Posted on 08/29/2006 10:44:08 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Seriously, XP blocked me from installing it on a 350.
I would say that the former is incomplete--why does it piss him off? Probably because of the latter.
We cannot install software on the computers at work. Only those with admin privilige can do so. This seems to be a very sensible solution. It is their computer and their choice about what software to install.
I know some think that it is harsh for the employer to restrict their computers but it is thier computer.
However, you would be amazed what you can run from a thumbdrive installation.
< grin >
Not here. My work laptop was stolen from my office in June. I've been usng my personal laptop ever since.
There are two interesting anecdotes from where I work. It's a materials R&D facility. We needed access to SciFinder, the largest on-line database of peer reviewed science journals in the world. But our IT guys didn;t like the fact that it had to write to a specific port that they wanted closed on our firewall (I'm not an IT guy so please forgive any mis-diescriptions on my part). So for 2 years, over 100 researchers had to use a dial up modem on a PC separate from the network. All because some IT guy in corporate HQ on the other side of the country knew how to do R&D.
The second story comes from dealing with the same IT masterminds. We have a lot of scientific instruments that are computer driven. Our IT guys installed all kinds of management software that disrupted the operation of the instruments. We were told that if the instrument could not run with the management software, then the computer couldn't be used. Moreover, in order to avoid conflicts with the management software, IT would review our instrument requirements and specify what scientific instruments we could use based strictly on their conformity to network policy. So somoe IT guy is going to make descisions that only a qualified PhD researcher should be making!
Well, when our international HQ, where our R&D results go, hear about the stuff the IT department was pulling on us with the blessing of the U.S. HQ, the matter was resolved. The IT guy was told off and all of his restrictions lifted, management software pulled, aside from anti-virus standardization, and we could actually do research.
THey didn't care if it would cost us almost $1 million to upgrade electron microscope lab from Windows NT to XP just for the sake of U.S. software standardization. At least they didn't care until they were told they would have to pay for it out of their budget.
233MHz is the minimum for XP.
I worked at a company that restricted internet access by controlling IE settings from the domain. I was required to research new controls for use by the programmers. Google, and just about any site I wanted to visit was “Off Limits” I wrote my own browser (it took 15 min to a half an hour depending on how complex I wanted to make it (I couldn’t save it and use it later as they had rules about that too.) I was researching a control one day and my boss walked in. He took a look at my screen and said, WOW, how’d you get to that site, so I told him, He walked away shaking his head.
Later, at another company, I was doing a lot of “Time intensive work” (Things that had to run overnight). They had tightened security down so no one could access their machine from home, but we had to be able to use Net meeting to support our customers, and we had to have email. I wrote a program that would check an e-mail address and respond to specific emails by doing things for me. One email would open up net meeting and place a call to my Static IP at home, then hand me the desktop. I was very productive. My boss called me on night and apologized for asking me to drive 45 minutes just to give him a file he needed, while we were on the phone, I had my work computer contact me and emailed him the file from my work computer. He hounded me for a week before I told him how I did it. IT wanted to talk to me (Great). At the end of our little chat, the IT director said well, that is pretty secure (since it could only access my static IP, and only responded to emails containing a daily cipher.) He said “I don’t think there is a way I can stop you without killing our business” Can I have a copy? And how do I get the cipher, and set the email address?” A new “Approved” product was born…
Moral? You can’t stop and employee with technology they understand better than you do.
Or they could save all work files to a server, and have very little on their desktops/laptops.
I lost count of the number of times our Helpless Desk said to me, "if you figure out what the problem is, will you get back to us?" Our original IS staff from a decade and a half ago prided themselves that they didn't own personal computers (because they were world-weary, sophisticated professionals, don'tcha know). They couldn't troubleshoot a typo.
I recently had a C: drive crash. I begged my field tech not to try to fix it, but he did. He showed up one morning when I had a doctor's appointment, took away the drive, brought it back and reported it was totally dead and none of the data was recoverable. He was right. Unfortunately, the drive he carted off had been the perfectly healthy D: drive. I managed to recover all my data from the C: drive.
They instituted new online rules a few months ago. They took away all unauthorized browsers and made us use IE. There goes my Opera. At the same time, they disabled any program that "phones home" for updates. There goes my Ad-Aware.
Shall I go on...?
That strategy is fine if the network is stable and the parties responsible for server backup are doing their jobs. The problem is that the "admin" task is treated as a collateral duty. It's not billable time to a customer. If the responsible party has a full plate of billable work, the collateral tasks never get done. Nobody cares until the server crashes.
Having lived in this environment for quite a while, I invested in DVD+/-R/RW DL drives on each local computer. I use Ghost to back them up on a regular interval.
Do you provide a list of Sites That Piss Off Gilor so users can avoid having their accounts suspended?
So downloading 'warez' (illegal software) is ok?
My company hired me to not only run their networks, but to protect them.
I could have had the Idiot User fired, but I'm a nice guy.
Better yet, add them to your proxy filter and bar them from even going there and redirect to a nice warning page. NO p0rn, No Warez no iTunes, No FReeping... (opps!) Get back to work!
Getting them 'reminded' to go back to work is their bosses job.
Find the George link in this thread. Those people exist.
Great examples. The Mordak character in the Dilbert cartoons should be popular with your group.
For every 20 stupid user stories, there is a stupid administrator story. For every 20 stupid users completely botching their machines up several times a year, there is a stupid administrator halfway botching up multiple departments for months to years.
As you can see in my earlier post, George is NOT an IT administrator, he's a helpdesk lackey. They are not qualified to administer a network.
If an administrator is botching up multiple departments for months to years, he won't be an administrator for long. The employee who screws up his machine, however, is rarely held accountable.
I agreed. There are far more stupid users, and the stories about them are far easier to understand.
If an administrator is botching up multiple departments for months to years, he won't be an administrator for long.
Well, unfortunately that is not true at all. Because their effects are near universal, unless they actually bring down the system entirely or large parts of it, if their acts continuously degrade everyones ability to work it is unlikely that their mis-steps will be noticed - especially as there is no "better" to compare performance with.
We just took away their admin rights and that fixed a lot of problems. They were only ready to drop the gloves over silly little phone-home email icons. Everyone tries to outcute one another. Geez.....
When we hire a new employee, we have a standard speech about rules. One of the big rules is "No matter how important the incoming email looks, do not forward it to the dept email list. Even if it says to send it to all your friends."
Wow. That would definitely get annoying after about 2 weeks.
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