But just yesterday a survey showed that about 70% of the youth doesn't have a clue how you can contract HIV, and a very high percentage takes no protective measures at all.
Same in France... but it used to be different.
I really loved the messages we got back in the late 80s - early 90s. There were no mixed messages back then. After some pretty bad scandals with contaminated blood, the government changed their tune from hope (we'll have a cure within 5 years) to gloom. The message I remember from then was:
If You get the virus, it's only a matter of time before you develop AIDS and die a horrible death.
The corollary was "use condoms, they're safe"... condoms you could purchase from pharmacies for 1 franc (10p? 20c?).
A second corollary was: If you ever wanted to have unprotected sex with your partner, you'd wait 3 months and could go to the clinic to have a free, anonymous test. In those days, a contaminated person could still show negative if contaminated within a 3 months window. Anyway, you'd have a chat with the nurse, she'd tell you all about the risks involved with unprotected sex, re-explain the vectors of contamination (but you did learn that in school too) and would let you off with "even if it's safe to have sex with your partner, there's an element of trust involved for both of you and the only 100% safe-sex practice is to use a condom".
At the same time, there was also a big show of solidarity towards HIV-positive people (I remember of a full mouth kiss on TV between an actress and someone infected... she wanted to remind people that saliva is not a vector). But! When you're HIV positive, eventually you die... Cyril Collard, Freddy Mercury, etc etc etc...
Fast-forward 15 years, kids are having sex younger and younger, they think anal sex is safe, they think a cure will be found, condoms are fucking expensive so people don't use them, and those free HIV tests? You'd be hard pressed to find a free clinic.
In Britain... Well, I'm showing my ignorance here, I have lived here for the past 12 years but have only been to hospital once (that was enough) and to the GP twice (second time was enough). What I hear is that tests aren't anonymous and that your employer is allowed to know if you went for a test (probably not true, but that's what I heard).
Condoms are real expensive here too... So people don't use them or don't know how to use them and they get infected by all sorts of VDs (not only HIV). Britain also has the youngest mothers in Europe!
It's not only France and Britain. If you want to see how bad sexual practices in the devoloped world have become, watch the movie kids (set in NYC).
NT3.51 had 5 service packs. NT4 had 6.5. w2k had 4. XP might only have 2.
Next one after that? Won't have any service packs at all!
I'd still be using my NT4 if it weren't for the lack of USB. It was supposed to come in SP7... but didn't because 2k was released. 2k had USB support and people moved en-masse. Can't remember what XP promissed over 2k, though. Better games? Icons for children? Can't have been improved stability, right?
They're what appears to be a really big shop with a lot of interesting (read cheap) taiwanese gear you can't really find elsewhere (at that price).
But! If that comes at the price of their customer support, people ougth to think twice before ordering from them: When everything's fine, you get yourself a bargain. If everything is not fine and dandy, then you have a problem.
Yes they screwed me before on two occasions (I sent the AGP card back and got the PCI I ordered, but I could've done without the hassle), but they've been fine on many other occasions.
What does it, is when they start accusing me of trying to con them out of a couple of quid, instead of looking at their record to try and sort out their mess.
Record of bad support == stay away.
A shop with good support? Microdirect (at least for me, here in the UK).
I bought one of them athlon shuttles and the samsung memory I bought with it just wouldn't work. I tried two sticks, then another two and each time memtest86 failed.
What do the microdirect guys ask me to do? They ask me to bring the shuttle, then one of their employees tested sticks with memtest86 until he found two that worked. He then sent the whole batch back to samsung as faulty but that's not the point:-)
The point is, it wasn't my fault if Samsung sent them faulty sticks, was it? They didn't say I was trying to con them, did they? Nope, they were professional and even though they are more expensive than ebuyer (not always) I will shop with them because I can always pop down to the shop and find someone who will listen to me. If they screwed-up, they'll fix it.
They've gone worse and worse over the past 18 months, too! Ebuyer is still cheap with loads of goodies and their website is easy to navigate, but I'm sorry to say their customer service is plain shite. Don't shop with ebuyer. If anything goes wrong with your order, don't expect it to be sorted... ever.
They don't do email, just "enotes" (which will take you an hour to send because that particular part of the website is so slow it loses connection all the time) and phone. Phone is expensive, and enotes they read and reply to weeks after... if they feel like it at all. I'm trying to have a conversation with their main man "david" but with weeks between replies, it just seems silly. They operate in the US too (I'm in the UK). Maybe if they piss-off someone enough in the US it'll get ugly. Here, they just hope you'll get bored and give-up, and go away.
My misfortune? I ordered a 120GB seagate drive, received a broken 200GB maxtor covered in finger prints. Difficult to argue "you sent me a drive I did not order and it's broken" when "david" says ebuyer or their warehouses don't do mistakes... Yeah right, do you remember last time you sent me an AGP card when I ordered the PCI version? And that time last year when my order turned-up weeks after chrismas even though I paid extra charge to have it delivered on time? My current problem has been going-on since last summer. I have a feeling I lost the money.
Well, least I can do is warn you not to buy anything from them... and don't trust me, check the other reviews online!
OK, I haven't RTFA (what's the point, everyone else says it's bogus) but that somehow reminded me of this project: MDI (Moteur Developpment International) (it's been mentioned on/. before).
Project revolves around an engine that can run of compressed air up to a certain speed, and uses a mixture of petrol and gas to push the speed further.
So... running on compressed air, the tank can be refilled of a compressor (yes, that'll be really useful when someday our electricity is derived from clean-er sources) and the overall amount of petrol needed to drive around is reduced.
I've been following the project with interest. I can't do much to help these guys, though... just thought I'd get the project mentioned again and hopefully their effort will rise a few eyebrows.
Yeah, same thing here, I tried to swap my dad's TV for one with an svideo plug, he didn't say anything (because his beloved son bought him a new TV), but I could see that he was unhappy in the extreme (well, I didn't spot anything, my mother told me).
What's the point of the story? Sometimes, people just like things the way they are... and we're all guilty of this to some extent: Can you stand the "new" XP look? How long's it been like that already? I still call it the new style even though it's probably been years. Same with Linux, I'm still using 1.2.13 when 2.0.36's been out for... But, the old one's working fine, right? Why replace it?
So, if I'm already exhibiting this kind of conservative behaviour at the tender age of 33, I guess I can't expect my dad (in his late 60s) to be happy about my replacing his f*in telly without him even asking for it! Yup, the old one is working just fine... move along, nothing to see...
Unfortunately, this will probably mean OpenLDAP will fade into insignificance, but I may be wrong !
Why? KDE vs gnome? freebsd vs linux? It's not going to dissapear...
Nope, more like OpenGFS vs GFS. Check the opengfs webpage, they started work on improving global locking, etc etc, but once Redhat bought sistina and re-released GFS under GPL, opengfs had no reason to exist anymore. Shame for the devel effort going to waste...
Same happened to QT vs Harmony if anyone remembers (Harmony died when QT went for GPL if I remember)...
Hell yes! In the old days, we (kids) were using something called "compteur mobilette" (tm).
So when someone was doing "70kph compteur mobilette" it meant he/she (mostly he) was probably only doing 30-40kph. Still, that used to fill them nedheads full of pride for riding soooo fast, and may in fact have saved a life or two... unfortunately.
I'm not too proud about that one but... here it goes.
One trick you can do with a can of soup is this:
Put your index finger on a flat surface (say the kitchen top).
Lift a can of [insert your favorite ingredient] with your other hand, high in the air.
Smash the can on your finger as hard as you can.
If you aim right, the middle section (half way up the can) has some kind of a soft spot, you won't feel a thing, no matter how hard you come down. It's noisy and scary, a great party trick really! (works even better if you're pissed enough... or if your audiance is).
Now, I tried it once in germany and I still don't know what the fuck went wrong... maybe they use some kind of armored tin or something... but it didn't go exactly as planned.
To cut the story short, sharp pain and mister nail turning instantly purple. Thing is, the germans didn't even laugh... one asked me "Are you mat? vhy did you do that for?"
Ahhhh the germans... God bless them... Endless hours of fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, I wish I had mod points to mod you informative!
(google cached copy provided in case he runs his webserver on CP/M)
I really loved the messages we got back in the late 80s - early 90s. There were no mixed messages back then. After some pretty bad scandals with contaminated blood, the government changed their tune from hope (we'll have a cure within 5 years) to gloom. The message I remember from then was:
If You get the virus, it's only a matter of time before you develop AIDS and die a horrible death.
The corollary was "use condoms, they're safe"... condoms you could purchase from pharmacies for 1 franc (10p? 20c?).
A second corollary was: If you ever wanted to have unprotected sex with your partner, you'd wait 3 months and could go to the clinic to have a free, anonymous test. In those days, a contaminated person could still show negative if contaminated within a 3 months window. Anyway, you'd have a chat with the nurse, she'd tell you all about the risks involved with unprotected sex, re-explain the vectors of contamination (but you did learn that in school too) and would let you off with "even if it's safe to have sex with your partner, there's an element of trust involved for both of you and the only 100% safe-sex practice is to use a condom".
At the same time, there was also a big show of solidarity towards HIV-positive people (I remember of a full mouth kiss on TV between an actress and someone infected... she wanted to remind people that saliva is not a vector). But! When you're HIV positive, eventually you die... Cyril Collard, Freddy Mercury, etc etc etc...
Fast-forward 15 years, kids are having sex younger and younger, they think anal sex is safe, they think a cure will be found, condoms are fucking expensive so people don't use them, and those free HIV tests? You'd be hard pressed to find a free clinic.
In Britain... Well, I'm showing my ignorance here, I have lived here for the past 12 years but have only been to hospital once (that was enough) and to the GP twice (second time was enough). What I hear is that tests aren't anonymous and that your employer is allowed to know if you went for a test (probably not true, but that's what I heard).
Condoms are real expensive here too... So people don't use them or don't know how to use them and they get infected by all sorts of VDs (not only HIV). Britain also has the youngest mothers in Europe!
It's not only France and Britain. If you want to see how bad sexual practices in the devoloped world have become, watch the movie kids (set in NYC).
Next one after that? Won't have any service packs at all!
I'd still be using my NT4 if it weren't for the lack of USB. It was supposed to come in SP7... but didn't because 2k was released. 2k had USB support and people moved en-masse. Can't remember what XP promissed over 2k, though. Better games? Icons for children? Can't have been improved stability, right?
They're what appears to be a really big shop with a lot of interesting (read cheap) taiwanese gear you can't really find elsewhere (at that price).
But! If that comes at the price of their customer support, people ougth to think twice before ordering from them: When everything's fine, you get yourself a bargain. If everything is not fine and dandy, then you have a problem.
Yes they screwed me before on two occasions (I sent the AGP card back and got the PCI I ordered, but I could've done without the hassle), but they've been fine on many other occasions.
What does it, is when they start accusing me of trying to con them out of a couple of quid, instead of looking at their record to try and sort out their mess.
Record of bad support == stay away.
A shop with good support? Microdirect (at least for me, here in the UK).
I bought one of them athlon shuttles and the samsung memory I bought with it just wouldn't work. I tried two sticks, then another two and each time memtest86 failed. :-)
What do the microdirect guys ask me to do? They ask me to bring the shuttle, then one of their employees tested sticks with memtest86 until he found two that worked. He then sent the whole batch back to samsung as faulty but that's not the point
The point is, it wasn't my fault if Samsung sent them faulty sticks, was it? They didn't say I was trying to con them, did they? Nope, they were professional and even though they are more expensive than ebuyer (not always) I will shop with them because I can always pop down to the shop and find someone who will listen to me. If they screwed-up, they'll fix it.
They've gone worse and worse over the past 18 months, too! Ebuyer is still cheap with loads of goodies and their website is easy to navigate, but I'm sorry to say their customer service is plain shite. Don't shop with ebuyer. If anything goes wrong with your order, don't expect it to be sorted... ever.
They don't do email, just "enotes" (which will take you an hour to send because that particular part of the website is so slow it loses connection all the time) and phone. Phone is expensive, and enotes they read and reply to weeks after... if they feel like it at all. I'm trying to have a conversation with their main man "david" but with weeks between replies, it just seems silly. They operate in the US too (I'm in the UK). Maybe if they piss-off someone enough in the US it'll get ugly. Here, they just hope you'll get bored and give-up, and go away.
My misfortune? I ordered a 120GB seagate drive, received a broken 200GB maxtor covered in finger prints. Difficult to argue "you sent me a drive I did not order and it's broken" when "david" says ebuyer or their warehouses don't do mistakes... Yeah right, do you remember last time you sent me an AGP card when I ordered the PCI version? And that time last year when my order turned-up weeks after chrismas even though I paid extra charge to have it delivered on time? My current problem has been going-on since last summer. I have a feeling I lost the money.
Well, least I can do is warn you not to buy anything from them... and don't trust me, check the other reviews online!
Project revolves around an engine that can run of compressed air up to a certain speed, and uses a mixture of petrol and gas to push the speed further.
So... running on compressed air, the tank can be refilled of a compressor (yes, that'll be really useful when someday our electricity is derived from clean-er sources) and the overall amount of petrol needed to drive around is reduced.
I've been following the project with interest. I can't do much to help these guys, though... just thought I'd get the project mentioned again and hopefully their effort will rise a few eyebrows.
Here's the direct link about the AAC driver mentioned in the story.
What's the point of the story? Sometimes, people just like things the way they are... and we're all guilty of this to some extent: Can you stand the "new" XP look? How long's it been like that already? I still call it the new style even though it's probably been years. Same with Linux, I'm still using 1.2.13 when 2.0.36's been out for... But, the old one's working fine, right? Why replace it?
So, if I'm already exhibiting this kind of conservative behaviour at the tender age of 33, I guess I can't expect my dad (in his late 60s) to be happy about my replacing his f*in telly without him even asking for it! Yup, the old one is working just fine... move along, nothing to see...
Same happened to QT vs Harmony if anyone remembers (Harmony died when QT went for GPL if I remember)...
What? They still use BMPs?
So when someone was doing "70kph compteur mobilette" it meant he/she (mostly he) was probably only doing 30-40kph. Still, that used to fill them nedheads full of pride for riding soooo fast, and may in fact have saved a life or two... unfortunately.
One trick you can do with a can of soup is this:
- Put your index finger on a flat surface (say the kitchen top).
- Lift a can of [insert your favorite ingredient] with your other hand, high in the air.
- Smash the can on your finger as hard as you can.
If you aim right, the middle section (half way up the can) has some kind of a soft spot, you won't feel a thing, no matter how hard you come down. It's noisy and scary, a great party trick really! (works even better if you're pissed enough... or if your audiance is).Now, I tried it once in germany and I still don't know what the fuck went wrong... maybe they use some kind of armored tin or something... but it didn't go exactly as planned.
To cut the story short, sharp pain and mister nail turning instantly purple. Thing is, the germans didn't even laugh... one asked me "Are you mat? vhy did you do that for?"
Ahhhh the germans... God bless them... Endless hours of fun.