Monthly Archives: December 2008

Angry at SMS users

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The only text messages I get on my private cell is news updates from my carrier and messages of replies from facebook and twitter saying that my status is updated now. Today I got a message that kinda went out of this steady pattern. It was a chain letter. Yes the very same style of chain letter that specifies that if you forward to X number of people this good thing will happen. The only difference is it was an SMS message rather then an email.

This is what the message said.
Fwd:FW:Fwd::Attention! All cell phones Customers send this message2 10ppl and cell company will credit ur account $60.00 merry christmas.

I copied it exactly.
Now not only is this waiting my time and [the stupid person who forwarded it to me]‘s time it is also waiting mine and his/hers money. Unlike the Internet, where you can get a free email account and do this, you actually have to pay for this.
Lets do the math
On average I have seen text messaging prices between $0.02 and $0.10 per message in and per message out (varies who your carrier is).  This specific message says to send it to 10 people. This is my formula. {SMS_In_Price} + ({SMS_Out_Price} x {Users_To}) = {Waisted Money}. Lets put in some values, I am using the higest price I have seen ($0.10), 0.10 + (0.10 x 10) = $1.10.
Well ok that is not that much but by doing this more and more you are waisting more and more. Save that money and put it to good use like texting friends with IMPORTANT information.
Another note. No matter what the platform (email, sms, im…) is don’t forward chain letters.

I am now blocked

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Sure enough just after I posted my previous post my blog was blocked as you can see from this screen shot. I can still access the admin side of things to post new things but the main part of the site is blocked.

Bypass your school or workplace firewall

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It is content like this that will get my blog blocked at my school but I need to tell you anyway.

There are a bunch of ways to get around your school or workplace firewall, some work and others do not. The most basic of them all is to use what is called a proxy bypass website. This is a website that encrypts the URL of the website you are visiting and displays the page in your web browser. The downside to this is the website that you need to use may already be blocked and 90% of the time the page is not being displayed the right way.

The next way you can bypass the firewall is to use a portable web browser. Portable FireFox is a free portable version of the popular browser FireFox. All you need to do is install this program on your USB flash drive and run it off of that. All of your settings are saved to the folder that it was installed and it will not require one computer to run. Because most schools and workplaces just use Internet explorer they also setup the proxy settings in the settings of Internet Explorer. Because FireFox will not use a proxy by default it will skip the proxy server and go strait to the Internet. This can also make browsing faster because it is not waisting time going through the server.

Sometimes not even FireFox will work on the most harsh of network firewalls. In cases like this you are basically screwed.