Keep Yer Paws Off Your PC: Preventing End-Users from Installing Applications

ITBusinessnet ^ | 28 August 2006 | Esther Schindler

[HairOfTheDog]

You employ children at your office? ;~)

[RightFighter]

For every stupid user story, there is a stupid administrator story.

Only a user would say something this stupid.

[HairOfTheDog]

I'm kinda glad MY hole area doesn't send external emails either. Ouch.

Made me think of this :~)

[HairOfTheDog]

err... this :~)

[EricT.]

It's the boss's daughter.

[Gideon7]

Although the Group Policy Editor may stop casual users from installing software, it will not stop an expert.

Windows Vista is harder, but it is still possible.

[HairOfTheDog]

Is she a child, though? A 'girl'? The comment was regarding whether we'd call a male coworker the "boy" in the next cubicle.

I think you can get away with that only if she's under about 18.

[NerdDad]

BTTT

[antiRepublicrat]

I thought this article sounded familiar.

The author asked for the collaborative help of Groklaw (most famous for covering the SCO/IBM case) in writing this article.

[HairOfTheDog]

For every stupid user story, there is a stupid administrator story.

Only a user would say something this stupid.

Maybe, but only because users are perhaps more introspective... as for stupid decisions by IT administrators, I think many of us users could tell you stories :~) There's some on this thread.

[Turbopilot]

The post you replied to specifically stated the employee was on 'warez' sites, and you're responding like he was just checking on some baseball scores. If you've never heard of Microsoft or Adobe suing companies whose employees have downloaded unlicensed copies of their software onto company computers, you haven't been paying any attention to that sort of thing.

[VOA]

bump

[RightFighter]

The main example linked on this page is of a help desk technician, NOT an IT administrator.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Oooh rah. That smarts.    =;^)

[RightFighter]

There is a difference of about 50 IQ points and about $25k per year.

[js1138]

Just out of curiosity, how do you install XP on a 266 mhz machine?

[ShadowAce]

The author asked for the collaborative help of Groklaw (most famous for covering the SCO/IBM case) in writing this article.

Yup :)

That's how I found it--PJ announced its availability.

[Still Thinking]

Verrrrrrrrrrrrrry verrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwwwwly.

[Xenalyte]

All true. However, the IT guy's response was "warez sites piss me off," not "warez sites can provide unlicensed copies of software and get us into trouble."

The latter I would have taken absolutely no issue with, as it's undeniably true.

The former is capricious and weird and not exactly helpful in terms of providing user guidance.

[Xenalyte]

Me too. I'm not even sure what doctor I'd see about that.