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Holy shit I am back from the graveyard of the Internet. Let me take this opportunity to point out something that I consider very important:

It is the bane of Information Technology to take something that works perfectly, and try to upgrade, or change settings that people are dependent on using.

For those that do not attend Clayton State, the server that this blog resides on made a move from the old Technology building into the new University Center. It took one month – it should have taken one day. When it (finally) came back online, the administrator of the server decided that FTP was a “potential security risk because of the ability to upload viruses”. Welcome to the 21st century. Along with an upgrade in the hardware, it was considered necessary to assess their security risks.

Here there is a severe misunderstanding of technology. While I patiently waited for FTP to come back online, which my blog need(ed) to function, I considered the alternatives. I could “ssh” into the machine and move around files that weren’t necessarily in my home directory. I could “scp” a virus to the server, I could “sftp” a virus to the server. Apparently I could even EMAIL a virus to this server, because someone has an email account on it.

Go figure. It appears to be a case of “FTP” is too simple, so we should complicate things into a level of security that we cannot understand or maintain because it must be more secure.

Alas, at least I have my humble little corner of the web back.