Wouldn't Certification be Better?
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
Training and development standards shouldn't be the responsibility of labour unions, they should be the responsibilities of trade certification organizations. My understanding is the in the USA you do things differently thant he rest of the world: the rest of the world has apprenticship programs that lead to certification in a trade, but in the USA people join a union and the union claims all it's workers are "up to code".
Not everyone has a natural cycle however. People who have problems sleeping might just be living in such a way that conflicts with their sleeping and waking cycle, or it might be that they are predisposed to not forming sleeping/waking cycles. Melatonin can do wonders in such a case. Melatonin is produced by your brian when its dark and destroyed when you see bright sunlight. People will really bad eye-sight sometimes don't distinguish between daylight and night with the same contrast that well-sighted people do. A little Melatonin can help out a lot in such cases.
Light regulates sleeping and waking cycles. People who have trouble sleeping or waking up are often more strongly affected by light than others. Don't sleep in the basement. Make sure you've got a room with lots of windows, or a big window, or a window that gets sunlight as soon as the sun rises (or all three!). Go to bed when it gets dark, wake up when it gets light out.
If you have problems sleeping, you may have to abandon any hopes of sleeping less. If you don't sleep well now, and your asking to be able to fall asleep instantly and wake up refreshed, and only get 4 or 6 hours sleep, your probably won't get what you want. If you've got bad sleeping habits the best thing you can do is establish good ones.
Between the ages of 9 and 25 I had horrible sleeping habits. It really affected my life. It took me 2 hours to fall asleep every night and I woke up every 45 minutes (no it was apnia). I woke up in a very foul mood and usually stayed in bed for an hour or so before getting up. My life suffered greatly. Then moved into a place where my bedroom was facing the sunlight in the morning. WOW! Things were very different. I woke up early and felt great.
Also try Melatonin. It's a substance produced by your brain when there is no light and induces sleeping behavior. The brain destroys melatonin when you see bright sunlight. It really has a profound effect on regulating sleeping and waking cycles. I've used it on and off for years now and when my sleeping habits begin to slide it really helps to get back on track. Or when I NEED a full nights sleep without interuption it helps too.
Apple Juice is a diuretic. It may be "full of goodness" but you can't drink a lot of the stuff and stay hydrated well enough to think at maximum capacity. It's hard to find many juices that aren't mostly apple juice unfortunately. Coffee will also dry you out. Of course coffee is even worse since the narcotics it contains also inhibit concentration. The euphoria coffee brings is sometimes worth the loss of concentration though.
OK, all these people talking about lawyers are off-topic. The guy just wanted to know how everyone else working in IT is treated. Put your lawyer back in its holster and calm down.
I'm a contractor at one of the big telcos in north america. They follow some business practices set down as standard by GTE, so what I describe is probably common to many big companies and this should give you an idea of how the rest of us are treated.
Here are the rules regarding being "on-call" as they were described to me:
You get paid for work you do "on-call" as overtime
You get paid an hour of over-time for every weekday that your on call even if you don't get called.
You get paid 1.5 hours of over-time for every day your on-call on the weekend even if you don't get called.
Contractors can't be put on-call unless there is no normal employee to do the job.
When your on call you can't drink or go out of town. You need to be able respond in whatever time is dictated by the duties for which your on-call for (where I work that means you have to be able to get to a phone within 15 minutes and to a network-connected computer with 30 minutes)
Basically you should be paid a little something because they are asking you to do something for them outside your normal duties; they are asking you to stay alert and ready and to restrict your life to not include activities that would prevent you from doing your "on-call duties" at a moments notice. Where I work they pay you an hour of overtime just for being on-call even if you don't get called. If you get called, you just get over-time pay for the time you work (1 hour minimum). On the weekends you get paid a bit more because the company is asking a bit more to restrict your activities on the weekend!
There are also rules where I work about how long someone can be on call (two weeks max before another employee has to become the "on-call" person).
Indymedia is an excellent example of what groupthink is. Mostly unsubstantiated, poorly written crap that is so badly biased that it is impossible to take anything seriousl
While the EFF's license seems like an excellent response to the non-sense of the recording and related music publishing industiries, I think it has a negative side-effect of legitimizing the notion of "music as a licensable thing". Why is music something that I must license? Why must a legal contract exist between myself and a large number of other parties in the event that I hear some music?
I worry that this flurry of licensing issues will result in the de facto assumption by law makers that a license exists in all music transmission actitivities (listening to music, playing music, reading music, discussing music etc.).
People have been pepper-sprayed and jailed for doing the exact same thing IBM's done. IBM shouldn't merit special treatment. The police should march to IBM HQ and pepper-spray the marketing prez and drag him to jail in handcuffs, and then the judge should sentence him to pick up trash in the park for 8 weeks.
The MPAA should go after individuals instead of technology platforms. But what their doing is an ip-terrorism tactic; Forcing their concept of Intellectual Property of the world by creating an atmosphere of terror. People are uncertain if they are legal or not, or what the legal status of IP should be or even is. The MPAA wants peole to be afraid, deathly afraid, that they might run afowl of the MPAA. The MPAA want people to be afraid so there is a lower probability that they will be challenged and thus a greater probability that the MPAA will get their way as legistlation changes. The MPAA doesn't have a legitimate platform, if they did they wouldn't need to terrorise citizens around the world. They want you to believe that if you enjoy any form of entertainment using a digital technology platform without their specific and ongoing approval that you will befall an uncertain fait. That uncertainty combined with specific horrifying examples of what they've done to those they've accused of minor and uncertain transgressions constitutes terrorism.
It is easy to verify the signature of an RPM produced by a major vendor. However we need a system by which individual packagers can build trust with the users of their RPMs. Perhaps a "web of trust" type system would work, or perhaps someone can suggest a more appropriate solution.
I'm just an RPM packager and user. No one can say, "you can trust my RPMs" but it would be great if there were a system available by which a packager could build a trust relationship with users, and by which users could verify the claims RPM packages.
If it's needed TRUSTEDRPM.NET can be used to start a mailing list and website so other people interested in building a network of trusted RPM packagers can dicuss what could or should be done. I can provide any other resources that are needed (application server, databaser server, bandwith, etc.) and do the development work too. I'd really like to see this happen now, not later.
What's needed isn't resources of course. It's qualified and enthusiastic participants.
Should we all eat onions because many prefer them and some don't know how to remove them? Perhaps instead we should provide many simple ways for the masses to get onions without asking, and several effective ways for others to achieve onion-less solutions. I suggest that, while thinking about new solutions, we make no assumption about requirements such as onions or anything else.
The problem still remains. It lies not with the technology but with the lack of a trusted source. Are there any existing systems for building RPM signature trust?
I have just registered TRUSTEDRPM.NET for the purpose of hosting an application to help build trust amoung RPM signers and users, assuming somethign doesn't already exist.
If there is a problem that reduces the trustability of PGP Signatures in RPM files, or that reduces the liklihood that a signature can be verified, then we should develop an RPM web of trust for RPM signers. I'd be willing to front the webspace and database is such a thing doesn't already exist.
I'll be buying Tribes 2 for Linux. I recently purged my windows systems which were only used for games. I'm happily gaming on Linux playing Sim City 3000, Railroad Tycoon, and Descent 3. I'm really looking forward to Creatures 3 and Neverwinter Nights. The only other game that I really really wish was available for linux is Counter Strike.
I won't buy Alpha Centauri. I played the demo and it sucks.
The biggest problem I have with Linux games (from Loki anyways) is they depend on SDL. SDL apps totally crash my system. I have five video cards in my workstation and if I launch an SDL app on anything but my primary display the system halts. I don't me X crashes and I don't mean X locks up, I mean the system freezes completely. SDL is really nice but so is my five monitor system; I have having to choose between them.
Hehe, I have no argument that mice are required for playing first person shooters. The higher resolution the mouse the better!
I don't know that a mouse is essential for selecting things. Your specific example assumes using a Macintosh style file-manager application. I'm suggesting that we need to rethink both software UIs and hardware UIs. Perhaps file-managers only exist in the currently fashionable GUIs. Perhaps there are ways to select files that don't involve file globs or mouse-pointer-rectangles. I think the current UI model that we commonly called "desktop" is probably good for children and illiterates, but I suggest the desktop model actually impedes the activities of information workers. IT professionals could get their jobs done with or with a desktop operating system; let's have people examine what type of interfaces would be best for individual problem domains and put an end to the "one desktop gui" fits all non-sense.
I don't specifically attack keyboards, because they seem to be used, often in combination with other devices, by most UIs introduced to date. Mice on the other hand are very fashinable right now but aren't part of any UI except the desktop model. I'd be happy to be rid of the keyboard. Maybe I should just shut-up and start using my twiddler.;-)
Before problems with software user interfaces can be solved, we must solve the problems with the hardware interfaces. The mouse needs to be eliminated; it's great for slow people who don't know how to use a computer but it slows down those of us who know what information we want. However what the replacement would be is debatable. I like pen based interfaces (not for writing, for pointing) but that doesn't work well with the current fashion in PC 'stacking' (stacking the monitor on the desk, perpendicular to the desks surface).
Perhaps we need to ask the question, "do we really need to point in order to compute?" and if the answer is "yes" then how should we best point, and if the answer is "no" then what should be changed.
I've had four Linux Laptops over the years. The first was a Packard Bell 386 with 4 MB of RAM running the first or second release of Slackware (yes, it was a LONG time ago). It was OK, but you can't compare those old systems to today's.
The second was a NEC. I don't remember the model but I had it for two years. It has 16 MB of RAM and worked well. The sound card never worked quite right (not all features available in windows worked under Linux), but I managed to get it to record and play well enough when I needed it. The keyboard worked just fine and the touchpad was a dream under Linux.
The third was an IBM thinkpad. I hated it with a passion.
I currently have Toshiba Portege 3010CT. I've never been happier with a laptop. The keyboard does need a little tweaking, but there is a website (whose URL I don't remember) dedicated to the running Linux on the Portege and it's got all the info you need. It wasnt' hard to get the IR support working (so I can sync my palm pilot to it). I've used RangeLAN wireless ethernet in it, and modems, and ethernet cards too. The Portege is very slim and even the screen is smaller than other laptops it's still quite nice. The battery lasts about 4 hours if you've got no cards plugged in. If you do it's about 2-3 hours (for my modem or ethernet card).
I've also installed Linux on other laptops. I installed a Travelmate (sold by Acer now, I think originally this line was from Texas Instruments). It was the easiest install I've done but I don't think the user was too picky so I don't know if there were any issues really. It was big and bulky, but had everything built in. The Portege has NOTHING built in... which is the way laptops should be... how often do you REALLY need to use a floppy drive on your laptop?
Toshiba's might take a little configuration but they do make some of the SLIMEST laptops around and that's a really nice feature; I think how light and slim a laptop is defines how useful it is.
It isn't true that you can establish a tunnel on any port with any protocol. Under most circumstances it is possible but proxying firewalls can make it difficult or impossible. But let's just assume that you can always find at least one protocol/port that you can tunnel with, SSH is still a problem because it makes creating both outbound tunnels and inbound tunnels trivial. Other methods, even if they are "easy", are not trivial. Most security policies would make circumventing the security of the firewall a violation. So tunnelling without SSH is out if your trying to obey the policy. SSH is usually considered "grey": its good for the policy because it encrypts your shell sessions, but bad because it makes bypassing the firewall trivial (for TCP connections anyway, slightly more effort is required to tunnel UDP with SSH).
Security policies don't exist because employees aren't trusted, they exist so to provide guidelines for employee behavior that allows everyone to have a higher level of confidence that all information technology will function as desired (or at least as expected). IT is complicated and mostly broken IMHO. If you want it to work they way you think it should work then everyone needs to follow some guidelines; that's what the security policy is for.
For the uninitiated, I'm calling an outbound tunnel, a situation where you instruct your client to listen on port XXXX any packets that arrive on that port are delivered to the server who then delivers those packets to host a.b.c.d on another YYYY. I'm calling an inbound tunnel, a situation where you instruct the server to listen on port XXXX and any packets recieved there are delivered to the client who in turn delivers them to host a.b.c.d on port YYYY.
A outbound tunnel can be used to allow hosts on the private network to bypass the firewall and talk to hosts on the Internet. An inbound tunnel can be used to allow hosts on the Internet to bypass the firewall and talk to hosts on the private LAN.
In general SSH connection should not be allowed outside a private LAN. If a user can establish a connection from his PC on the private LAN to a host on the Internet, then that user can also tell the Internet host to listen on a port and redirect any connections to that port to any host inside the private LAN. This defeats the purpose of having a firewall. Similarily tunelling via covert mechanisms is certainly a violation of your security policy and even if it does not result a hostile compromise of your organization's LAN it could result in a great deal of wasted time and money of security has to investigate what your doing.
Bottom line, if you can't already find a way to tunnel out then perhaps its a good idea that your not allowed to tunnel out. Why not bring up the topic with your network architecture person/people/group and discuss why they've set the policies they've had. If you have a legitimate need to establish outbound SSH connections they might be willing to find a solution for you.
I don't know why this bothers me, but I'm really sure that Mosaic wasn't the first browser. Arguably it was the first one that mattered to a lot of people. I've found lots of web pages that say Mosaic was the first browser and even one page that claims Lynx was, but they surely were not, so I've gathered some evidence to prove my point.
Slashdot Mirror
Training and development standards shouldn't be the responsibility of labour unions, they should be the responsibilities of trade certification organizations. My understanding is the in the USA you do things differently thant he rest of the world: the rest of the world has apprenticship programs that lead to certification in a trade, but in the USA people join a union and the union claims all it's workers are "up to code".
Give me independent certification any day.
Not everyone has a natural cycle however. People who have problems sleeping might just be living in such a way that conflicts with their sleeping and waking cycle, or it might be that they are predisposed to not forming sleeping/waking cycles. Melatonin can do wonders in such a case. Melatonin is produced by your brian when its dark and destroyed when you see bright sunlight. People will really bad eye-sight sometimes don't distinguish between daylight and night with the same contrast that well-sighted people do. A little Melatonin can help out a lot in such cases.
Light regulates sleeping and waking cycles. People who have trouble sleeping or waking up are often more strongly affected by light than others. Don't sleep in the basement. Make sure you've got a room with lots of windows, or a big window, or a window that gets sunlight as soon as the sun rises (or all three!). Go to bed when it gets dark, wake up when it gets light out.
If you have problems sleeping, you may have to abandon any hopes of sleeping less. If you don't sleep well now, and your asking to be able to fall asleep instantly and wake up refreshed, and only get 4 or 6 hours sleep, your probably won't get what you want. If you've got bad sleeping habits the best thing you can do is establish good ones.
Between the ages of 9 and 25 I had horrible sleeping habits. It really affected my life. It took me 2 hours to fall asleep every night and I woke up every 45 minutes (no it was apnia). I woke up in a very foul mood and usually stayed in bed for an hour or so before getting up. My life suffered greatly. Then moved into a place where my bedroom was facing the sunlight in the morning. WOW! Things were very different. I woke up early and felt great.
Also try Melatonin. It's a substance produced by your brain when there is no light and induces sleeping behavior. The brain destroys melatonin when you see bright sunlight. It really has a profound effect on regulating sleeping and waking cycles. I've used it on and off for years now and when my sleeping habits begin to slide it really helps to get back on track. Or when I NEED a full nights sleep without interuption it helps too.
Apple Juice is a diuretic. It may be "full of goodness" but you can't drink a lot of the stuff and stay hydrated well enough to think at maximum capacity. It's hard to find many juices that aren't mostly apple juice unfortunately. Coffee will also dry you out. Of course coffee is even worse since the narcotics it contains also inhibit concentration. The euphoria coffee brings is sometimes worth the loss of concentration though.
OK, all these people talking about lawyers are off-topic. The guy just wanted to know how everyone else working in IT is treated. Put your lawyer back in its holster and calm down.
I'm a contractor at one of the big telcos in north america. They follow some business practices set down as standard by GTE, so what I describe is probably common to many big companies and this should give you an idea of how the rest of us are treated.
Here are the rules regarding being "on-call" as they were described to me:
Basically you should be paid a little something because they are asking you to do something for them outside your normal duties; they are asking you to stay alert and ready and to restrict your life to not include activities that would prevent you from doing your "on-call duties" at a moments notice. Where I work they pay you an hour of overtime just for being on-call even if you don't get called. If you get called, you just get over-time pay for the time you work (1 hour minimum). On the weekends you get paid a bit more because the company is asking a bit more to restrict your activities on the weekend!
There are also rules where I work about how long someone can be on call (two weeks max before another employee has to become the "on-call" person).
Indymedia is an excellent example of what groupthink is. Mostly unsubstantiated, poorly written crap that is so badly biased that it is impossible to take anything seriousl
That sounds just like a description of CNN.
While the EFF's license seems like an excellent response to the non-sense of the recording and related music publishing industiries, I think it has a negative side-effect of legitimizing the notion of "music as a licensable thing". Why is music something that I must license? Why must a legal contract exist between myself and a large number of other parties in the event that I hear some music?
I worry that this flurry of licensing issues will result in the de facto assumption by law makers that a license exists in all music transmission actitivities (listening to music, playing music, reading music, discussing music etc.).
Perhaps you just need a few tips on wire wrapping
People have been pepper-sprayed and jailed for doing the exact same thing IBM's done. IBM shouldn't merit special treatment. The police should march to IBM HQ and pepper-spray the marketing prez and drag him to jail in handcuffs, and then the judge should sentence him to pick up trash in the park for 8 weeks.
The MPAA should go after individuals instead of technology platforms. But what their doing is an ip-terrorism tactic; Forcing their concept of Intellectual Property of the world by creating an atmosphere of terror. People are uncertain if they are legal or not, or what the legal status of IP should be or even is. The MPAA wants peole to be afraid, deathly afraid, that they might run afowl of the MPAA. The MPAA want people to be afraid so there is a lower probability that they will be challenged and thus a greater probability that the MPAA will get their way as legistlation changes. The MPAA doesn't have a legitimate platform, if they did they wouldn't need to terrorise citizens around the world. They want you to believe that if you enjoy any form of entertainment using a digital technology platform without their specific and ongoing approval that you will befall an uncertain fait. That uncertainty combined with specific horrifying examples of what they've done to those they've accused of minor and uncertain transgressions constitutes terrorism.
The MPAA is an IP-Terrorists.
What is it about these "paranoiacs" scares you so much you wish to see them forced into home-style prisons?
People who desire their privacy are not maniacs.
It is easy to verify the signature of an RPM produced by a major vendor. However we need a system by which individual packagers can build trust with the users of their RPMs. Perhaps a "web of trust" type system would work, or perhaps someone can suggest a more appropriate solution.
I'm just an RPM packager and user. No one can say, "you can trust my RPMs" but it would be great if there were a system available by which a packager could build a trust relationship with users, and by which users could verify the claims RPM packages.
If it's needed TRUSTEDRPM.NET can be used to start a mailing list and website so other people interested in building a network of trusted RPM packagers can dicuss what could or should be done. I can provide any other resources that are needed (application server, databaser server, bandwith, etc.) and do the development work too. I'd really like to see this happen now, not later.
What's needed isn't resources of course. It's qualified and enthusiastic participants.
Should we all eat onions because many prefer them and some don't know how to remove them? Perhaps instead we should provide many simple ways for the masses to get onions without asking, and several effective ways for others to achieve onion-less solutions. I suggest that, while thinking about new solutions, we make no assumption about requirements such as onions or anything else.
The problem still remains. It lies not with the technology but with the lack of a trusted source. Are there any existing systems for building RPM signature trust?
I have just registered TRUSTEDRPM.NET for the purpose of hosting an application to help build trust amoung RPM signers and users, assuming somethign doesn't already exist.
If there is a problem that reduces the trustability of PGP Signatures in RPM files, or that reduces the liklihood that a signature can be verified, then we should develop an RPM web of trust for RPM signers. I'd be willing to front the webspace and database is such a thing doesn't already exist.
I'll be buying Tribes 2 for Linux. I recently purged my windows systems which were only used for games. I'm happily gaming on Linux playing Sim City 3000, Railroad Tycoon, and Descent 3. I'm really looking forward to Creatures 3 and Neverwinter Nights. The only other game that I really really wish was available for linux is Counter Strike.
I won't buy Alpha Centauri. I played the demo and it sucks.
The biggest problem I have with Linux games (from Loki anyways) is they depend on SDL. SDL apps totally crash my system. I have five video cards in my workstation and if I launch an SDL app on anything but my primary display the system halts. I don't me X crashes and I don't mean X locks up, I mean the system freezes completely. SDL is really nice but so is my five monitor system; I have having to choose between them.
Hehe, I have no argument that mice are required for playing first person shooters. The higher resolution the mouse the better!
I don't know that a mouse is essential for selecting things. Your specific example assumes using a Macintosh style file-manager application. I'm suggesting that we need to rethink both software UIs and hardware UIs. Perhaps file-managers only exist in the currently fashionable GUIs. Perhaps there are ways to select files that don't involve file globs or mouse-pointer-rectangles. I think the current UI model that we commonly called "desktop" is probably good for children and illiterates, but I suggest the desktop model actually impedes the activities of information workers. IT professionals could get their jobs done with or with a desktop operating system; let's have people examine what type of interfaces would be best for individual problem domains and put an end to the "one desktop gui" fits all non-sense.
I don't specifically attack keyboards, because they seem to be used, often in combination with other devices, by most UIs introduced to date. Mice on the other hand are very fashinable right now but aren't part of any UI except the desktop model. I'd be happy to be rid of the keyboard. Maybe I should just shut-up and start using my twiddler. ;-)
UIs could be a lot better if we all typed in Lojban instead of English. ;-)
Before problems with software user interfaces can be solved, we must solve the problems with the hardware interfaces. The mouse needs to be eliminated; it's great for slow people who don't know how to use a computer but it slows down those of us who know what information we want. However what the replacement would be is debatable. I like pen based interfaces (not for writing, for pointing) but that doesn't work well with the current fashion in PC 'stacking' (stacking the monitor on the desk, perpendicular to the desks surface).
Perhaps we need to ask the question, "do we really need to point in order to compute?" and if the answer is "yes" then how should we best point, and if the answer is "no" then what should be changed.
I've had four Linux Laptops over the years. The first was a Packard Bell 386 with 4 MB of RAM running the first or second release of Slackware (yes, it was a LONG time ago). It was OK, but you can't compare those old systems to today's.
The second was a NEC. I don't remember the model but I had it for two years. It has 16 MB of RAM and worked well. The sound card never worked quite right (not all features available in windows worked under Linux), but I managed to get it to record and play well enough when I needed it. The keyboard worked just fine and the touchpad was a dream under Linux.
The third was an IBM thinkpad. I hated it with a passion.
I currently have Toshiba Portege 3010CT. I've never been happier with a laptop. The keyboard does need a little tweaking, but there is a website (whose URL I don't remember) dedicated to the running Linux on the Portege and it's got all the info you need. It wasnt' hard to get the IR support working (so I can sync my palm pilot to it). I've used RangeLAN wireless ethernet in it, and modems, and ethernet cards too. The Portege is very slim and even the screen is smaller than other laptops it's still quite nice. The battery lasts about 4 hours if you've got no cards plugged in. If you do it's about 2-3 hours (for my modem or ethernet card).
I've also installed Linux on other laptops. I installed a Travelmate (sold by Acer now, I think originally this line was from Texas Instruments). It was the easiest install I've done but I don't think the user was too picky so I don't know if there were any issues really. It was big and bulky, but had everything built in. The Portege has NOTHING built in... which is the way laptops should be... how often do you REALLY need to use a floppy drive on your laptop?
Toshiba's might take a little configuration but they do make some of the SLIMEST laptops around and that's a really nice feature; I think how light and slim a laptop is defines how useful it is.
It isn't true that you can establish a tunnel on any port with any protocol. Under most circumstances it is possible but proxying firewalls can make it difficult or impossible. But let's just assume that you can always find at least one protocol/port that you can tunnel with, SSH is still a problem because it makes creating both outbound tunnels and inbound tunnels trivial. Other methods, even if they are "easy", are not trivial. Most security policies would make circumventing the security of the firewall a violation. So tunnelling without SSH is out if your trying to obey the policy. SSH is usually considered "grey": its good for the policy because it encrypts your shell sessions, but bad because it makes bypassing the firewall trivial (for TCP connections anyway, slightly more effort is required to tunnel UDP with SSH).
Security policies don't exist because employees aren't trusted, they exist so to provide guidelines for employee behavior that allows everyone to have a higher level of confidence that all information technology will function as desired (or at least as expected). IT is complicated and mostly broken IMHO. If you want it to work they way you think it should work then everyone needs to follow some guidelines; that's what the security policy is for.
For the uninitiated, I'm calling an outbound tunnel, a situation where you instruct your client to listen on port XXXX any packets that arrive on that port are delivered to the server who then delivers those packets to host a.b.c.d on another YYYY. I'm calling an inbound tunnel, a situation where you instruct the server to listen on port XXXX and any packets recieved there are delivered to the client who in turn delivers them to host a.b.c.d on port YYYY.
A outbound tunnel can be used to allow hosts on the private network to bypass the firewall and talk to hosts on the Internet. An inbound tunnel can be used to allow hosts on the Internet to bypass the firewall and talk to hosts on the private LAN.
In general SSH connection should not be allowed outside a private LAN. If a user can establish a connection from his PC on the private LAN to a host on the Internet, then that user can also tell the Internet host to listen on a port and redirect any connections to that port to any host inside the private LAN. This defeats the purpose of having a firewall. Similarily tunelling via covert mechanisms is certainly a violation of your security policy and even if it does not result a hostile compromise of your organization's LAN it could result in a great deal of wasted time and money of security has to investigate what your doing.
Bottom line, if you can't already find a way to tunnel out then perhaps its a good idea that your not allowed to tunnel out. Why not bring up the topic with your network architecture person/people/group and discuss why they've set the policies they've had. If you have a legitimate need to establish outbound SSH connections they might be willing to find a solution for you.
At Mr. Berners-Lee's homepage there is an FAQ that includes some Examples of early WWW hypertext. It would appear to be from 1990 or 1991. That's about as early as it gets I would think!
I don't know why this bothers me, but I'm really sure that Mosaic wasn't the first browser. Arguably it was the first one that mattered to a lot of people. I've found lots of web pages that say Mosaic was the first browser and even one page that claims Lynx was, but they surely were not, so I've gathered some evidence to prove my point.