Bill Gates made his money from screwing people over and devastating an industry. This saw his personal wealth become huge.
Now, he puts bits of the personal wealth into altruistic things. That's how it used to work (where the industry barons used to sponsor altruistic actions, before the State really got into it).
What he's doing is calling Google as a company out on not doing something that Microsoft is also not doing. If the Google founders end up with the personal wealth he's accumulated, then sure, call them out individually for not doing their bit. If they don't make the billions Gates has done, then perhaps their contributions will also be lesser.
Compare like for like; it's great to do altruistic deeds.. But don't use those as a bludgeoning stick to boost your own ego and agendas...

But some learned wondrous things. And used that to go even deeper. Isn't that what education and learning is all about?
If it appeals to enough groups to stay in print, that's a fair number.;

And everyone magically uses the custom apps which they just happen to have ported to their mobile phones? Or have you got UPS and things in place to tether your desktops to the mobiles or USB dongles? You're still at the mercy of battery, and you still have an outage.
With servers in racks, and UPS, you can keep your core network/servers up for a while, and selectively reduce service at that end. If it comes to having to relocate, your working resource is going to be thoroughly disrupted whatever you're up to. It's expensive to move a company ad-hoc.

Bear in mind that most NHS places barely fund an IT department, let alone one that'll support the costs of encryption to every disk on every machine in a trust.
General policy is usually that you don't save patient identifiable information to a non-server disk. And when you hire a contractor to do a job, you expect it to be done. The fault here isn't with the NHS, it's with a contractor who's supposed to be vetted as secure, offering a service, and then doing something completely stupid.
Would be great if every machine everywhere was 100% secure, but alas, there's not the money or time available in most places.

You really obviously have no idea.
I've done both, and I've seen people swing the lead at both levels. A real IT manager isn't an easy job, but being the one whose plans (the real IT tech) make or break the infrastructure really isn't trivial.

Especially when you're banned from driving at the time you hit the cyclist.

Hey, guess what.. I've been using computers since the days of the Commodore Pet. I was using and supporting microsoft since the days of MSDOS 3... And I was using UNIX before that.
The bones I've had to pick with MS were originally because they had pretty shoddy tools, compared to the UNIX (for DOS), and no multi-tasking. Through the Windows 3 era, I thought it compared poorly to the Apple UI, and it performed absolutely shoddily when compared to OS/2.. I saw MS's marketing engine fire up, and scare people (needlessly) into just using their product, not by dint of superiority, just because they had cash to throw around. Dirty tricks really were the name of the game.
With the advent of Win95, Microsoft actually had a GUI which I had to admit was well thought out. It did what was wanted in a simple and no fuss way. Sure, it was still a layer above DOS, but it was definitely usable, and actually comfortable.. They'd done their homework on that..
Fast forward to now. They force a UI that's pretty decent for a tablet (quite like how it handles on a tablet) onto a desktop.. And I hate it on the desktop.. The idea of using it for Servers is filling me with dread.. The ergonomics of it are atrocious in that use case; I'm just glad you can do everything in Powershell.. That really is going to be the start of a move to 'Core' install, and just run things via powershell. It's mostly how I do it these days, but I do enjoy the flexibility of the Win7 GUI (I think Win7 is the best OS MS have put out to date). I like the tech improvements behind the scenes in Win8, but after using it, I refuse to install it on my home workstation, and work is never going to move to that version (apart from tablets/kiosks, where it shines).
In an attempt to grab the niche market, they seem to be eviscerating their core one.. Which I really just don't understand.. The strategy that would work would be to have an API that works across all the forms (tablet, kiosk, desktop) with a GUI that you can swap between depending on your needs.. If Android releases get the desktop done nicely (and optimised for desktops, not tablets), then MS could be in with a bigger fight than it expects..

In short, it's a good OS ruined by changes that alienate most people. Not just because they "have to learn something new" (which was their big thing about not shifting to Linux), but because it makes changes with no advantage, and quite frequently to their detriment.

The complexity often sets the ceiling.
SQL Server is pretty simple out of the box, and with a reasonable toolset to let you administer it. I trust it to a level. However, cost 'savings' being what they are, a lot of companies who do not understand exactly what it is they're asking, will hire someone who can click the SQL Server buttons on the GUI and change a tape.
They're cheaper than an in depth DBA that groks the environment by a long shot. However, when it comes emergency time, I really don't trust that things will go smoothly.

Oracle has the starting point that you need to know a few of the bits under the hood, so you actually start to understand what's really going on (it tries not to hide the messy details from you), seems to come with the kitchen sink (though occasionally with a fair mortgage as well), and requires staff that actually know what they're about; it actively encourages you to go deeper all the time.

I don't have a problem with a product that's geared for high end enterprise requiring a guru level knowledge to actually get going. At that level, you really should have the skills to back your actions up with.

So, who in the company was the "head of information security"? This is a role that not many think to introduce, and without it, sysadmins who excel in some areas may miss some of the hardening aspects. Hell, if you've got a 'regular' sysadmin who just installs database engines on boxes as well, you don't even have a DBA. That's two corporate strikes on good business practice (the problem goes deeper than the sysadmin; if there was only one full stop, then I'm wondering just how much he was running round trying to deal with the wave of stuff that hit him).

Of course it wasn't fair that you'd tricked the sysadmin; he was right in that. However, the world in general isn't fair, so you were right in that. You did something that would have taken quite a lot of effort from someone outside the company (but does happen).
That being said, the general method of getting specific info is to rock up on site dressed as one of the IT techs and simply go to a user and mention that you're there to do some work for them (replacing their PC with a shiner one is often a strong tactic). Now, if they just leave themselves logged in while you transfer their apps and files to the new one..
Once you have a valid account, the rest is pretty fast. Social engineering attacks are a royal pain, because they rely on the trust that exists to get the job done with any decent pace. The upshot of this, I'd guess, is to get the server reconfigured, and also put policy in place to make sure that all calls for security requests are vetted more thoroughly. This means that what could be done on the phone (which a lot of complaints in this thread want) now has to be ticketed, vetted, and take several hours or days (incidentally, I think that more secure way is the real way to do it), which will have many people up in arms because they want something done NOW. Safe and now are rarely compatible.

Incidentally, there's a very good reason that external security auditors use a lot of diplomacy and objectivity; it's a very tough thing to have all your work dragged through the coals with nothing hidden and everything brought to light. But it is necessary.

Ho many of them are called up at 3am in the morning on a day off?

It's not that nobody should be able to reach them. As an sysadmin role myself at the mo (I've worked in most jobs in IT over the years), it's a case that I've only got time to field a limited set of things. These are the things that change the big picture in the infrastructure, and that's what takes most of my time.

I'd like to be able to help out more with the individual systems, seriously... The techs that get to go out and fix the small problems are the knights in shining armour; they get to fix the smaller mistakes that users get themselves into (oops, I accidentally deleted some files, oh my PC works again now you've fixed it, so on).
The people that do know me are the heads of departments; they filter in requests that make a business sense to them, and request that they be implemented as a technical solution. Things relevant to the business in the wider scope make it to me.

When I took on the role, it had an inordinate amount of calls from users who wanted to short circuit the help desk (no logging means we can't prove we've done the work to the accountants for a start). Everyone's work, to them, is top priority, after all, it's they who are affected. It took a while to get that under control, and even to people who I consider friends in the organisation, if it's one PC that's affected, it really isn't my problem. If a thousand are, it probably is my problem.

To run a company, roles need a frame of reference. Some make the mistake of believing their frame is the whole of everything that is (hint, it's not). The further you work from your core frame, the less effective you are at doing the core work. If you find your strengths are in a different frame, you're in the wrong job, so change that.

Assuming you should be able to go direct to the admin assumes you know the technical impact of the problem you have (in the enterprise wide scope), know exactly how to describe it, how it's impacting every other system, the amount of users affected and a whole host of things (which is a picture that's built up by the Helpdesk and escalates through the technicians). If you've spent time doing that, what have you been doing in your real job? There may be many people with your level of skill also phoning the help desk, and they may have different views and conclusions based on a different geographic/business perspective.
Doing things the right way lets an accurate picture be built. If all 5k+ staff phoned me in a huge incident, I'd neither be able to get a real picture of it, communicate with the people I needed to, nor actually talk to most people. I'd also not be fixing the problem, which is the real kicker.

Incidentally, HR does work that way; it's the only way they can research the query, and give me an accurate answer that lets me work on a factual basis (rather than "Oh, I seem to remember that it's something to do with X. Probably. Bye then."

Forcing people to use mandatory processes? Well, whatever next? Why does turning up for work when you have a hangover from the night before have to be mandatory? Doesn't suit your problems very well?

For every person's problem that's fixed by altering a process, it may well be that hundreds are adversely affected by that change. In an enterprise, there are often checks and processes in place to ensure that hundreds of projects and tasks can occur simultaneously, all being balanced and prioritised. What the company needs to happen will happen, when it's appropriate that it happens, in the interests of the company.

If you have a solution, present it as a business case. Sometimes, you may find you were right. Mostly, you'll get your eyes opened to a wider picture than you normally see, and the explanation "we don't do that, because it doesn't work under the majority of circumstances we face in the big picture".

Whoah... The sysadmin is the person responsible for making sure the production environment is stable, and for fixing the problems that arise there. They're the ones that know the theory and practice of keeping the big iron running.
If they're not to touch the production environment, then who? And if you say "developers", I'll consider it a marvelous joke.
In your healthcare analogy, sysadmins are the "top consultant" in the specialist area. There's one of them to many technicians; technicians are the eyes and ears (and sometimes extra hands) for the sysadmins.. Those would be more akin to the registrars etc. and Junior Doctors.
The Helpdesk staff would be more akin to the nurses; they can be trusted with a lot, but I certainly wouldn't want them holding the scalpel in surgery on me.

Developers are more like the drug vendors. They do essential work, and they understand how it affects the patient in specifics, but I'd really not trust them to rock up in an operating theater and wield the scalpel.

So, you can fix one problem in your area that affects you before the admin team? Great. What does the fix do to the rest of company? How many other people and problems are the admins working on?
Sounds like you can cope with the really simple stuff, but you've not mentioned anything about scaled up problem solving (believe me, most people can solve a simple network or PC issue; scaling it up to deal with heterogenous systems on a large network is another thing entirely).

We don't actually depend on them though. In some places, they're creating new markets, which if they prove viable, will then have competition from other areas. In some places, they're simply competing against other companies for space in an existing market.
Now, if Google became mandated by the world's governmental organisation and granted eternal monopoly, I'd have a problem with it, but so far, I don't find much that they do (apart from the depth of the data gather) even remotely related to a dystopic world. Unless you include 'Brave New World', and that's not your usual dystopia.