Is there any capability to scan documents into your systems? Still may not be practical, but stands a better chance than typing the changes in.
I sympathize with the circumstances, not long ago I declined to renew a contact largely because of an even more ridiculous situation: we had NO access to sensitive or classified data, we'd all had background checks and the systems we worked on were for development only, nonetheless the IT department took it as their primary task to defend those systems and the non-existent data against the developers.. the very people building their systems for them. There were no optical drives with write capability, we were allowed to plug NOTHING into the machines, they scanned continually for "unauthorized" software, sandbagged all requests for software approval, and in the end made us sign forms stating that we would not bring notebook computers or even thumb drives into the building. They even confiscated our scissors. The irony is that access to the web was pretty much wide open. If anyone had actually wanted to steal any of the non-existent data that IT were "protecting" it would have been trivial. As is often the case, all of these measures only worked against those trying to play by the rules. Eventually, as usual, the productive people just got frustrated and left. It's called "security theater", where a huge show is made of "securing" everything, no matter what the cost, resulting in little if any real protection against real threats. In one project years ago I had to type in and compile a simplified version of the xmodem file transfer protocol; the sysadmins had decided that FTP or anything similar represented too much of a risk to the minicomputers and had simply deleted all those executables, then mandated that we move our code from the client PCs to the minis for source control. They simply expected us to re-type or cut-and-paste it all in terminal emulation, everything we'd developed, every time there was a change. The fact that this was impossible to do on any schedule and irrational on the face of it (the terminal emulators being less secure than FTP) made zero impression, delivering software was not their problem, securing machines was, and deleting those programs was something they could do with zero effort on their part. We've reached a point in MANY institutions where "security" has become a magic word meaning "you will do whatever I say no matter how ridiculous without question", progress has come to a complete standstill, and only the "dead wood" remain at the desks. We're now maintaining thousands of pretty secure, almost completely unusable systems. I only hope the pendulum has swung as far as it's going to and that sanity will gain a grip again soon. No offense, but even in your situation you express complete sympathy for and agreement with the measures in place, and yet you're trying to work around those measures in order to get access to the tools you need to get the job done. Seems a case in point. On Jun 9, 6:47 am, AlanBCohen <[email protected]> wrote: > I appreciate the thoughts; but I really can.'t argue with their > reasons for not allowing outside programs and data - in this > situation, it is reasonable on their part. BTW, I am consulting in > one of the IT groups, but they are highly silo'ed (also for good > reasons). I will, however submit a request to have an update to the > library. > Somewhere in the TW file, there is the code that someone entered with > an editor that can be reviewed or changed. All I want is to find it > in both this old version and the current version; make changes to > bring it more current. I have not been working in HTML or Java. > I figure it will be weeks/months of lunch-times before I can get it > fully updated; if there was a history of changes, I could implement > them as I went along, testing to make sure the changes worked, rather > than depending on a 'big bang' approach. > Since we are talking about the core processes first, I thought this > list would be a better place to ask than the GTD TW list. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
