School and blocks!

[Iyeru]

Well, today... I wanted to discuss something. Something serious, yet not so serious. This is about school blocking techniques among other naughty school computer trends. For example, here in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), East High School has made it so imageshack.us is blocked, so I can't see a lot of the images posted all over the nets.

I despise this, and I've told the admin to release the block on imageshack several times, but no response was given. If you have anything to complain, discuss, etc. Please do so here.

P.S: The keyboard at school is/was sticky, some words might also be stuck together.

[mudah.swf]

P.S: The keyboard at school is/was sticky, some words might also be stuck together.

you know this might be the reason why imageshack was blocked.

[Lord of Joshelplex]

My school uses Bess. It is awful, it blocks everyhting under every category ever. Hell, Ive had it block sites for "Information"

[dumbclown]

Wait until you get a job. They block anything you look at twice in the same day.

[Demetrius]

Our webfilter at work updates at least daily, I figure that it is only a matter of time until I am unable to view this forum from work.

[mauve]

Hehehehe. I remember my high school having Bess. That thing was so stupid. It blocked access to Encarta's website, of all places. A friggin' encyclopedia! And not even a "questionable" encyclopedia like Wikipedia. But at the same time, it had no problems with letting me access the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 message board I was on at the time, which was hosted by the SciFi Channel website. (I was in high school way back when MST3K and LEXX were shown on SciFi on a reglar basis. I'm old.) I remember being able to get on to game websites in Middle School, too. Like, I dunno, CartoonNetwork games and something called Cyber Wars which I remember was kind of fun. Whoever installed the Bess program had no idea what they were doing. Nobody knew how to uninstal it, either. Apparently there was a way to override the system, but none of the professors knew the password. XD


So school content blockers really aren't that effective unless the person who puts them on the computers actually knows what they're doing.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Ah the wonders of uni and unlimited, unrestricted access.

[CelesJessa]

My school uses Bess. It is awful, it blocks everyhting under every category ever. Hell, Ive had it block sites for "Information"

I had Bess at my high school. Bess is of Satan. I've had it block information on planets, yet it let me into a KKK hate site (like, not even a site for information about the KKK, just a website listing why the people they don't like should die and go to hell) and it always let me go to deviant art and any oekaki board.

But unlike most other schools (at least from the way it sounds) we never got enough time on the computers to do anything fun, so Bess was kind of a null point.

Although Bess makes it really annoying to find reference pictures online for art projects.

[Sithdarth]

Way back when I was a junior in high school I was doing a report on nitroglycerin for chemistry. Now our IT professional knew what she was doing so 99% of the time are filter worked well. However, during this report I was repeated blocked from websites that mentioned the anarchist's cookbook. Ironically I was eventually able to stumble onto a site that to which the entire book and been transcribed. It became one of the central parts of my report as I instructed my entire chem class on how to make nitroglycerin in their Kitchens.

Sidenote: I was the quiet kid that no one really spoke to and got in a lot of trouble for destructive out bursts of rage. To this day I am shocked that I was not questioned throughly about that report.

[Eltargrim]

My school uses a centralized blocking system; all schools in the division route through this proxy. It's pretty competent, and I've only had one or two occasions on which a legitimate thing was blocked.

To be honest, while they're sometimes a pain in the ass, they're justified. Hurts to admit it, but it's true.

[42PETUNIAS]

I go to a boarding school. You do not know the meaning of blocking pain. There are a couple of ways to get around it, but ironically the main way (changing your IP) only works in the school buildings, and not in the dorms...

[Skit]

My school is kind of weird. It blocks my comic under "Hate" for some reason. I have no idea why, it's a comic about mythology. However, they did not block Youtube or Y-Gallery and did block all e-mail and FTP so we could never access our files to print at school. A problem for the digital art class that worked at home.

[Iyeru]

My school uses Bess. It is awful, it blocks everyhting under every category ever. Hell, Ive had it block sites for "Information"

East High uses "Squidbox" paired with Novell 4.x

[greed]

Back when I was at high school, our administrator was a drunk and if we had blocking software I never ran into it. So total free reign. The downside was all the computers being continually flaky due to the sheer bulk of people downloading pornography and playing MMOs on the server. Also you avoided touching any surface in the computer labs at all costs. So yeah it's probably better to have it.

[bananarama]

The downside was all the computers being continually flaky due to the sheer bulk of people downloading pornography and playing MMOs on the server. Also you avoided touching any surface in the computer labs at all costs.

HOLY SHIT!!!!:eek: :eek: :eek:
GUYS JACKED OFF IN YOUR SCHOOL'S COMPUTER LABS?!?!

ehem... my school doesn't have any blocking (that I know of), but rather they used some vision client or whatever. It basically allowed my school's librarians to see whatever anyone is doing on the computers and (if that wasn't enough) they could take over. So for example:

Me: Lalala... I am checking out Myspace.
(a minute or two later)
Me: Wait...what's happening?...HOLY SHIT! SATAN HAS TAKEN CONTROL OF MY MOUSE CURSOR!!!...OH NOES SATAN IS LOGGING ME OFF! WHY IS SATAN LOGGING ME OFF?!?! NOOOOOOO!!!!

:) Luckily, the school librarians don't usually take advantage of this liberty and most of the time, they just walk up to us and tell us to get the hell off the damn computer. Also, it seems that the only sites that the librarians don't allow are porno sites (duh) and Myspace. So I guess my school is kinda lucky that we don't have complete assholes for librarians.

[The Argent Lord]

HOLY SHIT!!!!:eek: :eek: :eek:
GUYS JACKED OFF IN YOUR SCHOOL'S COMPUTER LABS?!?!

ehem... my school doesn't have any blocking (that I know of), but rather they used some vision client or whatever. It basically allowed my school's librarians to see whatever anyone is doing on the computers and (if that wasn't enough) they could take over. So for example:

Me: Lalala... I am checking out Myspace.
(a minute or two later)
Me: Wait...what's happening?...HOLY SHIT! SATAN HAS TAKEN CONTROL OF MY MOUSE CURSOR!!!...OH NOES SATAN IS LOGGING ME OFF! WHY IS SATAN LOGGING ME OFF?!?! NOOOOOOO!!!!

:) Luckily, the school librarians don't usually take advantage of this liberty and most of the time, they just walk up to us and tell us to get the hell off the damn computer. Also, it seems that the only sites that the librarians don't allow are porno sites (duh) and Myspace. So I guess my school is kinda lucky that we don't have complete assholes for librarians.

Oh, yeah, I had that at the school I went to freshman year. Except they'd just put up this big grey thing that went "WTF DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING GO SEE THE LIBRARIAN FOR YOUR DATE OF EXECUTION!"

[h4x.m4g3]

Back at my school we had lightspeed content filtering, which would always seem to block any site more than 3 people got on more than twice a day. So it was impossible to do anything. Also it blocked various keywords from being searched, but if you put spaces in between the letters blammo insta unblock. But that wasn't the worse part. The worse thing is that to combat people playing games they blocked all programs except essentials. The only problem is that these blocks were not universal throught the school, a single classroom, or even day to day. The only programs you were guaranteed access to were Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Internet Explorer. This was espcially irating when trying to make a database, spreadsheet, etc. Itwas impossible to find (and playback) sounds for various projects, in fact roughly 85% of the computers had their sound cards removed/disabled to ensure no one listened to music.

So glad I graduated.

Edit: I should note that the blocks were system wide not school wide. Which sucks cause the Admin's (who was a techer at the school, and since we no longer had a "full-time Admin" we couldn't control/use our own server. Note: THEY LEFT THE SERVERS IN THE BUILDING but we weren't allowed to turn them on and use them.) policy was "hey don't download any viruses, don't consume excessive bandwith (during peak hours) and don't disturb your classmates/teachers. If a teacher complains I am obligated to restrict your uses."

[Ex. 68471]

My school used some weird filter, almost worse than Bess.

Here's what I mean. I attempted to go to MySpace because my friends were all like, "Duuuuuuuude, you need to get a MySpace, MySpace rules, I have sooooo many cool pics I can show you!" So finally I break down, and under the watchful eye of my friend, I keyed in the web address. Unluckily, they had decided to install this wierd filter the previous night, and it blocked MySpace. My friend shrugs it off, says he'll visit me later and help me at my house. He then sits down next to me and logs in to another computer. He then proceeds to successfully log into VAMPIRE FREAKS, which is MySpace for super-emo people.

That is stupid in my opinion, because according to my friend, Vampire Freaks allows porn pictures to be downloaded(As I said, according to my friend. He has been known to lie about stupider stuff before.)

[Iyeru]

HOLY SHIT!!!!:eek: :eek: :eek:
GUYS JACKED OFF IN YOUR SCHOOL'S COMPUTER LABS?!?!
So? I did it in college a couple times. Well, without anyone in the computer lab of course.

[42PETUNIAS]

...

Why? I mean... whatever turns you on, I guess, but you could probably get in deep shit for that...

[bananarama]

So? I did it in college a couple times. Well, without anyone in the computer lab of course.

Ummm....congratulations?
I hope, for the sake of everyone else in your college, that you used tissues.

[greed]

Hmm at uni I haven't bothered using the comps much. I can access my uni account and shit from home and my internet and computer's a lot better.

HOLY SHIT!!!!:eek: :eek: :eek:
GUYS JACKED OFF IN YOUR SCHOOL'S COMPUTER LABS?!?!

That was hyperbole. I don't think any actually jacked off in the labs. Probably some in the toilets, but it's not like you ever touch the surfaces in a high school bathroom anyway.

And Iyeru, just fucking ew, learn some self control, use the toilets at least.

[Iyeru]

And Iyeru, just fucking ew, learn some self control, use the toilets at least.

Well, it was only twice. Otherwise I'd have used the toilets.

[Meister]

I'll be sure to remember that next time I'm in the computer lab and need to take a leak. "It's only the second time, no sweat."

[Fifthfiend]

So it seems like the reason for school blocking techniques, is because of... people jerking off on school computer equipment. Okay, I'd say that question is pretty much answered.

As this has pretty much turned into a conversation about people jacking off onto school computer equipment, I'm gonna take a page from our fine and dedicated public educators, and block this conversation as well.

Iyeru banned for two weeks, for this and a couple other things. You really need to stop with the creepy.

Honestly if this is the kind of thing you want to do threads about, you may want to reconsider whether this is really the online forum community for you.