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From: grouse1@gDONTSPAMITmail.com (Grouse)
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.nospam.female.short-hair
Subject: The FAQ
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Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 10:12:27 GMT
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Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.binaries.nospam.female.short-hair:811
Q. What is this group about?
A. It is for people who appreciate women who wear their
hair shorter than most other women.
Q. What does "short hair" mean?
A. It refers to hair on the head, not any other kind of hair.
"Short" is subjective, but most women let their hair grow down
past their shoulders. For this group "short hair" means
around shoulder-length, or shorter.
Q. How short is too short?
A. Another subjective question with no clear answer. Bald
is as short as it ever gets, but shoulder-length or shorter is
the only rule. If you wish to compare how a female looks with
short hair versus long hair, a sample depicting her before a
haircut might be useful, but please keep such samples small.
Q. What if a woman has some hair short, but also some long hair?
A. Usually OK. In general, a woman with long hair who has a
fringe of "bangs" cut short in the front is not considered a
short-haired woman. But as fashion trends move in and out and
ever forward, some women choose an asymmetrical hairstyle, short
on one side and long on the other. Some women choose a style
that is short in the back, and longer on the sides. Here's a
"rule of thumb": if short hair is a major feature of her hairstyle,
then she will be appreciated here.
Q. What kind of binary files are on-topic here?
A. Although text-only posts are pleasing, many of the messages
here will have binary attachments. Acceptable binary posts
include images and videos. Obviously, audio files are of
lesser utility when appreciating a hairstyle, but audio files
are certainly welcome when on-topic. A binary text file which
describes some aspect of short-haired women, or a work of
fiction featuring a short-haired female, would be appreciated
as well.
Q. Does it matter if a picture or video file includes nude women?
A. Not really. This group is interested in how short hair
affects a woman's appearance, so her body below the shoulders
is not all that important. Body type, body color, or level of
body covering is not of prime interest. Short hair can change
a woman's "look", whether she is clothed or not (or anywhere in
between).
If you are tolerant of female nudity, then contribute what you
wish. If not, then only contribute depictions of clothed women,
or crop nude images to only show above the chest. Reminder: if
you post a depiction of a female who is in an erotic situation
(whether nude or clothed), you need to make sure to obey the
laws of your land and the terms of your net service provider.
Q. What does "nospam" mean?
A. It simply means that spam and commercial advertising messages
are not welcome here. A side-effect of being in the alt.binaries.
nospam.* hierarchy of newsgroups is that crossposting messages
to other newsgroups is a bad idea. Crossposting means sending a
message to more than one newsgroup simultaneously, like adding
another email address in the "CC:" field of an email message to
send it to more than one person's inbox at the same time. If a
message sent to a "nospam" newsgroup is also crossposted to
another newsgroup, some news servers will just toss the message
in the trash. If your crossposted message passes through one
of these servers, nobody will see the message here, or in the
other newsgroup(s).
Q. Why are some files marked "reduced"?
A. A number of modeling houses have lately taken to releasing
image files in very high resolutions, thus making the files
very large in size, some as large as 20 MB for a single picture.
There are valid reasons for doing so, such as improved image
quality when using a very large television as one's computer
monitor. Other reasons are more dubious, such as bragging
rights for marketing purposes.
Some visitors here have expressed displeasure at the prospect
of needing a gigabyte of data space (or more) for a single
photo set, as well as the length of time one may spend persusing
a set.
For this reason, some larger files are reduced in resolution
and pallette before posting. Such files are clearly marked,
and original versions are available upon request. My trigger
when deciding what gets reduced before posting is when a set's
files average 1 MB per image or over. When reducing, my target
is to have the file's shorter side at about 1400 pixels. Files
receive a reduction using the Lanczos 3 interpolation scheme,
with a simultaneous reduction in pallette to 85% of the pallette
of the original image. This often reduces a file's size to
near 30% of the original.
Q. How do I read/post messages?
A. You need a newsreader program, sometimes called a "client".
There are many Usenet clients out there, some free and some
for sale. If your web browser comes with an email program,
then it probably can also read newsgroup messages. Outlook
Express comes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and the
Firefox web browser comes with Thunderbird, which can handle
both email and newsgroup messages.
The major drawback of these "integrated" newsgroup message
programs is that they don't handle binary files attached to
messages very well. For decoding binary file attachments,
a stand-alone program is much more useful.
If you try a standalone newsreader client, make sure that it
can handle yEnc files, or your tasks will be more difficult.
Unfortunately, clients that are great for text messages are
often poor for binary files, and clients that handle files very
well are often difficult to use in managing text discussions.
The best solution is to use one program for files, and another
one for text messages.
For a free program to manage files, I recommend XNews which
is easy to begin with and very versatile after you get familiar
with it. For managing text discussions, Forte made a free
version of their Agent newsreader client, called Free Agent.
Free Agent is now discontinued, but it can still be found on
the internet, with the help of a search engine.
The noteworthy Useneteer "mjello" says this:
"Many people end up using two newsreaders, one for
downloading binaries and one for discussions (Xnews
is free and does that well)."
He also has a handy list of useful websites about Usenet clients:
http://www.binaries4all.com/
http://www.slyck.com/Newsgroups_Guide
http://www.usenetmonster.com/infocenter/articles/usenet_binaries_tutorial.asp
When you get some more experience with Usenet and want to try
sending a file, the best choice is Power Post 2000.
Q. Can you help me use Power Post 2000?
A. Yes. Here are some tips for using PP2K...
Very easy to use... but the sounds in the program are
incredibly annoying, so click View -> Program Settings
-> Program tab, and uncheck "Play Sounds". Under the
same tab, set your "Default Max Lines Per Part" to 2,500
to 3,500 for yEnc encoded posts, or 5,000 to 7,000 if you
use UUEnc instead. Why? because lines in a yEnc message
are twice as long as UUEncoded lines. Using 3,200 lines
for a yEnc encoded post is a very good idea.
This is how the subject header displayed for a sample post:
Short hair at the beach [20of20] "bch_1152.jpg" yEnc (1/1) 27.8 Kbytes
To get that subject header, I used this PP2K header format:
Short hair at the beach [$1of$2] $K$F
"Short hair at the beach " is a short description
"[$1of$2] " inserts the file number and file count
"$K$F" inserts the filename and the size in Kilobytes
You must include "$F" in the header, and for best results
you should NEVER type anything after the $F. The version
of PP2K I use also adds "yEnc" to the end of my posts,
and puts quotes around the filename. With other versions,
you may have to add "yEnc" manually. Why? Read below.
The early requirements for yEnc encoding specified that
the word "yEnc" appear in the subject, and there should
be quotes around the filename. These are now options,
no longer required, but are still a nice thing to do for
two reasons... first, "yEnc" alerts the viewer that it's
a yEnc encoded file, in case their system requires them
to do something differently when they download yEnc files.
Secondly, putting the filename in quotes allows it to be
decoded correctly by older, first-generation yEnc software.
If you wish to send a 0-part text message, to describe
your post, click the tab in PP2K to "prefix 0/N text".
Make sure to send it with "First File Only", not "All Files".
One reason that PP2K is the standard for posting binaries
is that it allows you to do segment fills. Not important
for small pictures, but if you're posting a larger file that
PP2K splits up into 45 segments, and only 44 make it to your
server, you can choose to repost only the missing segment
instead of the whole file.
To repost a single segment, you right-click the file on PP2K's
main screen and a list of actions pops up. choose "Re-Queue
Selected Files". Then right-click the file again, and choose
"Task Properties..." In the posting box that pops up, click
the button to "Uncheck all", then check the box(es) next to
the segment(s) you wish to repost, then click the "OK" button.
Now just post the file as normal, and only the segments
you have chosen will be reposted. Now when you refresh the
list of headers in your client, your post will be complete.
Q. Why use yEnc encoding for binary files, instead of UUEnc?
A. Simply, yEnc encoding makes files 30% smaller on the Usenet
server than the UUEnc encoding scheme. They are still the same
size when decoded back into JPG or AVI files, but yEnc files
can be uploaded and downloaded 30% faster than UUEnc. Smaller
storage demands on your service and faster downloads means that
your news service is more likely to hold all the posts in a
newsgroup for a longer time.
YEnc files can be easily decoded by using a modern newsreader
client, like Agent, XNews, NewsBinPro, or NewsGrabber.
Forte's Free Agent newsreader has been discontinued since
version 4.0 came out, but a Google search will turn up places
where Free Agent can still be downloaded. Free Agent supported
yEnc files after version number 1.93.
The most common problem that people have with yEnc encoded files
is when using Outlook Express as a newsreader client. As mentioned
above, OE is very poor at dealing with binary files. If you must
use OE, get a yEnc decoder for Outlook Express to enable you to
decode the files seamlessly.
Q. Should I include thumbnail "contact sheets" for previews?
A. When posting a set of picture files, this is optional. Some
people appreciate being able to see what a set is all about in
one glance, so those people might appreciate a preview sheet.
For pictures that are reasonably small files individually, it
is often just as easy to preview a set by downloading a few of
them. When posting a set of large high-resolution pictures,
a preview sheet of thumbnails is more useful, since each picture
may be several megabytes in size. Another method to help others
with large image files is to convert a sampling of files down to
a smaller size, and post those as previews.
When posting a large multimedia file, including a picture preview
is always a great help to the downloader. Always strive to do so.
Q. Should I include a parity set with a post?
A. As with preview pictures, this is more helpful with large
media files than with sets of pictures. It is customary among
most newsgroups to include a 5% to 10% parity recovery set with
a large video file, but not as common to post parity sets with
picture files. It's always a nice thing to do, but not a
requirement.
A good tip for making parity sets is to use QuickPar, and set your
parity block size to be the same size as your posting program's
segment size. For instance, in QuickPar the default block size is
384,000 bytes. In PP2K I set the number of lines per segment to
3,200. That's yEnc lines, which are twice as long as UUEnc lines,
so for a UUEnc encoded posting program, I would set the number of
lines to 6,400 (2x lines, since the lines are 1/2 as long, get it?)
3,200 lines of yEnc encoded text equals about 384,000 bytes of
encoded data. Making the segment size in your posting program
the same as the block size in your parity set is a Very Good Idea.
It means that a downloader who is missing four segments only has
to find four parity blocks... so they know that a file named
"vol06+4.PAR2" will be exactly what they need. File "vol10+9.PAR2"
will contain 9 QuickPar parity blocks, etc.
When making a set of data integrity verification files, there
are two tips which will always benefit you. First, always test
your verification files after making them. In rare cases, a
parity set is created incorrectly and may not report itself as
bad during its creation. Trust but verify.
Second, making two data verification checkers using two different
formats is wise. There are four formats in widespread use: par2, par,
csv, and sfv. Choose two, test both results yourself, and you will
save yourself the trouble of having to repost something else later.
Q. Should I post a "nzb" file with my binary post?
A. This is optional, since nzb files do not have universal support
among major newsreader clients. A .nzb file is an XML document
which an "nzb aware" newsreader can read and interpret. The nzb
file tells the newsreader what files belong to its set and automates
the process of downloading an entire set of files. Originated by
the makers of the NewsBinPro newsreader, the nzb is useful but is
not supported by all newsreader client programs at present, making
its utility limited, and thus inclusion is optional.
Q. A file is incomplete on my server, how do I make it whole?
A. If you're using Xnews, there's no reason to skip an entire
file just because 1 segment out of 38 is missing. XNews makes it
painfully easy to grab incomplete files, here's how:
Click once on the incomplete file to highlight it.
Press the "A" on your keyboard to send all available segments to
the XNews Archive.
Open the Archive by choosing "Folder" on the main menu and
choose "Archive" from the list which drops down.
Hit the Spacebar on your keyboard, just like you would normally
to choose a file for downloading.
Click on the "Decode" button (looks like a light blue rubik's
cube), or press your F4 key (does the same thing).
A dialog box opens, asking you where you wish to decode the
file to. Put it with the rest of the post. The file is recombined
but with the data in the missing segment not included.
Now, when you use QuickPar again, it will say "Ready to
Repair using 1 of XXX blocks". Click the repair button.
Afterwards, make sure to clear out the XNews Archive, by clicking
the "Purge Folder" button at the bottom, which looks like a little
dustbin. This empties and closes the Archive.
There are a few caveats about using the XNews Archive:
1. If the first segment of a file is missing (eg: 01/38), then you
must select that file and decode it by itself, individually. With
files where the 01/XX segment is present, you can select them and
decode them all at once, just as with complete files in normal
XNews use.
2. In rare cases, a poster has used an exotic program to post,
and a file missing the first segment will not decode at all.
3. You can archive and decode multiple files at the same time,
but NEVER put more than 1 GB of data into the Archive. If you
do this by accident there is a workaround, but it is ugly.
4. It is a good habit to sort the headers in the Archive, because
in rare cases they will not be arranged in proper order. To
sort the headers, simply click once on the "Subject" column.
On the main menu in the Archive, you see the word "Server"?
Just below that is the word "Subject". Click on that to sort
the headers. Sometimes, you may need to press the "Page Up"
key on your keyboard to get back to the top of the Archive.
Q. I use Agent, not XNews. Can I get incomplete files too?
A. Here's how to do it with Agent:
There should be a menu choice called "Split Sections". The
last time I used Agent, it was under "Message" in the main
menu. You click once on the incomplete file to highlight it,
then click on Message -> Split Sections.
The file breaks up into its individual segments. You then choose
all the segments, just as if they were single files that you wish to
download. Leave them chosen (highlighted), and click on the
button for "Get Selected Message Bodies". Last I knew, it is an
icon with a page and a lightning bolt over the page.
Wait for the segments to all download. You still have them all
highlighted, so now click on the main menu: Message ->
"Join Sections..."
This opens a dialog box with all the segments listed in the order
in which they were downloaded. You shouldn't have to rearrange
them, but sometimes you do. It's often wise to quickly check to
make sure they're in order (eg: 01/40, 02/40, 03/40, etc.)
Now you have a choice: you can click the "Join" button to
make them appear as a single file in the newsgroup window,
and you can grab that file just as if it were complete. Or, you
can hit the "Save" button to save the file with the rest of the
set you're trying to complete. If you click "Join" then Agent
combines all the available segments and your main newsgroup
window now shows the file as complete (without the incomplete
file icon, so you can download it like normal.)
Now you can get incomplete files, and make Agent assemble
them. Next, open the par2 file, and instead of "Missing" it will
list the file as "Incomplete", and tell you how many usable
block of data QuickPar can find within. Now, instead of missing
40 blocks of data, you'll only be missing a few at most.
Agent may have moved some menu choices around since I last
used it, but I am certain that they did not eliminate the ability to
reassemble and save incomplete files. So if my instructions don't
match what your version of Agent has, just poke around for the
"Split Sections" command, or something that sounds like it.
Q. Does this newsgroup have a charter?
A. Yes. Here it is:
"alt.binaries.nospam.female.short-hair is for the appreciation of
women who choose to wear their cranial hair near shoulder length
or shorter.
Acceptable material includes messages about women who choose
to wear their hair short, whether for convenience, fashion, or
sex appeal. Acceptable messages may refer to, or may include,
pictorial representations of women with short hair, or may
include multimedia representations of women with short hair.
Off-topic posts are discouraged, but all off-topic posts
should have "OT" at the beginning of the subject line.
Posters are discouraged from posting material in excess of 1
(one) gigabyte in one day, and are discouraged from posting more
than 1,000 (one thousand) individual files in one day. Failure
to observe these cautions is considered "excessive posting".
Reposting is discouraged, but is at the discretion of the
responsible poster. Reposting material posted within 30
(thirty) days of the original post is discouraged, except
in events where the integrity or normal propagation of a file
exhibits a defect which was unintended by the poster.
Pictorial or multimedia representations of women having their
hair cut short against their will are off-topic and prohibited.
Pictorial or multimedia representations of nude women younger
than the age of 18 (eighteen) are off-topic and are prohibited.
Unmarked off-topic material, excessive posting, advertising,
spam posts, virus infected binaries, and embedded links to
software installers are all prohibited."
Grouse
--
Most women have long hair because they think it
distracts from their flaws. Short hair means
either that she's confident, which is always sexy,
or sometimes, it means that she simply does not
have any flaws.
"Long on hair, short on brains."
-- old French proverb
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