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:
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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
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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 ;)
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