08.15.2007

New Geniuses: RobWill has earned his second Genius certificate, in VPN. Nice work, Rob!

More MVPs: RobWill, one of the more genial members of Experts Exchange, not only has two Genius certificates, but is also a two-time Microsoft MVP. Also on the list is ghemant, an MVP in Microsoft SQL.

Milestones:

• angelIII has surpassed 16 million points overall. Almost half of them are in the MS-SQL zone.
• SheharyaarSaahil is the eleventh EE member to go over 7 million points.
• amit_g earned his 6,000,000th point overall last week.
• mlmcc went over the 5,000,000 point level in Crystal Reports.

From the Inbox: We had an item in Nata's column a few weeks back about a trojan that affects Yahoo and Hotmail accounts, in which the link -- which originally went to a BitDefender.com article -- became the link to the site's "News" page. The article can be found at BusinessWire, and a technical description is on BitDefender's website. Thanks to prismnetwork and crm-serv for letting us know.

Kudos: We came across this question that shows the best of what an Expert at EE does. JimBrandley, who joined EE in 2004 but didn't start answering questions until about three months ago -- why is that, Jim? -- took a couple of days to get the question straightened out, answered it, and then spent a weekend working it over with the Asker. Outstanding work, Jim!

Experts Exchange Search: Currently, Experts Exchange search defaults to an "Experts Exchange" only Google search. We have made available an update to the My Account/My Preferences page which will allow you to select your default search preference. To default your search preference to Experts Exchange search, locate the My Account box in the upper right corner of the browser window, and click Edit next to My Profile. After entering your password, perform the following steps:

Click on the "My Preferences" tab, navigate down to the "Default Search Preference" line, and then click the bubble of the search tool you would like search to default to. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Update Information" button. After a page reload, you will see a message at the top of the screen that says "You have updated your preferences successfully". Also, while you are changing your default search in the My Preferences area, take a moment to update your Account Information. Thanks!

We've made some changes to the Question Wizard to assist Question Askers and Expert Answerers in the Question and Answer process on Experts Exchange. As always, we value your feedback, and you can let us know what you think of the updated functionality of the Question Wizard by clicking on the feedback button at the top of any of the pages on Experts Exchange, or emailing feedback@experts-exchange.com directly. We will continue to work on the question asking process with the goal of getting your question answered in the most accurate and timely manner possible by our outstanding and talented group of Experts.

Notable among the new features introduced in the Question Wizard are the optional expanded details the Asker can include with their question. The Asker can add the kind of software and hardware they are using, what development language is being used, and what error message is being received. There are also hints to help write better titles and questions. The ability to add "tags" can assist the Asker with composing the question Title, and any tags used will be searchable. This initial information will also provide the Experts valuable information regarding your question and expert level so they are able to accurately evaluate your issue as quickly as possible.

Another new feature is that you can now assign a "primary" zone when you ask your question; this will be the zone that appears in the URL when you receive notifications on it, and will be the zone that shows up on your question history or when it is returned as an Expert filter result. Finally, we have re-implemented the box that allows you to set the value of your question at a number you choose. The minimum of 20 points and the maximum of 500 are still in place, but if you want to go wild and set the points to 347 or 459 go for it!

Under AnnieMod's direction, the process of cleaning up abandoned questions has dealt with nearly half a million questions. A programmer in Bulgaria, she is the Administrator of the Cleanup Program at Experts Exchange.

Do you want to help EE?

Most of the questions on the site get answers (or at least comments) in the first minutes and hours after they are posted. Unfortunately a lot of the Askers never close their questions -- often because they do not know they are supposed to, or simply because they do not care. That is why we created the Cleanup process.

The "Tip from the Mods" actually explains what you are supposed to do if you see a cleanup message. But someone needs to post these messages before you can do anything based on them. Unfortunately we cannot setup an automated process -- every question needs to be read carefully so only the answered ones are saved and the proper experts rewarded. This is what the Cleanup Volunteers do.

If you have participated at EE for any length of time, you have probably seen at least a few posts by the CVs -- they are the silent guard that makes sure that the old questions get closed sooner or later. The increase of the number of areas six months ago made the work of the team harder and since then, we are trying to find more people willing to help so that we can handle every single abandoned question as soon as possible.

If you have ever considered helping, the following questions and answers may actually help you:

If you are interested in helping, please send an email to anniemod "at" experts-exchange.com. And to everyone in the team now -- great work guys and thank you. This site won't be the same without you.

Q: Someone posted in a question a comment that talked about the Asker abandoning his questions. What does that mean?

A question is considered "abandoned" when it goes for three weeks without any comments; in our experience, if it has gone that long, it is unlikely to get any further comments. Having an abandoned question doesn't make someone the equivalent of an axe-murderer, though; it just means that the question has fallen off the radar screen.

There can be several causes. Askers sometimes get re-assigned to other projects, and forget they have a question open about something. They can go on vacation. Or they might just be new to EE, and not realize that they have a responsibility to close their questions. It might not seem like a big deal to them, but to us, it is; four years ago, there were literally hundreds of thousands of abandoned questions, and we've spent a lot of that time cleaning up the mess. Now, there are usually around 30,000 open questions at any given time, and that number is decreasing daily.

So what do you do if you have an old question? Well... close it. Either award the points to the Expert or Experts who helped you find a solution -- even if they just pointed you in the right direction. If you have answered it yourself, or if you never did get any comments, then the best thing to do is delete it or "PAQ" it and start over. Most of the time, you'll need our help in doing those.

A couple of notes. First, we run a bot every so often that deletes questions that don't have any comments. If you get a notification that says EE_AutoDeleter has posted, you know we've already deleted your question. You'll still be able to see the text of it, but you will also know that there were no comments in it. Second, if you have too many abandoned questions -- the benchmark is generally somewhere between five and ten, depending on how many questions you've asked -- you're likely to be hearing from us. It is a good idea to respond to our request.

I've been writing professionally -- meaning that I have been paid for it and have had my work published -- since before I was in my teens, and I'm reasonably familiar with the whole point to copyright laws; I've seen my writing appear, word for word, under someone else's byline in some other publication on a couple of occasions. I know the law is on my side, and I know that precious little can actually be done to stop someone from doing it.

So it has been with some interest that we have been following the growing bandwagon that is the lawsuit against Google and YouTube alleging copyright infringement. At issue is whether the posting of clips and images, produced and created by one party and uploaded to YouTube by someone else, is a violation of the copyright of the first party.

The issue is no such thing, and everyone knows it except the law. The issue is really all about money.

Google makes a ton of money from advertising. For every ad it pushes to websites or displays on its search pages that gets clicked, it gets its hand wet. That's not a bad thing, and even if it is, who cares? The advertisers are willing to pay for it, and if they pass the costs on to their consumers, the consumers are willing to pay for it. But the emphasis isn't on "advertising"; it's on "ton of money". Google has it, and what better way of getting rich is to sue someone who has a lot of money.

But here's the thing. Nobody cared much about YouTube until it was bought by Google; who paid any attention at all to the Finnish Football League Association or Robert Dur (he's the guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time and shot the video of Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots) until Google made YouTube worth $1.6 billion?

The lawsuit, though, has legal merit, and how it plays out in the courts has some profound implications for not just writers, musicians, and anyone else who creates something original, especially if one puts it on the Internet. It also has profound implications for the industrial structure of the Internet as a whole.

First, Google's lawyers will argue that caching information is no different than a library keeping copies of old newspapers. The newspapers my family owned included, when we sold them, the longest continually published paper in California, predating the San Francisco Chronicle by six months. We had archives of one dating back to its founding in 1881 -- which is pretty handy when you're working on a centennial edition. Google provides such a service, and like a library, doesn't charge people to look at it. The big difference? While you're searching for the lyrics to some song written by a one-hit wonder eight years ago, Google is going to show you some ads, and will make a few bucks off them.

Second, Google's caching system is, in essence, a copy, taken without regard for, permission from, or compensation to the creator. It's just taken, unless the site takes steps to prevent it -- which also happens to keep it from being listed in the search pages in the first place. So if you want people to read your material, and you can't afford a printing press, you're working against yourself to do that. If I'm Google's lawyer, I'm going to argue "implied permission" or some such, especially if the copyright notice appears. Besides, Google will argue, it is not making any money off the inclusion anyway.

The concept of a copyright is an outgrowth of Gutenburg; his printing press made it possible for works to be easily reproduced and distributed. It also meant that the theft of printed materials was easy as well; almost anyone with a press could sell a copy of an author's book without paying the author a dime. The system worked fine for hundreds of years. Then along came computers, and floppy disks and CDs and the Internet. Now, there's only one way for you to keep your material from being stolen -- and that's to not publish it at all.

Which begs the question... If an article is never published, and is never read, was it ever actually written at all?

Gee thanks, guys: The Wall St. Journal recently published a list of Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You. TechRepublic was not at all thrilled.

What everyone wants to read about: Not quite a year ago, Second Life got its own reporter courtesy of Reuters. Now comes a story about a lawsuit over some illegal copying of software used at Second Life, at the same time that Second Life has banned gambling, had a bank failure, and had someone rip off its stock market. And it's only going to get worse, if Gresham's Law is accurate. Who says art doesn't imitate life?

"Let's All Act Surprised" dept.:

• Office 2008 for the Mac won't arrive until 2008.
• The search for a new Evil Empire is over. Google is everyone's new target du jour.
• The terms of use contract for the iPhone is one of the longest ever.
• Lest we forget, Congress passed the Protect America Act of 2007 just before taking off on vacation.
• IRS employees routinely ignore security rules and give out information over the phone.

This just in: Satan orders new winter coat on eBay, shuttle to get porcine pilot: It looks like IBM and Novell will be invoking a "Do Not Resuscitate" order on SCO, now that a court has ruled that SCO owes Novell 95 per cent of royalties paid to it by Microsoft and Sun. Don't anyone be shocked if Duke Nukem Forever is in our Christmas shopping guide.

Anything we can do they can do better... : so we'll buy them, slap in a few ads and make money that way. At least, that seems to be what is going through Google's corporate mind, as they've decided to shut down their video store because of competition from ... YouTube, among others.

Don't toss your old cell phone just yet -- it may be an antique: President Bush decided to not intervene on the ban on Qualcomm chips.

List of the week: Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace. Let us say it first: every boss we've ever known will fire you for numbers 2, 3, and 5. Numbers 1 and 7 are pretty much nonsense. And if you try 9 very often, you won't get a card signed by everyone else when it's your birthday. This one, published before the July 4 weekend but appropriate to the upcoming Labor Day weekend, is a lot more valuable.

We're only mentioning this because it comes with a great line: Both the good guy hackers and the bad guy hackers were in Las Vegas last week. One of our brothers, who works for a large hotel/casino chain, noted that the gaming industry doesn't really care: "Computer geeks bring one white shirt and a $20 bill to Vegas, and neither gets wrinkled."

How to keep a billion people busy for years: Have them clone everything the rest of the world invents. Then have them map every inch of the moon. Or start checking for copyright violations.

Sites of the Week: "A social bookmarking explanation your mom would understand"; from Lunchy, rubber ducking; and from kodiakbear, what to do if your company doesn't like you using instant messengers.

We all get this stuff: Anyone who has a blog knows that he is eventually going to find himself targeted by spammers who use bots to post their garbage. Steve Yelvington spends most of his time writing about journalism and the state of the news industry, but last week, he wrote about (among other things) dealing with blog spam. If you're tired of using your delete key, you might want to check out the tricks.

Stop the presses: Are we the only people who think that the Gartner Group has always had a firm grasp of the obvious?

Sign of the Apocalypse: Airlines are trying to reduce delays, but the TSA is fighting back. Or not.

Lots of little things push my buttons. I don't like bugs eating my tomato plants. I don't like spam or virus writers or email scams (although some of them are almost funny). Having my Internet connection drop on me is frustrating, but so is having to always wash the dishes.

But an article in InfoWorld really rankled me. It says that a report from the GAO -- the people who supposedly tell Congress the straight scoop on legislation -- says that identity theft isn't a problem, at least on the scale we think it is. Maybe it isn't -- unless you happen to be the person whose identity has been stolen. (There is at least one person for whom identity theft is a different kind of problem.) It isn't just those people, either; it has taken TJMaxx seven months to sort things out since it had its security breached. Once can only wonder what the havoc caused by the theft of a Veterans Administration laptop has been.

Speaking of email scams and such, BellSouth customers are the latest target of a phishing scam. The email you'll get says that they want to protect you from phishing, blah blah blah, and then asks you to "verify" your account. It's just a matter of time before ComCast and AT&T subscribers start seeing the same kinds of emails -- but none of those companies ever sends out emails like that.

It also gripes me that when the shovelware version of Symantec's software expired, I couldn't change over to the other software I wanted to use because it wasn't available (no names, but the editor had quite a rant about it a month ago). It is now, and the editor passed along a message he got from Ryan_R:

I know, I know. I should have had him get me a Mac, right?