I do not condone overriding group policies on systems in a corporate network as a general rule.  The policies are setup for a reason and are there to help and protect you.  No, really.

However, sometimes you need to override some to get your job done or sometimes are not appropriate.   For instance, I am a fervent proponent of the locked desktop.  So much so that I reflexively use winkey-L when I get up from my desk.  As a fail-safe, I set my screensaver duration to a ridiculously low value.  Ah, but our networking folks have set group policy that is more lenient and restricted users from modifying it.  So as an admin of my box, I went around the policy and set it back to more aggressive values. 

Now I can defend my position as tightening security as opposed to violating policy, but my actions are still wrong.  The following link is to Mark Russinovich's excellent article on circumventing inconvenient group policies.  Read it at your own risk:

Circumventing Group Policy Settings

When I finished Thunder Below, I realized that I haven't read a Sci-Fi title in a long time and picked up a book co-authored by Ben Bova.  It stunk.  I didn't get more than 100 pages in and dropped it.  I was afraid that since I have read a great many good books with relevance lately, that I was tainted to the irrelevant, namely fiction.   I was wrong.

The Time Ships is a sequel of sorts.  It picks up from The Time Machine, the master work by H.G. Wells.  We follow the further adventures of the Time Traveler as he attempt to return to the time of the Eloi and Morlocks.  But he discovers that time streams are not linear and he cannot return to the future as returning to the past has obliterated that possible future.  Instead he meets a Morlock who is civilized and vastly intelligent, far removed from the Morlocks of Wells imagining.  The remainder of the story involves the Time Traveler's futile attempts to find his place in the Multiplicity, or the whole of possible past and futures.

The main praise I have for this book is this:  Finally someone treats time travel in a way that is not insulting to anyone who knows the least bit of theoretical physics or cosmology.  I really enjoyed this book and will use it as a stepping stone to more of Baxter's works.  Well done, excellently planned and brilliantly executed.  A fine read.

I heard a brilliant reason clever generalization for why Socialism, and by extension Communism, will always be doomed to failure:

Have you ever rented a car?  Did you wash it?

Edit:  Commenter inadvertantly reminds me that this is not a reason, but a gross simplification.  I don't discount the hundreds of other reasons and historical proofs for the failure of Marxist states.