I need a keg...

[W1RKW]

The AH company I work for just blocked AMFone.net.  I can no longer view the forum.  I can't even view through a proxy website.  They'll block this nice website but they won't block the websites that allow people to play fantasy football.  Go figure.  This is more educational and meaningful IMO. Freakin' big brother.  I need a drink...

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Any explanation as to why?

[KB2WIG]

He's thirsty??

[W1RKW]

I work for General Dynamics and they pretty much block anything and things that don't make sense.  I don't know if it's because of web hosts, content, certain types of code or all of the above.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Well, that sux.

[K1JJ]

I work for General Dynamics and they pretty much block anything and things that don't make sense.  I don't know if it's because of web hosts, content, certain types of code or all of the above.

My guess is it's a general directive down from the bean counters. They have told their webmasters that anything that might look remotely related to "wasting" time for personal endeavors should be blocked. If it turns out to be an important business-related site, they figger someone will speak up. If not, then nobody will own up to it.  As for the web Fantasy Football that still gets through, sounds like some employees have friends in the web office.

AMfone IS an important technical site critical to your job and should be reinstated. Tell the bean counters Tom Vu said that, caw mawn... 

T

[WA1GFZ]

or tom vu will crash their stock

[John Holotko]

These days more and more companies are getting into blocking and filtering more and more  content. It's primarilly due to security fears (which are often justified) and legal concerns. The later pertains particularly to things like email, blogs, webforums, chat rooms, etc. Companies are afraid employees may, eitherdeliberately or inadvertantly, post something that coiuld in some way be injurious to the companyor raise liability issues. Sometimes out of fear IT departments will block or filter more  content than they need to because they are afraid  that if any "bad content" gets through their heads will roll as the higher ups hollar "WHY WASN'T THAT ALREADY FIXED ??".  One rukle of thumb is, "block everything and only allow what is needed". In many respects it's a good rule to follow. Unfortunately more  and more employees are finding that during working hours they are becoming more and morelimited to the companies local Intranet and not much more
 

[Bill, KD0HG]

FWIW, businesses often block web sites by locking them out of the corporate DNS.

It is possible to sometimes evade this by using a different DNS (even one external to your company's), or by manually entering the IP of the site into the browser so DNS isn't used at all.  Or you can install a dial-up modem into your office computer, get an account with a local ISP and plug into a Fax line to bypass the corporate network entirely.

Of course, actually doing this can either get you a promotion for cleverness or in deep doo-doo.
. ;-)

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Back when I was gainfully employed in the corporate world, my Company started blocking everything that they felt wasn't company related even though our group was doing marketing studies which required net access to a lot of sites.

I got tired of explaining why I needed access to this and that, so I finally wrote a telco request to our in-house telephone people to install a POTS line in my office. Hung a modem on it and off I went. Not as fast, but a lot less a pain in the butt.

[John Holotko]

FWIW, businesses often block web sites by locking them out of the corporate DNS.

It is possible to sometimes evade this by using a different DNS (even one external to your company's), or by manually entering the IP of the site into the browser so DNS isn't used at all.  Or you can install a dial-up modem into your office computer, get an account with a local ISP and plug into a Fax line to bypass the corporate network entirely.

Of course, actually doing this can either get you a promotion for cleverness or in deep doo-doo.
. ;-)

In many cases probably will result in deep doo doo. Enabling a dialup connection on even one computer thats  connected to the network would be viewed as a security threat because you've now opened an unfirewalled, unprotected portal to the outside world placing the network at risk.

Best way to do it is bring your own laptop to work.Make sure it is not connected to the company's  network in any way, shape or form. Then uses a plain ordinary dialip modem via a phone line or, even better, a mobile wireless account or a local wi-fi network (other than the company's) and your on.

[W1RKW]

GD doesn't allow their employees to bring or use personal digital equipment in the plant. Dialup, never will happen in my dept., secret level classified area. Phone lines are monitored.

Tried using a direct IP address, no go.  Tried proxying, no luck their either.

They allow CNN and a bunch of other mainstream websites through that place cookies and ads and whole bunch of other crap on their machines. That's a security risk as far as I'm concerned yet AMFone.net places a cookie for login purposes in the cookies file.  One little harmless cookie. Does AMFone.net do this if one accesses the site  as a guest only? I never logged in or posted when at work so I don't get it.   

They probably didn't like the ted nugent thread that's my guess. 

[Ed KB1HVS]

Did the same thing where I work. But I can still get updated baseball scores Real drag. When things got slo overnight I liked reading the posts.

[W1RKW]

My cell phone has Inet capabilities.  I should give it a whirl then I won't be without AMFone...  I'll get my midday fix.

[John Holotko]

Why not talk to someone from your IT department  and simply ask them why they are blocking/filtering this site ?

[w1guh]

Here, I can usually get to a page by accessing the Google cached copy.  'course that only works if Google has a copy

[k4kyv]

Where I work (the local public school system) they have a porn filter that blocks a lot of useful stuff.  For example, foreign language online dictionaries are not allowed.  I even once tried to bring up a site that contained some antenna engineering data, and got an error message "inappropriate content detected."  Double checked the site at home, and there was absolutely nothing on that site but mathematical formulae, graphic charts and technically oriented text.  Maybe someone had the idea that a vertical takeoff angle radiation pattern too closely resembled a pair of boobs.

But I have  long noticed how frequently Education shoots itself in the foot.

[John Holotko]

Where I work (the local public school system) they have a porn filter that blocks a lot of useful stuff.  For example, foreign language online dictionaries are not allowed.  I even once tried to bring up a site that contained some antenna engineering data, and got an error message "inappropriate content detected."  Double checked the site at home, and there was absolutely nothing on that site but mathematical formulae, graphic charts and technically oriented text.  Maybe someone had the idea that a vertical takeoff angle radiation pattern too closely resembled a pair of boobs.

But I have  long noticed how frequently Education shoots itself in the foot.

It depends on how the content filter works. Unfortunately  many proprietary filter companies are reluctant to release that information and according to the DMCA it  is not  exactlylegal to reverse engineer them and find out how  they work. It could be the content filter is finding something on the page, althouh it maynot be visible, that contains something that sets off  it's red flags.

Many of the filters, particularly the ones used by schools, really suck. All to often they filter out perfectly legimimate content. I personally don't like the idea of content filtering. If you want to protect children then they should be supervised when they are on the net. Find out what sites  they are  visiting, who they are talking to and  if somethings not kosher talk  to them. Explain to them why visiting such a site is not a good idea. Good supervision will go a lot further than a filter and is a lot harder to circumvent.

[w1guh]

"mathematical formulae, graphic charts and technically oriented text. "  Not allowed in school anymore.   

Where I work (the local public school system) they have a porn filter that blocks a lot of useful stuff.  For example, foreign language online dictionaries are not allowed.  I even once tried to bring up a site that contained some antenna engineering data, and got an error message "inappropriate content detected."  Double checked the site at home, and there was absolutely nothing on that site but mathematical formulae, graphic charts and technically oriented text.  Maybe someone had the idea that a vertical takeoff angle radiation pattern too closely resembled a pair of boobs.

But I have  long noticed how frequently Education shoots itself in the foot.

[k4kyv]

It depends on how the content filter works. Unfortunately  many proprietary filter companies are reluctant to release that information and according to the DMCA it  is not  exactlylegal to reverse engineer them and find out how  they work.

How, exactly, does one go about "reverse engineering" software?  I assume one examines each 16-bit or 32-bit binary number in the stream and analyses the pattern, just the reverse of writing software in machine language.  I never developed an interest in that kind of work because I always had the impression, rightly or wrongly, that it is extremely tedious.  I taught myself electronics when everything was analogue, and back in the 70's, when almost any electronics work increasingly required a good working knowledge of digital techniques, my interest waned and I moved on to other fields.

And if one actually succeeded in reverse engineering a piece of software to find, for example, exactly what raises the red flags in a porn filter, how would anyone with the software manufacturer know to prosecute, unless you sent the company an e-mail and explained to  them exactly how you did it?

I think it would be cool to reverse engineer some of the media players such as Windows and Real, and figure out how they encode the digital stream for streaming audio, so that it could be directly digitally downloaded and saved.  The popular programs for "saving" streamed audio are basically audio recorders.  They take the converted analogue audio off the sound card and convert it back to MP3 or other digital form and save to the HDD.  Of course, some of the resolution is lost as with any analogue recording/playback system.

It would seem to me that if your computer can download the stream and decode the information to feed the soundcard, it could also directly save the stream to the HDD to be later decoded and played at the convenience of the user.  But I have always heard that these players use proprietary coding to encrypt the data stream, and that no-one has ever figured out how to crack it.  If the DMCA is the only obstacle, why hasn't someone outside US soil managed to do this, since they are beyond the jurisdiction of DMCA and there would be a high demand for their endeavours?

But I am completely ignorant of many of the tedious details of computer technology, so some of these things to me are functionally the equivalent of magic.

[W1RKW]

I think there are uncompilers.  But I'm not a software guy and have no desire to be one so it's just a guess.

[wa1knx]

yes, there are decompilers, though your left with a comment less pile of assembly
code. I'll bet there are keyword search tables left in ascii. you could dump the
fiilter out, and perhaps patch the image to ignore what you want to see!

[John Holotko]

It depends on how the content filter works. Unfortunately  many proprietary filter companies are reluctant to release that information and according to the DMCA it  is not  exactlylegal to reverse engineer them and find out how  they work.

How, exactly, does one go about "reverse engineering" software?  I assume one examines each 16-bit or 32-bit binary number in the stream and analyses the pattern, just the reverse of writing software in machine language.

Well, you can do a hex dump of the executable or the object file prior to linking and examine the opcodes and translate them into assembly instructions. Of course for a large program (and most programs nowadays are huge) this would be an enormous task. You could also use a decompiler to try and do it "automatically"
Either way you have to be familiar with assembly. And to translate opcodes to assembly instructions manually you'll need to be familiar with how such opcodes are encoded for the processor you are using.
I have actually modified executables directly by opening them in a hex editor and modifying the opcode. But I have only done it to make very minor changes and to impress geeky women. 

Generally when you "reverse engineer" a piece of sopftware you're trying to uncover some specific functionality rather than the entire aggregate.  For instance you might be trying to find out how a sound driver communicates with a sound card. Or how a program accesses a particular systems resource.

In general revcerse engineering is nott just about decompiling but rather a process involving a wide range of techniques, the ultimate goal being to gather sufficient info  to determine how some functionality works. Other techniques might involve such steps as examining the systems  process table, examining what libraries the program is linking with, what specific library functions is it using, examining the programs variables, examining any network activity the program is generating, etc. Using a packet sniffer to examine network activity can reveal  some good info. Attaching a debugger to the running program can also provide some good information.

If you are interested in learning some more specifics about software  and reverse engineering you might want to check out the following site:

http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigmil/RevEng/index.html

for an informative overview into some reverse engineering processes.

And if one actually succeeded in reverse engineering a piece of software to find, for example, exactly what raises the red flags in a porn filter, how would anyone with the software manufacturer know to prosecute, unless you sent the company an e-mail and explained to  them exactly how you did it?

If you just did it for your own personal  satisfaction there would be no problem. But if you did it for the purpose of circumventing or altering some  feature and then distributing modified versions of that software
or cracking some copy protection or something like that and you publicize or distribnute your results there is a fair possibility  the software maker will haul you in to court.

It would seem to me that if your computer can download the stream and decode the information to feed the soundcard, it could also directly save the stream to the HDD to be later decoded and played at the convenience of the user.  But I have always heard that these players use proprietary coding to encrypt the data stream, and that no-one has ever figured out how to crack it.  If the DMCA is the only obstacle, why hasn't someone outside US soil managed to do this, since they are beyond the jurisdiction of DMCA and there would be a high demand for their endeavours?

But I am completely ignorant of many of the tedious details of computer technology, so some of these things to me are functionally the equivalent of magic.

there are various apps out there now that  will take the encoded digital stream and dump it to a disk file. Some will capture and dump the stream in it's original format and others will convert it to some other format on the fly. The encoded  content can then be played later on via a suitableplayer that can handle the format being used.  As far as decrypting protected content (i.e so it can be converted into non encrypted formats) that has been done. In the case of DVD CSS encryption it came in the form of deCSS. But that was an relatively easy hack because they used a relatively weak encryption scheme. Nonetheless hollywood was furious about it but it was too late,the genie was already out of the box. What's going to be interesting is to see if anyone cracks the new encryption scheme that will be used on the next generation Blu Ray or HDDVD DVD's. The new encryption scheme is supposed to be a lot tougher to crack than the CSS scheme. And it is supposed to be able to have the added feature of being able to change the scheme on the fly should anyone crack it. How well it all works and whether or not anyone successfully  cracks it remains to be seen.