Oh, FFS.

The University's Grand United Computer System — on which is done trivial paperwork like receipting, leave requests, training applications, publications recording, that sort of inconsequential nonsense — is shortly to receive an upgrade. From very soon, those who need to do super-sekrit special financial stuff will no longer need to have JInitiator installed on their machines, but will require Sun's JRE.

And there was much rejoicing, not least because this is already in many departments' SOEs, and we thought that this would be a cakewalk: for most people the job was done before they started.

Then the instructions arrive:

1. uninstall any existing installation of the JRE.
   
2. install this particular, obsolete, version of the JRE (and we're talking more than a major revision old, here)
   
3. turn off the JRE autoupdate function

*headdesk*headdesk*headdesk*


Luckily, everyone I personally work with also saw the minor flaw in this plan immediately.

But still, WTF were the twerps in Central IT development thinking??!??!!?
On second thoughts, don't answer that.