Oh man, today I got nagged by the GM again. He caught me slacking, surfing the web... I seriously need a GM proximity alarm when he creeps nearby. So I began using this self contained/portable Firefox browser which runs directly from my Flash USB drive. Since it doesn't install anything, there are no traces after you close the browser. There are neither cookies nor history check.
One of the things that really annoy me on my company's network is the group policy; everything you do is restricted by lack of administrator privileges. For example I can't change even change the simplest stuff like enabling Clear Type (makes it easier to read text on LCD flat panels). So I know they can't enforce group policy on USB devices, because the way Windows was designed, it doesn't have the feature to enforce some kind of group policy on USB devices. Even if Windows did natively had support to enforce restrictive policy on USB, they wouldn't be able to disable USB devices, otherwise they would be disabling USB keyboard, USB mice, USB printers and so forth. This would simply render the computer useless. So what is there for me to do? Exploit the fact that I can launch self contained/portable applications directly from the USB flash drive. Since these softwares are self contained, they don't need to be installed on the host computer, it will run directly from the USB drive. So this will by pass any group policy that doesn't allow software installation (ala college terminals) on the computer. So far so good. I launch the portable Firefox, however the company's network has an active filter which will block certain sites, and I mean a lot of sites. I launch the proxy server within the web browser to totally by pass these filters. Hahahah.
This reminds me of Sodo when he was in China, I was talking on MSN with Sodo and he was pissed that he couldn't check BBC News since it's blocked by the "Great Firewall". I had the same problem when I was in Beijing. So I instructed him to launch the proxy and voila! He was a campy camper reading BBC News from within China.
Another thing I hate about work's computer is the group policy disables any attempts to launch or install Windows/MSN Messenger. Windows native instant messenger is Windows Messenger, which is basically a simplified version of MSN Messenger. Windows Messenger is installed default. Our work computer even shows Windows Messenger installed on the system, but attempting to launch it will results in...Nothing. Freaking system administrator disabled that too. So once again, exploiting the USB thing, I obtained this self contained portable instant messenger which not only supports MSN Messenger, but AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and so forth. So now I can basically be logged on all these instant messenger services from work's computer. Hahaha.
Bottom line; work's net administrator 0 X 2 Sungi!
So my coworker had an USB flash drive too, so I told him how to not get caught by GM, not like he got caught before, but...
Not going out today, as I'm still car less and want to save some money. Probably I'm going to chill the whole weekend. Even partying on Saturday would be hard, because for some god awful reason they decided to have a mandatory meeting on my day off, Sunday MORNING at 8! Jesus.
Going to shoot a couple of e-mails to friends as I'm doing an awful job of keeping them in touch. Ok and gym too.
Behave kids.
1 comment:
HAHA.
Great stories of evading the top down control mechanisms. It reminds me of when I used to work in Office of Tax and Revenue for DC government. They exerted so much energy to stop us from doing such "horrible" things such as checking our email, that we had to spend a correspondingly great amount of energy to evade their attempts at control.
The truth is: any job which only has the threat of terminating you as an option for censure (and does CompUSA even really have that option?) should not try to piss off their workers, and waste energy getting in little pointless power plays over small things.
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