The Black Wire and the White Wire:
On my desk at work I have two ethernet cables. One is black and one is white. The black one is connected to our corporate network. I use that one when I want to print things. I could also use it for Internet access and stuff, but I don’t because the corporate network blocks a number of ports, including those used for Skype and Second Life. It’s also pretty slow.
The white cable, meanwhile, is a standard consumer-grade DSL connection to the Internet, with nothing blocked at all.
Huh. We had this at Turner Broadcasting in 1995. And for much the same reason, as a sandbox for new stuff that couldn’t be justified in a business environment (in 1995, TCP/IP over 10BaseT was still pretty new stuff in a lot of mainstream companies).
But yes, his point that your better IT departments will do more than just make sure the email servers are up is taken. Especially in a media company that is concerned with The New New Thing.