Change Classification of Site to Avoid Blocks

[Banana Stomper]

So today at my internship in which i've done quite literally nothing this week, i decided to check out how my games were going, only to find conquer club blocked! What does exelon care if i play games? They paid me to sit at a desk being babysat for a week, the least they can do is give me some sweet salvation.

Is there anything you can do to alter the classifcation of this website so that the blocker thing doesn't recognize it as a game?

I really haven't the slightest idea how that works, but that would be amazingly awesome if you could do something there.

[PaperPlunger]

Yeah, that's a good idea, my school blocks it. I don't know what lack can do about "pornography" as thats what it is blocked as, but i'm sure something can be done

[Black Jack]

It is easy to see why schools would block this site.

Any site that permits its members to behave, as they do here, should be blocked from schools.

It should remain that way... until Lack decides who controls this site.

[Pedronicus]

This site is a game? - Wow, I've only been coming here to help me in my geography lessons

[PaperPlunger]

This site is a game? - Wow, I've only been coming here to help me in my geography lessons

yeah, that's what i said.


I told my principal that it's not just a game, it can help us study, and learn about country locations etc.

[Haydena]

Heh, my schools ICT department are far too stupid to realise this is a game anyway...

[Pedronicus]

worth a try I suppose?

[Black Jack]

Any school administrator or principal that reviews CC... will block it.

They would also make sure that other school principals know about it and block it.

Until something is done about the rampant profanities, racism and homophobia... it will remain that way.

They have to or their jobs would be in jeopardy.

The problem does not lay with the schools, but with the site.

[PaperPlunger]

Any school administrator or principal that reviews CC... will block it.

They would also make sure that other school principals know about it and block it.

Until something is done about the rampant profanities, racism and homophobia... it will remain that way.

They have to or their jobs would be in jeopardy.

The problem does not lay with the schools, but with the site.

you're no fun at all, now are you?

[Black Jack]

The truth is frequently... not fun.

If students want CC available on school PC's...they need to be leading the fight to clean-up CC.

The current environment is not tne that schools will condon or approve of.

Plus, if most parents knew what was happening here.. they would ban you from it.

[Banana Stomper]

Well, i don't know about the problem with the site lying in the forums. It is blocked as a game (for me at least) nothing more. I'm not sure what it is that has had this site classified as such, who decides. Besides, i don't see much of anything going on in here that didn't go on at my lunch table in high school. In fact, this is probably pretty tame relatively. I really don't see where all of this horrible stuff is anyways.

I don't really want to get into stuff about what right the school has to block the site for what is said, cause i know it would be fruitless. But here goes anyway. The tinker case. A supreme court case in which they ruled that the students rights do not stop at the door to the school.

[UTGreen]

I think that youth should be taught to be subversive and I have no problem passing along the wisdom of others to the people of this board.

So up until a week ago I was a substitute teacher, and a student wanted to get on the computer to finish up a project (always a lie, but at least that means you've got at least one kid to quiet down). About 2 minutes later he's on mySpace.com which I know for a fact the school has blocked. I tell him that I won't make him get off (since there's only a minute or two left anyway, and the class was over for all practical purposes anyway) if he told me how he did it. It turns out there are two ways, and maybe they'll work for you too.

One is ninjaproxy.com which according to the site:

With Ninja Proxy you can browse your favorite web sites anonymously and even from behind a firewall with blocked ports. Whether you're on the job, at school or college university, a public terminal, or anywhere else with a web browser, you can use Ninja Proxy to view your favorite web sites!

The other way is to not type the homepage directly, but instead type in a URL beyond the gateway page. For mySpace they can type "www.search.myspace.com" for instance. For CC perhaps you can type "www.conquerclub.com/forum/" Not sure that would work though... would have to be a pretty sorry firewall not to pick that one up.

Anyway, that's all I know. Of course, YOU are still responsible for whatever you do at work, school, etc... so if you get fired, suspended, arrested, virused, expelled, hacked, divorced, spanked, Gitmo'ed, etc. don't come whining to me. But I would be interested to know if anyone gets either method to work.

[Banana Stomper]

Yea, i know of a couple ways to get around them that i've used in high school, but i don't want to be doing anything too shady at work. I mean, not that i've done a single ounce of productive work...or possibly could with my education at this point. I can't immagine them trusting anything, even the simplest thing with a freshman intern at a nuclear power plant. I guess i just need a way to pass the time. But i guess i was really wondering if the site can be reclassified from game to...educational... or something non regulated.

I guess playing games feels worse when you know you've intentionally bypassed company policy.

[Mjolnirs]

This site is blocked by my work as a game.

I was able to get in for about the first month I played, then nothing. I had someone suggest a proxy bypass site and that kind of worked, but not so much. I could log in and see my games, but the only thing displayed on the maps were the army numbers, not the map itself. I could handle this with the US map and the classic map, but any other map and it was useless. This past Friday that site was blocked too, WHILE I WAS IN MID-TURN

It eventually let me in with about 5 minutes left to finish my turn. I think I'll just stick with playing from home.

[Twill]

I dont think there is anything Lack, or anyone on this side of the fence, can do about classification system on individual firewalls and proxies.

The fact is, we are a game, any organization which watches activity from computers (i.e. those that block sites) are going to be suspicious about someone logging into a site named "conquerclub" from a nuclear power plant...no?

There are definately plenty of schools which have not (yet) blocked CC, and I'm sure it will be caused eventually by swearing/nudity on the forum and or the fact that people do actualy, despite common opinion, come here to waste time

I doubt there is much you could do, but I dont know, if anyone comes up with an idea that doesnt violate any laws, rules, guidelines or laws of physics, we'd be happy to hear it.

Twill

[Banana Stomper]

Haha, finally, an answer i was looking for. I guess i was really wondering, what i was looking for was how those blocker things work. If at some place on "this side of the fence" the game was somehow classified as a game or if the service blocking the site decided to classify it as such.

Thanks a lot, Twill

[lukonen]

lol, your schools SUCK
at my school, this site is NOT blocked... and too, we got these pimped-out laptops, they suck but its still cool and play on them pretty much all day

[Banana Stomper]

....I get to work with a nuclear reactor. And the president is coming on wednesday...i don't wanna hear about your crappy laptops.

[PaperPlunger]

OK> My school has something called Bess SmartFilter, this is and outside the computer program, meaning it's a box that is plugged into the server, which holds tons of websites. Things like NinjaProxy are called anonymizers, and they are blocked by Bess. You can visit almost anywhere with google, even though pages will be blocked, all you have to do is click cached page, instead of the direct link. The only way to stop this is for your blocker people to manually add the website/server website IP address to the blocker. Most proxy's will not work, so those are basically out of the picture. The next thing I checked on was to google http://www.conquerclub.com and click cached page. This works, however you cannot do much, as when you attempt to log in it goes back to the conquerclub site, and it's then blocked. You can however browse forums while not logged in, as they are not blocked. I don't know why, considering this is the only bad* part of the site. Basically stating: With SmartFilter you will need an outside host, like your home computer for instance, to have a specific url that's unique to it, that you can browse from there, through a school computer, which would basically require remote desktopping to the extreme (including replacement IP address etc). There are programs that will do this much more simply and will not require much hassle, and don't even have to alter proxy settings on the machine you're working on.

Basically clicking cached pages is your best friend. Unless the page's IP has been blocked.

All in all, my search has not yet ended, but I have tried many things. I will update more soon on my progress.

[Mr. K]

....I get to work with a nuclear reactor. And the president is coming on wednesday...i don't wanna hear about your crappy laptops.

For the record, incase you didn't realize, he's talking about the President of the United States. Yeah, him.

[PaperPlunger]

Has anyone seen the picture of Bush looking through binoculars with caps on 'em? It's cool because my sisters friend took the picture, and gave me a copy of it.