I spent some time yesterday at work looking for a batch file to executable compiler.
I needed a freeware one, as there was no scope to purchase a commercial product.
Every suitable freeware site was blocked by the corporate firewall as a suspected “malware/hacking” site.
I managed to download the software onto a surf café PC, but discovered its security policies prevent the use of USB sticks.
I couldn’t mail the software in to myself as the corporate mailserver will block any executable attachments.
I’ve tried zipping then raring the things before with no luck, and nor does changing the file extension bypass the restriction.
I tried mailing it to my own webmail account, then logging onto webmail from my LAN PC and retrieving the attachment from the sentbox, but for some reason the attachment kept corrupting.
I went back to the surf café PC to upload the attachment to some FTP space, but access restrictions meant I couldn’t install Filezilla, a firewall meant I couldn’t use command line FTP, and the PCs are running IE7 and FF which don’t have the built in FTP client of IE6.
I finally cracked the shits and uploaded the file to five free file hosting sites on the net, and the second – filedropper – worked fine (aka stupid firewall restrictions didn’t block it).
Time taken to complete work: 30 seconds.
Time taken to arrive at the point where I could do the work: one hour.
