6.18.2008

New Moderator: We are pleased to introduce PenguinMod as the newest member of the Moderator team. No, we haven't brought in a Linux specialist; he's actually someone who was, at one time, a Moderator who has returned to the team. Welcome back, old man!

New Geniuses: angelIII became the second member of Experts Exchange to earn his seventh Genius certificate, in Oracle Databases, and earned his Savant -- only the second one awarded by Experts Exchange -- in Microsoft SQL. capricorn1 picked up his second Genius certificate, in Access Coding/Macros, and LauraEHunterMVP earned her first Genius certificate in Active Directory. Outstanding work, folks!

Milestones:

• angelIII had a busy couple of weeks. In addition to earning his seventh Genius certificate and first Savant certificate, he went over 22,000,000 points overall -- the first member of Experts Exchange to do so.
• war1 reached the 15,000,000 point level overall.
• TheLearnedOne went over the 4,000,000 point level in Microsoft Visual Basic.Net. What makes that remarkable is that he also has more than 2 million points in two other zones.
• ozo and TechSoEasy both went over 8,000,000 points overall.

Kudos: geckogully, who joined Experts Exchange only a week or so ago, had the kind of experience everyone likes to see, and then posted about it in a comment entitled "Wow!"

Thank YOU, geckogully!

Welcome home! Four names that we haven't seen for a while have come across our screen recently, and we want to welcome them back from their journeys: TheRealLoki, nexusnation, Wakeup, and the first official Expert of the Year, from 2005, SheharyaarSaahil.

Cleanup Volunteers: Below is a table of all of the CVs who have helped us close questions since the new site launched, with their cumulative total of questions closed along with their production over the past two weeks through June 14.

As a manager or as a coworker, one of the best things that you can do for your company is to empower employees or teammates to excel at their jobs. Providing teammates with the tools they need to accomplish their tasks can save a business time and money by improving productivity, increasing job satisfaction and even reducing employee turnover.

An Experts Exchange Corporate Account is an outstanding way to empower your IT team with all the tools it needs to do its job. A Corporate Account provides each licensee unrestricted access to all the information they need to keep your technology productive in one place. With more than 2.2 million existing solutions and thousands of the world's best Experts at your team's fingertips, your business will be able to solve any technology problem it will ever face.

Here's what one empowered member, Jason1178, has to say about his experience at Experts Exchange:

"Technically, I am ten times better now at my job than before and my ability to communicate efficiently and effectively has also grown thanks to this site...In short, EE may have been one of the best things to happen to me professionally."

Congratulations to 26 companies that have recently empowered their IT teams:

Start your Corporate Account

kieran_b is one of the Zone Advisors in the Windows server operating systems zones. The owner of a managed services company in Sydney, he is also a Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server. This article is used by permission from his website.

There are subjects in technical circles that are as heated as religion and politics. The problem is that "technical" circles are just that, technical; there should be a sound basis for most if not all things -- a right and a wrong answer.

Domain naming is one such subject, and it stems with the innocent question of "should I name my windows domain company.local or company.com". The answers are generally one of three, "You must use .local because of X"; "You should use a .com because .local is pointless"; or "It doesn't matter because there are no real positives or negatives either way".

I used .local domains for a while, not out of choice but out of the policy of the company I worked for. I then moved on and started making more of the architectural decisions and came to prefer .com. This preference grew, making me one of the "You should use a .com because .local is pointless" crowd. However, spend a few years working on public forums, and you get exposed to a lot more viewpoints, and get to have the occasional well-thought-out debate -- and you're likely to wind up where I am.

I am now part of the "It doesn't matter" group, because it really doesn't, and I'll explain why in this article.

Covering the arguments is pretty simple. The argument FOR .local (and against anything else):

Better control

MYTH -- This is effectively a filler argument, it is detailed in this link (covered below) and seems to do nothing but fill space, because it sure isn't relevant. Regardless of what your internal domain is, you server will be the SOA for it.

More secure

MYTH -- This one always makes me laugh. Why would you open your local DNS servers up to the world anyway?

Easier to configure

AMBIGUOUS -- This isn't totally wrong, but there are negatives to this "ease" such as confusing UPNs for your users (meaning they can't just remember their email address for their username). If I want anyone to have it easy, it is my users; I am not interested in doing everything for my users, but where I can remove unnecessary confusion, I do. Sales guys have enough to remember, like fixing their hair and breathing.

Microsoft says so!

CONTENTIOUS -- The .local crowd has this link to fall back on. Don't let that page fool you. Just because it was reviewed in December 2007 doesn't mean they changed any of the horribly outdated material in it. Looking at the reasons for using a .local, you will see that I have covered them above -- and there is nothing really compelling about their reasons. Ease of configuration is probably the only half reasonable argument -- and remember, that page was written with SBS in mind!

Political separation

TRUE -- That's right, there is at least one really good reason to use a name that is not your publicly registered domain. What happens if you change company names, or get bought out, or have to relinquish your domain? You are going to need to do a huge migration, which will either be remarkably painful for little gain, or all but impossible if you are using SBS. Food for thought at least, but realistically, what are the odds of this being a problem for you?

Configuring split DNS is unnecessary

FALSE -- Sure, http://www.company.com would resolve instantly to the external address if your internal domain is company.local with no additional effort. But what if you want your users to access https://mail.company.com/exchange? Sure, you could send them to https://mail.company.local/exchange, but they are then going to get a certificate prompt (and also get confused when that address doesn't work from home). That in itself is not a problem, but your users have just learned a dangerous lesson; "My IT guy said that when you get a prompt about a certificate, just say OK". Think that is far fetched? I had a user who would religiously enter her domain username and password for EVERY login prompt she got -- simply because I didn't explain myself clearly enough when I said "If you get a prompt, just enter your domain details".

Those are the arguments FOR .local -- hardly convincing -- if you have another reason I will update the page if you send it to me. The argument AGAINST .local (and for company.com):

Exchange 2007 causes all manner of problems with .local

AMBIGUOUS -- Yes, configured incorrectly you can have a stack of problems with certificates and even service packs on Exchange 2007 with a .local domain name. That said, you can have a stack of problems with anything if you configure it wrong.

.local is for those that don't know how to configure DNS

CONTENTIOUS -- While it is true that if you are good with DNS, there is really no need to use a .local -- but what if you aren't? There is no shame in not knowing something, and any argument that resolves around "if you can't do it this way, you are stupid" is in itself stupid.

Macs (and IPv6) can't deal with .local

AMBIGUOUS -- Yes, Macs and IPv6 can freak out with .local. No, I don't care because you could easily solve this by using .lan, or .internal -- making this argument, quite pointless.

Microsoft doesn't use .local

TRUE -- They don't. They use corp.microsoft.com -- but when you have MSIT looking after your infrastructure, you can probably do whatever you like. Instead of helping the "don't use .local" argument, this reinforces the argument that .local is going to be easier if you don't know DNS that well.

Name resolution, Split DNS, Certificates

TRUE -- This is covered above, but I will touch on it again: no matter which way you go, you really should configure Split DNS. Why? Well if your internal domain is company.local, and you want your users to go to https://mail.company.com/exchange you are going to have a problem -- your router will reject it (as it should). If your internal domain is company.com, then you are going to need to add a host for www pointing to your (presumably) externally hosted webserver.

So what is the end result? It doesn't matter. All three will work, and the only thing that governs your choice should be how good you are with DNS. If you are good with DNS, then I would recommend corp.company.com or company.com -- and if you aren't that confident with it, and don't want to take the risks associated with learning, then company.lan (being better than company.local) would be the way to go.

If you have anything to add in agreement or argument, please let me know. I think that the above is as fair as it can be, and covers the arguments that are posed in so many threads out there.

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

Headline: Ballmer says print media dead in 10 years

Microsoft President Steve Ballmer went halfway out on a limb in an interview with the Washington Post last week:

Needless to say -- old time print media guy that I am -- Ballmer's comments caught my attention. They also raised the hackles of a number of online media types with whom I correspond regularly (actually, it's a listserv group, but I do participate). Several people wanted to bet a month's salary -- theirs versus Ballmer's -- on the matter, which is a novel thought. Others considered the matter not even worth talking about.

Dan Pacheco of the Bakersfield (CA) Californian scoffed, if you can do that in an email: "Ballmer's statement is overly simplistic and completely disregards other trends that are not directly connected to "the daily newspaper" or general-interest magazines, such as... Increased niche print products, especially hyperlocal ones... The hybrid online-print synergies observed in such niche products.. Home printing... Direct mail, circulars and flyers, and anything that can be stuck on your windshield or door.... Anything that can be printed out at a Kinko's and left in a coffee shop or bar.." He also commented that "just the other day I got a PRINTED postcard in my mailbox from Microsoft about Windows Vista. Take that, Steve Ballmer!"

By contrast, Vin Crosbie of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University said that he almost completely agreed with Ballmer. "If what he meant was that most of North American magazines' and daily newspapers' circulations won't be delivered in paper form by 2018, then I almost totally agree with him. The transition has already begun... The only reason why I don't totally agree with what he probably meant is that I believe the transition away from paper delivery of most North American magazines' circulation will lag five to ten years behind that of newspapers. (Nevertheless, I might be wrong specifically about that: a larger percentage of North American magazines' circulation already comes from electronic editions than does daily newspapers' circulation.)"

What's true is that a lot of these people have a completely different experience with the newspaper business than I do. My family ran small, local weekly newspapers; these people all deal with mid- to major-market dailies, and a lot of them probably haven't been near a press in years. That's not to say they aren't well-informed; newspapers, especially those in bigger cities, are suffering from declining circulation and revenue at the same time their seeing costs and competition from other media increase.

The people who own the newspapers here now... well, let's just say they wouldn't know a story if it walked up and poured the ink on their heads. There's no premium on good research, good reporting or good writing; they're the only game in town. Meanwhile, there's a guy who is trying to get the news out strictly online. He's actually pretty good; he has good contributors, he gets his facts right, he can spell... but he's slowly going broke.

The difference? Simple. Advertisers -- at least the local ones -- haven't been able to see a return on the investment for their advertising dollars on the internet. Now, billions are spent every year on advertising -- from the GMs to the guy on the corner selling six 8-year-old pickup trucks. For the big guys, they're going to leverage their TV ads onto their websites, and they aren't looking at huge increases or decreases based on one ad or campaign. But for SomeGuy's grocery store, he doesn't have a lot of room for error. So he sticks with what he knows works.

What's also true is that the people with the revenue -- the print side of a newspaper operation -- is also creating all the content. What the newspapers haven't been able to figure out is how to make their online operations -- with the streaming video, the podcasts and all the rest -- pay for itself. They have no option but to compete; can anyone imagine the New York Times without a website? But were it not for the print side, there wouldn't be much content, especially if the Times had to fund its web news gathering operation with the revenue it earns from it.

Still, it was a lively and entertaining discussion. The best line, though, goes to Steve Yelvington: "Fish, barrel, smoking gun... rapidly growing print markets like India may not even PEAK in that period. Somebody needs to open the windows on the Redmond campus and let some air in. But I don't think they believe in open Windows."

For the past year and a half, we've been watching the All Topics list fairly closely; when the new site launched, we all wondered what would happen when members were faced with something like 650 new zones.

With getting help for the people who ask questions as the whole point to Experts Exchange, we started looking at all of the new zones (and a few of the old ones), and a couple of weeks ago, Experts Exchange pushed the first major change to the zone list. Below are the changes:

New zones:

Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008, AJAX, Microsoft Identity Integration Server, Web-Based CMS (for Drupal, Joomla and so on), Infopath, ActionScript, Groove, Biztalk_Server, phpBB, and Mac OS_X_Server

Consolidations (zones that have been combined into one):

• Internet Security & Acceleration Server and MS Internet Security & Accel
• Microsoft_LCS/ and MS Live Communications Server
• Microsoft System Management Server and Systems Management Server
• Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Content Mgmt Server, renamed to MOSS-Sharepoint
• Two AppleShare IP zones combined
• IBM Message Queue, Oracle Message Queue, JBoss Message Queue and Microsoft Message Queuing into Message Queue
• General Intel Programming, Intel 32-bit CPU Programming, Intel 64-bit CPU Programming, Itanium Processor Development into Processor Programming for Specific Platforms
• Windows Active-X Programming and ActiveX
• Windows 2000 Active Directory, Windows 2003 Active Directory and Windows_File_Sharing and renamed to Active Directory

Renamed zones:

• General Office Suite Software to Microsoft Office Suite
• Microsoft FrontPage to FrontPage-Expressions
• Database Reporting Software to SQL Reporting
• Outlook Express Email Client to OE-WindowsLive
• Microsoft Windows Security to MS Forefront
• Server (/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/) to Microsoft Server
• MSH/Monad to MSH-Monad-PowerShell
• MySQL Server to MySQL
• MS Visual SourceSafe to Visual SourceSafe-Team_Foundation

And there will be more, so hang on to your hats. And lest we forget, huge kudos go out to jonathan_hoekman and molsen-ee for making it all happen.

Editor's note: Faithful readers of our newsletter know that at the end of this section, there's usually something we think is a Sign of the Apocalypse -- something that has happened that can only be explained by intervention of an omnipotent force committed to humanity's self-destruction by banging its collective head against a wall. Plus we think they're usually pretty funny. However, the past couple of weeks have made us nervous -- as if the Flying Spaghetti Monster were unhappy with the amount of oregano left as offerings -- so we have devoted the entire section as evidence of what is either our impending doom or an indication that we're ready for a summer vacation.

Case 1: We've had quite a few items over the years that talk about things like company blogs, people who write about their companies on blogs, ISPs who decide they don't want to host specific blogs, why anyone would want to write a blog, what's wrong with blogs, and on and on. But this is a first. Metallica -- the 80s band that made a name for itself back at the turn of the century by suing Napster and becoming the poster boys for the recording industry -- first invites music bloggers to listen to tracks for an as-yet-unreleased album, and then tells them to not blog about the music.

Case 2: Okay, so it's that time of year in the US -- the quadrennial eleven-month process devoted to finding out which two lowest-common-denominators will vie to become the Chief Manhandler of the Taxpayers -- so we could chalk this up to plain ol' dirty politics were it not so absurd. There's a cliquish little lobbying group in Washington, funded by the cable companies, that has the two-part mission of a) saying nasty things about Google and b) saying nastier things about the whole concept of "net neutrality" and one of its chief proponents, Google. That's not really news. What is news is that they've created a phony trade organization, supposedly representing those noisy activist corn farmers in places like Osceola, Nebraska. We always knew that Google favored the wheat farmers.

Case 3: Lately, the best reason to open up our email has been to read what's happened next in the ongoing saga of Yahoo; for whatever reason, we keep hearing in our minds Yeats' "Turning and turning in the widening gyre...".

• Yahoo boss Jerry Yang came up with a poison pill that was evidently more than what Microsoft wanted to swallow. Trying to then keep it from being made public makes Yang and his executives and board look pretty greedy, and it caused the shareholders who are suing to ask that the suit be heard before the August 1 shareholder's meeting.
• As should have been expected, the severance plan got the attention of Carl Icahn, who has been buying up Yahoo stock like popcorn at a county fair. Icahn is no Edward Lewis, preparing to build big ships with Yang; he wants to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for the $33 a share Redmond offered, which would be a substantial profit given how much Yahoo's stock dropped last week. On the other hand, he would have to do it with the current employees, since any who got fired would collect under the plan.
• Yahoo is still trying to convince its shareholders that it's worth more than the $33 Microsoft offered by cutting deals for everything right and left. The notable deals were to show CBS programs (already on YouTube, AOL and MSN) and to sell and show WalMart's advertising. For those not familiar with Bentonville, they're not known for spending more than they have to.
• Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock fired off a testy letter to Icahn, saying among other things, "their message to us and to the markets has been and remains that they are not interested in pursuing a full acquisition of Yahoo!." Microsoft President Steve Ballmer said much the same thing. More on the interview with Ballmer -- notably his comments about print media -- are discussed elsewhere.
• Not to be outdone, Icahn responded to Bostock indirectly, not once, but twice. Some people think he's taking a gamble, but it's hardly that. If Yang is successful in a proxy fight, Icahn will still own enough stock to make his life miserable.
• So, just to make sure everyone was clear that Yahoo doesn't want to sell to Microsoft, they asked that the suit be dismissed, broke off talks with Microsoft, and announced a reorganization.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Case 4: Our young friend compfixer101 has time on his hands this time of year, and while he spends much of it doing (to his everlasting credit) Cleanup, he also has time to come up entertaining examples (we're glad this wasn't asked on EE) of PEBKAC problems.

Case 5: We've been through a lot of airports in the past couple of months -- more than our share, probably. This just makes us queasy. Speaking of queasy, Glassdoor.com is doing for salaries what its sister site, Zillow has done for real estate. There is no listing for "technical help website newsletter editor", fortunately. (Thanks, Anita!)

Case 6: Apple announced a new iPhone that will cost half of the ones all the early adopters bought a few months back (that is, until you figure out what your service plan will cost). Wags are predicting that the disease known as Crackberry will disappear in our lifetimes.

Case 7: Save Windows XP. Are we the only people who remember when people hated it as much as they now hate Vista? Oh, and in case you missed it, SP3 for Windows XP is now available for download. Thanks, Andrew!

Case 8: We wish we'd have thought of this. Every time you pick up the phone and call someone, you're using the phone company's lines, so it is reasonable that you should pay for that. You could do it by the minute, but the economics of collecting that data are such that it's cheaper for most people to just pay a flat rate that averages itself out. Maybe the phone company makes a few extra pennies every month, but who wants to count minutes, right? And besides, part of what you're paying goes to cover you being able to receive calls anyway. But the cable people have gone them one better. Yes, you pay to receive everything your plan allows, and it's a flat rate; if you watch two hours of TV a week, you still pay the same as if you watched in 24/7.

Unless, of course, there is data involved. Now, we know the telcos and cable companies are making a lot of money for providing us the service, and we know they're doing pretty well by charging companies for the privilege of accessing the internet through their wires. Apparently it isn't enough, though, because now they're going to start charging people who do a lot of downloading a little more -- and they're going to lower the quality of service as well.

What's even better is that in doing so, they're "protecting" someone against those evil, wicked ne'er-do-wells who use large volumes of bandwidth; by slowing them down, it will be better for the rest of us. At a profit, of course. Who wants to bet that our cable bills will go down next year?

Case 9: The European Union, always ready to take a shot at Microsoft, issued a statement urging its members to start using open source systems, rather than Microsoft's OOXML "standard". With good reason, we guess; the approval of OOXML has been put on hold.

Case 10: Back in February, a young man in the Bay Area lost his job at Yahoo. Too bad, too, because he missed out on the severance package (see Case 3 above). That's not the story. He "tweeted" -- posted a blow by blow account of the day on Twitter (it's still there, if you're interested), became the temporary darling of the blog world, started his own blog, eventually found a new career, and everything turned out great. That's not the story either. The story is that here, four months later in the middle of June, the mainstream media finally caught on to the story.

Like a lot of people, we have a wireless router at home, and since we travel, one of the things we look for in a hotel is whether or not it has wireless internet access. But we also make sure that our antivirus software and laptop firewalls are up to date, and here's why: there's a trojan out there that can modify the settings of a wireless router. There are lots of things you can do (the obvious one being to change the default login and password for the router); you can never be too safe.

Speaking of the rotten things that are floating around out there, it looks like those smart guys at MIT are working on a way to keep worms from spreading -- at least, slowing them down a bit. It's a novel approach; instead of looking which way the flood is headed, look at which way it's coming from. And while we're on the subject of things that are rotten (there's a travel tie-in coming), there is a new scanner at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport that is just plain creepy. I just can't imagine what someone would be hiding where that would require things like this.

I came across these in an old newsletter from somewhere, and thought I'd pass them along, if only because I know how many of you get to suffer because your users violate about half these rules every day. They were listed as the "Ten Net Commandments" -- which seems good enough to me.

1. Thou shalt not buy merchandise found in pop up ads or spam.
2. Thou shalt not post thy e-mail address, phone number, address or social security number on the Internet, nor shalt thou post anyone else's.
3. Thou shalt not forget to update thy Windows every second Tuesday.
4. Thou shalt not connect to the Internet without installing an antivirus, nor shalt thou begin a scan without checking for updates.
5. Thou shalt not connect to the Internet without installing a firewall.
6. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's credit card number, nor his bank routing number, nor his social security number.
7. Thou shalt not enter thy credit card number without seeing the tiny padlock icon on thy status bar.
8. Thou shalt not reply to the e-mail from the Nigerian banker.
9. Thou shalt not forward chain letters to thy friends and family.
10. Thou shalt not use "password" as thy password, nor thy birthday, nor thy childrens' names.

If we need more commandments, feel free to send them in.

Finally, I've never used a Mac, but if I never have to really worry too much about it getting stolen, it must be a pretty neat machine. If I only had a birthday coming up... One reason I won't be buying a new computer soon: I already have Vista and like a lot of people, don't like it.