Yesterday's article on the Penn State firewall ("Unprecedented security risks prompted need for firewall," Feb. 24) grossly misrepresented many of the students' problems with such a "service." I have no doubt that a large number of students will never even notice the restrictive nature of the firewall, but there are those who will.

Students who use computing technology to its fullest will and have already been inconvenienced by Penn State's inadequate attempt at "protecting the users." Students in arts and architecture, engineering, information sciences and technology, and computer science all work with computers in ways far beyond writing a simple document or e-mailing and chatting with friends. Complex 3-D models, integrative art compositions, elaborate schematics and complex coding projects are just some of the many things that students need to create. More often than not, these activities are done in one of the various computer labs across campus. Unfortunately, the resources the university encourages us to use to store, deploy and demonstrate these projects (the U-drive, personal web server) are all woefully inadequate.

It's easy to store a simple PowerPoint presentation on the U-drive, but ask any student in architecture how easy it is to store a complex 3-D rendering, and you'll discover that the U-drive is very restrictive. Similarly, the personal web server's help pages actually encourage students to run scripts on their home computers, because the server "is expected to occasionally crash, hang and reboot."

All of these problems used to be remedied by students using their home computers to store their files, host code and do other advanced activities. Now, the use of home machines from anywhere outside of the dorm is impossible.

From what I can see, Penn State has taken my $320-a-year information technology fee and used it to restrict my ability to perform academic functions, instead providing me with free music -- and that just isn't right.