Posts made by raphjd

hXXp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_aids_treatment;_ylt=ArDBScb7Aua_IVpZ0KTDMM2s0NUE

German hematologists Eckhard Thiel and Gero Huetter of Berlin's Charite Medical University believe they may have cured an AIDS patient of his AIDS by virtue of a bone marrow transplant, given for an unrelated illness. An unidentified 42 yr. old American living in Berlin and suffering from AIDS developed an unrelated leukemia, which the doctors treated with a bone marrow transplant. Now, 20 months after the procedure, doctors can find no sign of AIDS in the patient.

The HIV retrovirus survives inside of white blood cells, all of which are completely eradicated prior to a bone marrow transplant. The white blood cells are then restored from the donor's bone marrow. One American and one European in 1,000 carries a gene mutation which happens to confer resistance to infection of the white blood cells with HIV. In searching for a tissue match for his patient's bone marrow transplant, Dr. Huetter managed to find a donor who was not only a tissue match, but also carried the mutant gene for HIV resistance.

Bone marrow transplants have been attempted before as treatments for HIV. In a 1999 review of 32 such attempts reported in the journal Medical Hypotheses, two apparent cures were reported. None of the prior studies, however, attempted to find donors who were both a tissue match and who carried the gene for HIV resistance.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases in the U.S., said the procedure was too costly and too dangerous to employ as a firstline cure for AIDS, however.

Significant minority want recriminalisation of gay sex in the UK

By Tony Grew • October 27, 2008 - 15:56

A new survey of the British public indicates there is still a minority who remain opposed to gay rights.

24% want gay sex to be recriminalised.

Among 16 to 24 year olds almost the same number, 23%, have had sexual contact with someone of the same sex.

Overall 6% classed themselves as gay, bisexual or lesbian, while 13% of the people surveyed said they had had sexual contact with someone of the same sex at some point in their lives, 16% of women and 10% of men.

Despite the introduction of civil partnerships, the equalisation of the age of consent, and new laws banning discrimination at work and in the provision of goods, services and facilities, there remains significant opposition to gay rights.

56% of those polled in the survey thought that gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children.

45% oppose gay marriage and 40% want a higher age of consent for gay sex, according to The Observer Sex Poll 2008.

"We have always been crystal clear that homophobia does not go away, it goes to sleep," said Ben Summerskill of gay equality organisation Stonewall.

"It is essential that we are continually vigilant of those who would like to turn back the clock not just to 1988, when Section 28 was introduced, but to the 1950s as well."

Homosexuality was partially decriminalised in 1967, with the age of consent set at 21. That was reduced to 18 in 1994.

In 2001 the government finally succeeded in equalising the age for gay and straight sex at 16, despite opposition from the House of Lords.

hXXp://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081016-net-filters-required-for-all-australians-no-opt-out.html

'Net filters "required" for all Australians, no opt-out

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: October 16, 2008 - 11:14AM CT

Australians may not be able to opt out of the government's Internet filtering initiative like they were originally led to believe. Details have begun to come out about Australia's Cyber-Safety Plan, which aims to block "illegal" content from being accessed within the country, as well as pornographic material inappropriate for children. Right now, the system is in the testing stages, but network engineers are now saying that there's no way to opt out entirely from content filtering.

The Australian government first revealed its filtering initiative in 2007, which it expected to cost AUS$189 million to implement. That money would go toward imposing filtering requirements on ISPs, who would have to use the Australian Communications and Media Authority's official blacklist, which is in turn based on the country's National Classification Scheme.

Australia moved forward with its plans despite widespread public outcry and began testing the system in Tasmania in February of this year. At the time, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said that the filters would be enabled by default and that consumers would have to request unfiltered connectivity if they wished to opt-out of the program.

Well, it turns out now that those promises were only partially true. Internode network engineer Mark Newton told Computerworld that users are able to opt out of the "additional material" blacklist—which targets content inappropriate for children—but not the main blacklist that filters what the Australian government determines is illegal content.

"That is the way the testing was formulated, the way the upcoming live trials will run, and the way the policy is framed; to believe otherwise is to believe that a government department would go to the lengths of declaring that some kind of Internet content is illegal, then allow an opt-out," Newton said. "Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked—end of story."

A spokesperson for the Australian Communications Minister seemed to confirm this revelation by saying that the filters would be required for all Australian citizens.

Assuming this is in fact the way the scheme is implemented in practice, it raises plenty of troubling questions. "Illegal" is a broad definition, leaving users wondering exactly what kinds of content will end up falling prey to the government's apparently mandatory filtering restrictions. Will Big Content be ringing up the Aussie government soon to have tracker sites added to the blacklist? What about sites that discuss topics like at-home bomb making, or something a little less explosive, like DVD decryption tools? And how about those sites that advise users on how to get around the filters? Will various Wikipedia pages be blocked?

Australia continues to ignore its own government-funded studies from 2006 that show ISP-level filtering to be ineffective and costly. The Australian government's disregard for those prior studies suggests that the driving force behind the current plan is more political than technical.

hXXp://gizmodo.com/5064310/australia-to-build-great-firewall-down-under

Australia To Build Great Firewall Down Under

By Elaine Chow, 2:05 AM on Thu Oct 16 2008, 11,081 views

Looks like China won't be the only place with a Great Firewall in place—The Australian government is introducing its own censorship regime that will determine what is or isn't illegal for you to view on the web. The move is said to help stop teenagers from accessing online pornography, but even if you opt-out of the pr0n filter, you'll get put on a different blacklist for “illegal” content.

So what could be considered illegal content? There's the possibility that the government will block any website related to controversial opinions on euthanasia, drugs or political dissent. Even legal content might get screwed with, considering even the best Internet content filters still incorrectly firewall about .1% of webpages. Who knew the land of bloomin' onions and Crocodile Dundee was teetering on the brink of Big Brother-ness?

Youtube Video

hXXp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btBF8jp6IgE

Many of you may remeber that Moses was up on Mount Sinai talking with god and getting the original 10 Commandments, while the others were making the golden calf.  When Moses came down and saw this, he broke the tablets, ordered the statue be destroyed and a bunch of people killed' including his brother.  Then he went back and got a replacement set of tablets of the 10 Commandments.

They mistakenly assume that gays are pedophiles. It's not the same thing.

No one ever says they need to ban heteros because some people molest children of the opposite sex.

hXXp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/3329225/Vatican-to-use-psychologists-to-weed-out-homosexual-priests.htm

Vatican to use psychologists to weed out homosexual priests

Trainee priests suspected of being gay should be weeded out by psychologists and banned from joining the Catholic Church, the Vatican has said.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 4:02PM GMT 31 Oct 2008

Homosexuality was a "deviation" that must be rooted out in would-be clergy early on in order to prevent "tragedies", the Vatican decreed in new guidelines on the issue.

Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Catholic Education Congregation, said that a celibate candidate with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should be barred "not because he commits a sin, but because homosexuality is a deviation, an irregularity, a wound" that would prevent him from fulfilling his duties.

The guidelines, approved by Pope Benedict XVI, are designed to prevent the sort of sex scandals involving paedophile priests which have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years, triggering law suits costing hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

The decree appears to ignore the consensus among sex abuse experts that homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.

Should there be any doubt about a trainee, psychologists or psychotherapists should be brought in to assess their sexual orientation and evaluate their suitability for the priesthood, the Vatican said.

The ruling outraged Italian gay rights organisations. "If the principal requirement for being a priest is chastity, sexual orientation should be irrelevant," said Franco Grillini, president of Gaynet.

Another homosexual group said the Catholic Church was full of gay priests and threatened to 'out' them to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Vatican's stance.

"We offer ourselves as consultants to help the Italian Catholic hierarchy trace all the homosexuals hiding away in the Vatican, in the college of cardinals, in dioceses, in parishes, in monasteries and so on," said Aurelio Mancuso, the president of Arcigay. "It would certainly be a haul to make the sacred buildings tremble".

It's great news for so many things in the US.

However, Obama believes in the Jim Crow style "back of the bus" for gays.  He has repeatedly said that his religious beliefs won't allow him to support gay marriage.

Civil Unions are not equality for countless reasons and it does separate us from the rest of society, making us 2nd class citizens.

I moved this since it's not an upload request, but a discussion about the video clip.

It's still happening.

The torrents are very fast.  I had one the other day doing over 7.8mB.

We just bought the series' 1 - 4 of Battlestar Galactica boxset and I noticed that no matter what the situation is, their hair is always perfectly gelled.

The humans still left on Caprica {their home planet} after it was nuked and taken over by the Cylons, all had perfectly gelled hair. They lived in the forest and scrounged for food and clean drinking water while fighting the Cylons, yet they were able to maintain their hair gel supplies.

During battles with the Cylons, stuff would be blowing up all around them on the various ships, but their hair never got messed up, even if they suffered massive 3rd degree burns on their entire bodies. You couldn't always recognise the face, but you knew who's hair style it was.

On New Caprica, they had virtually no supplies {a piece of rat jerky costs an entire day's wage} and the conditions were extremely hash, but they had plenty of hair gel.

After they left New Caprica, the President and the Admiral were talking and they said that all supplies were either completely gone or were going to run out in 2 days. 3 weeks later and their hair is still perfectly gelled, but the only food they have is algae soup.

Every time a helmet comes off {think hat hair}, their hair is still perfectly gelled.

I'm not really complaining, as there are some very hot guys on the show, but really, let's have at least a tiny bit of realism.

For this conversation, we're talking about east Asians {China, Japan, Korea, etc}.

Now the other way around… what I've observed is there are far fewer whites (gay men and women) that prefer Asian men, especially when you talk about the younger whites.  Why is that...

It's natural to tend toward your own race and culture.

You also have to look at the % of Asians and white in countries like the US and the UK.  There'd be a lot of lonely white people if everyone preferred Asians.

Gay white boys (those in their 20s) don't go for Asians because I think they've got certain stereotypes about how Asians look and act, and that just turns them off.

I think most of this is due to them coming out of the closet and being insecure and trying to keep as much security as possible by being with someone they can relate to the most.

For their parts, John Cho and B.D. Wong has shown that you can be Asian, not speak with an accent, and be good looking.  Unfortunately they're not bigger in the media.

I don't find BD Wong attractive at all.  John Cho is a good looking, but I still get grossed out about him because of the "House" episode he did.

Some of you may be old enough to remember the show "Designing Women".  The part where they go to Japan was funny.  There was a stand up comic who is Japanese American and had a massive Georgia accent.

Brent Corrigan used fake some pretty good fake IDs to do porn before he was old enough.

The fake IDs were so good, that no one from Cobra got in trouble over it.

http://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?topic=2726.0

It's in the "guides & how to" section of the forums.

There are several threads in the Support section about this.

The tracker went off line for a bit and things will get back to normal pretty soon.

Ok, I found and got FTP working, but I'm still having the same problem.

Previously, I could do a single download from my seedbox using sftp and it would use all of my bandwidth.

Now each download is capped at about 175kBps, so I have to run 4 or 5 downloads to take full advantage of the bandwidth.  I've tried 3 sftp clients {FileZilla, Core Pro and Winscp416} and it's all the same.

Nothing changed, no anti virus/firewall/router upgrades.  I haven't messed with any setting since I set up the seedbox and sftp client.

NOTE: I have to use sftp because Linux Ubuntu doesn't support normal ftp.

I understand where everyone's coming from on this, but I think the point that's being missed is that GLBT individuals/couples should not have to resort to getting a marriage license in order to be treated fairly and given the same perks and benefits as straight people.

No government is going to abolish marriage and those rights/privileges are directly linked to marriage.

Besides, even if 2 gay people do get married, it does not mean society will change it's harsh attitudes or stop plotting to make life worse for the GLBT community.

Maybe that's true.  However, with all the brainwashing heteros have had for the last 2,000 years telling them we are nothing but sleazy whores, gay marriage might change their minds.

A lot of supposedly open minded heteros are shocked when they find out how long my partner and I have been together. Ok, they still tend not to believe we are monogamous.

My only point is that we should be fighting for equality without having to resort to marriage as a means of gaining equality.

How do you propose we go about fighting for rights that have a long history of being part of marriage, without fighting for gay marriage?

I see a few problems with your idea;

1. Heteros will rightly say that we are trying to destroy marriage if we say that those rights shouldn't be attached to marriage.

2. Heteros will claim that we want special rights, because we want the rights without marriage attached.

3. It will reinforce the stereotype of gays being sleazy whores and then the heteros will question whether we deserve these rights/privileges.

Of course it's extremely important.

In the US, there are 14,000 {city, county, state and Federal} rights and privileges for being married.  These include hospital visitation, survivor benefits from social security, work pensions, and the list goes on and on and on.

Then of course you have the non government rights and privileges.  All forms of insurance have lower premiums for married people.

There is also the issue of international laws.  These allow immigration and other benefits.