Good news! There is no sinister plot to block Stranger readers from accessing our website via Amtrak’s wi-fi services, according to Vickie Sheehan, a spokeswoman for WSDOT’s rail office (which oversees Amtrak Cascades).
“It’s not us,” she said when reached this morning by phone. “[The Stranger] is just caught up in the net. We’re working on a white listing service so that we can unblock them.”
The real culprit, she says, is a poorly-performing internet blacklisting service prone to “rogue content-filtering.” It’s set up to block access to porn and large downloads so the server doesn’t crash, but Sheehan said that “it kinda snags a bunch of things,” and it’s been accidentally blocking the Stranger and other sites for no apparent reason.
Sheehan says the problem should be resolved by mid-March. “We’re still working out the bugs,” she exlains.
But to all of you who complained, great job. Your whiny prowess is staggering—Sheehan said that the majority of complaints about the wi-fi have been from angry Stranger readers, who have contacted them with complaints more than five times a week.
OKCupid came in second. (Awkward.)
Instead typing, slog.thestranger.com, what happens when you type in the IP address?
copy and paste this into the URL browser.
209.104.5.192/blogs/slog/
If it works, then you need only switch to a Public DNS Server. Open DNS, Google are two entities that offer free public DNS Services.
I blame all the anonymous commenters, those Santorum-swilling reprobates.
Hat tip to Publicola for getting the ball rolling with WSDOT on deblocking the Stranger on Amtrak, in the course of reporting their own story, with which they scooped you guys by, um, two weeks.
http://publicola.com/2011/02/03/amtrak-b…
It probably has nothing to do with the fact that Stranger articles are littered with the f-word. Probably.
@4,
Or advertisements for strip clubs with porn stars spreading their legs wide open for all to see.
Or random Mudede posts about some Marxist this-or-that or a dialogue on Hegel, accompanied by a picture of some chick’s tits.
Not that I’m complaining about either of those (definitely not!)…. but it certainly doesn’t help the “why are you banning us?” cause.
@5: When I played with their wifi this weekend I was able to get to the Portland Mercury site via it. Don’t they use some of the same ads? They definitely share some of the same slog posts.
I blame all the ads for intimate apparel and gentlemen’s clubs.
Why the fuck aren’t people allowed to look at porn on Amtrak? If they’re creating a disturbance that’s something else entirely, but why shouldn’t you be allowed to look at your porn in peace on the train?
@8, because a large percentage of the passengers — about a third the last time I rode to Vancouver — are children. Believe it or not, but most parents of eight-year-olds don’t want them to see Jenna Haze getting pounded in her prolapsing anus when they get up to go to the toilet.
How about this:
DONT FUCKING FILTER ANYTHING.
TIP: Try using the RSS feed with google reader. It’s pretty efficient and effective, until you want to post a comment. You don’t need that anyway: Your smartass note would probably have been something you’d regret later on anyway.