administrative control vs. user rights

I have spent the last few hours struggling with yet another computer where the secret administrative password made it very difficult to solve basic problems...

My user had gotten a virus, someone at the helpdesk decided to uninstall the old norton anti-virus software on the computer and install a newer version using some remote control software - then he could not get the new version to install... And left my user in a helpless situation...

It is ironic that viruses and ad-warez never need administrative rights to install themselves...

Eventually I was able to track down someone who knew the special login / password combination to access the computer... I tried running norton's custom removal tool from their website, but that did not do the trick either... Then I had to go through the tedious manual removal of all the references in the registry (fortunately on the symantec website there are detailed instructions on how to do it by previous software version)...

So for the last hour the new version of Norton anti-virus software has been running and finding various threats that it is quarantining - 4500 instances of one program, 2-3 instances of a number of other programs...

I did also reset the administrative password to the standard one that is used by our IT group so that in the future access to the machine is not going to be as difficult...

My personal belief is that users should have administrative rights to their computers... After all, we are talking about the personal computer they use every day. I do not think it enhances their productivity to treat them like children in grade school...

Busy week... learning and doing

Have been busy with photography and web design/graphics experiments...

For diversion, have been reading different technology articles online...

This article about using motion sensing gloves to create powerpoint presentations was especially interesting - "The Mind-Bending New World Of Work"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_14/b4028001.htm

looking forward to playing with some of my toys this weekend...

I have this great interactive music game for my Nintendo DS called Electroplankton - it is very relaxing to play with...

New Yorkers can be very helpful

I just read this article about some research done by students at Barnard College... Rather inspirational - they found that if you drop a wallet, the vast majority of the time strangers will try to return it to you...

Here is a link to the article about their research:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/03/Wallet.html

It is true in my own experience, several times over the years I have accidentally left my wallet or my cell phone in a taxi, and I have indeed gotten them back... For the wallets, the person who got into the cab after me found identifying information and called me, and for the cell phones, I was able to call my cell phone and have the taxi driver return it to me...

It reminds me of this quote I saw on the door of an apartment:

"Practice Random kindness and senseless acts of beauty"

it turned out to be part of a movement for goodness - the slogan was written by Anne Herbert

TED Talks

I've spent the last few days watching and listening to different presentations from the TED conferences, courtesy of the TED Talks website: http://ted.com/tedtalks/

Very inspirational... From ideas about slowing down to enjoy life to Kevin Kelley's presentation on Technology as an evolutionary force of life, they are ideas that deserve to be pondered...

I think the really great thing about streaming videos like this is that you can pause them, and view them in your own time at your own pace... It must be extremely intense to try to absorb so many presentations in a couple of days, one right after the other...

SO I am multi-tasking, working on websites while listening to TED Talks, with soothing new age music filling the background moments...

Hello world!

Working with computers and web design, my friends keep asking me if I have a blog...

Reading Circuits from the NY Times online, I ran across this great website that searches for emotions on the web, looking for sentences using the word feeling - it is called www.wefeelfine.org and is really fascinating to look at and read... Give an interesting feeling of Global connectivity.

So I decided that it was really time for me to start a blog...