Discourse.net

Back on Dec. 17, 2005, I posted an item entitled Kudos to the Miami-Dade Public Library which said,

I have to praise the Miami-Dade Public Library system. Once I escalated my complaints about their new wireless service they have done almost (but not quite) everything I asked for.

They unblocked digicrime.com from the PC network. They are going to put into place procedures which allow on-the-spot blocking overrides for the laptops they lend out in the library (!). They regret that they don't see a secure means of providing a similar on-the-spot override for users who bring their own laptops, as they think that would 'compromise security'.

But most importantly, they've unblocked port 22 so I can use ssh! And they were very nice about it, too. (Please, nobody mention some of the things you can do with ssh tunnels, ok?)

I'm impressed.

Well, a good chunk of that statement is now inoperative. I am posting this from the Kendall branch, and my attempt to reach digicrime.com just produced this glorious message:

Access to this site is restricted 1

Hacking the site is www.digicrime.com

Not only is this infuriatingly uninformative, but it represents a grave breach of faith with library patrons. How many other whitelisted sites have been surreptitiously re-blocked?

At least ssh is still open...