Access denied
One of my tasks this summer is to make some upgrades to our computer. One thing I did was to get an Airport card so that we can use wireless internet. Of course, all I did was buy the card for the computer. I didn't set up a wireless network in my mother-in-law's house or anything. So after I installed the card and confirmed that the computer recognized it, I was kind of stuck. There was no way to test whether it would actually connect or anything. Anyway, yesterday I finally headed over to a branch of the Pierce County Library in an attempt to use their WiFi service to surf the net. It was incredibly easy and I happily clicked on my Flickr bookmark so I could upload some pix. (Although the dial-up from Mom's works great, it's still dial up and hogs the phone line.) Alas and alack, I found that Flickr was blocked. As was Blogger. The only "work" that I could end up doing on that fast and easy wireless connection was update some of my system software. Turns out that in compliance with some Child Internet protection act or some such, Pierce County Libraries limit which sites you can access. Wow, just like China.I had mixed feelings about it all. I mean, I have no problem with the idea of keeping kids from logging onto sites with unsuitable content. Nor do I feel that the library is obligated to provide every bit of information that's out there. I'm content to let the librarians pick and choose what books, CDs, et al that they put on the shelves. But it does seems odd that I can't access some thought provoking blogs on Blogger or Live Journal with the library's connection, but I can access Sluggy Freelance. (Not that there's any reason to block Sluggy.) Of course, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about this if I hadn't been blocked from my sites. So I suppose I should have just paid for some proper web space that wouldn't offend the big bad internet filters that are out there. But if I did that, of course, I couldn't have afforded that Airport card in the first place...
posted by John @ 10:11 PM
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