It was a dark and stormy night…
“I just found out something.”
“What?”
“Apparently, they block every single type of peer-to-peer sharing at Oxford.”
“You can probably get around it, somehow.”
“No, you can’t. Everything — everything — is prohibited; BitTorrent, Limewire, IRC, even DC++! The bastards even restrict you from playing online games!”
“Pretty awful.”
“How am I supposed to get my TV fix? What about Lost? House? Heroes? What am I supposed to do? Tell me what to dooooo….”
“I think I speak for us all when I say, “You got wtfpwned when you took that scholarship”.”
I’ve noticed my friends never actually give me any useful advice. Ever. They just make up words like “wtfpwned” in an effort to keep me on my toes and constantly amused. But that’s what we call real friendship, n’est-ce pas?
Michelle says,
thats rough, by the way congratulations on the scholarship, how long does it run for?
Nishant says,
I doubt theres no sharing system there, you might have just asked the wrong person. Try to make friends with someone in their computer science or engineering department. As long as they give you internet access, somebody will find a way.
Nishant says,
Otherwise, you’re wtfpwned.
Phil says,
Nishant: Originally, that’s what I thought, too. However, from message boards I’ve browsed, apparently they can be pretty Nazi about the whole affair — to the point where people have been booted out, or, more realistically, have lost their internet connection. And I’m not stupid enough to think that, from a network admin perspective, it’s in any way hard to track down people who are using torrents.
One obvious way is to simply keep track of the type of files, as well as the quantity that’s coming in.
I’ve heard of ways around it. For example, use torrent programs that randomize the ports, and making sure to cap your download to something much lower than usual. Other people recommend Usenets, which is anonymouse but requires monthly subscriptions.
There’s always a way around it, of course. But the point is, there isn’t any convenient loophole I see. And in any convenient way that might be possible, there’s simply no way to hide if the admins are on the lookout. I’m not mentioning cumbersome ways like having a friend at home simply let me download shows using an FTP or over MSN. But this is just in stark contrast to most universities we know, where the rules are more laxed (apparently, DC++ is rampant at the University of Toronto). And no gaming? Puleeze. It’s not exactly a huge burden on the network, here.
You can read the exact rules here.
roselle says,
umm…here’s an idea..watch it on television like “normal” people
Jonathan Weatherhead says,
Try to find a good free proxy and a torrenting client that supports proxies (maybe a SOCKS proxy?)
I’ll look around and see if I can find any good shit.
Nishant says,
UofT’s filesharing thing is actually quite spectacular. It’s all done with the IT staff’s knowledge (they can’t really miss ~50TB of internal traffic a day), so the system is actually very flexible.
Anyways, as far as “simple” solutions go, most torrent programs now (ie uTorrent) have a setting for encrypted headers, ie the packets arent labelled as torrent traffic, and are rather clumsily disguised. It works…kinda…
Mark says,
Roselle, although I can’t speak for Phil, that’s not as easy as it sounds.
The first hurdle is whether or not the show is even available over where he’s going. Although it’s less of a problem for high profile American shows, some shows may take a year or two to reach other parts of the world.
The second hurdle is he has to purchase a tele over there if he wants to watch in his room. That also means he has to purchase a (monthly? annual?) TV subscription since it’s not free (as in Canada).
The third hurdle is that he actually has to be physically present for the show. Granted, not a huge deal, but I think given his heavy scheduling, it might be a problem.
And Phil? If you can find a convenient way through it all, you might want to try iTunes. Although I know for a fact TV episodes will be more expensive over there.
But yeah. That’s what you get for ditching Canada for bigger and better things.
Collin says,
Panic ye not fine sir. It happens that we have TV in the UK too.
I believe they’ve even shown Heroes, House and Lost on at least two different channels! Ok, we’re a little behind the times, having only just finished season 1 of Heroes, but yes, we saw it.