No one has really stepped forward to offer to do anything in this vein, or even given any concrete suggestions, so it looks like I'll be setting off to do it. I'll post a brief advertisement on appropriate newsgroups. It would be nice if y'all could suggest which newsgroups it would be. I'm also wondering how to get TPU mentioned on Slashdot. They've never accepted it as an articleish thing with previous attempts. I might buy some banner ad time. Anyone want to make an ad? :-)

I still think that we can advertise to high school programming classes, appealing more to the prodigies, not the run of the mill programmers. It's a great way of recruiting new members if you ask me.

How do you propose to do that?

I run my school district's web site... but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to put a link to TPU on the main page. :-) Any suggestions on how I can more properly abuse my power?

- taubz

yes, I am the site admin for my school as well. The site's only just been created, and is up at dcs.qld.edu.au

However, I don't know how I can con my principal to allowing a link to TPU on the site

Psion: Seek and destroy... or is it command and conquer? Pretty much we target all *.k12.edu etc. domains that we can find, and send email to the webmaster, making it as personalised as possible, so as not to make it look like spam.

TPU is banned at my school. :P

Plus all incoming/outgoing traffic is read and scanned for vulgar, racism, pornography, hate, etc.

You can say "I'm gonna punch you.", in an e-mail and be on your way to the principals office the next. It's ridiculous.

So schools are out of the question. Me thinks.

You should fight for your rights...

Banned, or not allowed? Like is it not on the filtering list, or has someone actually gone through and said, no@ Kids must not learn to program, they could destroy our system!

"Banned, or not allowed?" You just can't access the website.

Plus the system admin installed this thing called eSnif, which like stated above, all incoming/outgoing traffic is scanned for baddy wordys.

He's being immature about it.

I think that is quite rediculous at a high-school, they obviously don't credit you with a level of maturity above 3... We, on the other hand, get unscanned access, but what you access is logged, so real profanities get you in trouble.

heh..our school is quite small, and our admin has only allowed one account designated the "internet account" access to internet explorer. what he doesn't seem to realise is, that password crackers are very easy to use, and installing a different browser doesn't take a rocket science degree ;-)

Well, when you have a bunch of horny idiots who look up porn during class, then stuff like this happens, and it hurts everyone else.

Maybe if we make a bunch of naked pictures of ourselves and send them into stileproject we could get some advertisement. Hrm, Squee could be a part of the portals, and have his cam on there. :P

Here's an ad idea: Google ads are kind of cheap. $10US gets you 1000 ad views, based on keywords. 1000 views might not last long, though. If anyone has a credit/check card and 10 bucks to blow (not likely, I know :), it might be worth a shot.

http://www.tpu.org/tea/Thread2./cg-10/id-92 <- I used the word "bitching" :o

Take note that this is one reason why I can't access the site from my school, because eSnif will give me a spankin' if it happens to see that word!

auntfloyd, I already did that. Got 6 hits out of about $9 worth. Maybe I picked the wrong keywords.... On the bright side, I think your putting TPU on the front page of the Open Directory Computers/Programming category has been the best advertising we've ever gotten. Thanks. :-D

Don't be a dork, CHollman.

Oh right, uninstalling their software will brutally force them to open access to TPU.. Seriously, doing what you do is just a destructive behavior, often found with hackers and virus writers, and it will just cause the network admins to spend time reinstalling, that could've been used for maintenance.

I know people who think it's cool to destroy things, it's really not. We are programmers, we are supposed to be the ones to build things, not break them.

I couldn't agree with you more, gian. If you're not the network administrator at your school or work, keep your hands to yourself! Respect their work, they're probably doing things the way they think is the best, and doing it as good as they can. If anything, offer to help them, or suggest small changes in the system. Not just "Open that port!" or "I want this program on the computers!", but document why you think it could be a good idea. After all, I doubt that if a school has an interest in computers (and programming), that they would ban TPU if they knew what it really is. I mean, my teachers are very interested in places like TPU, and they just wish more of the students would join and learn about programming, instead of playing games all day. :)

I have to agree with gian and AngelOD on this. It's rather annoying when some idiot decides to erase the MBR of school systems, as I'm normally the one sitting there for hours after school trying to reinstall Windows and Office from some crap OEM distribution disks.

I think that a lot of newbie "programmers" have the misguided impression that that's what we do... we sit around writing viruses, phone phreaking and hacking into banks and wiring millions of dollars into our swedish bank accounts.

gian: if only that were true :-)

CHollman82: Now you're just trying to provoke a response, so here's one:

How can you stand to watch things you build being broken? If you coded up some really cool demo or something, would you like it if someone hacked your computer and formatted your drive? I don't know what your morals are, but they severely differ from mine...

"What I did had nothing to do with . . . ethics"

- taubz

What about say that we make some free software together for the webmasters in exchange for a link on their site.
PrograPack

Interesting how this went from Advertisment to cracking hacking and generally abusing school computers and networks and why we shouldnt do this.

<sarcasm>huh? you mean this is a thread on TPU???</sarcasm>

We proved our point without even leaving the thread!

I never abused a school computer, I only used it more "effective".
The computers were connected in a somewhat standard windows '98 network. All I needed to do, was to find out which background BMP file some assho~ I mean, guy had, and simply replaced that file by an more fitting BMP. Since this was done over the network, there were no traces to me, and the teacher thought that guy had been messing around with the PC. Also deleting files from someones floppy, had some succes too. Revenge can be so sweet.
Those days were so funny.

RedX