YouTube Blocked at School
 

Well my frustration is that unfortunately ALLLL the computers at our school blocks youtube (thanks to some dumb students) so i started this thread to see if any of you teams that have movies files of your robots could maybe send me a link (that is not youtube) so we can see what all you other teams have accomplished! Thanks for anything you guys can do!

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

I'm glad to see that we are not the only ones with this problem

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Yeah, it happened to us too.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

you may be able to use google to upload the videos and view them. you would have to check to see if google video can be accessed from your school.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Actually it didn't. You can still get to Youtube, Google Video, etc. just fine. But they un-installed flash video on all of them (and students don't have install rights), so it's even worse for us. ;)
But you can always watch at home!

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Actually, parental controls are blocking it.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

I would suggest not breaking school rules. Breaking school rules on behalf of your team is not a good way to make your administration happy with your team.
The best way to view the files would be to view them at home. If you must view them at school, ask your teacher if there is a way around your school's web blocking software. Often times, teachers are given less restricted access to the web. If this fails, you and a teacher should ask your principal or network administrator nicely to allow you to view youtube/Google Video.

PS. David, you probably should have looked at the 6 posts before yours which were deleted before posting.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Folks, schools have filters for a reason - deal with it!! One thing we can all do is STOP UPLOADING TO YOUTUBE and USE GOOGLE VIDEO!! That way at least we can download the videos at home and show them at school using the standalone player.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

As you can see, multiple posts in this thread have been deleted by moderators. The reason for deleting these posts is CD is not a place for discussing how to bypass school filters. If discussion like this continues, this thread will be closed.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

our school has blocked youtube too. and google video isn't working really good.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

everyone knows there are ways of getting around the filters, the intent of the thread was to ask teams to not post on youtube....i dont think the thread should be shut down b*c people keep saying ways to get past the filters, we cant keep people from doing that and we arent asking them to do that either

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Well, ours has blocked it all and un-installed flash. But i can still watch some of the videoes because im cool. (cant say how). Im always on CD around the same time...and people can probably tell when i am by my posts. I dont need to watch the videos though...CUZ IM DOING WORK...hehe

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Our school has it blocked but our techs block the sites in a way that you can't access it by typing www.youtube.com, but you can access it through just typing in youtube.com . They realize their mistakes eventually, and our remote-firewall run by a company is very stringent, but as posted before, blocks websites that are used for school. Luckily i'm in web design at my school and because of a programming error our class is the only class that actually has more rights than a teacher has (Nothing major, but usually useful, such as unlimited logins which is great for robotics meetings so we don't have to wait for everyone to login, I just login on all of them when I get there).

P.S. I think the youtube.com spelling used to access it is made so that smart people who actually add the www can't use it, jk.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Same here!! Only we use something else with a weird name. A lot of times we need information about something, for instance, Kevin's site was blocked, which hosts the camera default code. I don't condone what we did, and yes, I know we shouldn't have. But Bedford is pretty strict with their everything. Believe me. And with the process it would've taken for them to approve the site, our children still wouldn't be able to access it.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Most school systems block 'user content' sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Myspace, Geocities, and so on, as they have no idea what can appear in the pages in those sites. There's not much you can do except download the videos at home (Which is yet another great reason to use Mozilla Firefox! :p) and bring them in on a USB drive to watch at school.

Or... The best way to solve the problem is to talk directly to your IT department and briefly outline any exact issues that you need solved. Chances are they won't buy a YouTube story, but if certain websites like ChiefDelphi are on the block list they can unblock them easily enough. Instead of yelling at them about how stupid their rules are, if you act as a gracious profesional they can magically unblock some websites (or at the very minimum, set lessened restrictions on certain websites). ;)

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Some of us aren't so lucky to get google video even. At last check any and all video hosting sites (youtube, google video, zippy video, photobucket, imageshack, etc.) have been blocked from our school.

Videos are really the least of our concerns when it comes to web blocking though. I'm happy that after 3 years our district finally unblocked ChiefDelphi at our school, but in return Kevin's code hosting website is now blocked!

And please don't go around using techniques to get around school web sense filters. I can't even count how many friends I've had that have received suspensions or even expulsions for violating acceptable computer use policies.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

We got around this by stringing our own high-speed connection into our room at our school, after asking permission of course. This way we have full control over our access, and can reprimand people if we catch them stealing our connection (and believe me, we do)

doesnt mean i dont hack... but hey is there a programmer who doesnt ;-)

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I think I have the most effective way of bypassing the filters on school/work computers:

Step A) Get Library Card
Step B) Go to local library with free internet
Step C) Watch Youtube and check sites that are blocked at your school/work

That works for me! :yikes: (hotmail, youtube, facebook, myspace, and a bunch of other sites are blocked at my work. Not CD yet though ;) )

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Man I was going to say the library
:(

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Well at least your team site isn't blocked. :)

Ours was for a short time but it was a misunderstanding.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Our school also blocks youtube

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Last year for about a month Our teams website was blocked due to pornography. It was great. The joke was on some of our mentors. But Talked to the people the runs the firewall and got it fixed. But it still was funny:)

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

If any admin read this post, my intention of this thread was NOT to find ways to get around our schools filters, but simply a way to at least be able to some how share the videos with my class for class disscussion. Becasue with youtube, it is not even possible to download/save the video clips outside of school to show in our class disscussions. Im very sorry for any Inconvenience and if you would like, to stop any further problems/misunderstandings, i will shut down this thread.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I hate to sound like I'm putting more of a workload on Brandon, but I just came up with an idea that I thought was interesting that would (should) solve all of the problems, regardless of any and all video-hosting sites your school/work/place of internet access has blocked. On CD-Media, we have photos and white papers, right? What's the feasibility (Brandon or a mod) of putting a CD-Videos page up? I have no idea how to do it, but I'm imagining something similar to Google Video or Youtube, with a "home page" for the videos. They would be searchable and taggable, just like the photos. Albeit, if you have CD blocked, this won't work too well, but...

What do you guys think?

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I think that is an icredible idea!!!!! haha that would solve A LOT of problems! Hope something like that could possibly be created! Great idea!

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

good idea but does CD have the bandwidth and storage for tons of videos? that seems like the only big roadblock:(

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

That was in the design of CD-Media and still is a long-term goal; photos & papers were added just to completely replace the old gallery & white papers area.

It's lower priority on my list .. Fantasy FIRST and other things will be worked on before Videos in CD-Media.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Our school has blocked YouTube as well. We can get around it by using the wireless network, which is only availible to staff. Perhaps you can convince your school that YouTube has some educational values, and that maybe they can only block the homepage, and not direct links to video (so you can access video with their links posted on CD, but students can't just go to the home page).

I highly recommend just simply using Google Video. Not only is it better quality, but you can view the video in different sizes, and you can download an actual video file (.wmv, .mov, or .mp4 for iPod's and PSP's I believe).

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

our school has a similar stance on web content. so far we've had a decent relationship with the it guys and they have been very supportful of our team.

I understand that they have to do what they do, blocking websites, there are a lot of people who would search/view innapropriate content and the school has to make sure they don't end up with a lawsuit.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

You could always have the files still hosted on google or youtube and just tagged and searchable via CD.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

one thing to think about is the schools don't block it but the county and it is not by the url's but by key words on the web page or at least that is how it is down here.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

well we have some site unblocked at our school (chiefdelphi for example) just have your teacher talk to the board via email and request that it is unblocked for educational reasons.. We got Google Video unblocked and delphi too through the teachers and not through filter bypasses:D

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I hate when schools block websites like that. Especially when it doesn't make sense why they blocked it.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Yeah having Sites blocked is no fun. My school has been upgrading everything which has been good and bad, websense has been freaking out, It even blocked the schools website for a day. On the bright side I stay on the ITs good side and I'm often able to get some of the old hardware that they don't need anymore. If you want something unblocked the best thing that you can do is go to the Administrator with a good argument as to why it should be unblocked, and there is a good chance that they will unblock it for you. And definately don't do like a member of our team did, story: Our team has an account on the system so that we can log in and get slightly better privileges, mostly more network storage and unlimited printing(instead of the 400 page a year limit). So this unnamed member of the team went to proxify to get around the websense, well the admins have a nifty script that immediately suspends whatever account access proxify and emails them to let them know what computer they are on. So we had to do a lot of smoothing things over to get our team back on their good side. Please, be smart and don't make the system admins job harder.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

If you have a problem with negative rep you received, take it up with the person involved and, if you truly believe they were wrong, contact Brandon and he could possibly remove it (or change it to neutral).

Also, remember that all the mods here on ChiefDelphi are volunteers. Many of them are in college or have a job, as well as on FIRST teams who are smack in the middle of build season. Please remember this before you criticize them.

Thank you.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

uhhhhhhhh sry bout that guys will keep quiet now

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

We don;t really have a problem with that at our school because we have a wireless network that allows us to use our own laptops, psps, etc. and we can access any site we wish (people often play WOW in the halls at lunch, lol). Also, our technical head is our mentor, so if we have issues that need fixing they can be addressed...

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I went a little overboard, sorry bout that

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Ours blocks google video and youtube as well. But I mentioned google video so that we can at least download the videos at home and then share them with others at school. Now someone mentioned you can download flash embeded video with Firefox? Can someone elaborate on this or should I just get off my lazy rear and start using firefox?

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I can address the school web blocking issue from a very different viewpoint from most of those who have posted. I am on the school board for the Millcreek Township School District in Erie PA. Our township borders the city of Erie PA on the south and the west. We have approximately 1,500 laptop and desktop computers to serve 7,500 students in 2 high schools, 3 middle schools and 7 elementary schools. I also chair the Operations Committee which oversees the installation of technology. So although I am not an IT expert, I do know a little bit about the problem.

There are 2 main reasons for schools to block so many sites. First and foremost, installing web filtering software was mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Some of you may have heard of that. No choice, we had to do it. Many schools took the easy way out and blocked large categories of websites (Someone help me out here. Is their not some type of HTML tag which can help identify site content and rating?) such as sports, games, entertainment, and the all encompassing unidentified and unrated categories.

The second and perhaps more important reason is the issue of bandwidth and it's cost. Students were consuming such large amounts of bandwidth viewing and downloading videos, playing and downloading music and playing online video games that it had a huge impact on legitimate student and administrative usage. We were forced to adopt the category blocking I mentioned to bring the situation under control. We also updated our policies regarding computer usage and put some teeth into them. Here is a broad overview of our policies: http://www.mtsd.org/district/technology/policy.asp Sadly a former robotics team member got caught and was suspended from school. And no I did not turn him in!:ahh:

So there are some very legitimate reasons for school web blocking. But we also have a process and procedure to have sites unblocked. I would bet you all have a process by which you can get sites unblocked too. Just calmly document your reasons to get a site unblocked without going on a rant about how unfair blocking is. You will get a lot further that way.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Yes, that is correct. That's one of the best things about Firefox; many of the things that used to (and still are) impossible in Internet Explorer, like downloading embedded video, is possible with Firefox and it's many Add-ons. ;)

I would suggest that if you would like to download video at home to watch at school, download Firefox portable and VLC Media player portable onto a USB drive. (They won't take up much space, but the best part is being able to use Firefox (and your same bookmarks, etc.) on any computer you plug your USB drive into. :))

Once you have Firefox installed, you can install Flash player if needed, and then go to this page and click the "Install Now" green box. This will add the Video Downloader extension into Firefox. When you restart Firefox, there will be an added icon to the browser window which will allow you to save the video from YouTube.

Since YouTube video is Flash video, it will save all the files in .flv format, which some media players may have trouble with. That is why I also suggested downloading VLC portable to your USB Drive, as VLC will play almost every and any video type known to mankind. If you have Firefox, VLC, and any saved videos all on your USB drive, you can then download any video and watch them on any computer. ;)

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Thanks Art. I'm running Firefox now and have some catching up to do. Also found http://www.videodl.org/ where you paste in the youtube link and it then lets you download the flash video. Then use a stand alone flash player. Very nice and easy.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Still make sure to watch your school rules if you're doing this. At our school Firefox is considered a proxy since the websense doesn't properly block things on it, and you can/will get suspended for using it.

Also, don't bother if they delete flash on your computers/disable peripheral device hookup (yes, in some rooms at our campus USB drives cannot be accessed).

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

That makes sense, Brandon... it was an idea I wanted to propose, because I didn't know if it had been proposed before.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

You can also use GreaseMonkey to download videos. Someone has written a user script so a little red bar appears on the top of the page that says "Save video as.." Instructions for this process can be found here. They also have a link on the site to here, which is a different way to do the same thing.

There are also links to FLV players and converters on the first site, though I would go with VLC, like Art said before.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

That was the idea. Images will be able to be hosted off-site, as well. Eventually.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Would the videos be viewable through CD, though? The problem for us, at least with Google Video, is that we can get to the main page and look through all the videos, but when we try to watch them, they all say "This video is not available. Please try back later." I don't know what the "format of the block" is for others, but that may be a potential problem.

In other words, would it be a link to the Youtube page or the Google Video page, or would it be something else?

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

O.O

I want your school...

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

It would be an embedded player on ChiefDelphi. It would most likely still be blocked, if videos on YouTube or Google are blocked. We would just be providing a centralized place to view videos/images from external sites in the CD-Media system.

Re: AGHHHHHH YOUTUBE!!!!
 

Thanks for the insight. The sky is also blue.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Darn! There's no way to upload the .wmv's or .mp3's to CD and then have a embedded Windows Media-type player for them? Again, just an idea because I have no idea how to do it.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Both uploading and linking externally would be options, most likely.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

If there is a need, I could provide the hosting. I've been thinking about setting something up you might call a "Firstube". It would be like the gallery system on our website, where you are given the choice to watch the FLV video (using a flash player) or download the original (whatever format that might be) where flash is blocked.

Regardless, I'll probably do something.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Beat you to it - I've put some of the recent youtube vids in flash format on our website along with a link to a stand alone flash player. www.vandenrobotics.org just click on the movie reel icon in the top right corner.

** disclaimer - I have a gut feeling that I have broken some violation of something on youtube (yep, by posting video on youtube, youtube has rights to it) - if anyone has a problem with this please send me a pm. Also I'm not sure how long I can get away with hosting some video files on our district server - so this is only a short term solution.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

While it'd be nice to have all the teams host their videos, most teams don't have the hosting or capacity to do so. So video hosting sites are the obvious and simple solution. CD Media including videos would be nice, but that'd be a much more extreme load on CD servers compared to just the white papers and the pictures. Not sure how able Delphi would be to get that kind of bandwidth.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Whoa! Considering I basically emulated a bunch of the features of CD-Media when I wrote the photo gallery PHP/MySQL backend for the team228.org website (except that I use a "Flickr set"-like sorting method), that would be awesome. I even added tags to our photo galleries. We certainly have the storage space and bandwidth to handle hosting all our team photos. :)

As for a CD-Video option, what about the feasibility of using FLV encoded video with an embedded Flash Video player like FlowPlayer? While the transcoding from WMV/MOV to FLV may be server intensive as a "direct upload video to ChiefDelphi" option, there might be an easy way to use a YouTube/Google Video FLV stream copied to CD's server and plug that into the FlowPlayer embedded on ChiefDelphi. As long someone had Flash installed in their browser and CD had the storage space to host the videos, then you'd be able to watch it.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

I would Suggest using your team's website to post video and then send links on CD to watch them (assuming your team has a site ;) )

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Late last year, around April they decided to block ChiefDelphi, The Robonauts Website, and one of the FIRST sites (home or Q&A I don't remember), so I told one of the techies at school who helps out with robotics and he got them unblocked.

Also for those that try to get by the schools' settings, at my school at least, you can get suspended from school and lose computer/technology permissions for the rest of your high school career for using proxy servers, whether for CD or YouTube, schools have blocked stuff for a reason, and if you have a problem with it or you feel that there is something that was unnecessarily blocked, talk to your robotics teacher sponsors and maybe an administrator or something because it works, and even if it takes two to three weeks to get CD unblocked or something else, (YouTube will never be unblocked by the way...there are reasons due to some of the R rated clips on the site), it is completely worth it.

By the way here is the Vid you requested and if you need any help or have questions give me a PM on CD or AIM.

Pavan.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

You do know that you necro-bumped a thread 4 years old?

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Since you've already necro posted, I'll go ahead and answer. It's mostly a matter of who we're representing here on CD. FIRST focuses on a spirit of gracious professionalism, and its generally unprofessional to use(or abuse) systems provided by a third party for your own uses when is specifically goes against an agreement you entered. In other words, we frown upon saying you'll follow the sysadmin's rules, then going and trying to get around those rules. Also since many here are students, they have another can of worms. Getting into trouble with a computer in the wrong circumstances can get you into a lot of trouble, not just a little, but big time civil and criminal litigation if you piss off the wrong people, or worse make them look stupid.

Yes you can get around filters. I was no angel, I can't say I followed all the rules to a "T" all the time, but I won't tell anyone how to get into trouble, and I wont encourage others to try and break the rules for something as silly as watching a youtube video, and I think most on here would agree with me on that front.

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Did you try with the software [...blocked...]??? in my school works very good, is for anonymous surfing

See you

Re: YouTube Blocked at School
 

Did you read the message posted immediately before yours?