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August 25, 2010 >>

What's New at Experts Exchange
New sites to test, Geniuses and kudos

Editors' Choice Article
Two of EE's finest are rewarded

Last call! The Next Big ThEEng
Great ideas can win you a prize

"We're sorry, Joe, but Steve's the new QB"
Getting the best people -- and getting out of the way

Tips From The Moderators
What are all those zones for?

More News and Notes
How to make most of us feel like complete idiots

Nata's Corner
LinkedIn, hackers and flash drives

New Certificates
New certificate holders, through August 21

What's New at Experts Exchange

New Features: Redsource Interactive, the parent company of Experts-Exchange, has announced the establishment of several new sites that are topic-specific.

FoxPro Answers | Excel Answers | MySQL Questions | VB Script Experts
Crystal Reports Experts | Microsoft IIS Experts | DotNET Assistance
Handheld Experts | Desert Racing Experts | KTM Dirt Bike Repairs
Ford Bronco Experts | Recording Studio Experts | Land Rover Questions

Now, before you go clicking on links, we offer you a little advice. You aren't automatically a member of these sites; you must register first. If you use your email address from your Experts Exchange profile, you will be prompted to import your EE profile. You will be taken to an EE page where you can use the same username or a different one. Fill out the rest of the information, and you will be redirected back to the new site, where you log in as normal. You can then go to your profile; on the Edit Preferences page, there is a check box to receive notifications of new questions.

We're very excited to see what you think of the new sites; please, post your feedback on the new sites and systems.

New Geniuses: nobus is the 16th member of Experts Exchange who has earned four Genius certificates; his most recent came last week in the Motherboards zone. mwvisa1 has earned his second 1,000,000 point t-shirt in Query Syntax. Finally, two Experts have earned their first Genius certificates: sybe (who joined EE in April, 1997 -- almost at the beginning) in ASP and coolsport00 in VMWare. Outstanding work, all!

Milestones:

• capricorn1 is the fourth member of EE to reach 19,000,000 points in his careeer.
• mlmcc has moved into the seventh spot on the Hall of Fame list by going over 13,000,000 points.
• TheLearnedOne has earned 5,000,000 points in the VB.NET zone; he is one of only two Experts to have 2,000,000 points in each of five zones.
• matthewspatrick has earned 11,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange. He also reached the 5,000,000 point level in Excel.
• oBdA has earned 5,000,000 points in the Windows 2003 Server zone.
• Chris-Dent has joined the 8,000,000 Point Club.
• chapmandew has gone over 7,000,000 points since joining EE.

Kudos: jason1178 came up with a solid answer in keks_'s question about PHP icons in Dreamweaver ("Wow you're right. The width of those rows is actually 400, but it's not explicitly declared in the tr tag. When I add the width attribute to the tr the icons show. I would never have solved this. Thanks!") but what really makes it worth looking at is the image describing the problem.

snowball77 was having some issues with customizing a Joomla search system when a solution was provided by joomla_php: "Brilliant!! You are brilliant girl!! Thank you so much for your help! She is a miracle working this expert!"

ethernet69 got help from alanhardisty in figuring out why an Exchange server was blacklisted: "Alan always gives top-notch advice, and I appreciate having him as a valued resource when I have server issues with my clients."

Mea culpa: teylyn wrote to us a couple of weeks ago after we announced the availability of the new children's shirts, asking "Can someone please shed light on what "2T, 3T, 4T" means? Which one is the bigger? What are the children's average heights/ages for these sizes? Is 2T bigger or smaller than 4T? In Germany and other parts of Europe, children's clothing is sized by body height in centimetres, i.e. 98, 110, 124, 136, etc. In NZ, where I live now, it is categorised by age, i.e. 6yrs, 8yrs, 10yrs." Good point, teylyn. Generally "T" sizes refer to toddlers; the young lady shown at right will be three in a couple of days and is wearing a 2T, while her brother, who turned five a week or so before the photo was taken, is wearing a 4T.

IngoW let us know that a teenager who used Craigslist to trade up from an old cell phone to a Porsche erroneously said that the teen is from the Silicon Valley; he is actually in Glendora (southern California) -- "unless the San Andreas [fault] really went to town."

LAST CALL: The Next Big ThEEng

We mentioned in our last issue the contest at Google Moderator for serious suggestions to improve Experts Exchange that features a couple of pretty special prizes, courtesy of TheLearnedOne. So far: over 50 ideas from over 30 members have been submitted and nearly 400 votes have been cast.

TLO has donated not one, but two Visual Studio.NET Ultimate MSDN subscriptions to the people who come up with the best ideas between now and August 31; the winners will be selected from the top ten vote-getters by our crack panel of judges and announced in the September 8 issue of the EE newsletter. There is no limit to the number of entries, but we will be deleting duplicated entries and ones considered to be less than serious.

This is your chance to tell Experts Exchange what you think needs doing. Don't like the color scheme? Offer ideas for changing it. Have an idea for changing something so it works better? Post it. As long as it is a serious suggestion, it has a chance to be voted into the top ten ideas, and could be one of the two winners, selected by TLO, WhackAMod and Netminder.

Typical disclaimer in teensy type made smaller this time because by now you should have read it: This contest is not endorsed or sponsored by Experts Exchange, Microsoft or Google, nor any of those companies' employees, owners or agents. You must be an Experts Exchange member in good standing to participate, and you must be able to comply with Microsoft's Terms of Use to receive one of the prizes. The decisions of the judges (including those related to eligibility) are final. Winners are required to provide to the judges a valid snail-mail address (so they can send you the subscription voucher); the judges reserve the right to select a different winner if you fail to provide that information in a timely manner. There is no guarantee, implied or expressed, that any idea or suggestion will ever be implemented by Experts Exchange, and in the event your idea is implemented, you have no rights to it, now or at any time in the future. It's just for fun; plus, we really do want to see what the membership at EE comes up with, and it's a way to keep two expensive MSDN subscriptions from going unused.

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Tips From the Moderators

What are all those zones for?

We spend some of our time moving questions around -- usually technical ones, but occasionally those that have something to do with a system at EE. In the interest of making it easier for people to get the help they need, this is a list of what the various Community Support zones are for.

BEFORE you go looking at the questions in these zones, please see the "rules of engagement. Except for the Input zone, if it's not your issue, we would just as soon you not try to "answer" a question, if only because the information you give might not be correct.

New To EE: This one is easy. If you don't know how to do something at EE, just ask it here. Our resident new member specialist modguy will explain it all to you.

EE_Bugs: If you think you've come across something that isn't working the way it's supposed to, this is where you post it. BooMod will help track the bug down and get it filed for fixing, but be prepared to answer a lot of questions.

Suggestions: If you have an idea for a new system, or for improving one that already exists, post it in Suggestions. Just so you know, EE is currently working on a whole raft of major upgrades, so your idea might wind up on the back burner for a while. It could also be already in the works.

New Zones: If you want to see a new topic area, you can ask -- but the zone list is getting a major revision in the next few weeks, so at this point, we'll probably say "no" for a while. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Feedback: Generally speaking, EE is a member-administered website -- one of the very few anywhere -- so most issues get handled by the "Badgers" (the Moderators, Zone Advisors and Page Editors), including complaints about them. If there's something you want to tell Experts Exchange, though, this is where it gets posted.

Input: Also known as Expert Input, this is where you get to talk about the policies and procedures the "Badgers" use. If you're upset that the Moderators don't "refund" your points when you leave your question abandoned, the Input zone is where you can kick the policy around with your fellow members.

General: This is where the action is. When you Request Attention, it gets posted here. If you object to the way someone wants to close a question, same thing. It's the Moderators' zone; we all want to help you, so please be as responsive as possible... and if you're not sure where your question about EE should go, then ask away.

Editors' Choice Articles

The following articles have been 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.

Mappit! - a free Excel model auditing addin
by brettdj:

Using the Switch Function in Microsoft Access
by matthewspatrick:

"We're sorry, Joe, but Steve's the new QB"

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

We don't get into fantasy football all that much (for one thing, it cuts into the middle school basketball season, and we have a championship to defend this year); we have one brother who runs a league, and in the course of doing what passes for "due diligence" -- not a requirement for the league, but still worth doing so you don't draft a guy who retired six months ago -- we came across a list of five bad habits of team managers.

There are times when you have to act like a NFL general manager and tell a player that it's time to either hang it up or move on; we recall the news that Joe Montana -- the nearly-living-legendary quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers -- was told that if he wanted to continue to play football, he should move on to another team, because the 49ers were going to go with Steve Young. You don't necessarily draft someone based on what they did last year; running backs typically only have four or five productive seasons. And one thing he didn't say: that the offensive line, not to mention the defense and special teams, have a lot to do with how successful an offense can be.

We also spent some time reading the mail from our item last issue about Tony Hsieh's talk on the culture he has fostered at Zappos. One item -- a link to a slide presentation by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (thanks, Guy!) -- got our attention, because Hastings spends 120 (!) slides to talk about how Netflix's culture is tied to its success.

So how does that fit in with football? As it turns out -- lots.

Netflix is one of those companies that's in a tight spot. It's profitable (and the curve looks better each year), but its original core business -- DVDs by mail -- is projected to be near its topping-out point; people are turning to streaming video. While Netflix is doing fine in that market, it also has a lot more competitors -- and those competitors have a lot more resources (original content, built-in methods of delivery, and most of all, money to burn). To meet that challenge, Netflix -- and Hastings -- have to constantly come up with new ways of keeping customer satisfaction high, and new ways of delivering its offerings.

And that's where Hastings' slides take off. "Values are what we [emphasis added] value." He notes that Enron had fancy sounding company values; but in Netflix's case, "the real company values are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go."

"Real company values," Hastings writes, "are the behaviors and skills that we particularly value in fellow employees."

Hastings lists nine behaviors in skills (slides 9-21) that his company looks for in its employees. Those people are what he calls "stunning colleagues", and having them makes for a great workplace. It's not "day-care, espresso, sushi lunches, health benefits, nice offices or big compensation", although they'll offer it if that's what it takes to get or keep an outstanding employee. And the company practices what it describes as "adequate performance gets a generous severance package" -- not unlike Hsieh's $2,000 "quit now" bonus for new hires. The concept of "stunning colleagues" -- and the impact that has on other employees -- is both anecdotally and empirically sound. If you and Sam and I all have a good day, then everyone else will feed off that an have a good day as well.

Netflix is a lot like a professional sports team, Hastings says -- and as anyone who follows any professional sports team knows, the job of the coach is to "hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars at every position." At evaluation time, managers ask themselves, "Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months, would I fight to keep?" The rest get that generous severance package.

Loyalty is a little over-rated, Hastings suggests. Yes, you give someone who has hit a slump time to redeem himself and keep the job -- but it's a two-way street; Hastings wants employees who will give the company the same break if it goes a couple of years without winning a conference championship. He isn't terribly concerned about effort; it's the results that matter -- that, and responsibility. Responsible people are self-motivated, self-disciplined and self-improving; they "pick up the trash on the floor" and "behave like an owner." Hastings says that resonsible people thrive on freedom, and that Netflix wants to increase it as the company grows, in order to attract and nurture the innovators it will need to stave off the challenges Netflix faces.

Most companies don't do that; rather, they attempt to control (slides 40-54), and in doing so, stifle the creativity and innovation that got them on the right road to begin with. The complexity that comes with growth and the high performance required to maintain it cannot co-exist with the conservativism that sets in to protect it -- so companies write policy, procedure and operations manuals, and develop complex processes that ensure that someone is held responsible while someone else's ass is covered. What's that old saying? He who laughs last has found someone else to blame.

Hastings says that instead of increasing the complexity of his business by offering more products, it stays focused on doing what it does. It has a few big products -- not a bunch of small, half-baked ones. It eliminates distractions from its mission; it just does what it does better, with more customer satisfaction, than its competitors. And it keeps the whole thing as simple as possible.

Hastings isn't some pie-in-the-sky philanthropist when it comes to his company, though. He knows that high performing employees don't make a lot of mistakes, and when they do, they correct them quickly; creativity demands the allowance for something going wrong. He avoids "rules" like the plague; "we get rid of rules when we can." He cites the company's policy on vaction time; vacations aren't based on how many days or weeks or hours you work. There's simply no policy -- which means no expense in keeping track, and no policy to enforce. If you've gotten the job done, then you have the time to take off. The company's entire policy on expensing, travel, entertainment and gifts: "Act in Netflix's best interests."

Netflix manages to context (slides 77-82) and outcomes, and lets its employees fill in the blanks. Everyone has a job to do (like the offensive tackle who protects the quarterback's blind side). Everyone knows the goal, and how its attainment will be measured. Everyone knows why a certain play will get called in a certain situation. Then they go out and get it done. "High performance people will do better work," Hastings writes, "if they understand the context."

Hastings does talk about how Netflix pays (slides 93-105). Unlike a lot of tech firms, Netflix pays pretty healthy salaries based on what it would cost to replace an employee. There are benefits, but most of what would otherwise be spent on them is just rolled into the paycheck; there are no bonuses and no free stock options. "Give people big salaries, and the freedom to spend as they think best." And there is an annual compensation review that is also based on what it would cost to replace. It's good for stability; people are being paid more than they can get in a similar position elsewhere.

The presentation ends with the statement that "culture is how a firm operates." Hastings says that Netflix needs a culture that supports both "rapid innovation and excellent execution" -- two concepts frequently at odds with each other. It needs a culture that supports the "effective teamwork of high performance people" -- again, two concepts that are apparent contradictions. And it needs a culture that "avoids the rigidity, politics, mediocrity and complacency that infects most organizations as they grow."

Which makes the soap opera that is currently engulfing Netflix neighbor Hewlett-Packard all that more interesting. In case you missed it, Mark Hurd -- brought in to stabilize and refocus the company following Carly Fiorina's curious acquisition of Compaq, followed by its board chairwoman being forced out by misconduct charges -- was unceremoniously dumped as CEO a couple of weeks ago for having an improper relationship with a contractor. HP certainly performed better under Hurd than it did under his predecessors, but as Ars Technica noted in a story on tech giants, "it does some interesting things, and we cover them on a regular basis, but the things we cover aren't likely to be the ones that drive the company's profitability." In the meantime, its best and most valuable employees hate their jobs and are looking elsewhere.

In short, the drive to control has stifled the drive to innovate -- and while for the time being H-P will continue to be a player, it's not, by any means, a growth company... and forget about the values Bill Hewlett started the company with. He doesn't own it any more -- even if his name is still on it.

More News and Notes

How to make most of us feel like complete idiots: All you have to do is get some spare computing time -- about 35 CPU-years worth -- from a company that has a lot of it, and you, too, can take the world's most popular puzzle/toy and turn it into no fun at all. On the other hand, the version they used as a starting point is pretty cool. And while we're talking about fun, spend a minute or two and find a word to save. Our current favorites: panchymagogue, colaphize and veteratorian.

No, this isn't related -- but it could be: Intel agreed to buy McAfee for $7.68 billion, which caused rival AMD's stock price to drop about two per cent while Symantec's went up by about three per cent. The big questions: Will the Oakland Coliseum (which still has McAfee's name all over it) renegoitate the naming rights to fix the budget? Will Larry Ellison, who lost out on buying the Golden State Warriors but has Oracle's name all over the adjoining arena, try to buy Intel? Or even Oakland? And who will Al Davis sue? Maybe he can ask the RIAA (which still thinks everyone else should do its dirty work. Also from McAfee: Cameron Diaz is the most dangerous person in cyberspace (sorry, WAM!).

Forget Big Brother: Faceborg has released Places, its answer to Foursquare and Gowalla, in yet another attempt to become as much a part of your life as breathing. Oh, well. It's your privacy you're giving up, not mine. As a public service, however, here's how to not creep out your friends and how to keep them from creeping you out, along with the top ten fixes for Faceborg.

Rumors of my death redux: We mentioned last issue that Wired editor Chris Anderson was going to publish an article that said the Web is dead. In fairness, we should also note that both ValleyWag, Boing Boing, the Washington Post and the New York Times thought it was a classic example of making a mountain out of a molehill. Harry McCracken just thought it was silly. Also not quite dead yet: Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

Contest update: In addition to the contest noted above, you have only a couple of weeks left to win an iPad for the best redesign of American money.

Legal notices: Oracle wants a piece of Google over Android. Someone will sue everyone over the Google/Verizon net neutrality proposal. Goldman-Sachs paid a $550 million fine, which is a drop in the bucket. The US justice department wants more information from ISPs without warrants. And finally, the late Senator Everett Dirksen once noted, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." Apparently, he should have moved the decimal point over.

We can't wait: The next installment of the Star Trek Faceborg saga happens in about a month with the debut of The Social Network at the New York Film Festival. We're waiting with the same anticipation we feel for the next Jennifer Aniston movie (see "Chewed-On Theory No. 3" about halfway down). Speaking of which, the "fake dislike button" add-on for Faceborg isn't fake. Meanwhile, another big web firm is going to be getting the Hollywood treatment, while another social networking film will also start showing up in theaters this fall.

Yes, but is it art? Seat savers, pencil tips, and the flight attendant who quit by sliding down the emergency chute, certainly one of the more artistic resignations in recent times. One of my favorites involves a woman who faxed her boss in California saying she wouldn't be in that morning -- from Ireland.

New Apple device can spot a jailbreaker: Apple has applied a patent for a "method" that will detect unauthorized users of iOS devices through, among other things, voice print analysis, photo analysis, heartbeat analysis and "noting particular activities that can indicate suspicious behavior." Too bad they couldn't use it to identify the people responsible for a SQL injection attack, a manager indicted for taking kickbacks, or the iPhone app process manager who likes "escort services".

It's about time: We just finished up what amounts to a two-month long road trip that involved hotels, airlines, theme parks, restaurants and even a few visits to hardware stores, and all along the way, we were asked for one card or another; sometimes I think I need to exchange my wallet for one of those old business card holders the size of the operations manual for some chain store. Relief is in sight, perhaps; Verizon just pumped a little money into a start-up that wants to keep track of it all for you. Now if they'd just pump some money into being honest about bandwidth speeds, I might be marginally happy for a while.

Sign of the Apocalypse: South Korea is blocking North Korea's Twitter account and Faceborg page (both of which North Korea denies are theirs), and Google Refresh.

Nata's Corner

The latest scam out there is targeting members of LinkedIn.com, the site a lot of people use to keep in touch with contacts from years gone by without having to put up with cutesy games and photographs of your aunt Suzie's cat. The scam is an "invitation to join my network", and when you click on the link, you're sent to one of those sites that installs malware on your computer. The people at LinkedIn tell you to not accept invitations from people you don't know -- but in this Facebook/Twitter world, where you think you're judged by the number of friends you have and not the quality of your interactions with them, it's a good bet that a lot of people will get caught up in it. It's the nature of the beast.

I have to admit that a lot of the articles at Experts Exchange are over my head technically, but DrDamnit posted one over the weekend that I really enjoyed reading. It's especially useful for anyone who has been stuck cleaning up the mess made by someone who doesn't pay much attention to what s/he does on the Internet, and I highly recommend reading it. Oh, and despite the name, he's a very nice guy too. Speaking of cleaning up the mess, you can't resist an article that describes security mistakes as "dumber than dog snot" (thanks, Susan!).

I saw a post by one of the Badgers recently that said the flash drive he got from EE a couple of years ago had failed, which got me wondering about mine (which I don't use all that often) and my other half's (which he uses all the time), and how long it would be before he either "borrowed" mine or broke out one of the half dozen or so others people have given him. It turns out that generally speaking, they can last a very long time (newer ones have an expectancy of 10,000 to 10,000,000 write and erase operations, depending on the manufacturer, size and conditions, so I don't think I'm going to worry about it for another couple of years -- unless he spills coffee on it.

Oh, and that photo at the right? It was taken in 1956, and shows a 5mb hard drive for the IBM 305 RAMAC computer. And for those of you too young to remember, Pan American Airlines ceased operations in 1991.

New Certificates