I just *had* to comment.

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 02:56:06PM -0400, Don Levey wrote:
> Well, I have.  Note that he said "exclusive of help-desk activities".

Yeah I guess that's true, but it depends on what constitute help-desk
activities in your organization, or if there is even a distinction
between the help desk and the sysadmin team.  I think making such a
qualification is meaningless because it can't hold up for many, if not
most organizations for those reasons.

> Keeping Windows up-to-date can be accomplished by a number of
> things, including their auto-update feature, SMS, and even remote
> desktop.  

All of which users can and will break, given sufficient motivation
and/or opportunity. 

> > I have re-implemented, or been involved in environments that
> > re-implemented something very similar to what Derek describes on more
> > than one occasion.  And I never lived at MIT.  Doing so, in as much as
> > is possible at your site, makes everything a lot nicer.

> It may be - but there's only been one unnamed) example mentioned so far.
> Considering the number of production environments out there, this does not
> seem to move it beyond the "special case" category.  If you're mentioning
> others, then that might change.

Requiring that they be named is a bogus requirement, since without
going into those environments and examining their configurations,
they're not really verifiable anyway.  All of the environments I
worked at were engineered this way, to differing degrees.  I'm not
inclined to name them though, mainly because I think that discussing
the details of any of their implementations is a violation of their
trust, possibly of their security, and in some cases maybe even my
employment agreement with those parties.  But there were 4 of them, 2
of which were very large companies, and 2 of which were relatively
small engineering shops.  If you find that unacceptable as anecdotal
evidence to the contrary, then you're welcome to continue to believe
the original supposition...  I don't really care.  ;-)

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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