• (disco)

    complaint with their new overlords’ IT policies.

    Yes, they certainly had a complaint.

  • (disco) in reply to boomzilla

    oh, stop complianing about the typos.

  • (disco) in reply to NedFodder
    NedFodder:
    oh, stop complianing about the typos.

    yeah! that's my job!

  • (disco) in reply to boomzilla
    boomzilla:
    >**complaint** with their new overlords’ IT policies.

    Yes, they certainly had a complaint.

    Let us hope there won't be any [spanking](https://what.thedailywtf.com/t/enlightened/8795).
  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    NedFodder:
    oh, stop complianing about the typos.

    yeah! that's my job!

    No, it's your job to make them; it's ours to complain.

  • (disco)

    but who knew whether their overlords would care?

    Don't hold your breath. Especially not with an effective work-around in place.

  • (disco)

    This story sounded familiar. The name was: http://www.thedailywtf.com/articles/Were-All-Administrators,-Zoologically-Educational,-and-White-Space but I can't place the content...

  • (disco) in reply to Zemm

    http://thedailywtf.com/articles/you-will-be-admin-similated

  • (disco)

    A few searches later, he had the answer: the infamous Windows 7 Computer Maintenance. If there were more than 4 broken shortcuts on the desktop, it deleted them completely. No Recycle Bin, no Unused Icons folder, just obliterated. It ran its maintenance tasks once a week on startup, after the desktop icons loaded, but before the network drives finished mapping. That meant the database links were "broken,” and were therefore deleted.

    Can be worse: If on the local machine there is a file that roughly matches the originally linked file (especially by name), Windows "helpfully" bends the link to the local file. (Without confusing anyone with superfluous messages, of course.)

  • (disco)

    TRWTFis Windows Maintenance.

  • (disco) in reply to Vault_Dweller

    What's funny is this version of the story is a fresh email that came in a few weeks ago. Those who don't learn from history are doomed, yada yada yada.

  • (disco) in reply to RFoxmich
    RFoxmich:
    TRWTFis Windows Maintenance.

    Yeah, next time get Alu frames instead of wooden. No painting the windows so almost no maintenance on those!

  • (disco)

    He ended up writing a startup script to manually recreate the shortcuts after all the other bizarre startup processes had finished doing their thing.

    What, doing the check every startup? Just put them in a goddamn folder if you really need to! Or disable the maintenance via a group policy.

    Also, what's the problem with giving at least your not-technically-retarded people local admin? In a corporate environment, you should be doing permission control with group policies anyway, and if you don't trust your programmers not to break their workstations and infest them with millions of viruses, then gee, maybe you shouldn't have hired them.

  • (disco)

    Eh, I'm with the corporate overlords on this one. As long as you have a reliable AV, for a company of 100 employees and 2 IT staff, it's my experience (and I have worked for the last 20+ years in just those environments) that local admin is preferable. Sure, you every now and again have to deal with a malware install, but it's preferable to having to deal with all the support requests you get from people having lack of admin, and worse, people not updating things like java, flash, acrobat reader, because the update requires admin and they can't be bothered to ask IT, AND it makes your users happier, lack of local admin frustrates people.

    As for his deleted icons problem, easily solved by setting a windows setting 'wait for network on logon' which you can easily globally set for all users using Group Policy, or if you aren't running AD, you can set as a local policy on each machine.

    TRWF here is Will.

  • (disco) in reply to Zadkiel
    Zadkiel:
    it's preferable to having to deal with all the support requests you get from people having lack of admin

    Especially if your corporate policy is that if you need to install something, you have to round-trip the request through the helpdesk serving the whole country, so that they can call the guy sitting next to you in 3 to 5 business days and tell him to log into your workstation as admin and let you run the installers.

  • (disco) in reply to Maciejasjmj

    Yeah, because requiring a 'process' that turns a 30 second administrative tweak into a minimum 48 hour multi-silo effort is so super corporatey.

    Efficiency is totally through the looking glass.

  • (disco) in reply to Maciejasjmj

    It is not the programmers that I am worried about when you move to a policy of "everybody is a local admin"; it is the techo-dolts in HR and Sales who think that installing the latest warez will help improve productivity and clicking on exciting ads and then complaining that the anti-virus software keeps popping up messages. "Oh, yeah, when ever that comes up, I just click on Ignore so that I can install the software/look at the website. A revoked certificate on a website isn't a big deal, right?" This is how your on-site programmers become an extension of your IT support group and not just for the stuff they wrote.

    This is also how your bosses' friends and families all get emails at the same time saying that they have been mugged in a foreign land and need $1500 to replace their passports and get back home. I take it this company never deals with credit cards (see PCI Audit).

  • (disco) in reply to Luhmann
    Luhmann:
    Yeah, next time get Alu frames instead of wooden. No painting the windows so almost no maintenance on those!
    I would link one popular YT vid that perfectly fits that line, but it's in Polish and no one would get the joke.

    Filed under: Amelinium

  • (disco)

    Big company wants everybody to be admin, small company doesn't. Is it not mostly the other way round?

  • (disco) in reply to Gaska
    Gaska:
    I would link one popular YT vid that perfectly fits that line, but it's in Polish and no one would get the joke.

    It sucks to be a Pole. Either you're among other Poles and get reminded of a joke that doesn't make sense in Polish, or you're among English speakers and get reminded of Polish material.

  • (disco) in reply to Maciejasjmj
    Maciejasjmj:
    It sucks to be a Pole bilingual. Either you're among other Poles language A speakers and get reminded of a joke that doesn't make sense in Polish A, or you're among English B speakers and get reminded of Polish A material.

    I know there are very good reasons for Polish nationalism (and thanks for Enigma, guys, pity you were let down by Roosevelt) but your experience is perhaps more general than you suggest.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    A maiori ad minus - if it sucks to be bilingual, it also sucks to be English-speaking Pole.

  • (disco) in reply to Gaska
    Gaska:
    A maiori ad minus - if it sucks to be bilingual, it also sucks to be English-speaking Pole.

    Does that mean "Native New Zealanders don't see the adverts"?

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    Well, my experience is limited to the situation I described, so.

    I do know some German too, but since it's physically impossible to make a joke in German, that's not exactly relevant.


    Filed under: wenn ist das Nunstuck git und Slotermeier?

  • (disco) in reply to Maciejasjmj

    It's possible, just incredibly dangerous.

  • (disco)

    Umm, if it's a big company (and I assume it is, since they gobbled up a "small" 100-employee" place), then surely they musts be aware of privilege guard software products on the market that let's user's have local admin for operations that need it while protecting crap like this when you don't.

  • (disco) in reply to DCRoss
    DCRoss:
    It's possible, just incredibly dangerous.

    It's impossible: Any joke would be a syntax error in German.

  • (disco)

    I know it's bad form to post something serious, but here I go:

    TRWTF is putting crap on the Desktop in the first place. Train your users NEVER to do so, and begin by replacing all those links to servers in a folder called something like "Server Links" which you could roll out to every C:/users/* directory. There are lots and lots of reasons why the Desktop is the wrong place for any file (or link, or folder); this is just one of them;

  • (disco)

    Adding the number of support tickets won't help, but multi-million dollars lost on information leak because of "everyone is local admin" will.

    You just have to wait it to happen, because people want to see dancing bunnies.

    Play fair and you'll eventally get what you want... even if you don't actually want it.

  • (disco) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    There are lots and lots of reasons why the Desktop is the wrong place for any file

    Yet users keep doing it. Must be something mighty strange going on if most users are persistently wrong.

  • (disco) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    There are lots and lots of reasons why the Desktop is the wrong place for any file (or link, or folder); this is just one of them;

    How about you name a few?

    There are lots of reasons cellocgw is an elitist asshole; chiding people for using the Desktop "wrong" is just one of them. Semi-colon.

  • (disco)

    My question about this WTF is why were the links considered broken? Did they actually work if they clicked on them?

  • (disco)

    So instead of looking into proper solutions they opted for some hacky batch script? I think that is TRWTF.

  • (disco)
    kupfernigk:
    Wer war die Dame, die ich Ihnen gestern Abend gesehen ?

    Das war keine Dame , das meine Frau war.

    Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

  • (disco)

    Meh. I don't have any icons on my desktop anyways. Good riddance db links! :tongue:

  • (disco) in reply to blakeyrat

    OK :First of all, ad-hominem is poor style. Next, just because my name isn't Steve Jobs doesn't mean I have no vision or understanding of GUIs.

    So, here goes: the "Desktop" is a melange of stuff in your user/desktop folder and allusers/desktop folder, so you don't really know where a given item is -- nor who owns it. The Desktop cannot be sorted by Name, Mod Date, Type, Size, or any of the other features the Explorer window allows. The Desktop can't even display the full name of files if they get kinda long.
    WIndows Maintenance may even delete Desktop icons that "haven't been used in a while" (thanks, ghost of Clippy). Try sliding a bunch of desktop icons to your second screen (as one can easily do w/ an Explorer window).

    Really, give me ONE reason other than ignorance or inertia that people use the Desktop. You might as well call me names for suggesting that there are quality alternatives to MsoftOffice and claim I'm wrong because 'most users are still using it."

  • (disco) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    So, here goes: the "Desktop" is a melange of stuff in your user/desktop folder and allusers/desktop folder, so you don't really know where a given item is -- nor who owns it.

    Ok. And this is a problem because...?

    Note that all users own the icons in "All Users". That's kind of in the name of it.

    cellocgw:
    The Desktop cannot be sorted by Name, Mod Date, Type, Size, or any of the other features the Explorer window allows.

    Ok, you're wrong. But... if you weren't wrong that might be a slightly good reason a bit? Maybe? Too bad you're wrong.

    cellocgw:
    The Desktop can't even display the full name of files if they get kinda long.

    And that's a problem because...?

    cellocgw:
    WIndows Maintenance may even delete Desktop icons that "haven't been used in a while" (thanks, ghost of Clippy).

    Welcome Time Pod traveller! You have arrived in 2015.

    cellocgw:
    Try sliding a bunch of desktop icons to your second screen (as one can easily do w/ an Explorer window).

    Ok; I did that. Now what?

    Are you not aware that you can select more than one icon at a time by drawing a little rectangle around them with your mouse?

    cellocgw:
    Really, give me ONE reason other than ignorance or inertia that people use the Desktop.
    1. It makes a handy launcher after your computer starts up.

    2. It's a convenient place to put images while you're dragging-and-dropping them between windows.

    3. To spite you personally.

    cellocgw:
    You might as well call me names for suggesting that there are quality alternatives to MsoftOffice

    I'm not going to call you names, but you are dead-wrong about this.

  • (disco) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    First of all, ad-hominem is poor style.

    Uh, you've never ventured into other forum sections from Articles have you? Plus from blakey that was a remarkably friendly response.

  • (disco) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    Try sliding a bunch of desktop icons to your second screen (as one can easily do w/ an Explorer window).

    I tried it and it worked no problem. What's supposed to happen?

  • (disco) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    OK :First of all, ad-hominem is poor style.

    I've been trying to get Blakey (and others) to get this for almost a year now.

    It has not worked in the slightest. -_-

    Welcome (back?) to the forums. I promise we're not all like that.

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    I promise we're not all like that.

    Just the vast majority :imp:

    Or alternatively "there are always exceptions to the rule"

  • (disco) in reply to locallunatic
    locallunatic:
    Just the vast majority

    no, not the majority. I refuse to believe that the majority are like that. I prefer to believe for the sake of my sanity that it's merely an extremely vocal minority.

    locallunatic:
    Or alternatively "there are always exceptions to the rule"
    Any rule that has exceptions is not a rule, merely a guideline
  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    I prefer to believe for the sake of my sanity

    Believing something that is obviously false is normally not classified as sanity.

  • (disco) in reply to locallunatic
    locallunatic:
    Believing something that is obviously false is normally not classified as sanity.

    then put air quotes around the word if you want. my comment stands the way i chose to word it.

    :-P

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    Welcome (back?) to the forums. I promise we're not all like that **yet**.

    FTFY

  • (disco) in reply to FullPointerException
    FullPointerException:
    FTFY

    Edit denied. it's correct the way i wrote it the first time

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    Any rule that has exceptions is not a rule, merely a guideline

    You should never be allowed to work on anything with any edge cases if you take that outlook.

  • (disco) in reply to kjordan2001

    Oh man, we had that exact problem with Win7 when we (finally) transitioned last year. My boss is overly anal about the wrong thing, and shortcuts to common excel files must be on every desktop. Using a GP? No, too easy; they need to be cut/paste from a network folder. (Despite the fact that another shortcut is pushed that way.)

    So I get the computers all set up and transitioned, and a week later someone's computer is suddenly lacking the shortcuts. Boss flips out at me because she thinks I didn't follow directions, and I spend half a day figuring out what happened and eventually found that same Microsoft article. What a horrible, horrible idea. I went around to all computers and disabled Troubleshooting (thankfully only a dozen desktops) to keep it from happening.

    (Putting them in a folder on the desktop would also keep Troubleshooter from eating them, but that goes against Boss Policy.)

    My question about this WTF is why were the links considered broken? Did they actually work if they clicked on them?

    Because the network drives, which they linked to, take longer to connect than the Desktop does after logging in, and in that space of time Troublehooting runs and "helpfully" deletes them. If Troubleshooting didn't remove them, they would have worked fine.

  • (disco) in reply to locallunatic
    locallunatic:
    You should never be allowed to work on anything with any edge cases

    what? like discourse?

    also it's true. if a rule (of law/society/squishy human stuff) has an exception, it's not a rule, it's a guideline.

    a Rule (math/science/comptuer/iforonewelcomeournewaioverlords) is a different thing entirely!

  • (disco) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    2) It's a convenient place to put images while you're dragging-and-dropping them between windows.

    It's a handy place to put images I'm actually working on, when I don't want Google to upload and index them yet. To put it another way, the desktop is a useful clipboard for files. I am not responsible for the people who abuse this facility and store everything there...

    cellocgw:
    OK :First of all, ad-hominem is poor style.
    (attribution fixed, OK?)

    blakeyrat is not guilty of committing an ad hominem, however. It would be one if he wrote "because cellocgw is an élitist asshole, his views on the desktop are wrong". However, he argues in exact reverse, saying that cellocgw's views on the desktop are a reason why he is an é.a. An ad hominem, in fact, is saying "this is wrong because of who said it". blakeyrat is saying, in effect:

    1. Believing X is contributory evidence that someone may be an élitist asshole.
    2. cellocgw believes X
    3. Therefore this is contributory evidence that cellocgw is an élitist asshole.

    His statement stands or falls by whether 1. is correct - and 1. cannot be disproven, because it's a black swan argument (even if 1000 people tested believe X and are not élitist assholes, the next one may do both and so there is a non-zero statistical probability that 1. is correct. We would need to test every person on Earth, and the population is increasing.)

    So blakeyrat's statement is not only not an ad hominem, it is logically consistent and not disprovable.

    I hope this clarifies matters.

    (for the record, I don't really defend unnecessary personal abuse. I was just being a pedant about @cellocgw trying to show off by using a Latinism he didn't quite understand. I don't have any objection to the use of non-English expressions where they make sense, but if you're going to do it, do it right. My own main failing is to be far too snarky.)

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