Just a standby man in a confirmed seat world....

Sitting in the airport affords me large amounts of time to think about things, and look at how people are consuming different types of media. It often makes me smile seeing how people react to stressful situations, especially in public, and in an airport.

This is how I stay classy...

Oh confidential documents... why do we love you so?

Is there anything quite as satisfying as looking at something marked "CONFIDENTIAL"?
Really tho, whether you're supposed to be reading it, or if you're not... it always breeds an extra sensory emotion not found in simply reading a memo.

I've found myself in this position a couple times, I remember when I was younger, and I used to love the internet because I could look up all sorts of "Classified" documents about Roswell, and Area 51 (that's all I can say here...shhh).
I loved the mystery of having access to documents that in all reality, had little to do with my everyday life. But what do we do when documents come to light, that DO have an impact, and why are such documents still the way we measure the severity of the scandal? We always go back to the internal memo, and the confidential documents to show that someone knew something, and chose to either do nothing, or the wrong thing. We look to court documents that we don't have any business looking at, simply because we can. www.thesmokinggun.com has all the info you would want if you're looking for that special little tidbit that gives you a step deeper into the shitstorm than E! tells you about your favorite celebutaint.
Needing a little bit more info about Heath Ledgers death than you'll find on CNN?... go there. If you want to see that latest mug shot of Ms. Lohan... gotcha!
But what if you're looking for whistle blower documents that could have serious implications on current officials? Documents that reach from beyond the closed doors of proceedings, to the core of us as citizens.

Enter wikileaks.org.

Don't worry... going there will not yield anything, instead, you have to go to the ip of the site: http://88.80.13.160/

This is because the site has been shut down by a California federal judge.
The real reasons are not expressed, I'm not really here to argue for or against the site in particular. What is interesting is even in the age of hidden cameras, taped phone calls, and pictures on the internet. We still find the secret document to be the ominous smoking gun in any situation. There is something academic about having read the evidence in which nothing was done. When you read the report about working conditions the same as the CEO that chose to do nothing, it angers you. It gives you that inside look into what information they may have had, and what history logs as their decision. Seeing an undercover video is almost to easy, because how could anyone not think it despicable. But when we have to imagine it, and come up with our own images, we feel like we not only know a different decision should have bene made, but that given the same info, we could have done a better job. It is a lofty goal for sure, but nonetheless, we put ourselves in that role.

It's no secret that we as a nation love our secrets. We love our hard copy, text on paper, CONFIDENTIAL, secrets... don't believe me? Just pick up that memo about the use of company paper, handed out to everyone, and see how special it feels reading it. Then go dredge up a copy of Donald Vance vs. Donald Rumsfeld, and see if that seems slightly more important, and less talked about.

Because text in video makes sense sometimes

I've like totally seen the future, and omg... it's like completely totally filtered

Denver happens to be a destination I frequent often, in fact I would say it is my most frequented airport actually (aside from DFW hence which I live, thus I depart from). For months they have offered free Wi-Fi to passengers waiting for planes in the terminal. I enjoy this, to an extent.
The service does require you to visit an ad page first, then you can navigate away easily to where you so desire. I've often used it, and the only problem is that it sometimes is slow due to system load. Very few problems aside from that but... Alas, where there is a will, there is a way to annoy me, as such they delivered in the annoyance.

I tend to frequent www.quicksilverscreen.com ... it's a bootleg heaven for movies in and out of theaters, with surprising quality. Since I'm stranded for a little bit, I figure, "why not check out that crappy 'Jumper' movie"... seeing as how I would never pay to see it, I figure I'll watch it now.

It's at this moment I can hear that annoying robot saying "danger will robinson"... as I receive:
********************************************************************************
Notification

Bad Reputation
Your request to URL "http://quicksilverscreen.com/" has been blocked by TrustedSource. The Web reputation score of this URL is 127, which is not allowed by your administrator at this time.
generated 15/Feb/2008:16:47:10 -0700

********************************************************************************

Really?
I wonder who gave them such bad reputation... because honestly it has a very extensive archive of educational documentaries that are otherwise unavailable. Sure there are a couple(hundred) illegal movies... but seriously, if you know of the site, I can't imagine it getting a bad reputation It's SO GOOD.

This sets me wondering a few things:
A) Should I just watch something on my hard drive?
B) Is there a way around this?
C) Who decides this sort of thing.

Answers:
A) I'm saving the movies I've downloaded for when I don't have net access (plane in air etc).
B) Of course! www.proxify.com
C) Since 'B' got me what I wanted I lost interest in figuring it out.

To be fair, they really tried to block it, 2 other annonymizers were also blocked, but alas a will to block only fans the flames of determination. The amusement of the fact that I was able to simply use the free connection that was censoring my surfing to search for ways to get around their blocks... I believe this correctly qualifies as 'irony'.
On a side note, the movie 'Jumper' was shit. I wouldn't recommend wasting the bandwidth watching it, let alone a matinée price.

I will however use this long diatribe to expound on the real reason for the post, the possibility that corporate sponsors like Nike, or Coke, or McDonalds could potentially give away "free wi-fi"... but then block sites like fairlabor.com, or healtyfood.gov... it seems almost plausible that they could partner with other companies and tailor your web experience to almost anything. Yahoo could partner and suddenly block gmail, google could do the same. Amazon.com could pay to have ebay block, or ebay inversely could pay to have craigslist.com blocked... hell even in an airport, one airline could block a competitor, or rental car company... it's an interesting little situation that wore my brain down to the point of writing about it.

Don't worry... this is no where near as bad as the valley girl sorority chat going on next to me at a higher than needed level. "I mean like this totally makes me think this relationship is serious... I mean like, I actually totally WANT to see him... when does that happen? I know it's been 4 mos, but like, omg, I can't believe that Im doing this, just going to see him... it's just so ... like... wow"

yea...

and you thought reading this blog was bad ;)