• David (unregistered) in reply to H3SO5

    The real WTF is people being able to tell the version of IE, by the looks of its buttons..

  • (cs) in reply to Arancaytar
    Arancaytar:
    abx:
    Badger:
    The real WTF is that he is using IE5
    downloads.microsoft.com was probably blocked...

    "... categorized as Virus/Malware."

    Yeah, that's apropriate. However, my (ex-)high school blocked downlaods.microsoft.com under the catagory: 'Marijuana'.

    (The Real WTF is that I know how to spell Marijuana without having to look it up in a dictionary...)

  • Snuggles (unregistered)

    This is why you use Linux at home: for the excellent sshd server that's built-in. Add a proxy (at your house), and voila: no more WebSense.

    You run PuTTY at work, setup sshd at home to listen on port 443 (secure HTTPS), then ssh to home, turn on tunneling, then configure an alternative browser (FireFox/Opera, something your corporation also frowns on) to use the proxy port PuTTY sets up on your local machine.

    Instructions here: http://www.cs.uu.nl/technical/services/ssh/putty/puttyfw.html

  • Snuggles (unregistered) in reply to Chrsitopher Mercer
    Chrsitopher Mercer:
    At just about every company I worked at they had a wide open internet policy. No filters, blocking programs, restrictions of any kind. You were expected to do your job and if you did not because of internet abuse (wasting time) you got the bounce. It's really simple, do your job don't waste time.

    My company has this policy as well, but still forces us to use a corporate Microsoft proxy to get outside on 80/443.

    When I am paranoid about something being logged, I will ssh to my home computer, switch on port-forwarding, and I use my copy of WinSafari to bypass not only the proxy, but since it is travelling across ssh even ethereal can't reveal what I'm browsing.

    I've also crippled MOM since our admin was stupid enough to setup MOM to have the clients call home by hostname instead of a fixed IP. One line in etc/hosts keeps MOM away! :-)

    CAPTCHA: kungfu

  • Edss (unregistered) in reply to H3SO5
    H3SO5:
    benryves:
    Badger:
    The real WTF is that he is using IE5
    Looks like IE6 to me (XP). Just running at a low colour depth.

    Looks like IE6 on 256 color mode. The real WTF is that there are people still using 256-color mode...

    Or more likely it was saved in an image format that was set to 256 colours and not optimised to use the colours in the image. Such as saving the image as a .GIF from MSPaint.

    (And yes I do know it's a .PNG there)

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Rabbi
    It might originally have been 32-bit colour, but 256 is more than adequate for an emailed image that's going to be posted to a website.

    Not if the image includes a wooden table. You'll lose some of the fine, subtle details in the wood grain.

  • Prevert (unregistered) in reply to dingo done snatched my baby
    It seems that people have figured out ways to circumvent these restrictions. Research should thus proceed into uploading biocontrol software directly into worker's brains.

    There's a story called "Root Kit" that thinks along the same lines you do...

  • Corporate Cog (unregistered)

    Unblock request form? Wow! I didn't know other people could be so lucky.
    Here at BloatedCorp, there is no such beast. Even when I've demonstrated need, I found out that there are no exceptions to all the blocking. What's more, the system they've got in place is totally worthless; after all - I'm at work now.

  • Corporate Cog (unregistered) in reply to penryu
    penryu:
    Having followed that advice, one of our public-facing departments (read: reception) recently sent a formal request to my department requesting we allow them access to myspace.com for "morale reasons."

    We laughed.

    Typical. Probably my netadmins here at BloatedCorp. Let the square pegs eat cake!

    A better approach is to focus on hiring good people and then not restrict them in any way.

    When I started my first programming job, it seemed that the senior engineer spent an inordinate amount of time goofing off on the net. He was also the smartest, most knowledgeable, and most productive programmer I've ever known or probably will ever know. He would never work at a place with policies like yours.

  • (cs) in reply to Badger
    Badger:
    The real WTF is that he is using IE5

    The real WTF is that someone thinks that the real WTF is that he is using IE5.

  • (cs) in reply to SilverEyes
    SilverEyes:
    Company proprietary dictionary only!

    That way you can have the correct version of words, as approved by management.

    ... and that's how $CEO invented the universe...

  • (cs) in reply to wf_tmro
    wf_tmro:
    Badger:
    The real WTF is that he is using IE5

    The real WTF is that someone thinks that the real WTF is that he is using IE5.

    Well, it's hideously insecure and so on by this point, surely?

  • Loren Pechtel (unregistered)

    I think what's going on is that the place in question is whitelisting acceptable URL's rather than blocking unacceptable ones.

  • (cs) in reply to Loren Pechtel
    Loren Pechtel:
    I think what's going on is that the place in question is whitelisting acceptable URL's rather than blocking unacceptable ones.

    True whitelist-only systems don't know or care what "category" a non-whitelisted site is in.

  • nobody (unregistered)

    That company probably has a lot of misspellings and inappropriate words in their documents.

    I worked at one company where the blocking software blocked the Free Software Foundation as a "gambling" site. We all know it isn't gambling if it's free. Now, Microsoft is more of a gambling site; generally you pay your money and then you lose.

  • Pat (unregistered)

    Maybe the management is afraid that everybody will start to actually look up the buzzwords they always use and point out how badly misused words like, "paradigm" are...

  • bramster (unregistered) in reply to penryu
    penryu:
    I think you're all missing the point here.

    Forget about all this censorship. Dictionaries, social networking, Greenpeace... all this pales next to my employers "no beard" policy!

    Makes perfect sense. If you really screw up, you can disguise yourself by just shaving off your beard.

    This has been a policy in many DP shops for many years.

  • With-held (unregistered) in reply to dkf

    I've seen the same page with the item as "Search Engine" .. in this case the company wants a signed form that you accept the policies or else it blocks all requests from the web browser.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    We have a real WTF at my work when I discovered that all the "translate this page" links on Google have been blocked, even though the original pages aren't.
    That's really not that surprising, seeing that Google Translate can be used as a crude (but simple) CGI-proxy, and thus overcome the company's filtering policy. Now they only have to block the remaining google - I mean googol - proxies ...
  • (cs) in reply to Mr. Lurker
    That's really not that surprising, seeing that Google Translate can be used as a crude (but simple) CGI-proxy, and thus overcome the company's filtering policy. Now they only have to block the remaining google - I mean googol - proxies ...

    given that the target url is passed unencrypted as a GET parameter, filters should be able to look at that and compare the actual address against their filtering list.

  • Matt Foley (unregistered) in reply to dingo done snatched my baby
    dingo done snatched my baby:
    It seems that people have figured out ways to circumvent these restrictions. Research should thus proceed into uploading biocontrol software directly into worker's brains. This software will, for the duration that subjects are at work, preclude them from accessing sites deemed "off limits" by patching their behavioral control centers with neuronal implant interfaces. At the least, it will allow easier panoptic monitoring from the master control center. We should also proceed with, but maybe not tell people about, additional hidden control capabilities that will be available to be engaged after work hours, as that sort of thing tends to scare people.

    Mr. Gates, don't you have better things to do than to scare everyone with your misguided missives?

    captcha: bathe, as in Bill could bathe in scorpion venom ($38,858,507.46 per gallon)

  • nerdytenor (unregistered) in reply to sas
    sas:
    Here in the US, you can do a lot of things to your employees, but firing them often requires defending a lawsuit.

    The US has its share of problems, but difficulty in firing people is not, IMHO, one of them. Check out France or Germany for comparison.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Control_Alt_Kaboom
    Control_Alt_Kaboom:
    Yeah, that's apropriate. However, my (ex-)high school blocked downlaods.microsoft.com under the catagory: 'Marijuana'.

    (The Real WTF is that I know how to spell Marijuana without having to look it up in a dictionary...)

    No, you don't. Marihuana is spelled with an H in a U.S. law banning it. Tijuana is always spelled with a J!

  • Will (unregistered)

    A company I contract for won't allow myself or any other FT perm employee to use Google or Yahoo Groups. Google Groups is great for posting .NET / C# problems.

  • (cs) in reply to sas
    sas:
    Here in the US, you can do a lot of things to your employees, but firing them often requires defending a lawsuit.
    Not in at-will states.
  • Lewis (unregistered) in reply to Control_Alt_Kaboom
    Control_Alt_Kaboom:
    Arancaytar:
    abx:
    Badger:
    The real WTF is that he is using IE5
    downloads.microsoft.com was probably blocked...

    "... categorized as Virus/Malware."

    Yeah, that's apropriate. However, my (ex-)high school blocked downlaods.microsoft.com under the catagory: 'Marijuana'.

    (The Real WTF is that I know how to spell Marijuana without having to look it up in a dictionary...)

    The real WTF is the fact that you can't spell downloads ;)

  • alexgieg (unregistered) in reply to Pat
    Pat:
    Maybe the management is afraid that everybody will start to actually look up the buzzwords they always use and point out how badly misused words like, "paradigm" are...
    A friend of mine is a department manager at a telco, and he dislikes passionately these buzzwords. But instead of complaining, he has creative ways to make his colleagues aware of what's wrong with these terms. A typical example: he enters the meeting, and before anyone talks, explains he's researching the topic of "paradigm breaks" and so needs everyone to write down which "paradigms" they "broke" in the morning, detailing the results attained with every "break".

    Everyone laughs and (for some time) stop talking about paradigms.

  • Erik Purne (unregistered) in reply to Brian Jones
    Brian Jones:
    Clearly they're not allowing access to dictionary.com because it contains a lot of mistakes. Flavour, colour, the list goes on. I bet if he went to the Oxford English site he'd find it nice and accessible ;)

    I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're being sarcastic, because those are not mistakes, just alternate and, if anything, more valid spellings of those words.

  • kevin sanchez (unregistered) in reply to Alcari
    Alcari:
    buggy:
    I used to work at a company that had bizarre blocking policies. They would block PETA, for example, but not Earth First. They would block some, but not all, of Planned Parenthood, but openly let Operation Rescue through. I used to amuse myself finding interesting, contradictory, or ironic parings of blocked/unblocked pages.

    Sounds like their policy is really paying off...

  • zero (unregistered) in reply to bramster
    bramster:
    penryu:
    I think you're all missing the point here.

    Forget about all this censorship. Dictionaries, social networking, Greenpeace... all this pales next to my employers "no beard" policy!

    Makes perfect sense. If you really screw up, you can disguise yourself by just shaving off your beard.

    This has been a policy in many DP shops for many years.

  • Kendall F. (unregistered) in reply to Sauron
    Sauron:
    Reminds me of one day a year or two ago when Websense blocked Google for 'sex'. Yeah, it would have been an unpleasant day at school for me had I not set up a personal proxy server already....

    That is one thing. Blocking the word 'document' on the other hand...

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