The Boing Boing blog offers tips to get around Web filters. It offers such advice in case you're subjected to a Web filter by "your employer or corrupt, undemocratic, dictator-based government."

So that's what it's come to--central IT and Kim Jong Il are seen as tech compadres.But it's not just witty blogs that think leaders of centralized IT need to change their thinking to deal with the mounting wave of Web tools and applications. Ray Ozzie last week, days before taking over as chief software architect from Bill Gates, urged IT pros in a speech to take a less black-and-white view of what's inside and outside the firewall. His comments spoke to the suspicion many IT pros have for any software made for consumers first--a suspicion well-grounded in security problems, management cost, and compliance concerns, just to name a few.

Is this right? It's possible that employees would like to do productive things with Web-based applications that central IT doesn't allow them to do. It might even be that IT would like to allow it, but feels it can't for very real business and technical reasons. Let us know what you think. Is IT the Web 2.0 buzz kill--or the only grownup in the room?