Yesterday, I had to leave early from work. Everyone in my office had gotten an email from our IS department requesting we make sure the area around our PCs were cleared out becuase there were planning some software upgrades. In my case, they had to replace my POS desktop (an ancient Compaq Deskpro) with a newer HP/Compaq model (I don’t the exact number, but it’s not important). I had just recently gotten a much needed upgrade from Win95 to Win98. I now have Win2000 Professional. I had to tweak the settings like the display properties and mouse orientation (I’m right handed but use a left handed mouse setup).
One thing I could not do was set the wallpaper! When I went into the display properties, the default setting was “None” and the Browse button was grayed out. If I was using IE and right clicked on an image, the “Set As Background” option was also grayed out.
It’s not a big deal by any means, but I am understandably curious. What do you think is the reasoning behind this?
There’s never been an incident of someone displaying inappropriate images (AFAIK) and we are blocked from downloading anything from the web, but I guess this is likely the reason.
Our IM department did the same thing to us. Without any warning so whatever was your background when you left that day is still your background now. Sort of makes the objectionable images idea unlikely. Personally I think they (or more likely management) just like jerking us around.
Novell Zenworks can use the desktop color to indicate the kind of login you’re using.
I say I charge extra when the user has wall paper of his/her child holding a rabbit or wearing an amusing hat, but they don’t believe me.
Sorry you lost your wallpaper.
What OS and network is it?
Originally, I was using a “thin client” PC (a completely stripped down to the bare essentials POS. Not much better than a terminal). They’ve added software that requires a “fat client” (basically, a “real” PC).
The bulk of the work I do is off a virtual desktop. The programs are on a myriad of servers. All the servers were recently upgraded to Win2K as well. We are not allowed to change anything on the server. That makes sense, of course, since there could be dozens of people on the same server at any given time.
That thin client PC I was using had 16k RAM (ooohhhh!) and a 500Mb harrdrive. No, that’s not a misprint.
The way we access the servers was changed. We now have to go through our intranet. I was using Win95 w/IE5.5. Unfortunately, becuase of the laughable memory, IE was extremely unstable. I would get memory errors to a point of not being able to do much of anything. That’s why I got an upgrade to Win98. They even gave me a 2.1Gb drive. (again, ooooohhhhh!!).
I’m not sure what the specs on the new PC are yet. I haven’t had a chance to dig into it.
The multinational company where I worked for the last 5 years was funny that way. Two years ago, they set internet filters in the US servers: you couldn’t go to the straight dope, or to sites about music, or wicca. But of course you could still go to sites about musica (that’s the Spanish word) or the Jesuits. Afaik, it was just the same filter used by aol. I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me why is it kosher to visit a Catholic site but not a Wicca one, both being religious sites not directly related to work at a chemical company.
If you’re in a UK server, you can’t visit any website that’s not in the company’s intranet. Makes Purchasing’s job an absolute pain.
If you’re in Spain, no filters at all.
Most sites let you customize your desktop, but I was in an Italian factory where any computer connected to the local server (including my laptop) would get a specific color scheme, background, etc. My guess here is that the local IT person is of the Broomstick Inside variety.
Often you’ll find end-users (particularly those on older computers with limited memory) complaining of problems/crashes consistent with memory shortages. On investigation you’d find that they’ve made this humungous bitmap their wallpaper and it’s this that is effectively using up all their memory.
The same would often happen with screensavers. Massive all-singing/dancing behemoths that don’t actually ‘save’ anything, never mind the screen. As soon as they fire up and lumber all over the computer memory and kill all other applications running.
This is why these options are often locked-down across an entire network.
Another thing is that when you use remote control programs like VNC, it will take a long, long time to display the background.
I have to support PC’s all over Europe and if the connection is a bit slow, it can take up to 10 minutes before a high-res background is loaded.
First thing we do is remove those backgrounds, so we can save the bandwidth for real data.
That reminds me of a woman where I work who has a terrible problem with spyware. Every time I come over to work on her computer, it’s infested with the crap. Last time I was there, I told her to stop installing things without asking me about it first. She protested that she never did that sort of thing. Without saying a word, I minimized all her windows at once and pointed at her wallpaper–it was an animated waterfall with swimming fish and butterflies. Dumbass.
My version of VNC has an option to turn off wallpaper downloading. (on the client machine) Server properties -> desktop -> while connected -> remove wallpaper , perhaps you’re running an older version?
As to the OP my take on security design is that you allow the users to perform the tasks they need to do their job rather than disallow them from doing things they shouldn’t be doing. It’s a shorter clearer list most of the time and more robust in the case of unforseen circumstances. If there’s no need for you to change your wall-paper, you don’t get that option.
I admit that this may seem rather strict but the truth of the matter is that the leeway most people are used to in the setup of their machine is a source of unecessary work for support departments, which impacts the bottom line of companies (as does people spending time looking for pretty pictures for their wallpaper).
They took away all our screensaver options.
Now everyone’s screensaver is the company’s name, scrolling across the screen in flourescent yellow.
It’s horrible.
I can understand not wanting people to have webshots, and other stuff they downloaded…but we can’t get to that stuff through our filters anyway. Why not at least limit it to the few that came with the computer? I’d much rather look at flying windows. Not to mention that the reason they supposedly did this was because of “safety”. Well - before I had my screensaver set to kick in after 5 minutes. Now it comes on after 30 minutes.
There may be no ulterior motive to blocking wallpaper other than simply a bad implementation of systems policy enforcing screen-blanking after x minutes.
We’re able to set wallpaper here, but can’t do anything with the screen saver or its timing - we go black at 10 minutes. Sounds like your IT staff may have simply disabled the ability to change display properties rather than just controlling the screen saver aspects.
One reason is to provide a uniform user interface on the company’s computers. If every computer looks the same, and operates the same way, people can use any company computer without being confused or distracted by local customizations made by the computer’s primary user.
Dumbass.