I've just noticed whilst going through my server log files, companies like http://www.relevantnoise.com on a back search of what these guys do, they scan your website or blog / journal for anything that could affect corporate brands, and companies then they sell the data on, probably with the intention of said company trying to go into court to get a gagging order on you, which is quite frankly stupid. I've written to them today and asked them to remove my domains from there list. They make money out of this, and use my facilities to facilitate this, so why should they not pay me? If they did I would not mind the intrusion by corporates like this. But as it happens when they sell the Data I do.

Whats even better is there support email address bounces YAY proffessional Incompetance strikes again

And another one

www.bdbrandprotect.com these guys don't even have an info, 
support or non client email address to issue a desist order too So the little 
guy gets slammed again., or maybe not, name em and shame em

One thing that has always suprised me, is the fact that Education establishments are to extreme on Firewalling. A few years ago my son came home and said to me that he couldn't access my site from school, I was at the time running an RPG site (Tabletop) and when he typed the URL in he got a snotty proxy block message from the LEA computers.

So when I created this site I deliberately edited the IRCA tags and more to enable the site to be seen by education establishments as its an educational site. But imagine how peeved I'd be if they still where blocked? I'd be annoyed. Yet I did find one such establishment the other day. I asked the head of Networking why my site was blocked. Interestingly it was blocked due to ONE Keyword!!!! Go on Guess which One... "Amateur" So firstly I decided to do some research.

Taking the most popular internet search engine of the Day (Google by stats) I went into my account settings and turned off content filtering, so I would get even the adult sites. Then I selected "Pages from the UK" and Typed the following in the search box "Lancaster Amateur"

Suprisingly in the first three pages there is no ADULT content, nor anything dodgy. This site is listed as second link second page...

So I thought Why do they block me based on ONE keyword when My IRCA tags are clearly pointing to any age, educational... The answer is, simply, its easier to block all keywords than set up proper definitions. So I thought How can this be broken.

How to break it and why: Firstly using a service like ibypass.net/ which uses tunneling to bypass the system, you can bypass system services like SmartFilter, but what about systems that allow the Sysop to view your screen? Personnally If I was only breaking the filters to look at educational sites like this I wouldn't care, I'd let them pull me into an office and start an argument, I am sure the governers and the LEA would love to know about it. I would also let my children do the same.

Ethics? The interesting question here is the ethics of smart filters and the like in school. I don't have a problem with properly established and maintained setups but I do have a problem with badly configured ones that rely on a SysOp monitoring what the Students are doing. As a parent would I snoop on my child? No I would not, because the child has to learn responsibility. If they don't find what they are looking for here they will find it somewhere else so best to find things in a safe environ* So when A child goes to a school should an administrator be aloud to spy on them without a parents Explicit permission, as opposed to Implied permission? quite simply they should not. I recall M6IRU being called up infront of a head teacher due to the fact that, in a class they where studying famous people who where of a specific religion, and someone had said to him that Kattie Price was one, he didn't know who she was, so looked said person up on Google. Hense lots of hastle. Now even though this had been an honest mistake it caused lots of issues that involved a lot of people that had better things quite frankly to do with their time.

Yes there are advantages of Smart filters, firewalls and restrictions etc, they do stop adult content, cyber bullying and the likes, but they also hinder learning, which takes many many forms. Head teachers are sometimes very far removed from reality of many of their pupils, they are used to dealing with the miniscule percentile that are either bad pupils, or the 1% of excellent pupils, not the rest. No longer is it simply enough to do what we did in my day and keep our heads down and out of the way.

Whilst on the topic of firewalls and education in all my years using .edu email addresses (no addresses given here) I have never had any repercussions over my test emails which usually go along the line of > President (Name), Prime Minister (Name) Random location, bomb, gun, missile, chocolate bar, telephone, pizza, random day of the week, football ground, golfer, theft of trophy" etc yet we are told all email is monitored hehe maybe mine just gives people a giggle....

Sidetracking: I wonder if on Vista on a Educational network, if USB pens will allow the running of Software if they run as SmartStart devices using U3?

1/6th of the total power of a transmission is in each carrier, thus in AM with both sidebands thats a total of 1/3rd of the power (reference the sidebands alone.) leaving 2/3rds from the carrier.

So you may have heard about cleenfeed BT developed it for the UK  government to stop pornography or is that all? now many ISPs have implemented Cleenfeed, is it an Orwellian knightmare coming home to roost. No not exactly.

So it could be used to censor your viewing of sites, say your a member of greenpeace, technically they could cut all access to greenpeaces sites, or is that so?

Not quite. If you know your way round the networking setup you will already know there are many DNS servers and many ISPs suggest you use theirs (however you don't have to)

I suggest surfing over to OpenDNS and get their dns settings they don't filter you unless you ask them to (IE for a childs PC)

Similarly if you don't want the UK government reading your emails, set up a domain name with a non UK isp like

This stops the UK government seeing your emails Too

I am not promoting criminal acts, just pointing out the internet is a research tool and should not be restricted nor tamed.

Go to your browser and find internet|privacy then locate cookies and exceptions

add the following to the list

www.webwise.net BLOCK

www.oix.net  BLOCK

www.doubleclick.net BLOCK

www.doubleclick.com BLOCK

Volla sorted, no advertising cookies from Doubleclick and it stops Phorm dead also (until they set up a new server