To play devil's advocate...

I believe this is guaranteed by some health and safety law.

The break room was kindly provided by the company and is a priviledge.

I don't smoke. I believe the employee's handbook says that smoking breaks come at the expense of "tea" breaks, however, so this too is clearly a provided priviledge.

I know of companies where using the work phone for personal use is a sacking offense. I don't anyway; I always use my mobile.

The phone in the break room has, I believe, an outgoing call block on it because someone (we suspect the cleaners) used it for premium rate lines at one time. Clearly usage of the phones for outgoing calls is thus a priviledge.

To the OP's question: I reccommend asking the network administrator. They may say yes, they may say no, but it's just rude to assume it's a "yes, if you can get around my security measures" straight up.

Kas.

Heya,

In answer to your question:
If you can use AIM or any other messenger programs then it means the socket port is open which means you could use that to proxy the telnet port, which is also technical bla bla I wouldn't want to bother anyone with. (Besides I don't even know if I use the correct english term).

There are some programs that can do it for you, like socks2http who can emulate a socks port by tunneling through the http port. However since you seem to have socks already I suggest just trying to use a mud client that allows you to set proxy settings and put in connect through socks5 then fill in with server localhost and port 1080.

Yeah! Hack into the school firewall! Woohoo, mudding at school is the best thing you can do! Woot!

Greetings Dre

This is off-topic, sort of, but hey, run with it...

The concept of working 8-5 with an hour lunch is outdated and only really can be applied effectively in certain instances.

I work in an IT department, my services are pretty much on demand.  Yes I have projects which I have to devote time to at times, but none of the are the "I need it now!" variety.  Do i work "regular hours", well, yeah, sort of, but if something dies at 4:59pm, guess what, I'm not going home with the crowd at 5:00pm.  As long as things which are expected of my position are completed, and done timely, my bosss could care less if I am posting on TMS, reading Fark, writing code, etc.  I perform exactly what he needs me to do on a "on site, on call" basis, and he's perfectly happy with that.  We have people in our office who work flex time, we have people who work nights, we have people who come in promptly at 8am, take a lunch propmptly at 12:00 noon, and leave at 5:00 on the dot.  Do any of them perform any better or worse for it?  Probably not, in fact if it suits their own schedule and preference better, they probably perform BETTER than they would locked into a schedule.

I defy anyone to say I have no work ethic in my office, and gee, I surf the net, play games, write code, AND do my job...

Kas:
At my past three places of employ (woohoo for small business!), there was no employee handbook =). Rather, the things that are appropriate for employees to do were left to common sense, with the general rule being that we should maximize our billable hours. This is the standpoint that I was arguing from, that generally certain things are obviously beneficial to productivity even if that specific time is not spent in actual production. It's sort of like designing a program: You need to carefully balance too much and too little design; too much and you're left with little flexibility when the requirements change, and too little and you're left wondering what the requirements are =).

Which mud clients allow one to set proxy settings?

So far as I know only Zmud does that in Windows. There may be other clients, but SimpleMU and Mushclient don't offer proxy support.

ROAclient wll do that as well, though it is unbearably simplistic for most ZMUD scripters.

Couldn't you just use a java mud client? Like the one on

My experience has been that "non-billable activities", within reason, tend to improve work qualitiy and thus are to the benefit, rather than the detriment, of the company.

I drink just far too much coffee at work.  I tend to do this more because I need to take a break from my desk where I've got too close to the coal face, I need a chance to step back and gain a wider perspective, than because I'm that desperate for caffiene. Similarly, I tend to do my best design work while in the shower or driving down the freeway.

I don't think anyone performs particularly well at work when they're worried about their sick child but can't call home to check on them (or when they're dying to go to the restroom, for that matter).


Which isn't to say I don't entirely agree with this:

Groups will always work better when their members are pulling in the same diredtion and not trying to rip each other off.


K

Nothing should keep you from connecting to a MUD. Just use a telnet client, or if one is not available try a java telnet app available on many MUD webpages. Does TMC still do that?

-Xanes -=- Lone Coder WinterMUTE

in my humble opinion, you should befriend and ask the monitors of your school in order to MUD in your school. It is important to really befriend the admin, so that would not be just for convenience. Yes, it's takes much more time than hacking the firewall, but it's ethical and you would get in less trouble in case you get busted.
in respect of the issue of MUDding at school, I think it's like an aggregate value, of couse, if and only if you put your priorities straight.
just my two cents, no need for flames:
Ruobhe

My standard advice to anyone who wants to start their own mud is to use the base to which you are the most familiar. Be that ROM, Circle, Smaug, or whatnot. If you regularly play on a Smaug mud, you will be more at ease as a starting admin/coder with taht code because you know how it functions on the player's side of things, which makes it easier in theory to look at from a coder/admin side of things...

Personally, my base is ROM, which is because 95% of all muds which I played previous to making my own were ROM, and upon asking lots of people at the time I was starting, they gave the same advice which I give, "Use what you know"...

Good luck, and if you have questions, feel free to ask on either the administrator or coding forums, I'm an admin of both.


T