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February 17, 2010 >>

What's New at Experts Exchange
Features, Geniuses and Kudos

Editors' Choice Articles
Three Page Editors' selections, plus must-reads

HappEE Birthday To You
Hanging around until you've caught on...

The Tweet Elixer Of Life
We can't afford to pay attention

Tip From the Mods
Keeping the conversation civil

More News and Notes
"Grub first, then ethics"

Nata's Corner
Black hats, credit cards and your reputation

New Certificates
New certificate holders, through February 13

What's New at Experts Exchange

Search upgrade: You can now save your search and edit your saved searches right from the search results page. When you click on a saved search it opens up the on the fly filters so you can edit your search. When you edit a search and save it again, it saves the search as a new search.

Register a Friend for FREE!: Have a friend who knows a thing or two about technology? Have them register as an Expert at Experts Exchange for FREE! Just send them this link: http://www.experts-exchange.com/becomeAnExpert.jsp.

How it works:

• New Experts can answer questions and write articles to unlock premium features such as asking questions and searching the knowledgebase
• To unlock these features and become a Qualified Expert, new Experts must earn 10,000 points (about 7 questions)
• fter that, they'll need to earn just 3,000 points each month to keep free membership and access to premium features

Share this link with your friends and colleagues! http://www.experts-exchange.com/becomeAnExpert.jsp

New Geniuses: TheLearnedOne became the fifth member of Experts Exchange to earn his sixth Genius certificate, in Microsoft Visual C#.Net, a significant achievement by any standards, but in addition to that, he joined angelIII as the only two members who have more than 2,000,000 points in five separate zones. blue-genie picked up a second Genius certificate, this one in ActionScript, while guru_sami earned his first in ASP.NET. Congratulations to all!

Milestones:

• angelIII has earned 32,000,000 points overall.
• objects has earned over 14,000,000 points overall.
• jkr has earned 8,000,000 points in the C++ Programming zone.
• rindi is the 30th member of Experts Exchange to earn 8,000,000 points.
• GrahamSkan went over the 7,000,000 point level.

Kudos: bganoush was having some problems with some VB code in an Access database until aikimark helped him do a little investigative work, which solved the problem: "Your help was worth more than 500 points."

A couple of weeks ago, matthewspatrick posted an article on using the domain aggregate function to concantenate values in an Access database, and it was quickly awarded Editor's Choice status. But of far more significance to him was the email he received from someone who is not a member of Experts Exchange:

Jason's List (special Valentine's Day edition):

• It's more like The Taming of the Shrew than Romeo and Juliet.
• Rule no. 83: No matter how much of a bad dude you think you are, there's always someone a bit badder.
• Just what everyone needs: something to go with alligator boots.
• Everyone needs a hug. Maybe even two. But 1200 seems excessive.
• There are some things we're glad Stephen Spielberg didn't include in Jurassic Park.
• What we want to know is: will these people show us the way first?
• You can't make these obituaries up: Horace Greasley and Viva Leroy Nash.
• Not exactly the sermon you would expect to hear on Valentine's Day.
• Nothing quite says "I love you" like... well, read for yourself.

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Tips From the Moderators

As a means of communication, the question and answer process at Experts Exchange has its good points; you can use code snippets and images to show what you mean when you're trying to explain something to someone else. But unless you're a Hemingway or Faulkner or even Bradbury, things occasionally get lost in translation, and someone decides someone else is insulting them.

With inspiration from our good friend Chris, we would like to offer some suggestions for what to do if you feel your heritage, intelligence or parentage has been besmirched by another user.

>> Take Computer101's advice and "step away from the computer". It's not just that he's been doing this job for a while; it's that it just makes sense to not say something when you're angry or upset, because you will probably regret it later.

>> Don't take the bait; use the Request Attention button instead. Just remember that the Moderators have seen a lot of indignation over the years, and will be able to read only what is written; they cannot peer into your mind to see your own biases and sensibilities. So if you're going to complain that someone has insulted you, be prepared to say specifically how and why the Moderators should be concerned.

>> Make sure you didn't pick the fight. There's little that is more annoying than to have someone complain about being called a dippleclanging cloddlehamper only to find out that had he not said something about someone else's "inept, low-class, outdated coding skills" the disagreement might not have happened in the first place. You should also remember that the Moderators have a pretty well-developed institutional memory; if you've been on the wrong side of a flame war in the past, it's a good bet that someone will not only remember it, but will dig it up.

Editors' Choice Articles

The following articles were designated as Editors' Choice by the Page Editors. For additional information on Articles and making sure your masterpiece is up to EE's publishing standards, check out the Article Guidelines and Article Tips zone.

WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
by DrDamnit:

How to Get Backlinks
by dhwake:

Viruses in the System Volume Information (System Restore).
by rpggamergirl:

Must reads:
Protecting Your Turf in Tough Times by princetonpublicspeaking
What is Enterprise Architecture -- Part 1? by keith_alabaster

HappEE Birthday To You

Over the past few months, Experts Exchange has highlighted its two Senior Administrators with notices of their tenth anniversaries on the site. However, in doing so, we realized that we have inadvertently slighted the large number of people who have been contributing to EE for quite a while. To rectify that, below is a list of the people who joined EE before February 1, 2000, that have been active on the site with in the past three months. Thanks to all of you for your continued outstanding support! Oh, and yes, we'll probably have another list every month or so.

The Tweet Elixer Of Life

An editor by trade, a writer by avocation and an Expert by some cosmic practical joke, ericpete puts together the newsletter for Experts Exchange.

One of the nicest gifts my father ever started giving me decades ago was a subscription to the New Yorker; issues have piled up consistently ever since, just as they piled up for him, to be read when one could devote an extended period of time to digest a profile of General David Petraeus or an article on health care costs in Texas. The quality of writing has dropped a little over the last forty or so years, but it's still better than almost anything else you can find on a regular basis.

While it is not uncommon for the magazine's staff to be critical of political figures, it is rare that they get into squabbles in print with other writers, which made a recent back-and-forth between George Packer, who generally sticks to foreign affairs for the magazine, and Nick Bilton, the lead technology blogger for the New York Times, about Twitter all that more fascinating.

Packer's comments posted online were relatively innocent; he was bothered by a Times article about Twitter that included the observation that there is "always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on." Packer went on to write, "Twitter is crack for media addicts. It scares me, not because I'm morally superior to it, but because I don't think I could handle it. I'm afraid I'd end up letting my son go hungry."

Mr. Packer's post makes three points. The first is that culturally, we have no time to read (or are possibly desperately afraid that we'll miss out on something if we take the time). His second is that we are bombarded with information, some of it useful and timely, a lot of it trivial junk, and some of it little more than a self-important rant (start on Feb 13 and work your way forward) over a perceived injustice that is only half-true at best, and a juvenile cry for attention at worst.

His third point, only implied, is that the necessary brevity of Twitter messages, while adding a variety unheard of ten years ago, is removing all the texture and intricacy from all we see. Instead of marveling at the complexity and complementing flavors of a carefully-constructed bouillabaisse, we're taking one of each of the Campbell's Soup varieties.

Mr. Packer's column provoked a response from Mr. Bilton that, because Mr. Bilton's critical thinking skills are apparently not as sophisticated as one might expect from a Times writer, missed the point entirely. Not that Mr. Bilton's assertions about the huge number of people who are using Twitter are incorrect; yes, even President Obama is looking for a "social networks manager", and Twitter is certainly changing the way people receive (and react to) news. Neither of those address Mr. Packer's central theme: that separating the information wheat from the chaff has become virtually (pun intended) impossible.

Mr. Packer does take the time to read (or someone tipped him off to Mr. Bilton's column), because he came back a week later with a riposte: "There's no way for readers to be online, surfing, e-mailing, posting, tweeting, reading tweets, and soon enough doing the thing that will come after Twitter, without paying a high price in available time, attention span, reading comprehension, and experience of the immediately surrounding world." Mr. Packer isn't the only person who wonders if all of this is making us more stupid.

There's some evidence that Mr. Packer's concerns are justified. In the videos, the MIT students interviewed insist that they are perfectly capable of multi-tasking, but their professors begs to differ. "There are two sorts of things you can test students about," says David Jones, one of MIT's professors. "You can test how well they're paying attention in lecture, and you can test how well they are absorbing information from readings that you assign... and I don't think they're doing either of those things well."

"I just gave my class a midterm," Jones says, "and I was really asking obvious questions that, had they been attending carefully in lecture and had they been doing the readings carefully, everyone should have gotten 100 per cent on this exam, and the mean score was probably about a 75 per cent."

"It's not that the students are dumb. It's not that they're not trying," Jones adds. "I think that they're trying in a way that's not as effective as it could be, because they're distracted by everything else."

Dr. Sherry Turkle, another MIT professor, echoes Mr. Jones' comments. "I teach the most brilliant students in the world," she says, "but they have done themselves a disservice by drinking the Kool-Aid and believing that a multi-tasking learning environment will serve their best purposes. There really are important things you cannot think about unless it's still and you're only thinking about one thing at a time."

Whether the professors' concerns about the apparent inability of their students to focus is a symptom of just too much of the current big thing, or represents a trend that has become something of a pandemic is a good question. What does appear to be the case, though, is that if MIT students can't perform at their highest levels in a world full of distractions from myriad sources of information, then we mere mortals don't stand a chance.

More News and Notes

"Grub first, then ethics": About a month ago, Google announced -- to significant fanfare -- that it was going to stop filtering its search results to suit the Chinese government. Talk, apparently, is a lot cheaper and easier than actually getting it done. There are a billion Chinese, and they buy stuff, and Google knows that even getting a third of the revenue is better than getting nothing, and is much better that Microsoft/Yahoo getting any of it.

Still, Google marches on in its quest to "organize the world's information". Last week, it launched Google Buzz, its answer to Facebook (with several of the privacy issues (here's how to turn it off -- thanks, Marie!) that have plagued both Facebook and its rapidly-sinking former rival MySpace) -- and not everyone was happy. Google also provided an 8 to 1 return on investment to the venture capitalists who put $6 million into Aardvark by taking it off their hands for about a minute's worth of gross revenue, and announced plans to offer internet service in "certain test markets" that is 100 times faster than normal broadband. One thing that won't be getting a lot of attention from Google's innovation department: the agreement on who owns copyrights to old books.

That means three-fourths is legal, right? One-fourth of the Microsoft software sold in Russia is bootlegged. Which begs the questions: How much of Microsoft's dominance is based on CDs handed from one person to another? More importantly, how much of Microsoft's dominance is maintained by the blind eye turned on the situation in those countries where people can't afford to shell out $100-$600 every time Microsoft (or any other manufacturer) issues an upgrade?

In requiem: Geek icon Walter Fredrick Morrison, inventor of the Frisbee, and as of March, Internet Explorer 6 on Google.

Lost in the Susan Boyle shuffle: For the uninitiated, Nessun dorma is the signature aria from Turnadot, and was made famous by Luciano Pavarotti. Greg Pritchard, a waiter, nailed it.

Apparently, she's never heard of Reagan's Law: Carly Fiorino, the erstwhile CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is running for the US Senate on the Formerly-Employed-By-Tech-Companies ticket, which is fine -- but the former President must be spinning in his grave over her attempts to get the nomination.

Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Or better yet, a 9-year-old with five MS certifications?

"Nobody's life, liberty or property are safe..." Local police want a nationwide network that will allow them to peek at your email with only an electronic warrant delivered to an ISP, and to make ISPs store data for five years. The FBI is pushing for legislation requiring the keeping of logs for two years and allowing tracking of cell phones.

The check is in the mail: PayPal has suspended personal payments to people in India while regulators try to figure out how to get their hands on some of the money.

New take on "Direct To Video": We know the folks at Google are smart, but are they really so smart (hmmm... maybe we should Google it) that they produced their Super Bowl commercial knowing they would get not one, not two, not three, but at least a dozen spoofs?

Man bites dog: The Chinese are worried about cyber attacks. They might be resting easier now that they've finally shut down a hacker recruiting site.

Email of the week: Forwarded by our long-time correspondent, Amy:

Whaddayamean, no rebooting: Ksplice has introduced a service that allows Linux security updates to be installed without having to reboot the server. One buddy of ours says it works great, but we'd love to see a review written. They offer a free trial (hint, hint)...

Not that it will stop the entertainment industry... but an Australian Federal court has decided that ISPs are not responsible if their subscribers user peer-to-peer file sharing services to download illegal content. The ruling hasn't stopped protesters from wreaking havoc with the government's website.

Signs of the Apocalypse: Microsoft has found a way to stop intruders from getting into your computer: issue a patch that BSODs, and in a not-so-startling paraphrase of Theodore Sturgeon, 95 per cent of user-generated content is spam (or malware).

Nata's Corner

I'm beginning to really like reading the stories about the various Black Hat conferences because they almost always have something interesting. The last one -- it was held in Washington, DC, last week -- featured a talk by Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina, a security consultant, where he said that Internet Explorer (big surprise there) has a bunch of flaws that could allow a hacker to access files on a computer and even upload copies of them. Microsoft says that using Vista or Windows 7 prevents the attack. Another consultant, Christopher Tarnovsky, showed how to unlocked the "Trusted Platform Module" -- the device built into newer computers that requires an extra password or a fingerprint to unlock the data on the computer.

The courts are finally beginning to crack down on the guys who steal credit card numbers. Last week, Max Ray Vision was sentenced to a reduced sentence of 13 years (because he has been cooperating with the police). He was the guy who ran the CardersMarket forum that sold credit card numbers for $20 apiece. He could have been sentenced to life.

Every once in a while, Microsoft sends out an email to home users reminding them of things they can do to protect themselves on line -- install security updates, make sure you have a good antivirus program, and so on. The latest one has an item about protecting your online reputation, and it kind of hints at what everyone already knows: that the search engines keep track of what you search for -- so don't go searching for your credit card or social security number.

Finally, there's an email that keeps getting forwarded by Facebook users about Automation Labs and a security hole. It's fake, and forwarding it doesn't help anyone; you're just wasting bandwidth.

New Certificates