I don't disagree that desktop support and network support are vastly different things, nor do I disagree that the IT staff should NOT be doing this stuff, simply because desktop stuff is a teaching / training issue more than anything else (until you get to hardcore automation stuff where the coding skills of the IT staff start to come into play).

But in the bigger picture, if the IT department wants to lock down end users as far as what can be installed on their computers, and dictate what is and isn't allowed, then they are necessarily going to have to accept responsibility for the suitability and usability of what is there. That's just the way the universe works, and they look like sulky and spoiled children if they refuse to accept responsibility for supporting what they shoved down everyone else's throats. That's how it plays to the rest of the world.

But there seems to be a lack of common sense involved that goes beyond even that...

There's this story: Our corporate office sent out a piece of financial reporting software we were required to use for planning and reporting. We had to install it on our computers. Now this was some years ago, pre-XP, whether it was win95 or 98 I can't remember, anyway, I dug into the documentation corporate provided, figured out what was needed, including edits to sys.ini and autoexec.bat and got up and running. There are 5 other people in the accounting department who needed this software, none of them remotely as computer sophisticated as I am, and I don't claim to be very sophisticated at all. I wrote up a HOWTO and walked it over to the IT department and explained that I expected that they didn't want everyone messing around with system configuration files, and here you go, these are the other folks who need installs....

"We don't support user applications," I was told. Well, I explained, I'm an accountant, and installing software and configuring system files isn't my job, either. So I'll pass this along to my colleagues and let them figure it out for themselves, too.

Phone started ringing off the hook in IT about 20 minutes later.

At the level of network infrastructure, I have no problem with this. Frankly, I don't want to have to worry about the mechanics of the network. I want it to work for me. I want to be able to call the IT org for help and trust they'll straighten things out when necessary.

However, IT does NOT know better than the rest of us about how to do OUR jobs and many IT policies impact them. For instance, our new security guy decided that some forms of iternet access were a Bad Thing - like e-commerce for those lazy thieving cube-dwellers out there. Too bad many of our suppliers have taken to electronic invoicing and our Accounts Payable department needs to download invoice documents via those same electronic commerce pathways you just blocked.

As another example, Excel may not be the greatest thing in the world, but if you're an accountant, for good or ill, you're stuck with it. It's a critically important tool to doing your job. So the day to push across that "latest" MS security update that's been sitting around since forever is NOT the first day of the fiscal month when every accountant in the company is under major deadline pressure to close the books and thereby knocking down everyone's computer for 2 hours.

Finally, if you a)hand me a computer system with Office on it; b)announce that you don't provide user support/help for Office, then you have no right to expect that I will do anything but regard you with suspicion. Office is what users use - it is how they interact with the computer and you've just announced you're blowing them off and yet you wonder why your users think you're a waste of time and a pain in the ass and that all IT policies are subject to workaround?

So, really, it cuts both ways.

A little common sense, a little communication, a little humility, a little training goes a long ways.

...pretty much, yeah.

Which is why it took about exactly one encounter with Fairpoint customer dissservice for us to completely dump them as any kind of service provider whatsover and switch everything over to our cable provider.

The asymmetry of power.

In other words, if elected officials evade and avoid the means established to hold them accountable, (say by illegally conducting government business out of sight in a private email account) then they are assuming the risk that other, less formal means will be found to establish that accountability.

Sarah Palin got her email account hacked. She wasn't tarred and feathered or ridden out of town on a rail, or dragged out of her office and hung from the nearest tree by an angry mob.

Since Sarah doesn't think the rules apply to her, then why the hell should they apply to anyone else dealing with her?