The world is at mercy of the root password

"To err is human; to really screw up requires the root password."

Probably this is the only time I laughed that hard reading a technical book.

In the early days of my sysadmin career, I always failed to see why is the need for sudo since we can just su root to enter full root user mode and do whatever we want without typing the password every time. Now I see the point, after washed by some real site working experience. God bless that I never bring the site down yet.

Annoyance caused by sudo is exactly the purpose of this command. It prompt user that he is going to do something that might be destructive thus the decision might be considered again. Also, allowing a user working freely with the highest root permission is never a good idea in a working environment. I should stick with sudo more from now on.