Wednesday, January 16, 2008

CITY HALL BLOCKS BLOGSPOT.COM

Confirmed by Councilman Peduto. Post-Gazette Early Returns now gleefully reports the news. Not sure who broke it, but no one's keeping score.



One question is whether this is good policy; we are torn. On the one hand blogs can be a waste of time, along with MySpace and Facebook.

On the flip side, some may appreciate the blogs' readiness for work-related research and analysis. Wonder what the decision-making process was.

City computer supercop Howard Stern said there was no conscious decision to block the blogs, and that the change in security settings came down, uninvited, from Websense.

Really. All of a sudden?

"They're untrusted Web sites," he told us. They can transmit viruses, he said, "and that could knock out the whole city."

My goodness. Can we get tested?

"If it's job-related, we'd be glad to open it up," Mr. Stern said. "There's no reason, otherwise, to expose my network to vulnerabilities and risks."

That's good to know. Meantime, everybody look in to Google Reader.

UPDATE: Mr. McIntire has an opus. An Opie opus.

10 comments:

  1. I had heard a rumor a little while back that 2pj was banned, but someone said sometimes you couldn't even get to the P-G from City Hall, so who knows...

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  2. Google reader = greatest blog-related invention ever.

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  3. Yeah trolleyrider, and I agreed with a lot of your comment on the Burgh Report this afternoon.

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  4. My tracker tells me a lot of city employees check out my blog quite a few times a day. I'm going to check tomorrow to see if any city IP addresses still pop up.

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  5. Since nobody in the City is going to read this, I'd like to take this opportunity to admit that I'm really Yarone Zober.

    Oh, and "penis".

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  6. I have a ton of hits from

    fw-ext.city.pittsburgh.pa.us

    TODAY

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  7. What does the fw-ext prefix stand for, I wonder.

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  8. Wait---maybe firewall external?

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  9. Rumor has it that City Council has been looking in to getting on their own system. This might nudge that idea off the back burner.

    Now if we could just get them a solicitor.

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