Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Give me a break.


It seems that over the Christmas break, the tech department went on a blocking spree. According to my calculations, approximately 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the Internet is now inaccessible from a W.H.S. computer. Newly blocked sites include Text Twist, Yahoo! Mail, and, you guessed it, the Wakefield Étudiant!
Now, I'm no expert on these things, but I think I know a little about how these blockers work. Every site on the Internet is categorized as a commercial site, the site of an educational institution, the site of a government institution, etc. Blockers block every website that belongs to a certain category.
The tech department uses the Astaro blocker. Now, instead of blocking every website that belongs to a certain category, the blocker ALLOWS every website of certain categories and denies users access to any other website on the Internet. If one tried to access this website, a message from our friends at Astaro would appear, explaining that this site is inappropriate because it is...get this, uncategorized.
Now, as silly as it sounds to block a news website, that's exactly what the tech department has done. But at least we're not alone. The Wakefield Daily Item's inappropriate, too! No, seriously! Try it!
I just discovered all this today, while trying to access the Étudiant. Hopefully, this is temporary. If not, come ON! I can KIND OF understand this website being blocked, what, with certain people spicing up their posts with profanity. But Yahoo! Mail? That's just ridiculous.

4 comments:

  1. Even the harmful Nesportsnews.com is blocked! Oh no! But ESPN.com, the world wide leader in sports is not! I am so e-mailing that Sahlas guy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I emailed the people before, and they stated that art websites may contain nudity, artistic none-the-less, thus they are blocked.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Who cares, its the school computers. They can barely run internet explorer anyways...

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's why you download firefox and put it on your flash drive. it runs smoother.

    ReplyDelete

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