Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with restriction

Hey BBC, stop being stingy.

photoslob — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:04:01 -0800

How do I watch streaming video from the BBC 4 site in the US? Is there a way to spoof or use a proxy to circumvent country restrictions on streaming video from the BBC?

I thought this video from this MeFi post was funny and so I did the google thing and found the show on the BBC 4 site. I tried to watch the streaming video and I get the "this service is not available in your area" message.

I know the Beeb is tax payer supported but it sucks they don't want us yanks to watch.

there is no more forbidden. why can't i understand this?

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:06:49 -0800

Raised in a super-strict, health-conscious household - I never learned "moderation" with not-so-healthy foods. Can I, as an adult, re-train good eating habits that do not include restriction, and do not include binging? My father was a biochemist/nutritionist. During my birth, my mother was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. As a result, food and healthy eating was a constant subject in our house, and I had little freedom to come to decisions on my own.

"junk" food was kept in a locked filing cabinet, to which only my father had the key. Our rations would include anywhere from 1-4 cookies a day, depending on our ranking from youngest to oldest (I am the youngest of four). Additionally, prior to my birth and my mom's cancer, food was less of a issue. It's normal for older siblings to pick on the younger ones; in my case, I was picked on because of the change in eating habits that merged birth and sickness. "We could always eat (x, y, and z) before you were born" was something I heard for many years.

Brown rice, tofu, steamed veggies, lean meats, low sodium, no-soda (and so on) was the diet of our household. As a result of this, I actually do sincerely enjoy eating "healthy" foods - they taste great to me. My favorite snack as a kid? Seaweed.

We were allowed to go go trick or treating as kids - but never allowed to keep the candy. Our rooms were searched for storing snacks we might have smuggled from school. This, in addition to keeping cookies under lock and key. Learning to develop a moderate diet, inclusive of everything with no restrictions, but knowing how to moderate foods, was something I don't think I ever developped.

Beginning in middle school when we had a little more freedom, I'd buy snacks at school, and hide them in places my dad would never look.

When I got my license and began earning my own money, this habit magnified - sneaking in the bad foods, hiding them, scarfing them down before I'd be found out.

I feel like I've carried these unhealthy habits into adulthood. I feel like if I get junk, it's not going to stay around. And so I must eat it quickly, in private, before it's found out and condemned. And I hate this condemnation. Even living on my own now, it's hard for me to rectify this ingrained reaction to junk or indulgent food - nothing lasts for long, because nothing ever lasted for long when we were growing up. In my mind I know no one is going to steal my hershey's kisses in the cupboard - but I feel like I've deeply internalized that if I have 3 now, I can't count on them being there tomorrow.

My problem is not that I dislike good-for-you-foods - I love them, actually. But I also feel like I don't know how to moderate my eating, and re-train my mind when it comes to developing good eating habits, where nothing is off limits - and find a balance between restriction and binging.

Can I change the way I think about food?

Restriction Warning

KRS — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:04:46 -0800

Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives I run Win XP Home on my stand-alone home computer. There's no administrator, and I assume I have administrator rights. A couple of days ago (I think after an auto-download from Microsoft), a message started appearing at logon:

Restriction Warning
Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives.

Also, I have no access to my the thumb drive in a USB port.

Please help me get my computer back.

What is the easiest and most effective way to limit a web browser to one specific website?

doomtop — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:34:55 -0800

What is the easiest and most effective way to limit a web browser to one specific website? I need to setup several laptops at an event. I want to have each laptop display a specific website, but I don't want anyone to be able to navigate away from that website.

Part of the problem I have is that the laptops I will be using belong to people who use them for work and have all their stuff on them, so I want to set it up in a way that has as little effect on their current setup as possible.

I don't think any of them use the Opera browser. So I was thinking I might be able to use Opera and adjust it to limit it to a specific website in some way. That way, I can make the adjustments and use it and then just remove Opera when all is said and done, leaving their normal browser (Firefox, IE, whatever) the same as it was before easily.

Also, for bonus points here, does anyone know of a Linux Live CD environment that would be able to suit this purpose? That way I could get the laptops completely out of their normal operating environment temporarily and when it's all done just go back to normal use.

Homemade Chocolate Challenge

plinth — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:03:27 -0800

How do you make your own chocolate? Mrs. Plinth is on a restricted diet that disallows eggs, dairy, nuts, and soy. Unfortunately, one of her passions, chocolate, is on the out list since pretty much every chocolate product contains soy lecithin. Gah.

So I'm looking for a recipe for making semi-sweet chocolate from cocoa powder as the starting point.

I've seen this recipe for chocolate syrup, but I'm looking for something that I can use as a direct replacement for chocolate (ie, something that I can dip things in or use for chocolate chips) - I've seen recipe guide for substitution of cocoa powder for chocolate.

I only want my programs to access the VPN, how would I configure this?

the giant pill — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:32:51 -0800

How would I deny access to a my local network for applications, but allow them to access a VPN? I am thinking zone alarm / kerio / black ice would work, but I can't figure out how to configure them to do this. Any hints would be appreciated.

1 More Arn

parallax7d — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:20:34 -0800

Is there any software that can limit the number of hours you spend at a certain domain, or with a certain piece of software? I want to be more productive, but don't want to go cold turkey on MeFi or Battlefield 2 (a video game).