It's not only about downloading music on company time.

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Napster has become a subscription service, but for anyone seriously interested in finding music for free online, numerous Peer to Peer programs are available. Of course when system administrators close off the possibility of downloading files with the suffix .mp3 they're not doing so in order to take the fun out of going to work. They're only thinking about protection. But "protection" and "sticking to business" go hand in hand. The message is: if you want to download music, do it at home - and usually on your much slower modem. It appears to no longer be one of the perks of an internet related job.

But in this case as well, being over-protective can be counter-productive. We, for instance, were in need of a printer driver that was on a CD in another city. The easiest way to get the driver was to download it via the internet. But with an .exe suffix, there was little chance that we could succeed in downloading it. I make it a habit to download studies related to internet use, both in the school and in the home. These studies are directly related to my work, but they usually appear in .pdf format. If that suffix is closed off to me, I'm not even able to get my work done.

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Go to: The Return of the PC.