Scale your photos down to 604x453, which is the size Facebook displays them at, and you will get to control the sharpness and image quality.
Upload at any other size, and Facebook will re-sample them with some very cheap algorithm and apply aggressive compression and they will look like ass.
Try it, you'll be amazed how much better your photos suddenly look.
I normally use "convert -strip -sharpen 0.3 -quality 85 -geometry 604x604" before uploading - it just takes a second, and makes a huge difference.
Facebook has the ability to rapidly deploy changes, something they would lose if they started using the interbank-transfer-system COBOL development model.
You talk about "future loads" as if they are a known quantity. This whole web world thrives on the idea that you can quickly react to changes in the market, user preferences, and so on. For Facebook it makes much more sense to remain nimble and put some effort into increasing the efficiency of the tools that allow them to do so.
Look at for example Singapore: Average GDP per capita is higher than in US, but still the country is not democracy by any definition.
On paper, Singapore is a fine democracy.
The two things that get in the way are (A) the willingness of the courts to indulge politically-motivated libel suits, and (B) the lack of an effective press. Between these two, the ruling PAP has been able to sidestep a lot of what would be healthy competition, with the result that most serious politicians and aspiring technocrats just take the path of least resistance and work within the party rather than running against it.
Over the years, it has been getting more democratic, though, and the trend seems to be continuing.
Many people seem to overlook the degree to which Singapore is a model for the slow but steady emergence of democracy in east Asia.
Merit still has 35.0.0.0/8 despite many of their largest tenants (such as the University of Michigan) moving on to smaller allocations of their own (mostly starting at 141.211/16). Other than MSU, I can't fathom what they are doing with all that space.
Gladiators were taught to fight with heavy wooden swords so that the real sword would be easier to handle.
Surely it is better to give students crippled operating systems such as Vista so that their introduction to real world technology is a pleasant one? Rather than go the other way around?
Starting the students on Vista is more like training gladiators with swords made out of aluminum foil.
N900 might be an amazing phone, technically, but most people don't, and never have cared about that. They care about how nice it is to use. Most people here still don't seem to understand that.
Nokia's interface has always been the easiest to use for people who are new to phones. It tends to be Apple-like in the sense that obvious actions produce obvious results, unlike many other platforms. Of course, people who are already accustomed to something else may have some re-learning to do which isn't fun.
And yet, your exception comes down to the same thing: the powerful man with the gun initiating violent force against the man who is merely moving from A to B and who has the audacity not to do as he is told.
I suppose you could read it that way, but in this case between A and B there's a sign that clearly tells you not to proceed. The fact that there are walls around certain buildings doesn't mean you're not generally welcome.
Which Asian countries allow Americans to do volunteer work for non-profits without a visa?
If you read the letter of the law, I'm not sure how many. Maybe not a whole lot.
But as a practical matter, this is how almost all short-term volunteers operate unless they are sent by foreign government-linked programmes like VSO or the Peace Corps.
The paperwork and expense associated with visas are so onerous, and the authorities' concern over the matter is so slight, that tourist entries are the standard practice. Unless you were staying for an extended period, nobody's going to go through the trouble of getting you a work visa.
From what I can tell, your association is with Singapore, and their government website visitor information only seems to talk about admission without a visa for "social" purposes.
Typically visa-free entry is granted for social or "business visit" purposes. This latter is meant to encompass meetings and the like, though in reality it tends to mean anything you're not getting paid for locally and not staying more than a few weeks/months to do.
I'm across the bridge from Singapore these days, in Malaysia.
The only useful professional service you can do in a week, outside of an operating room, is attend a conference.
Try to do a presentation on something from back home that the locals would not know about. Topic selection should involve things that you can't just download off freshmeat or print PDFs from cisco.com... the locals can do that perfectly well without you. Give a presentation on something the locals could not possibly experience. If in a tropical area, a short presentation on arctic data centers
Are you fricking serious? How useless a person would you have to be to think that's helpful? Perhaps you could give a presentation at a Golgafrincham B Ark conference sometime.
As I've posted above, there's a massive shortage of skilled people for even very simple IT tasks among many NGOs in developing countries. Sure, some are lucky enough to have knowledgeable folks, but in the really poor areas they are the exception. People who know their stuff GTFO to where they can feed their families.
Professional service is not suitable for short-term volunteering - better dig a ditch or something simple like that.
IT is an exception to this. There are plenty of straightforward needs that can be addressed in limited periods. Some of the drop-in stuff I've done recently:
Installing network cable, and teaching NGO staff how to install their own cable.
Doing simple security audits including securing wifi networks.
Cleaning viruses off machines and explaining how to try to keep them off.
Working with NGO to understand their near-term IT needs so they can present a coherent shopping list to donors.
Setting up simple databases (case management, document tracking, etc.).
Setting them up with a domain name and gmail boxes.
There are more destitute NGOs than you can imagine in the developing world, and most of them solve their IT problems by trial-and-error, usually with the emphasis on error. All you have to do is make a few contacts in the region, and you'll be the most popular kid in town.
I travel to these areas to do paid contract work but often get swept up in volunteering too. Some of the NGOs I like so much that I fly back on my own to provide ongoing assistance. They really need the help.
OK. Find me two outside North America which want IT help during spring break week, where a US resident acting individually is likely to be acceptable. Bonus if you can specify the visa requirements.
Actually, I can find several if the person actually knows what they're doing and is willing to travel to Asia. Would save me some trips that I really don't have time for. Visa-free for US passports.
How exactly does one become a "professional" with helping out after a disaster? Sitting at home NOT getting "field experience"? Taking courses at university of phoneix in disaster recovery?
You get experience by helping out in small local disasters until you have a solid understanding of the complex high-pressure logistics involved in dealing with major ones.
Learning how to participate in the smooth delivery of massive amounts of goods, or in life-or-death rescue efforts, is probably more effectively done when you're not at a serious language disadvantage (or does the average couch potato speak Haitian Creole?) and being shot at.
Sincerely, Former boyfriend of an international disaster relief expert who actually does know her shit.
Different system's doesn't really apply but what if the site's robots.txt is slightly different (different newlines or something) which is causing an unforeseen error?
There is a spec for robots.txt. If someone's not following it, then it's their fault. Given Microsoft's past history, I know where I'd point the finger absent any more concrete information.
That encryption is a performance drain is a myth created by hardware vendors wanting to sell you more hardware.
Do you run any web servers? You should be able to see this for yourself.
On relatively decent hardware I push out about 60% as many pages per second with SSL. Much of this is due to the huge overhead on session setup. With separate front-ends for SSL I can keep this from tying up slots on my content generation servers.
Without dedicated hardware, https is an incredible performance drain on web servers. And even the dedicated hardware at the data centre won't help the client side. Not to mention the caching rules which mean much more data traffic.
For most web sites, I see no reason to use encryption.
They grew so dependent on this 'insider access' that they realistically cannot write anything that goes against the flow. If they do, they'll lose their insider access immediately.
This presupposes the veracity of the simplistic TV-drama narrative which maintains that all decision-makers and their staff are a monolithic bloc standing in opposition to you, The Public.
In fact that's not true at all. Most of the juiciest news comes from insiders who disagree with their institution, and have decided to bring the truth (or their sense of the truth) outside. And if they're serious about it, they go to their contacts at the papers, not to DaveyTheGoliathSlayer.blogspot.com.
now the internet is awash with blogs and such that are almost exclusively other people's opinions. The way I see it it will only become more and more difficult for the NYT or any one else to convince readers that their columnists are so much "better" than the average blogger.
Many (but definitely not all) big-name columnists' opinions are in fact "better" than almost everyone in the blogosphere, for a few key reasons:
They have access to decision-makers
They have more to lose if they fuck up
They are knowledgeable about the subject
They have been doing this for a long time, and have historical perspective
They have editorial oversight and legal departments to keep them in line
I'd trade 500 bloggers for 5 Times columnists any day of the week.
laws are simply decrees by a country's government or ruler and each country has a different version of Evil: for example, one may purchase a gram of marijuana in Amsterdam at a coffee shop with zero worry of going to court, paying a fine, getting literally stoned or perchance going to f*ck me in the ass penitentiary, unlike other places in the world like Saudi Arabia or some States in the USA.
Despite the various laws, would you agree that the amount of actual evil inherent in purchasing and smoking a gram of marijuana is equivalent in all locations?
For the sake of this exercise let's leave aside complications like how much of a bastard the dealer or his supplier is.
And just to be clear, the way that the FQDN escapes is due to the DNS lookup prior to establishing the connection. The only thing available from watching the HTTPS session itself is the IP address, which could correspond to multiple hostnames.
In principle China can just redirect all access to external CAs to their own servers. They can provide "local" keys that protect the end users from each other, but not from government snooping. They can then have a router infrastructure that decodes the packages with the local codes, performs the filtering, and then re-codes the remaining packages with the true codes before they are passed on to the appropriate servers.
It's possible to try, but it's impossible to get away with for even a day. Someone would notice, since the signs (different key fingerprints, etc.) are obvious to anyone who cares and knows where to look. And then we would all know about it.
As a practical matter, therefore, it's not possible.
And as an empirical matter, they're not doing it. I travel to China frequently with my laptop, use it at net cafes and in people's homes, and take a great interest in such things so I am always checking.
Slashdot Mirror
Scale your photos down to 604x453, which is the size Facebook displays them at, and you will get to control the sharpness and image quality.
Upload at any other size, and Facebook will re-sample them with some very cheap algorithm and apply aggressive compression and they will look like ass.
Try it, you'll be amazed how much better your photos suddenly look.
I normally use "convert -strip -sharpen 0.3 -quality 85 -geometry 604x604" before uploading - it just takes a second, and makes a huge difference.
Facebook has the ability to rapidly deploy changes, something they would lose if they started using the interbank-transfer-system COBOL development model.
You talk about "future loads" as if they are a known quantity. This whole web world thrives on the idea that you can quickly react to changes in the market, user preferences, and so on. For Facebook it makes much more sense to remain nimble and put some effort into increasing the efficiency of the tools that allow them to do so.
On paper, Singapore is a fine democracy.
The two things that get in the way are (A) the willingness of the courts to indulge politically-motivated libel suits, and (B) the lack of an effective press. Between these two, the ruling PAP has been able to sidestep a lot of what would be healthy competition, with the result that most serious politicians and aspiring technocrats just take the path of least resistance and work within the party rather than running against it.
Over the years, it has been getting more democratic, though, and the trend seems to be continuing.
Many people seem to overlook the degree to which Singapore is a model for the slow but steady emergence of democracy in east Asia.
Huh? Here in Asia it's very common to host in the USA, where it's much cheaper.
You feel the latency, though, which is why more expensive local hosting has a certain cachet among those who can afford it.
You think that's bad, I'm in Malaysia and from here it routes to South Africa.
Merit still has 35.0.0.0/8 despite many of their largest tenants (such as the University of Michigan) moving on to smaller allocations of their own (mostly starting at 141.211/16). Other than MSU, I can't fathom what they are doing with all that space.
Not any more. Now only 192.0.2.0/24 has that honour.
They're always used! You put a faceplate over them and stuff all the extra cables behind there in case you need them one day.
Starting the students on Vista is more like training gladiators with swords made out of aluminum foil.
Nokia's interface has always been the easiest to use for people who are new to phones. It tends to be Apple-like in the sense that obvious actions produce obvious results, unlike many other platforms. Of course, people who are already accustomed to something else may have some re-learning to do which isn't fun.
I suppose you could read it that way, but in this case between A and B there's a sign that clearly tells you not to proceed. The fact that there are walls around certain buildings doesn't mean you're not generally welcome.
If you read the letter of the law, I'm not sure how many. Maybe not a whole lot.
But as a practical matter, this is how almost all short-term volunteers operate unless they are sent by foreign government-linked programmes like VSO or the Peace Corps.
The paperwork and expense associated with visas are so onerous, and the authorities' concern over the matter is so slight, that tourist entries are the standard practice. Unless you were staying for an extended period, nobody's going to go through the trouble of getting you a work visa.
Typically visa-free entry is granted for social or "business visit" purposes. This latter is meant to encompass meetings and the like, though in reality it tends to mean anything you're not getting paid for locally and not staying more than a few weeks/months to do.
I'm across the bridge from Singapore these days, in Malaysia.
Are you fricking serious? How useless a person would you have to be to think that's helpful? Perhaps you could give a presentation at a Golgafrincham B Ark conference sometime.
As I've posted above, there's a massive shortage of skilled people for even very simple IT tasks among many NGOs in developing countries. Sure, some are lucky enough to have knowledgeable folks, but in the really poor areas they are the exception. People who know their stuff GTFO to where they can feed their families.
Singapore, for starters. I'm pretty sure I've walked through all the neighbourhoods day and night and never even collected any dirty looks.
I suppose if you included stuff like walking through the Istana (Singapore's White House) gates at 3am and not stopping when the guards yell...
IT is an exception to this. There are plenty of straightforward needs that can be addressed in limited periods. Some of the drop-in stuff I've done recently:
There are more destitute NGOs than you can imagine in the developing world, and most of them solve their IT problems by trial-and-error, usually with the emphasis on error. All you have to do is make a few contacts in the region, and you'll be the most popular kid in town.
I travel to these areas to do paid contract work but often get swept up in volunteering too. Some of the NGOs I like so much that I fly back on my own to provide ongoing assistance. They really need the help.
Actually, I can find several if the person actually knows what they're doing and is willing to travel to Asia. Would save me some trips that I really don't have time for. Visa-free for US passports.
You get experience by helping out in small local disasters until you have a solid understanding of the complex high-pressure logistics involved in dealing with major ones.
Learning how to participate in the smooth delivery of massive amounts of goods, or in life-or-death rescue efforts, is probably more effectively done when you're not at a serious language disadvantage (or does the average couch potato speak Haitian Creole?) and being shot at.
Sincerely,
Former boyfriend of an international disaster relief expert who actually does know her shit.
There is a spec for robots.txt. If someone's not following it, then it's their fault. Given Microsoft's past history, I know where I'd point the finger absent any more concrete information.
Do you run any web servers? You should be able to see this for yourself.
On relatively decent hardware I push out about 60% as many pages per second with SSL. Much of this is due to the huge overhead on session setup. With separate front-ends for SSL I can keep this from tying up slots on my content generation servers.
Without dedicated hardware, https is an incredible performance drain on web servers. And even the dedicated hardware at the data centre won't help the client side. Not to mention the caching rules which mean much more data traffic.
For most web sites, I see no reason to use encryption.
This presupposes the veracity of the simplistic TV-drama narrative which maintains that all decision-makers and their staff are a monolithic bloc standing in opposition to you, The Public.
In fact that's not true at all. Most of the juiciest news comes from insiders who disagree with their institution, and have decided to bring the truth (or their sense of the truth) outside. And if they're serious about it, they go to their contacts at the papers, not to DaveyTheGoliathSlayer.blogspot.com.
Many (but definitely not all) big-name columnists' opinions are in fact "better" than almost everyone in the blogosphere, for a few key reasons:
I'd trade 500 bloggers for 5 Times columnists any day of the week.
Despite the various laws, would you agree that the amount of actual evil inherent in purchasing and smoking a gram of marijuana is equivalent in all locations?
For the sake of this exercise let's leave aside complications like how much of a bastard the dealer or his supplier is.
And just to be clear, the way that the FQDN escapes is due to the DNS lookup prior to establishing the connection. The only thing available from watching the HTTPS session itself is the IP address, which could correspond to multiple hostnames.
It's possible to try, but it's impossible to get away with for even a day. Someone would notice, since the signs (different key fingerprints, etc.) are obvious to anyone who cares and knows where to look. And then we would all know about it.
As a practical matter, therefore, it's not possible.
And as an empirical matter, they're not doing it. I travel to China frequently with my laptop, use it at net cafes and in people's homes, and take a great interest in such things so I am always checking.