RE: Blocking Internet Gaming

[Paul Lantinga <prl () q9 com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Griffin [mailto:stephen.griffin () rcn com]
[snip]
> What needs to be done is to balance the knee-jerk IT folks reactions
> to make life as miserable as possible for the greatest number vs.
> allowing some amount of employee usage, to increase satisfaction,
> _increase_ productivity, and basically make it worth going into the
> office.

That's an excellent point Stephen.  Killing employee morale can have
longlasting repurcussions.  I had the pleasure of experiencing a good
decision of this type about 3 years ago when I worked in India.  The execs
decided NOT to block outbound port 80, even though it was taking up 75% of
the bandwidth on a 128k link.  They paid for an upgrade to 256k (SFO ->
Bangalore, not cheap!) and decided not to block port 80, as the damage to
employee morale would be too severe.

-Paul.