More How to be a Hero in School Computer Lab...

How to Circumvent Full Armor

"I ran up against this program 8 months ago at school, they attempted to prevent people from writing to the hard drive. It presented itself as a challenge....for about 5 minutes."--Dave Manges.

Here's how Dave did the deed:

1) In the properties of the program it mentions the thread file (can't remember the name of the file) it was something.vbx

2) OK...this is easy enough, open notepad, open something.vbx

3) Just because I can't write to the hard drive doesn't mean I can't edit something already there, delete the first character from the file.

4) The file (opened in notepad) looks like garbage, but if memory serves the first letter was M.

5) Save the File and restart the computer, it should come up with an error like "Unable to Initialize Full Armor".

6) Now you can go into add/remove programs and uninstall it.

Again, remember to back up all files before changing them so you can put the computer back the way you found it.

Solve the Web Babysitter Problem

Suppose your next goal is to get rid of Web babysitter programs. But this can be a tough job. Think about it from the point of view of the teachers. If even one kid were to complain to her parents that she had seen dirty movies running on other kid's monitors in computer lab, your school would be in big trouble. So merely blasting your way through those babysitter programs with techniques will solve the problem for only a short time--and get you and your teacher and your school in trouble.

But once again you can be a hero. You can help your teachers discover the Web sites that are being blocked by those babysitter programs. They may be surprised to find out the block lots more than naughty pictures. They often secretly censor certain political sites, too.

If your school is running CYBERsitter, you can really beat up on it. CYBERsitter has encrypted its list of banned sites, which include those with political beliefs they don't like. But you can download a program to decrypt this list at http://peacefire.org (This Web site is maintained by a teen organization, Peacefire, devoted to freedom of speech.)

When your teacher discovers the hidden political agenda of CYBERsitter, you are a hero. Unless, of course, your teacher agrees with CYBERsitter's tactics. If so, you can probably find other teachers in your school who will be appalled by CYBERsitter.

How about IE's built-in site blocking system? It is harder to uncover what it blocks because it works by limiting the viewer to web sites that have "certificates" provided by a number of organizations. If a site hasn't gone to the effort of getting a certificate, IE can keep you from seeing it.

Of course, you can quickly disable the IE censorship feature. But instead of doing this, how about directing your teacher to http://peacefire.org and let him or her follow the links? Then perhaps the authorities at your school will be ready to negotiate with you to find a way to give you freedom to surf without grossing out other kids in the computer lab or library who can't help but notice what may be on your monitor.

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