Distributing Clue to Users


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Distributing Clue to Users

Full Description

More often that not your users are Clueless. In fact, if you have any users who don't do the human equivalent of sucking scum off the bottom of the aquiarium you're one of the 'chosen few' who are destined to be smug at BOF meetings and talk about how you are not and will never be a Microsoft shop, and no-one even knows what Outlook Express is.

You know that everyone hates you, hates you with a passion that transcends mortal means into a higher state of sheer purple-edged loathing. You see, most people in our rarified occupation have to deal with the unclued, the dim-witted, the moronically under supplied in the 'getting it' department.

And it's in the day-to-day support of these unwashed masses that occasionally, just occasionally there's the chance to pass on a pearl of wisdom to one of the plebians. A chance for them to rise above the mundane, the shiftless drudgery of the rest of the crowd. Naturally you can't just drop the wisdom fully formed into their laps and expect them to appreciate it as something to be prized above anything the guy down the hall told them about "this really neat thing I got in my email this morning". No, like all pearls they must start as an irritant; a small grain of sand deep within their psyche which itches until they're forced to cover it in a soothing balm of Clue.

You could firewall off ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger and Napster. You could apply a LART to anyone with a penchant for opening attachments from anyone by redirecting all their email to the spool directory on another machine and then telling them they have to work out which one and POP from it (bearing in mind that .../spool/mail/ is cleared every 24 hours). You could remove Windows from the desktop and replace it with $UNIX_OF_YOUR_CHOICE and only give them vi. The possibilities are endless, and only some of them would get you fired. Grains of sand my friends, they act like the fingers of God reaching down to create a new breed of user.

It's your job to deposit that grain of sand. Make it really itch. It's for their own good.

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