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[quote]Originally posted by Gollo:
<strong>
That's just it this guy isn't a customer. He's an employee.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Aahh, the issue is clouded. Let me make it a little clearer.
IT/IS/MIS is a service industry. This goes for outside consultants, and IT professionals working from within corporations.
You provide a means for corporations and small business to operate. You support the desktops, servers, and connections between sites; stay current with security, and adjust for new solutions offered by software and hardware vendors. You do not “decide” what these systems are used for; the business dictates that. Your only responsibility is to protect them from harm, while providing a balanced level of flexible functionality for the end users.
The short retort…we are all employees. No CEO wants to be told, “it can’t be done”. It doesn’t matter which side of the system you are on. If people demand miracles, give them a well-researched, properly protected version of what ever they want!
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Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap
If anyone emailed me regarding the user policies, PLEASE email me again for them!
I saw some emails with a 'user policy' heading, and accidentally removed them when I went on a mass deleting spree (Im also a looong long way from my mail server, and recovery is next to impossible)
Sorry about this, to anyone that did contact me, please touch base again, and I wont be so quick with my 'delete' key this time!
Address again is : [email protected]
Cheers all!
-Cameron
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[quote]Take Time Warner Cable: every desktop they have uses AOL for email. They don’t have a single Exchange server since the AOL giant acquired them.<hr></blockquote>
Nope, check your newspaper they stopped using AOL recently. I'll try to track down the story, I heard it on some sorta tech. news somewhere.
And if TWC can't even use it... :rolleyes:
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I believe the story was posted on MSNBC (figures, two of Time Warner/AOL's biggest rivals rolled into one) :p
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[quote]Originally posted by craigmodius:
<strong>
Nope, check your newspaper they stopped using AOL recently. I'll try to track down the story, I heard it on some sorta tech. news somewhere.
And if TWC can't even use it... :rolleyes: </strong><hr></blockquote>
I read it too. I can't remember if I saw it here or on the Wall Street Journal. Here's a little background on why.
<a href="http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2002/0218gibbs.html" target="_blank">http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2002/0218gibbs.html</a>
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It was on Slashdot too, but the link to the MSNBC from slashdot gets you nowhere.
<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/22/140230&mode=thread" target="_blank">slashdot article</a>
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Well, Ya-Know, pardon me for wasting your valuable time by asking for help here rather than "going to AOL and asking a senior network admin" for help.
I realize that I have only three years experience, and that I am merely self-taught, but that doesn't keep me from trying to do the best job that I can. In my opinion, that doesn't deserve being called uncooperative.
For further edification, the employee is insisting on running the AOL CLIENT AND AIM -- he say accessing "MyAOL" isn't sufficient. As far as I've been able to determine with my meager self-taught knowledge, that means opening port 5190 on my firewall.
If I'm wrong, please tell me because your knowledge is obviously so much greater than mine. I will bask in the light of your great wisdom.
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Quit the bickering.
I do not believe Ya-Know was trying to offend at any way, he was making a point on the subject of IT positions withing a corporate structure, it was slightly off topic, but I believe you may be reading too much into it.
Where Ya-know says: "Your only responsibility is to protect them from harm", this is probably the best single line Ive seen in this thread.
Our job is to provide services, as best we can, without compromising the operations of the company.
Does this guy want AOL access? Yes.
Will it help him do his job better? I fail to see why.
Does it have the posibility to harm the company? Possibly. (then again, so would an exchange account, or sendmail or almost any mail account)
I, personally, am in such a position where I could easily deny such a request, but I am part of a relatively extensive IT team, and we have a great deal of corporate push. In your situation, it may be trickier, but I would still question his motives, a lot, as it all sounds very very suspect to me.
As previously stated, rules of conduct need to become more commonplace in businesses.
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Virago, I am sorry that you missed my point. I was just trying to help you sort out the "hands-tied" syndrome to which you are being subjected. It doesn’t make sense that they hired you to provide the network support, but then tie your hands when you are asked to provide a service you don’t feel is in the best interest of the company. Yours was a sound judgment call, and most here would have taken the stance you attempted. However, most here have a better chance of getting the point across, where you are obligated by silly policy; policy, which correct me if I am wrong, seems to be rewritten without your knowledge, consent or approval. Face it, you are in a tough spot, and must conform a little in order to survive. That was my point.
BTW, knowing to open port 5190 on the firewall to enable AIM and AOL traffic is pretty sharp, I didn’t_know that, thank you for sharing. :D
As to this mention:
[quote]Originally posted by craigmodius:
<strong>
Nope, check your newspaper they stopped using AOL recently. I'll try to track down the story, I heard it on some sorta tech. news somewhere.
And if TWC can't even use it... :rolleyes: </strong><hr></blockquote>
This may be true for some parts of the company, but these last two weeks I was at several TWC offices, and can confirm that there is still only AOL for email in the entire SouthEast, and no project in the near or far off future has been scoped to change that service. My guess is they didn’t read the article. ;) :D
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[quote]This may be true for some parts of the company, but these last two weeks I was at several TWC offices, and can confirm that there is still only AOL for email in the entire SouthEast, and no project in the near or far off future has been scoped to change that service. My guess is they didn’t read the article.<hr></blockquote>
They didn't read it becase it was probably emailed to them. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
*ahem* sorry 'bout that I couldn't resist :D ;)
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Give him everything he wants, put all the possible security threats in writing, give it to your manager, keep a copy, <img src="http://www.userfriendlyonline.com/editedsm.jpg" alt=" - " />
Not only would this idea be extremely unethical but also illegal. This type of message is not permitted in these forums.
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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by disarm:
<strong>Give him everything he wants, put all the possible security threats in writing, give it to your manager, keep a copy, <img src="http://www.userfriendlyonline.com/editedsm.jpg" alt=" - " />
Not only would this idea be extremely unethical but also illegal. This type of message is not permitted in these forums.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm with disarm here. Warn them of what can happen with AOL and AIM installed. Provide it in writing. Then provide them a list of what can happen to their company and what it would take to repair/fix the damage(worse case scenario of course). <img src="http://www.userfriendlyonline.com/editedsm.jpg" alt=" - " />
Not only would this idea be extremely unethical but also illegal. This type of message is not permitted in these forums.
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I had a similar problem a few years back when I started working here. People wanted to be able to get any type of attachements thur their email (music, progams, etc...) from various sources and we had a big problem with users gettin porn and chatting on IRC trying to pick up girls. Of course the worse ones were the higher ups who didn't know or care about security. Had my hands tied with "well do what they say" or "you're too paranoid" . Then one day, while I was gone on parental leave, we got hacked, badly, and there were a few different virii floatin in the network. My boss calls me frantically begging me to come save them. I was at home but still doing some work thru remote connections and they decided to get an outside guy to come and try to fix things (he of course being the clueless friend of an employee who thought he could use one disk with the code red fix tool on it to clean the whole network up). When I came in finally, sat down with the boss and told him nothing's getting fixed till we have certain rules in place.
The poinnt is I had alot of ammo in which to drive my case home as he sees his emplyees standing around waiting for a big network rebuild job being done. When you drive home the bottom line (ie $$$$$ cost) to anytype of corporate person, they will understand. Let them know the costs involved in a repairing a virus and hack attack, or the legal costs of someone chatting on IRC to a 14 year old from a corporate owned computer. Things are alot different now, only documents and PDF files are allowed as email attachements and there's no more IRC, Realaudio, WMP streaming, ICQ, The firewall stays the way it is and When i say something pertaining to computer operations, IT GOES.
<img src="http://www.userfriendlyonline.com/editedsm.jpg" alt=" - " />
Not only would this idea be extremely unethical but also illegal. This type of message is not permitted in these forums.
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Another .02. No matter which way this goes, you've got a lot of good advice...and unfortunately Ya Know, although he offers a tough pill to swallow, has a good point.
This is actually a larger issue than just the AOL debate, this is where the learning curve for smaller companies begins. Face it, right now, your IT department is a red-headed stepchild. And for some reason, it always takes some sort of IT disaster to make the small guys wake up...pity the companies that are re- rather than pro-active.
If you remember that your job really is "give em what they want," while trying to convince them of the error of doing dangerous things, there is one thing you should do...create an absolutely safe [stand alone] machine that backs up all critical stuff.
Because, you may have to "give em what they want," knowing that it's suicide. Once you've given them your best advice, it's up to them to take it or not. All you can do is make your recovery job easier [if it comes to that!]
Other than the hassle of recovering from a major calamity [which no one likes to do], I know that it is very difficult to be the one who has taken all the time to get the network humming, only to have bow to the demands of nimrods. But, if they continue to move contrary to your advice, and if you're proven right, in the future you'll have the kind of clout that Evil Cabbage is talking about.
Hopefully all works out, but if not, and if tragedy happens, at least you can look at it as job security. If things do go awry, at least you warned them, and at least they know that you're there to rebuild.
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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
Originally posted by disarm:
Give him everything he wants, put all the possible security threats in writing, give it to your manager, keep a copy,
Not only would this idea be extremely unethical but also illegal. This type of message is not permitted in these forums.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">why exactly is that unethical? or illegal?
