So I overheard my kindergarten daughter and her girlfriends talking about UAC the other day. Kids can be so nasty. One said UAC is too chatty. Another said UAC has no real depth, it is just shallow. Even some teachers stepped up and suggested UAC really needed to just be ignored or turned off. Then, UACs parents tried to come to its emotional rescue, and I still don’t really get what they are saying, but I couldn’t stop thinking about The Runaway Bunny:

The Runaway Bunny begins with a young bunny who decides to run away: "’If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’"

At this stage in its life, feel free to give UAC some breathing room. After all, it is clear that the design is head and shoulders above the local admin settings that many (most?) organizations use, and that is really the litmus test. This is a function to transition all of those applications that "require" local admin to run with lower privileges. And yes, it does add security (what’s with the absolute black/white deal there?).

I am not sure why nobody (not even Microsoft) talks* about the 9 group policy settings with 19 options that lead to 65 different possible combinations for standard users and even more for administrators. It would be a heck of a lot more useful than the blather out there right now.

I think MS would have been better off leaving AAM mode out because Administrators don’t seem to be able to figure out how to set the No Prompt option for UAC or turn it completely off themselves, if they like to play the "do as I say, not as I do" routine.

* There was an old post on UAC Blog, but it doesn’t really provide any flavor on how the combinations might work together (unless, of course, they really don’t). In addition, it is not clear how these settings can be manipulated and/or combined with specific permissions to get a little creative.