The Secret Garden

[Mirah]

Wait no, it is called "The Walled Garden"

So my sister was just telling me how after a wind storm her modem got "knocked out" and so she has spent time this last week on the phone with tech support and each person she talked to mentioned this "Walled Garden".

I had never heard of the term, so I looked it up and understand the concept, but am annoyed at the term-it is more like a "walled prision" not at all like a garden, there are no flowers, no birds or bees or hummingbirds or fruit or vegetables.

Also they wanted to sell her the new upgraded model for only $200! or maybe even more, I can't remember. So she tried another modem and it seemed to work just fine, I told her to try the other one again now that she got the password to this secret garden.

[Eggs Loki]

I had never heard that term before so I looked it up:

On the Internet, a walled garden refers to a browsing environment that controls the information and Web sites the user is able to access. This is a popular method used by ISPs in order to keep the user navigating only specific areas of the Web, whether for the purpose of shielding users from information — such as restricting children’s access to pornography — or directing users to paid content that the ISP supports. America Online is a good example of an ISP that places users in a walled garden.
Schools are increasingly using the walled garden approach in creating browsing environments in their networks. Students have access to only limited Web sites, and teachers need a password in order to leave the walled garden and browse the Internet in its entirety.

The term walled garden also commonly refers to the content that wireless devices such as mobile phones have access to if the content provided by the wireless carrier is limited.

So it's a setup that closes off parts of the internet to you? Does you sister have little kids that she wants to prevent from seeing porn or something?

[Mirah]

Nope. It seems like a scheme to get her to purchase a new modem.