Experts Exchange Newsletter

What's New at Experts Exchange

New Geniuses: acperkins, a member of Experts Exchange since May 2001, became EE's fourth Microsoft SQL Genius last week, while ozo, who joined in August 1997, reached the Genius plateau in Perl. Congratulations to both!
VB Developers pressing MS: Visual Basic developers, including 232 Microsoft MVPs, have started a last ditch attempt to convince the company to postpone its plans to stop providing free support for VB at the end of this month. An online petition urges the company to continue to develop and support the popular programming language. You can also leave comments at EE Q_21347124.
Microsoft is trying to push people towards VB.NET, but critics say that VB.NET is not an improvement to an existing language, but a whole different can of worms. Unphased, Microsoft says that the decision was made several years go to commit to VB.NET, and while it will open a "VB6 Upgrade Center" on its developer network website, it isn't going to change its plans. There are about 3 million VB developers worldwide.
EU to MS: eeeww...: The European Union isn't particularly happy with Microsoft these days. It seems that Microsoft has decided to "comply" with the EU's demand that it share its Windows server code, but has done so with a licensing agreement that is both expensive and excludes free software, notably the GNU General Public License attached to most open source software.
The EU is now threatening to toss another fine (MS was fined $655 million for antitrust violations a year ago) in the general direction of Redmond, to the tune of five per cent of the company's daily global sales. Microsoft expects to have revenues in the $40 billion range this year; we'll let you do the math. Meanwhile, there's no shortage of MS bashing out there -- but they make it so easy.
Speaking of the GPL: Thirteen technology firms were handed warning letters from the organization that oversees compliance with the GPL at the CeBIT show in Germany last week. The essence of the violation is that the firms, among them Motorola and Acer, used open source software, but haven't made the source code they developed publicly available.
File-sharing redux: Back in August 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in a case involving MGM and Grokster, that file-sharing software isn't illegal just because people used it to share copyrighted works like music. Apparently, the big film studios didn't get the message, because they've served a lawsuit against a British man who runs (from quite a distance) a BitTorrent server. Alexander Hanff plans to fight the suit, saying, in essence, that the studios can't get blood out of a turnip.
At the same time, the music industry could claim victory against the BitTorrent community when an Australian ISP was shut down by an federal court.

It's quite likely that the issue could come back to the MGM vs. Grokster case, however. The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case next week.
More on open source: Sun Microsystems is warming a bit to the idea of open source, but has stopped short of creating an open source license, the company announced March 16. We won't say it's related, but Sun's main open source proponent, Danese Cooper, left Sun to go to Intel earlier in the week.
Whoda thunk it?: A British citizen living in Florida has proposed a new top-level domain: .xxx. We'll give you three wild guesses what it will be used for. According to a 2003 Reuters report, two-thirds of all online content would probably fit appropriately under the domain.
This week's Sign of the Apocalypse: A hack of Napster allowed free downloads of music files.

Your questions and solutions

Still open: can't save to shared folder on network

"Trying to save files to shared folder on network from Win XP Pro SP2 computer to Win 98SE computer with shared folder. Get permission error. When viewing shared folder propertiers from XP computer it's listed as read only. Can change attribute by clearing read only but it reverts to read only status... Am I missing a XP configuration setting?"

Points: 125 Mar 13, 2005 03:03PM PST

Can you help?

Still open: Windows XP won't Boot

"I recently tried to install a new Maxtor Hard Drive using the MaxBlast software. After the software supposedly copied my files from the original boot drive to the new drive, I tried to reboot the system. Nothing worked! I switched back to the original configuration but have been unable to boot my computer."

Points: 125 Mar 12, 2005 09:18PM PST

Can you help?

Still open: Timing Out on web pages after MS auto updates

"I have a Gateway 600 notebook with XP Pro, running through a Linksys Wireless 4-port Router and a Linksys Cable Modem. Everything runs fine for about 10 minutes then pages cease to load. I have tried this with and without SP2. I have applied the WinsockXPfix. Ping works fine..."

Points: 500 Mar 12, 2005 11:42AM PST

Can you help?

Featured Experts

leew

leew isn't exactly a newbie around EE; since he joined in August, 1997, he's accumulated nearly 2 million points in over a dozen topic areas. His strength is in anything Microsoft, from DOS 3.3 through Windows XP, and including Office and Networking.

Registration Date: August 7, 1997

Expert Points: 1937603

Certificates: Guru, Windows 2000, Windows XP; Master, Windows NT Networking, Desktops, Operating Systems, Windows NT, MS-DOS, Hardware, Active Server Pages, Networking, Windows Server 2003, Storage

mhambridge

mhambridge spends most of his time in the Windows XP topic area, but can also be found answering questions in Windows 2000 and Microsoft Network. His experience includes helpdesk, desktop, and systems engineer support.

Registration Date: July 20, 2003

Expert Points: 97736

Certificates: Master, Windows XP

Eagle6990

Eagle6990 is currently a systems administrator for a cardiology group, and is a certified sysadmin. He's also a MCP in Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server, Directory Services, Network Infrastructure, and Managing a Network Environment.

Registration Date: October 27, 2003

Expert Points: 318773

Certificates: Guru, Windows XP

Tip from the Page Editors: The Page Editors will pretty much remove your email address every time they see it in a question. This happens for two reasons. First, it keeps you from being subjected to all kinds of spam after your question is closed. More importantly, it's against the site's rules to give or receive points for a question that gets answered outside of the pages at EE. You're welcome to post your email address in your profile, however, but we would recommend using something like yourname "at" yourdomain.com.

Nata's Corner: Is anything REALLY secure?

woman in specticals Never mind that Boston College ran out to an 11-point lead in their NCAA tournament game Saturday, only to choke it away with some shoddy defense. The basketball team must be taking some pointers from the university's IT department, which was the subject of an attack by people trying to get to a list of 100,000 alumni who are prospective donors to the school. The machine is actually managed by a third party service, but the virus that attacked it was trying to access the database.

Apple's iTunes store was also the target of a hack by the same teenager who wrote DVD-cracking software back in 1999. This is a little bit different, though. It allows Linux users to purchase music from Apple's iTunes store, but without all that annoying anticopying software. There's already a Windows version, so it's a good bet that Apple's lawyers will be busy too.

ameba asked me to mention the petition to Microsoft about Visual Basic. It seems like the least I can do; he's made my job as a Page Editor a lot easier, and his list of certificate holders is an important part of the newsletter every issue.

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Inside the numbers

ameba, one of EE's prominent Experts, provides us with a list of newly earned Certificates. His list of all of the Certified Experts is located at his site. The list below covers the period from March 6 through March 20.

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
jimhorn Data-Man Trygve Billystyx RDWaibel aikimark Idle_Mind ryancys jimbobmcgee mlmcc mvidas peh803 ryancys acperkins ptjcb AaronAbend patrikt Batalf third geobul durgaprasad_j tbone343 ldbkutty lhankins SystmProg mkline71 PeteLong conradie plemieux72 PeteLong	Sage Sage Wizard Master Master Master Sage Sage Guru Guru Master Sage Guru Genius Master Master Master Wizard Wizard Sage Master Master Master Master Guru Guru Wizard Master Master Sage	MS Access MS Access MS Access MS Access MS Access MS Access Visual Basic Visual Basic Visual Basic Visual Basic Visual Basic ASP ASP Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL JavaScript JavaScript Delphi Java Java Java Java Windows 2000 Windows 2000 Networking Networking Networking Windows XP

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
cpc2004 AlexFM dungla itsvtk Exchange_Admin _ruudsje_ michaellundgren v_alber neo9414 cjjclifford laotzi2000 Type25 trevorhartman MikeMCSD jk_vr matthewspatrick jeverist patrickab tony_813 rdivilbiss Raisor Idle_Mind BriCrowe SystmProg Dave_Dietz TechSoEasy samccarthy INSDivision6 Buffon Billystyx	Master Wizard Master Master Wizard Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Sage Wizard Guru Master Master Master Sage Master Guru Guru Master Master Master Guru Master	Windows XP C# C# C# Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Exchange_Server Oracle Oracle ASP.NET ASP.NET ASP.NET ASP.NET ASP.NET Excel Excel Excel Excel Web Development Programming VB.NET VB.NET Win Server 2003 Win Server 2003 Win Server 2003 Win Server 2003 ColdFusion Flash Flash

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
Fatal_Exception SystmProg ozo manav_mathur cactus_data Mysidia ldbkutty petoskey-001 mwnnj carl_tawn COBOLdinosaur ldbkutty Batalf aikimark GrandSchtroumpf Batalf Dave_Dietz ahoffmann e-tsik adilkhan jaime_olivares acmp YZlat VincentPuglia duz coreybryant simon_kirk earthman2	Master Master Genius Guru Master Master Guru Master Master Master Sage Sage Master Master Guru Master Wizard Guru Master Guru Master Master Master Master Sage Master Master Master	Microsoft Network Microsoft Network Perl Perl Databases Linux Mysql Mysql Desktops XML HTML PHP and Databases PHP and Databases VB DB CSS CSS IIS Apache Linux Net. DreamWeaver Visual C++.NET Viruses Web Languages Web Languages Online Marketing Online Marketing DB Reporting PostgreSQL

1313 experts have 2066 certifications: Genius:34 Sage:97 Wizard:133 Guru:358 Master:1444

Tip for New Members: Getting a refund

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