Another Deep Thought comes from my MCSE book
Oh yes, this is another one of those earth shattering revelations that I simply
could
not have figured out on my own if the "Geniuses" at Microsoft
didn't tell me. So, here we go...
As you probably know from a previous post I'm working on upgrading my MCSE from
2000 to 2003 as a requirement for work (it comes with a pay raise too which is
my
real motivation). I complained about the obvious nature of this book
before but this one takes the cake so far. Check this out. I'm reading the
chapter on Troubleshooting Software Deployed with Group Policy and they have a
nice long table of Problem/Cause/Solution info to give you an idea of how to
handle certain common situations. That's a good thing and all but when you get
this it makes me raise my eyebrows and wonder just how good of a book this
really is.
Problem: Published applications do not appear for the user in Add Or
Remove Programs in Control Panel.
Cause: The User cannot access Active Directory.
Solution: Check to see whether the user can access Active Directory.
Why YES that's such a good idea! Tell you what, how about a couple of
suggestions on why a user can't access AD and how to fix it? Why are we
checking to see if a user can do something that we've already established that
he
can not do in the cause section!?
This isn't the only time this has happened. I have seen this kind of painfully
obvious stuff several times so far and this one finally made me sick of it.
Looking at the bios of the editors, Dan Holme and Orin Thomas, they sure
look impressive with things like "10 Years Consulting" and "clients have
included AT&T, Compaq, HP, Boeing, Home Depot and Intel". You'd think they
would be better then this.
A tip to M$ here, if you are going to print books from your own publishing
company about your own core products they had better damn well be
the best books ever on the subject. I don't care if you are paying
someone else to write these things for you. Try reviewing the thing before you
publish. You are, after all, the creator and supposed highest authority
of the products being discussed.