Flashes of Panic

I’m in receipt of a Powerpoint document from an advertising network which will remain nameless. Leaving aside the question of whether Powerpoint is the appropriate medium for communicating the information it contains (I come down heavily on the side of “No”), let’s take a look at this question, apparently intended to find out something about our ability to handle a particular advertising campaign:

Does your web server have internet access? Can your web server view web pages?

If the web server doesn’t have internet access, our site will have serious difficulty reaching its audience. Whether or not the server software can be said to “view” pages is a complicated metaphysical question I’m not really prepared to consider at this point.

I think the sender meant to ask if the server could programmatically access resources located elsewhere on the internet, and the answer to that question is (I think) “Yes,” with trimmings. (I suppose I can imagine a scenario in which an overly-paranoid firewall prevented a server from accessing outside resources.)

But how would you answer that question if you were not at my level of technical experience? Guess?

Now Playing: Maps And Legends from Fables Of The Reconstruction by R.E.M.

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