I can't run Steam or Xbox Live with the blocks they put on the ports. I shot em an email telling them that I had a few programs that I needed to run but the school blocked. Sure enough they called my bluff and are asking what programs I am using that might be blocked. Anyone have any ideas for educational programs that could possibly be blocked by the school?

Why don't you just tell them it's games? I can't think of a reason they wouldn't allow that.

I think it's somewhere in their policy that they don't allow ports open video games, but usually if you get a guy, he'll be pretty chill about it and let you have it.

Say you are using a distributed source control system, (ie Mercurial) and you need to connect to other people to commit changes and whatnot.

You might be able to install Hamachi/LogMeIn and use their network interface to port out to the net at large. I'm pretty sure they have specific port settings so you can tunnel your data through specific ranges.