I think the most indefensible policy I've seen is to lock down the appearance of machines. So XP with the windows "classic" theme enforced and background unchangeable.
There's clearly no security benefit in this, and I'd be very surprised if there had every been a case of someone using an inappropriate background image. Fortunately, that particular company was enlightened enough that they would allow developers to install linux on their own boxes - on the understanding that they shouldn't then expect their hands to be held by the support team for every trivial issue. My experience was that the support team far preferred requests from the developers anyway, as the problem was typically already solved and such requests usually just contained a detailed breakdown of what configuration changes were needed on some server or another. On 1 March 2010 10:55, Wildam Martin <mwil...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 11:41, Karsten Silz <karsten.s...@gmail.com> wrote: > > These machine make the iPhone look like Tinkerer's Paradise. But the > > main reason for that is not legal requirements, it's to lower support > > cost: When you can't tinker with your machine, you can't make a mess > > and call the support hotline. And if the laptop is broken, they just > > give you a new one, and you don't lose any app or data except for > > maybe your IE bookmarks. In the case of laptops, this also protects > > you against some theft of confidential data. > > That working data is to be stored on the net, that is clear, but for > the support there is another well working strategy that I have > encountered out there: If you call support and the issue can't be > solved within 15 minutes then you get a new image. This usually > results in the behavior of users to think twice before installing or > changing something because all their settings are gone when they get a > new image. > > Even on the most cut down machine users change some settings to make > them more productive (if it is just explorer views and the like) and > this is already annoying so support calls are reduced automatically > with this strategy. > > -- > Martin Wildam > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<javaposse%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- Kevin Wright mail/google talk: kev.lee.wri...@googlemail.com wave: kev.lee.wri...@googlewave.com skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
