Well considering that almost every security vulnerability ever reported has developers as a root cause, not sure you can really claim they cause less harm. The harm just gets postponed until it is maximally expensive.

It is impossible, IMO, to do many functions without these privileges.

I currently work in an environment where I don't usually need admin. I'm a self-employed Mac developer, and do all of my dev work in an unprivileged account. However that account is a member of the _developer group, which gives the debugger the right to attach to processes. That's frequently all I need. When I've worked in $bigcorp networks where developers do need admin or root, IT have typically created a sandbox network for developer machines to sit in which have access to SCM, the bug tracker, build environment front-end and so on but limited access to business systems and internet facilities.

Developers administering PROD boxes?

Apparently you do NOT go through any SOX or HIPPA audits

Why not simply work on virtual machines? Then you know they are clean and you can have all the rights you want and still have comply with company rules.

In a lot of environments, setting up a good seperation is simply to costly in time, so you either end up with dev's with not enough rights to do their job or to many where they can endanger systems they shouldn't.

So it should not be needed to have local admin rights, but then the sysadmins got a hell of a job to setup everything so that it is not needed. Most sysadmins simply ain't capable of that, or if they are, are not given the time.

He's over simplifying. Other things being equal, a population with a higher reproductive rate will out compete a similar population with a lower reproductive rate. The key there is other things being equal differences in organization of a complex population can be sufficient to counterbalance a reproductive rate advantage.

Let me start out by saying that I agree with you. And it's a good argument - it gets the emotional parts of the issue right out in the open. However, I see some things here that are going to be used, effectively, as a counter argument:

1. How many books do you own that you can pass on to your children? How old are those books?
2. Have you ever had a book destroyed through wearing out, getting destroyed by dog, fire, water, etc.?
3. Have you ever lost a book, had it borrowed or stolen?

I'm sure you can all see how these questions erode the argument. And the counter argument, pushing the statistical likelihood of a book being lost or destroyed before passing it on, versus the DRM getting screwed up - it's not very powerful. No one knows the real answer to that question - but people think they do - and so the argument loses those who already have an opinion.

Just some thoughts.

No. But having just searched for it, I discover it's a shorthand name for a law enacted in the US. I'm not from the US.

Just let everybody race everybody else. No more worrying whether people truly class as male, female, able-bodied or whatever.