See what happens.

You're the one that's out of line here. Even if you do know what you're doing in setting this up and getting it to work, you're intruding on IT's job. Would you be OK with it if out of the blue IT decided to setup their own X-Ray machine or MRI? Even if they told you that they "took all the necessary precautions"?

At the base level, this is not about your ability to run a server, competently or otherwise. It's about IT being responsible for the IT infrastructure. They don't know how competent you are, they don't know whether you'll keep it patched or up and running properly, but they know they'll damn sure get the blame if you do not. If you're IT shop is incompetent or inflexible, this is an issue to "send up the chain", but don't expect to be treated with respect if you go rogue.

You know what though? It's time to stop letting user get a free pass with crap like this. They've been told. Don't follow unknown links you get in emails. Don't reply to emails asking for sensitive information. Don't give the dude who cold-called you your password. But they still keep doing this crap.

If someone calls me up out of the blue and wants to know the schedules for building security, and the locations of all the security camera's, and I give it to them, I'm responsible. If someone backs a truck up to the loading dock saying they need to take all the office furniture in for a monthly cleaning and I open the dock door for and help them load it all up, I'm responsible. If someone asks me to provide them with information on all of my businesses customers, and I give it to them, I'm responsible. I'm fired, I'm possibly fined, I maybe even go to jail. Why does it suddenly become an "Oopsie" when there's a computer involved? It's Two thousand and fucking eleven already. These people have been using computers at their job daily for the better part of a decade in most cases by now. They know better, and if they really don't, then they need to hurry up and learn, or face the consequences.

That users are children. They lie, they don't listen, they ignore your advice, they actively look for ways to get around the measures you put in place for their benefit, and at the end of the day, when the users have done something galactically stupid, IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

Your users are children. Treat them as such.

Look, we told them we had to program an autonomous artificial intelligence agent to proactively scan cyberspace for hackers looking to bypass the firewall using port cross-scripting. They bought it, don't screw this up for us.

Why do video games have to reach some mythical, arbitrary level of artistic worth? "Hey, that's a great game that's fun to play, but....oh, it's not a 200 year old painting of nude fat women. Sorry, it's worth less now on the Society Scorecard".

Get over it already. So some people think video games aren't art. Hell, so what if 99% of the world feels this way. So fucking what? Dickens wasn't writing to make art, he was writing to entertain and sell a product. Michelangelo created David because someone paid him to do so. In another 100 years people may start really feeling this way about video games....or maybe they won't. In the end, it doesn't make a shit bit of difference. Play video games, enjoy them. Stop worrying what other people think about them.

Far too often, however, the problem comes not in whether you can properly educate your users/punish them for non-compliance, but whether you, as an IT entity, have the power to do so. If you do, awesome, but if you don't have the favor of the high muckity-mucks, phrases like "3 strikes" are going to get you stricken from the payroll records. This is particularly a problem in educational or medical environments, where profs/docs rule the roost, have for years, and aren't particularly interested in you coming in and changing things.

The point being, you sometimes have to pick your battles. A device like this is potentially a good way to avoid a particularly nasty battle, if it allows for increased security without having to constantly berate the people who have the ear of your CEO/Board of Directors/Dean.

Are just plain evil to begin with. Broadcom, Intel, HP, Dell, whomever it comes from, I've yet to encounter one that didn't interfere with the normal function of the computer in some way.

I'm sure all my friends will be happy to know that Mark, Jason, and Princess (or Ace, Dirk, and Agatha, depending on when you were born) enjoy Boulevard Beer. Maybe I'll mix it up and see if Boxy Brown might recommend Mafia Wars or something.

...chime in please. It seems like the solution to this is potentially all user-side, and controllable? Adjust the buffers in your devices if you can, or perhaps find a way to reduce the TCP buffer in your modern operating system?

...speed dial with enough memory to store ten numbers...

Whoa whoa whoa....what now? What's all this fancy schmancy wizardry again? I'm expected to remember some arcane, complicated button combination simply to dial a phone number? It's always the same: you get something working just the way you want it, and some damn hot-shot wiz kid has to come along and make screw it all up.

This is exactly spot on. There will be enough integration and management benefits that businesses will (eventually) begin to migrate to it for corporate needs, more and more consumers will be talked into it by Verizon reps, and eventually they'll gain a foothold. Microsoft really doesn't have any other choice but to stick with it, and to take a beating with it early if necessary. Plan B is to just be a complete non-factor - or worse, non-participant - in the mobile world.

- You need to have some very frank discussions with either your Dell rep, or whomever is speccing out your quotes. $1k for corporate-level desktop PC in this day and age is ridiculous; you should be expecting to pay more like $600-700. To give you an idea, I work for a state university, and we're currently giving about $550 for a Core2 E8400/4Gig Ram/160gig HD HP. Integrated video and no monitor of course, but a 3 year warranty. Sure you're not going to be decoding the human genome with that machine but it's more than enough for your average office worker. Don't be afraid to use HP as a club against your Dell rep; they're currently getting hammered by HP in the corporate world, and won't want to lose your account, assuming you're of any kind of size. I wouldn't recommend going to HP unless you absolutely have to though; service is horrible.

- Take some time to consider whether the time spent building custom machines is really worth the time of whomever would be doing it. Chances are, it is not. Either you're going to have someone making peanuts doing the work, or a skilled IT person who really isn't all that interested in doing what essentially is grunt work. In either case, you're going to see problems.

- If you haven't already, you should discuss this with your purchasing department before moving forward. Depending on the level of beauracracy that is entrenched in your level of government, building your own computers may not even be permissable.

You mentioned that you couldn't find anyone doing this on a large scale, this should be a warning flag. Lot of potential problems and pitfalls here, not the least of which is your cunning "transfer the OEM licenses" plan. There are a lot of better ways to save money on computer purchases.

Because it's Saturday, and we don't have anything else to get upset about! WE HAVE TO HAVE SOMETHING TO GET UPSET ABOUT, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?! How can I be expected to face the day if I'm not pissed off about something that doesn't directly affect me in any meaningful way?

"I've got a quarter we can flip to see if this is a good or bad thing."

You always have sniper towers on the corners. What a noob, leaking 5 inmates like that.