I really thought those days were over. I was naive of course; the job of maintaining the PCs in the company is primarily mine although I'd like to think of "my machines" as comprising of our 2 Linux machines and my own windoze workstation.
Well, well. This week, one (or more!) of our windoze PCs have been sending automated requests to google.com (constituting a DOS-pattern) and consequently our IP got banned by Google. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Google also blocks the NUS proxy IP, effectively blocking access to Google for the entire university population. Oh what horrors, all those students trying to find research materials or ready-made papers-for-sale online; all those research staff trying to do their job— suddenly cut off from their lifeline.
Really. When does Internet search become our lifeline? It's astounding how technology stealthily crept into our lives and quickly made itself indispensable. I suppose, other things must have been displaced from our lives just as stealthily too. This is something all companies need to look out for; we lounge about too long and our fate could be no worse than the dinosaurs of old.
Backtracking. Now all our machines' IP have been blocked. Will have to resolve the situation quickly; working with our campus sysadmins who are: (1) angry at us, no doubt, (2) stiff-nerdy-folks who are stingy with information.
Perfect day to begin the week of Lent :)
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