I worked in a large financial services company in Switzerland. We were one of the most intense users of a particular risk & control application. We understood each corner of this application and with each new release we analysed each change in detail. This was necessary to weigh-up the value of upgrading or not, or timing the upgrade appropriately. Some seemingly insignificant change could be a show-stopper for our users.

You can optimize your connection using an optimizing proxy hardwired to the Internet. The proxy can reduce some of the latency by doing dns lookups for you and reducing page sizes. It won't make real time apps like VOIP any better. There are also services like this available: http://www.vortexvpn.com/ or Opera browser, etc. I think even Chrome has it available.

Yeah, because Wikipedia has an army of lawyers ready to be deployed. That's why they are always running low on funds.

We all know how StackOverflow works. You can always ask or answer a question, but other privileges are based on your reputation. Reputation is only gained by creating good questions and answers. It takes work to get a good reputation on StackOverflow.

I actually don't know what Wikimedia has in place, but it could implement a similar reputation based approach as StackOverflow. Of course the algorithm and mechanism would be different since Wikipedia is not a Q&A site.

To make things even harder, they could implement a reputation killer. For example: if user A improved the score of user B, then user B gets nuked because they are one of these PR firms, then user A should suffer a major reputation dive.

While I'm at it... Instead of Wikipedia begging for money once a year, they could implement a wikipedia.com site which has some light advertising. By default all users go to wikipedia.org, but for those who want can manually redirect to wikipedia.com. I would be glad to support such a system.

I was one of those 175'000 customers who trialled it. And I have to say the speed was reasonable and you can't complain about free WiFi on the street. We were travelling NZ for 6 months and we used it all over the place. It tended to be the most reliable connection you could find, even better than sitting in a café and using their WiFi.

Animation Research Limited in New Zealand pioneered this way back in 1992 for the America's Cup in San Diego. It was revolutionary, what's in the article above is just evolutionary.

Some pix I could find of the original, seem to be not many around:
http://arl.co.nz/index.php/arl-news/131-what-does-it-take-to-be-world-class
http://arl.co.nz/index.php/arl-company/arl-history

Here is was Animation Research Limited are working to today:
http://virtualeye.tv/index.php/the-sports/virtual-eye-sailing

Try this service and see how it compares to yours:
https://www.vortexvpn.com/
See if you get the same behaviour. You get 1GB of free data, if you email support I can give you more. I could also open port 443 if they seem to be shaping non-Http(s) traffic. I have had it running for a few days. There is a server in Dublin you could use.

I would disagree with your post and most of the "don't work and travel - it's a waste" posts. Because I have found that living in one place for a longer period of time you get to learn about the city you are in, much more than a typical tourist. You will get to appreciate how things operate in a different country, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I would disagree that it is "very likely" that you will get robbed. I have traveled loads (I am the end of our 9 month travel around the world) with computers, fancy smart phones, etc. I have never been robbed or had anything stolen (except a $25 city map that I left sitting around for a while). I am cautious and take care of my belongings. As long as you take care of your things and be aware of people around you, do not look like a typical tourist and dress down, you should be okay.

I agree with above post. I have done this in Switzerland and New Zealand. Libraries often have a café attached where you can buy drinks and work at the same time. Some libraries have limits on how much data you can use up, typically around 100 MB. Some also charge per session. Check out the libraries before you decide to move to a place for a month. Because you may find the have no wifi or charge huge fees.

Cafés with Internet can be hard to find in Switzerland. Starbucks will only give you 1 hour high bandwidth per day.

  China if you want internet you may want to get a service like Boingo. Free internet is difficult to find in China if you have no Chinese phone number, because the government wants to keep tabs on who you are, so to get free Internet you typically get sent a txt/sms.

I have tried working while travelling. I have found that although a hotel advertises that it has wifi, it can be flakey (I have had to ask reception to reboot the router every 30 minutes) or the signal in your room is weak and useless.

Midnight Commander is not perfect. I have seen it do strange things with the progress bar.

I agreed with all the parent posts. Don't escalate without having discussed it with the program manager.

See it from their perspective, they also want what is best for the project. They want to ensure the project is on time and on budget... and a success. So you need to explain how your approach is better and how it will lead to a successful approach. A program manager will often do this because they don't understand the product/solution being developed. So explain what a good set up would be and why, and include examples of where this has worked for you before.

Also be aware that you may not get your way. Create a strategy for this situation. Ensure that you are in a position lead the technical piece. Ensure you have your ass covered when the shit hits the fan due to the PMs approach by documenting your approach.

First I would take the verbal approach with the PM. They may take a lot of talking to. Then if you think you have resistance follow up with and email. The email does not need to be pages, just short and sweet. Explain your position with 3 or 4 points, and how it would lead to a successful project.

What vpn provider do you use? We are on holiday in china and use things like googlemaps, gmail, tourist guides that use google maps. It is very frustrating. Even the android app store is not working (play.google.com). I have tried many vpn providers but they all appear blocked, tor dors not work either.