LOL.
 
I have always thought that the CEO should have equipment and resources at best as good as what his/her workers have and at worst, equipment and resources not as good. Why you ask? Because then that person can better gauge the issues and problems with tech the people that they manage have.
 
I have a fun story alone this line.
 
Once upon a time there was a analyst who was really really good. He was so good he got stuck with the added responsibility to personally support the top executive in the division of the company he worked in. This executive had a family name that was on the big sign on the side of the building of the company and this is actually a rather well known name. Anyway this exec had been using a corporate load machine for some time, however he found that it was difficult to get all of the support he needed from the analyst or others when the analyst wasn't around because the division didn't use that type of machine/load in the division. The load he had been using was Win95 on a laptop. The loads the division was using was either Window 3.10 with a hummingbird tcp/ip stack on a PS/2 desktop or OS/2 pre-Warp on PS/2 Desktop. Anyway, he asked what it would take to get better support. The response was to switch to the standard Windows load. He switched. About 2 weeks later the analyst gets a call asking him to drop on by when he is in the area next. The support analyst immediately drops everything he was doing and runs break neck speed from the poor part of the building where IT was stuffed into to the corner where the carpeting was lush and the sound proofing was good.
 
The analyst was told by the exec... "This machine really sucks, I can't do anything I want to do...It is worthless.".
 
The analyst responded, "I understand".
 
Exec: "Reload it the way I am used to.".
 
Analyst: "I am sorry, I can't, that isn't the standard.".
 
Exec: "Perhaps you forgot my name is on the side of the building....".
 
Analyst (a young smartass I might add w/ no fear about being fired and intent on doing the right thing): "No, I haven't. However I don't have the facilities to legally load Win95  for you, the only legal resources I have would produce the same thing you have in front of you and I don't want to put this company in legal jeopardy.".
Exec: "What stops me from going down to Comp USA and picking up the Win95 CD and loading it myself?".
 
Analyst: "Well nothing. It is your company, I don't think anyone is going to fire you for it which would be the result of anyone else doing it.".
 
Exec: "Well I think I will just do that then..."
 
Analyst: "Well, have you considered the fact that you will then again be in a position where it will be difficult for us to fix problems you have?"
 
Exec: "You are a smart guy, I know you will figure it all out for me and teach the others."
 
Analyst: "Thank you, but Ed, have you considered that the other 2000 people in this building and the 8,000 or so others in this division all have to deal with the same issues?"
 
Exec: "So what?"
 
Analyst: "Well I would imagine they would all like a new copy of Win95 from Comp USA as well so they can do their work too. And then, you would be running a fully supported machine that we could all help you with any time you have a problem since everyone would be running the same thing.".
 
Exec: "Oh, I think I understand. That will be all, thanks a lot."
 
A week later the analyst found out the exec was given back a laptop with the main company's corporate win95 load on it when called down to load some non-standard software. Probably within 3 months it was announced that the division would be switching over from Win3.10 to the Win9x corporate load as soon as as possible.
 
Possibly the switchover would have occurred anyway. Possibly not. This was a financial division of a very large company and anyone who works for a bank knows that IT is managed by accounting and accounting doesn't like to spend money except for on nice cushy leather chairs for the accounting execs.
 
 
One thing to think of when using Deny ACEs or depending on passive Deny with Grants that don't include specific people... What happens if there is a mistake or accident where that ACL is readjusted to authenticated users read? I personally never thought about it until it happened in production once and thousands upon thousands of people around the world on servers and clients all were locked down to a kiosk mode for a couple of hours. Luckily this was after 6PM EST which meant that only a small portion of the 250,000 people who could possibly be impacted were impacted. Basically Europe was offline, most of EST TZ was offline, it was west coast and Asia Pacific that mostly got whacked and that accounts for only about 30,000 or so people. Had that occurred at say 10AM EST, I think multiple people would have been fired and the financial impact would have been in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of US Dollars.
 
 
  joe
 
 
 
 
 
 


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Darren Mar-Elia
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 1:01 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Exclude a specific user (or group) from a GPO (WMI Filter?)

I agree with Joe here (it happens sometimes). Leave the DDP alone for this kind of stuff, esp. if it is also the GPO you use to manage domain account policy. I don't have any problem with you linking the GPO at the domain if it truly applies to almost all users in the domain, esp. if the alternative is having to link the same GPO all over the place to get full coverage anyway. Just put it in a different GPO than the DDP and use a Deny Apply Group Policy ACE for your CEO (or better yet a group containing your CEO).
 
And, as to why the CEO shouldn't be subject to the same policy as everyone else, its called American Capitalism :-). Since when was a CEO subject to the same anything as the rest of the employees?
 
 


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of joe
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 9:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Exclude a specific user (or group) from a GPO (WMI Filter?)

If you have any intention of excluding your CEO or anyone else from any other policies you should probably better scope your GPOs. Don't make the changes in the domain policy, in fact I rarely recommend anyone change things in that policy except for the things that they absolutely have to. Put the policies down on the OU(s) where the users/computers are. Then place the users and computers in the OU specific to the policy they should have.
 
BTW, why shouldn't the CEO have a machine configured like everyone else?
 
  joe


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason B
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 10:52 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ActiveDir] Exclude a specific user (or group) from a GPO (WMI Filter?)

In this example, I want to exclude our CEO from having a forced IE start page through GPO, while the remainder of our domain keeps a forced homepage.  Is the best way to go about this, to write a WMI filter to exclude that specific user, or is there some better way to do it, as we have this set in our Default Domain Policy?
 
If so, can anyone point me to a good tutorial for writing such a WMI script?
 
Thanks.

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