May 06, 2005

• It's pr0n, isn't it?
• Yes, but it involves bribery and forced fellatio.
• Sounds like a normal day at the office to me.
• Yea, it's amazing what they block at my office, but oddly enough ESPN and Yahoo Sports are wide open. Guess some bigwig likes his sports. My office uses one of those services that provides block lists. What I've found is that even if you can get to the home page of a site through some other means, like google archive or bloglines or whatever, the minute you click a link to go deeper into the site you hit the wall again. I've given up trying to circumvent it and just do my questionable surfing at home.
• a friend at a newspaper back in illinois reports that e-bay is blocked there. huh?
• Have your "friend" install VNC server on his computer at home, and VNC client at work. Leave the computer on at home and then VNC in from work, accessing the entire Internet via the home PC. Or you, I mean "your friend", could setup a VPN, for added security (so the home PC isn't hacked).
• which one of you guys auctioned off the chair i was sitting on?
• dt118's idea is probably easier than this, but you could set up a squid proxy at your [friend's] home, and browse through the proxy while at work. All web requests would go through your [friend's] home computer. This would be faster to use than VNC (unless you have a really fast home connection, VNC will add a lot of overhead) but it's harder to set up. If you are worried about the VNC security, set up your home firewall to only accept VNC connections from your work IP - most offices have static IPs, so this is easy.
• Also encourage him to check the company policy...not much point in losing his job in order to surf the net... usually, anyway...
• Possibly this precompiled Windows version of Squid will be helpful.
• I've heard that you could install AOL ::GASP:: and browse unfettered from within. I'm sure mr IT could still browse your cache and see that you visited greekdonkeysex.com, but clear your tracks and MAYBE you can live worry free, dreaming of sweet, sweet, donkey love.
• When this happened to me at work, I contacted the websites directly. Yourdictionary.com and Acronymfinder.com were being blocked. Those sites contacted the filter program people directly and I soon noticed I was able to access them directly. The whole filter thing at work is insane - the filter also blocked Lexis b/c the cases I was looking at contained roman numerals in the titles.
• I'm not sure about it, but isn't google's web accelerator supposed to do the same thing? You use the google's servers as a proxy for your request and it comes through the google servers?
• Good suggestions. Also, to access other blocked services (POP3 e-mail, ICQ, MSN, NNTP, FTP, etc.), use http://www.htthost.com/ to tunnel TCP/IP via HTTP.
• There's also CGIProxy or something like it. I had to install this at my domain because I could only check my email via port 25 and that was blocked at work. Of course, I always felt like I was about to rain doom down on my head when I used it.
• Two less technical thoughts: (1) Bloglines displays whatever is in the feed from the site to which you have subscribed. Some feeds have only excerpts, but lots have full content. (2) At my office, they simply use the proxy setting in internet explorer to restrict access to certain sites. You can browse with an alternate browser, which won't pick up the automatic proxy configuration, or you can simply turn off the proxy in internet explorer's options after you boot up. This assumes, of course, that IT is not requiring use of the proxy to get to the web.
• < devil's advocate > As someone who works in IT, specifically the Help Desk, I can see why a company would want to block access to some websites. My company has 5000+ computers for 8000+ employees, and I can't tell you how many times I have had to remove spyware from a computer that someone has been using to browse the web. Seriously, I have lost count. While my company is pretty lax about enforcing the "no surfing while at work", it's entirely possible that your friend's company may not be as forgiving. I've worked in IT departments with the stereo-typical BOFH IT manager, who was just waiting to fire people for IT-related offenses. Trying to bypass the proxy (or filter) could trigger his IT manager's "fuck you, you fucking fuck" mode and cost him/her that job. It may be that Bloglines was inadvertantly added by filtering software, but it could also be that it was specifically added by someone with access to the proxy server. It might be better to advise your friend to wait until he/she gets home to browse the blocked sites. < /devil's advocate >
• Oh no! jim_t is IT Guy! Everybody hide the stuff! (And put your pants back on!)
• SideDish: while our IT guys don't block any sites I've ever tried going to, ebaying can be a BIG productivity drain. I once worked somewhere where someone was essentially running a business on the side.
• As another "IT Guy", I've gotta say I'm with Jim. And if you installed VPN or some similar route-around on my system, I would see to it that you had a talk with the Chief, and a hit on your annual review. But we're extremely mean here because our need for security is high. So I guess what I'm saying is: consider the other side of this equation.
• I wouldn't use Google's web accelerator. Apparently, it clicks every link on the page, including "Delete my account" and the like. story here
• Clicked on a link someone sent me to a story about odds being offered on the new pope. Blocked. Apparently a lot of problem gamblers in my workplace.