I manage several windows domains in a pharmaceutical plant. Each plant runs a SCADA system which requires its own AD. Windows 10 does not ignore group policy. I almost never walk to a machine.

But if you administer systems in a large system, you really should set it up properly so that you control what gets installed, and what gets through the firewall, and which updates are approved, and how all security is configured. MS doesn't just 'decide to remote install some crap'. If stuff makes it onto your machines without your consent, they are not set up properly.

I had the snip. It's been a while, but if I recall correctly, my wife needed to sign the paperwork as well.
I seem to remember it was not for permission, but for verification of her being aware it was going to be done.

And that is not unreasonable imo. This is a decision that is going to affect her as well.
Plus while you can present an argument about strong individualism and it being your body, having her sign only applies if you're married. And the underlying reasoning with marriage is that this a permanent situation and you and your partner do things together.

If the US would pull out of Europe, I'd take time off from work to help pack.
Why do you think the US is trying to insert itself everywhere? It's for influence.
Why do you think Trump was so angry with Macron calling for the creation of European armed forces? It's not because of NATO. Ironically, spending on European Armed forces from within members states would count as spending for NATO. Trump was angry because the very idea of not needing the US policeman is a threat to the influence of the US.

Trump doesn't want Europe to have their own independent forces. Trump wants us to just have NATO. Because NATO is purely mutual defense, whereas European forces could be deployed globally, and thereby decrease the importance of US forces. And in the current climate, many countries would be more likely to accept European forces than US forces.

Or did you think that the US was playing global policeman out of benevolence?
And if the US would pull out of NATO? They're welcome to. It would mean Europe would be forced to ramp up military spending, and make the US irrelevant in European decisions. Do you think the US government would enjoy losing all the influence they have?

The problem with bypassing procedures like that is that you also have a higher risk of your change causing an issue, a disruption, or an outright problem. And if you work in a safety critical environment (say a power plant) or an environment subject to severe regulatory requirements (like a pharma plant) that would be bad.

I've worked in the space industry on ground station equipment, I've worked for a nuclear fuel processing plant, and currently work in a pharma plant. Other places were much looser, as you say, and focused on performance. But the 3 examples I just listed don't really care about the most efficient way to do things, but the way that is least likely to end with disastrous fuck ups.

All processes are fallible, there are no guarantees, but freewheeling because it is more efficient is never going to be good from a safety or QA perspective.

He publicly admitted doing this before, and iirc he also bragged about this one but even if he didn't, there was enough proof that he did this.
So he gets to choose: take a jury trial when there is absolutely no reasonable doubt, with enough evidence that he was a long term asshole, and possibly get a life sentence. Or take a plea deal and settle for 20.

In his case, taking the 20 was probably the best choice because a trial would in all likelihood have resulted in a guilty verdict and longer sentence.

Actually, a HUGE difference between the US and my country is that normal police do not have to consider that every traffic stop or intervention could result in being shot at. Cops in the US are on a hair trigger because getting shot at is a very real possibility. In most Western european countries for example, cops do not walk up to a situation expecting to be shot at.

Actually, if you think that something like that (causing terror and potential life threatening harm) is for giggles, then yes, that makes you messed up.
'what does this button do' type of things are stupid and reckless.
'I know it is dangerous and traumatizing to the targets, but I really don't give a damn.' is messed up

And if it then results in death, then a long prison sentence IS warranted because he knew fully well what the end result of a swatting can be. It is really no different from playing Russian roulette with someone else's head. And he knew it.

I suspect this is not just a matter of adding admin accounts with a fixed password.

I manage a large production control system in a pharma plant. The software is from a well known vendor (in that industry) and comes with a lot of certifications. There are no hard coded user accounts, though there are privileged accounts that I know the password of because I set them up. But regardless of the fact that I know those passwords, this is an enormous pile of software comprised of services, user applications, scripting engines, background process, etc, and different parts of the software are running distributed over 15 different servers. As a collection, some of that software is 30 years old and cobbled together from lots of pieces from lots of different sources.

I come from a software developer background, doing mostly kernel level work, interprocess communication, software infrastructure etc. When I look at the pile of software I have been managing for over a decade now, I see many ways to abuse running services or schedulers, and making do things they are not supposed to.

Not because I can 'log in' as a service account, but because I know for example that one of those privileged accounts is getting information from some place in order to determine what to do, and because of an oversight or bug, I can affect the information telling that account what to do. Due to less than perfect design (or possibly because of legacy software that cannot easily be changed) I could piggy back a script or executable on top of something else and have that executed in a privileged manner.

So I really think that this is not so much a cisco developer adding in privileged accounts. After all that would be trivial enough to find in code audits. But it is much more likely that there are ways to influence what a privileged process inside the cisco system is doing. The term 'backdoor' implies a much bolder and intentional issue, which I really don't think is going on here.

And since Cisco has developers who are very much at home in their own software, it doesn't really surprise me that they can look at their own code, and figure out things that may have unexpected vulnerabilities.

If you can reasonably be assumed to have suspected that the address was going to be used in a malicious way, then giving it out would be reckless endangerment.

It has it's pro's and cons.

On the plus side, she is very practical and pragmatic. And she is perfectly ok with me spending (some of) my evenings in the shop without being upset.
On the flip side, if I want to be hugged, I have to ask for one. And then internally she is probably counting 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi' and we're done. Last time I bought a surprise box of expensive chocolates, her reaction was 'I didn't really have a need for this, but ok...'

As I said, there are good sides and bad sides to having a partner who is very practical.

I have family time as well, normally every evening. We eat together and sped time together.

But outside that, every free minute goes into my blade smith hobby which turned into a side business long before FiF became a thing.
I have a large network of friends around the world that I talk to / communicate with on a daily basis. There are yearly events I travel to to meet with them and hang out in real life. Some of my best real life friends live on a different continent and I try to visit them or meet up when it is possible.

My oldest child has always been interested in knife making, and has started learning to forge things and make things in my shop. My youngest has her own tool box and often spends time with me in the shop, hammering nails into pieces of wood to write names and hearts and stuff like that. They love hanging out in my shop and doing creative things. And my wife isn't the huggy feeling person needing constant attention. We have our time together mostly during the weekend.

They used the BSD stack in the Windows 2000 era temporarily because they didn't have a decent one at that time.
That has been replaced a long time by a native Microsoft one.

I thought the mindset of open source was that YOU did things how YOU wanted to do them, and provide the source so that people can fork if they disagree?
That is after all why there are over a thousand text editors for linux.
That is why you have X.org and X386 if I recall correctly.
VIM and emacs.
etc.

My guess is that no matter what Microsoft does, you will complain about it.

Full disclosure: I work in big pharma.

The problem is that the decision making process of a medical person in routine conditions (i.e. not field emergencies etc) is only supposed to depend on things that were approved for medical use. Not only drugs go through very strict procedures. Things like heart monitors etc do to IF they are used for medical purposes.

If you wear a cheap fitbit knockoff to help you with cardio training, you can do that for personal use, but your doctor is not going to consider that anything but indicative. That fitbit is not medically certified. It has an unknown accuracy. It may not work correctly in some conditions, etc. He is not going to hinge his diagnosis on what your fitbit tells him unless it is corroborated by alternate and certified sources. The reason is that unless it is certified, he is not supposed to rely on its information.

So yes, your fitbit might provide him with an original clue, and then he needs to follow up with real medical devices. He is not allowed to rely on that data. And if he does, he opens himself up to severe penalties. Otoh, if he uses a medically certified devices that says 'A', then he can rely on it being 'A' without being required to put that data in doubt if it aligns with his medical opinion.

How about a lot of users and exposure?

I work in a Windows centric enterprise at the moment. But we do have some linux systems. And while I don't have one running at the moment, if I need to test or develop linux software, I need to run linux. What is the likely choice for me: a) deploy an ubuntu VM with a couple of mouse clicks and VMS settings, or b) futz around for possibly hours or days with a generic distro and hope I can get everything to work reliably as expected?

Also, I do think it's a bit silly to let Windows 95 era events influence your decision making process. Ubuntu has nothing to lose by working with Microsoft to enable quick deployment of ubuntu VM on Windows, and a lot of potential gain. This is a way for Microsoft to have a convenient linux deployment for customers who need it, and for ubuntu to reach a lot more users. It's not about how much ubuntu can get from Microsoft.