patent Hearing

Forbes: "The European Commission said it will hold a public hearing on July 12 on a future patent policy for the EU."

Nintendo Receives Patent For "Instant Messaging Service"

Geek.com: It seems Nintendo has received a patent (that was filed in 2000) that would "let gamers send messages and share user accounts and buddy lists across different Nintendo systems". I'm not sure whether it's specific to Nintendo, but it seems to be something that's currently widespread...