Late evening FTW!!!
Trying something new today. I call it “writing before 10 o'clock at night”, which is a change from my usual strategy but I'm in a good mood. I'm in a good mood for a couple of reasons. The first is that I just knocked off the first section of a Computing past paper with ease and speed. That seems weird but when you've spent the day struggling to comprehend a writer's doubtless deep and complex motives for using a comma, it's kind of nice to know that there's something in the world that you actually understand.
The second reason relates to last night's post: at precisely 19:26 this evening, I finally remembered what I was going to blog about yesterday. At least, I think I did. It doesn't seem as brilliant as it did then, probably because it's closer now and we idolise what we can't have, etc., etc. Point is, I can't be entirely certain and that nagging little doubt will haunt me till the day I die... or for the next fifteen minutes, whichever comes first.
The school recently upgraded it's filtering software for the ol' intertubes. Before, they had something from Symantec that occasionally got in the way of LICD and the odd Flash game site (we found others), plus Google Image Search was blocked (Klingon Google FTW! Well, actually we used the Australian one, but I just wanted to used that phrase). It was a pain occasionally but we never had much of a problem with it.
As I said, they recently upgraded it. Something by Redstone, or so the error messages tell me. It may just be a bizarre series of coincidences, but we ran up against that filter about three or four times during the course of one Computing lesson. We weren't necessarily looking at Computing related pages, and I'm not including the guy who sits behind me actively searching for porn, but everyone aside from that guy hadn't had so many problems before.
The first page that we noticed was blocked was Joystiq, which is sort of related to computers. This happened a few times with the old software, but that at least loaded most of the page until it found the nasty old swear words, or what have you.
Next up, Wikipedia. Main page completely off limits. At first, we wondered if the whole site had been blocked, since we knew from checking the school's IP's talk page that there had been problems with vandalism. Anyway, turns out it was simply that day's Featured Article. That's right, a book on witchcraft. I don't know if it was the school that added those terms to the list or if they came as part of the default but you have to love the mentality behind it.
Employees not getting their work done? Pupils acting aggressively? Bad behaviour rampant? That's not just the internet doing that. It's WITCHCRAFT!!!
Nobody expects the Redstone filtering software!!!!
I'd call that just a little bit overzealous. I've scanned the article and can't find anything else which might justify blocking and I can distinctly recall spending several weeks examining the historical trials of witches back when I did History. In the sixteenth century. Kind of sucks if you need to research that, huh?
Of course, the thing that worries me most is, what if it's not the filters being overzealous? What if my friends and I are just being morally underzealous?
Had you going there for a second, didn't I? Nah, it's somebody else's fault.
The second reason relates to last night's post: at precisely 19:26 this evening, I finally remembered what I was going to blog about yesterday. At least, I think I did. It doesn't seem as brilliant as it did then, probably because it's closer now and we idolise what we can't have, etc., etc. Point is, I can't be entirely certain and that nagging little doubt will haunt me till the day I die... or for the next fifteen minutes, whichever comes first.
The school recently upgraded it's filtering software for the ol' intertubes. Before, they had something from Symantec that occasionally got in the way of LICD and the odd Flash game site (we found others), plus Google Image Search was blocked (Klingon Google FTW! Well, actually we used the Australian one, but I just wanted to used that phrase). It was a pain occasionally but we never had much of a problem with it.
As I said, they recently upgraded it. Something by Redstone, or so the error messages tell me. It may just be a bizarre series of coincidences, but we ran up against that filter about three or four times during the course of one Computing lesson. We weren't necessarily looking at Computing related pages, and I'm not including the guy who sits behind me actively searching for porn, but everyone aside from that guy hadn't had so many problems before.
The first page that we noticed was blocked was Joystiq, which is sort of related to computers. This happened a few times with the old software, but that at least loaded most of the page until it found the nasty old swear words, or what have you.
Next up, Wikipedia. Main page completely off limits. At first, we wondered if the whole site had been blocked, since we knew from checking the school's IP's talk page that there had been problems with vandalism. Anyway, turns out it was simply that day's Featured Article. That's right, a book on witchcraft. I don't know if it was the school that added those terms to the list or if they came as part of the default but you have to love the mentality behind it.
Employees not getting their work done? Pupils acting aggressively? Bad behaviour rampant? That's not just the internet doing that. It's WITCHCRAFT!!!
Nobody expects the Redstone filtering software!!!!
I'd call that just a little bit overzealous. I've scanned the article and can't find anything else which might justify blocking and I can distinctly recall spending several weeks examining the historical trials of witches back when I did History. In the sixteenth century. Kind of sucks if you need to research that, huh?
Of course, the thing that worries me most is, what if it's not the filters being overzealous? What if my friends and I are just being morally underzealous?
Had you going there for a second, didn't I? Nah, it's somebody else's fault.
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
9:39 PM
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