[Restayvien]

I have just discovered, upon trying to follow a link found on TO, that my college has blocked the GW site specifically! I think institutions take things a bit far when they dictate what you can and cannot look at when there is no objectional content on the site at all (ok, Daemonettes and DE possilby). I hate the power-hungry attitude of the college computer admins. I have had similar experiences before, here and elsewhere...

Am I alone in thinking that they over-step the mark when they start censoring content that is completely legitimate, legal and wholesome? Maybe I should start filtering out sites that they find interesting and helpful. If it wasn't for the fact they run my life right now I'd be tempted to upload a really agressive content filter, although it would be hard to outmatch theirs which even blocks Yahoo - which is extremely frustrating when your college tutors send e-mails to your yahoo account.

[khanaris]

Did they give a reason as to why? That seems like an odd thing to block intentionally.

[Fish Ead]

I've heard horror stories about some colleges in the past. I once saw a guy ask how to play 40k without dice. When asked why he said that his college had banned dice on the campus! Why? Because the big wigs thought that dice were evil!

My high school had a really restrictive filter on their computers. However we managed to find a way to get in with some kind of admin setting and of course the admin hadn't installed the filter on their end. It was a while ago with a different operating system and everything, but it was like splitting the atom when we discovered that

[Restayvien]

Originally Posted by Khanaris

Did they give a reason as to why? That seems like an odd thing to block intentionally.

Nope, but I know it was intentional because they have 2 different filters - a content filter that pops up if you try to acess something that the computer recognizes as inappropriate (games, sweearing etc), and another filter that tells you acess to that page has been blocked (as in this case). The second one pops up with poster sites (annoying in graphics!), yahoo, myspace, and now GW. :P

[khanaris]

Odd. Sounds like an overactive administrator. Can you get around it with a proxy? One thing that occasionally works is going through a translation site. Tell Babelfish that GW's site is in Japanese and let it translate. You should be viewing GW's site through Babelfish, so the filter may not catch it. Since the site is actually in English, Babelfish won't try to translate anything and it should display normally. That has worked in the past for regional IP filters.

[FTyross]

Aren't you a cunning one, Khanaris?

I'd try to go through a Proxy service. I've encountered such sorts of software. I've found it's mainly triggered by keywords in the URL. If it has games anywhere in the URL, it'll probably block it quick smart.

Unfortunatally, the one's I've encountered have been native to the central server which serves you the pages after downloading them and scanning for the inappropriate material. I once managed to serf the net, albiet really slowly, by actualy opening the pages after they had been downloaded on the server (stupid admin forgot to block of Z drive lol, although it wasn't publically known). I'm not sure that applicable here really.

[Scout Sergeant Mkoll]

Originally Posted by Farseer Tyross

I'd try to go through a Proxy service. I've encountered such sorts of software. I've found it's mainly triggered by keywords in the URL. If it has games anywhere in the URL, it'll probably block it quick smart.

I'm not sure how effective that'd be. If it's anything like my college then all proxy sites will be blocked too. If you like I could give you a list to try? (knowing people addicted to myspace has its advantages)

[Restayvien]

Lol, you guys are brilliant.

[Scout Sergeant Mkoll]

So is that a yes to the list? ???

[Restayvien]

ER, dunno. I'm not up on technical stuff anymore really, so I'm not sure how I'd use them. But if it's easy and you can explain then yeah a list would be great.