AB3A's Journal: My Science Experiment

Our workplace defense against stupid web surfers is Websense. It blocks all sorts of legitimate things. First and foremost, it blocks access to all FTP sites. The silly thing is that most FTP sites now offer HTTP file transfer. So this block is mostly ineffective.

Mind you, this is a work place that still uses NT 4.0 and Internet Exploder. --We don't use state of the art anything here.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd try out the NTP nanokernel software. So after banging my head against the firewalls and Websense, I called our IT "Help" desk. Call the IT security person, they said. I did that. He asked me to fill out an online form and someone would download it for me. Oh joy. My response? Gosh. I could take my laptop to the local library and download it there before you guys get your act together. But I'll humor you.

So I filled out the form. It's been three hours now. This ain't rocket science. I'm beginning to wonder if I'd have been better served had I driven to UDel and asked them to burn me a CD.

This "security" thing is nuts. On the one hand, these idiots keep using a brain dead OS with little support and a browser with more holes in it than swiss cheese. Then they patch things up with a product they don't understand how to use.

Wow. I feel like that proverbial one eyed man in the villiage of the blind. Only problem is that they still think they know better. Welcome to my world...