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List:       racf-l
Subject:    Re: RACF Query
From:       Harvey Wachtel <babybaby () MAIL ! CUNY ! EDU>
Date:       2013-01-17 15:33:43
Message-ID: 201301171533.r0H684wu001963 () waikiki ! cc ! uga ! edu
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It's interesting to note the differences in approach between techies and
auditor types.  Bob Bridges strikes a balance that I'd tend to agree with,
i.e. recognizing that this is essentially a technical question ("how can I
grant all of the privileges allowed by SPECIAL except for blah-blah?") but
also recognizing that questioning the need is worthwhile because it may
turn up a simpler or more appropriate solution.  On the other hand, some
of my colleagues joke (I hope) that I must have a touch of Aspberger's
because to me almost everything is a technical problem, so I may be coming
from techie right field here.

Somewhat-off-topic story:  I have often encountered "but why do you want
to do that?".  Sometimes it's a productive question, but more often not.
Most memorable was many years ago when many of my programs, long in
production, starting S0C1ing on our new CPU because move inverse had been
omitted from the instruction set.  Our IBM FE was nonplussed:  "That's for
countries whose languages read right-to-left.  Why on earth do you need
that?"  Answer:  "to truncate trailing blanks from character strings
without using a loop, of course".  People have their reasons, and they're
often good ones that the designers of a feature haven't anticipated.
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