On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Diana Eichert <deich...@wrench.com> wrote:
snip thread > You are missing the point of "privilege" then. Privilege gives you access > to tools and right to shoot yourself in the foot. It is obvious to me that > someone was elevated to a privileged level without having the > necessary skill set. Perhaps the better question is why are unqualified > people giving the tools to shoot themself? Sounds like a management > issue, not a system design issue. That this is a management issue is central, I think. It sounds like "management" wishes to provide lusers with "safe tools", also called "wizards" in some benighted circles. > The question really is, is the cost of experienced personnel more than > the cost of educating your inexperienced staff to a proficiency level > high enough to gain privileged access? If so, train your staff, otherwise > expect to have visits to your office because someone shot your organization > in the foot. Are the days when a "professional" was expected to know everything in his area gone? At my first programming job, which was on Cyber 174s running NOS, I was given two manuals, an empty office and told to familiarize myself with it for a couple of days. As a maintenance programmer, my "training" consisted of a thick listing of the program I was to maintain, and access to the original programmer. Later, when minicomputers came in, I was told "Learn VMS". We had the manuals. At various times I was simply told to "Learn OS/360" and finally "Learn Unix". Most of this learning took place at home, on my own time. The idea of sending a "professional" engineer to a class on "using vi" or somesuch was insane. (This was not a stingy company -- they'd send employees to grad classes at Stanford if *needed*, or to specialized classes (I recall one in programming SGI's then-new "geometry pipeline"). To the OP, buy the people "vi in a nutshell" (OReilly [*]), and give them a printed copy of the cron* (*) manpages. Tell them to get it together in three days of night study. If they balk at it or fail, transfer them to the mailroom or to the curb. If the lusers are not "computer professionals", hire some. If the lusers are stupid, give them scripts. Don't give them root. :) If they just can't use vi, well, doesn't crontab -e support the VISUAL environmental variable? [Of course it does.] They can use some other ascii-editor. [*] Consider giving each luser a "gift certificate" for OReilly. Best wishes, Dave -- teh googlez read my emails 'n' STUFF!!!! LOLZ!!! urz 2!!! LOLZ!!!
