One medical sales representative brought along his boss to see me. They wanted to ask me some questions on management of our patients. After a few questions on our practices in the labor ward, I got tired. After all, teaching obstetrics to a non medical person can be quite tiring, more so if there is nothing in it for the institute. She kept telling me about what the obstetricians did in other cities, like Bangalore. Finally I said, "I cannot explain why people do what they do. The standard management guidelines are available on the net, e.g. RCOG guidelines, ACOG guidelines, and our guidelines. Since you want to know about our policy on these matters, please visit our websitre at www.kem.edu and check out our department's section. I will show you on my computer." Then I tried to get the page www.kem.edu. The browser displayed the following message.
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
I was surprised. The website is for the whole world to see. If it is forbidden, what would be the purpose of putting it there? So I called the person in charge of maintenance of the website. He was away to see Boss, but someone else who took the phone told me, "people have been given access passwords. You have to have your own password to access the website."
I was taken aback.
"The website is for the whole world to see and learn about our institute. Do you mean to say you will give a password to each person who wants to see it?"
"Um... er... shall I get the webmaster to call you?"
"That would be nice" I said.
The webmaster called later. I explained the situation to him.
"There is a problem with the server. It is down" he said.
"But then the message should not be 'Forbidden. You don't have permission to access / on this server.' The message should be 'the server is down'. I was upset that I did not have permission to access our own website."
He got the joke and said he would get a proper message there. I wonder if he can manage that. The computer and internet messages tend to make out as if the user is at fault or inferior in some way, like Windows used to say "An illegal operation has been done", forgetting to say that it was done by the Windows and not by the user. I used to be in morbid fear that policemen would be swarming our place every time the computer gave that message. It was many years later that I discovered the truth.
