Experts Exchange Newsletter

New Genius: emoreau has earned his Genius certificate in the Visual Basic zone. Congratulations, emoreau!

Another MVP: Mikal613, the Zone Advisor for Handhelds and one of the ZAs for Digital Living, has been named as a Microsoft MVP for Device Development. Nice work!

From the Inbox: Nata had an item a few weeks ago about the recent trend towards PDF spam, and another regarding the development of tools to break CAPTCHA security. That prompted a reply from Havin_it:

It's been remarked (I forget where) that there is a relation between these two developments. OCR (optical character recognition) methods can be used on hi-end mail routers to "read" and detect image spam. This is even possible with PDF-wrapped images as they can be programmatically extracted (when a text PDF is used, this step isn't needed).

On the other hand, CAPTCHA methods protect webmasters (and their users) by making it difficult to perform accurate OCR on an image. It then requires a human eye to read the data, thwarting mere programs from creating accounts for their masters' nefarious purposes.

However, those masters then use CAPTCHA techniques in the image-spam they churn out as a sideline, making it hard/impossible to determine if the image is spam.

If the mailserver admins then improve their OCR tech, that innovation helps the spammers to crack more web accounts with their bots.

What an ideal situation for the spammers. Because they operate within these two very different spheres, any setback in one will be an advance in the other. I wonder if any readers could suggest another example of such a "negative feedback loop"?

Kudos: RobWill, who was renamed to the Microsoft MVP list a few weeks ago, posted a note about a comment from HilltownHealthCenter: "Enrolling on this site just keeps on proving to be one of the best decisions I have ever made over the course of my career!" Even more effusive was ElrondCT. Thanks to all for your gracious comments.

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gregoryyoung, the Zone Advisor for the Developer zones, is a Microsoft MVP who has developed applications for industries ranging from parimutuel wagering to satellite imagery.

There has been a theme floating through various blogs of what individuals intend to do to become better developers. Usually people include books or specific bits of knowledge that they wish to obtain. To me the best way to become a better developer is to gain broad knowledge through experience, knowledge gained through experience tends to last much longer and includes better fundamental understanding that knowledge gained from other sources such as reading or a course.

Answering questions can give you loads of experience in a very diverse problem set. At some point in the future it is quite likely that you will see a similar problem come up again. Questions are also good at showing you what you don't know; if you don't know the answer, subscribe to the question to see if someone else has an answer or do a bit of research on it on your own.

Beginning to answer questions can be a nerve-racking experience. There are a lot of very high level experts in the various zones who can be intimidating to a 'new' expert. So how do you make the move from asker to answerer?

Often times people have more knowledge than they give themselves credit for. Switch to expert mode and look at the questions that are currently open. If you think that you know an answer try to find supporting evidence that agrees with you. The Experts Exchange search as well as Google searches and MSDN documentation can be invaluable in finding supporting information.

Once you have jumped into the deep end, assess your skills. What percentage of questions that you look at are you answering? Are there certain areas that you feel very comfortable in and others which you feel less? Pick an area you are less confident in and start learning about it. This knowledge will also be valuable in your work environment.

As an example, a long time ago I got into some LDAP integration questions. I knew a little about LDAP, and I had even used Active Directory for authentication, but in dealing with questions I realized that I had barely even scratched the surface of what I could do with it, such as adding custom properties and so on. Over a few months I gave myself a crash course in LDAP and eventually I found use for it at my day job.

Frequently people start answering questions and go on a question-answering sprint for a few months. Remember that this is a process that takes a long time. Start off slow; the first month is like the first mile of a marathon except there probably won't even be someone holding water for you at the end of it. Try to answer a few posts a day, when you see comments in your posts read them. The key here is not to go overboard; start with low-hanging fruit. If you desire to have as many points as objects or angelIII or jkr, just remember that they have gotten to their ranks through years of contributions.

Points are one way of measuring your results but I think they make for a poor indicator. After some period of time compare yourself against your former self (and Sartre fans need not put up an argument here). Go to your profile and look at accepted answers from a few months ago. Think about how you would answer that question now; is it different? New knowledge and/or experiences will change your viewpoint on things. By looking back at how you answered questions then compared to how you answer the question now, you can see what has changed (this is especially true when you look at your previous answer and think 'ugh what was I thinking').

Over time you will learn more and more by being exposed to further new situations. Remember to keep viewing your results. As additional time goes by your self and your former self should become more and more distant. Chances are after a year you have become the expert you used to look up to!

Aside from helping others along the way, by answering other's questions you will become what is highly sought after in most fields (especially for developers): Someone who has deep knowledge in a few areas but has a broad understanding of many areas including areas that are up and coming.

Not that we're terribly surprised that the torrent sites are under attack; they make it too easy for too many people to create "evaluation" copies of software and movies to share with anyone who wants to download them. It was predictable that the technology would be created, and equally predictable that the people who make money by selling software and movies would do everything they can to shut the file-sharing companies down.

We've poked fun at the movie and recording industry almost relentlessly; frankly, we think that the tactics of filing lawsuits against users for sums of money far in excess of actual damages -- which has caused people to cave in rather than fight, most of the time -- is a particularly poor tactic when it comes to solving the problems related to copyright violations. We think that the bad PR resulting from suing disabled single mothers and multiple sclerosis victims far outweighs any benefit the industries might gain in the way of discouraging others. We think the movie and recording industries have a tendency to ... ummm ... overstate their actual losses, to put it politely. And we think that if it didn't cost so much to go to the movies, and if they were better movies to begin with, the problem would be even less of an issue (to them) than it really is.

But what happened earlier this week is much more of a concern to us than some bad behavior by an industry clearly out of touch with technology (has anyone seen The Net?) A judge in the MPAA's lawsuit against TorrentSpy has said that emails obtained by the MPAA can be used against it. In a case that would do Charles W. Kingfield Jr. proud, a former associate of the TorrentSpy founders, Robert Anderson, rigged the TorrentSpy email servers to send copies of all company emails to his Gmail account. Anderson then sold the emails to the MPAA for the princely sum of $15,000.

TorrentSpy was told by the court that the MPAA could use the information in its suit. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled that the MPAA had not violated federal wiretapping laws when it bought the information. We don't have a problem with that; it might be against the law for the federal government to use information gained through questionable methods, but the MPAA can't put you in jail.

It's the logical conclusion that concerns us. Our ISP is a big one with strong reasons to keep the motion picture industry happy (they run big cable systems which carry a lot of movies); how long will it be before ComCast decides it's in its best interest to start sharing logs with the MPAA? We get email through a small, local ISP; what happens to us when some big association representing huge movie studios sues for their logs? And how small will the step be to sharing that information with anyone else?

Cross-posting -- one of the features that debuted with the current version of Experts Exchange back in February -- is arguably the one system that has been both a boon to members, and at the same time the cause of the most confusion. It allows the asker of a question to post it in up to three zones, but with that comes a few issues that aren't always clear.

The most common question concerns what happens to the points, because the lists on the Expert tab -- the My Participated Questions and the Filter results -- and the notifications only show one of the zones a question is listed in. Once the question is answered, it also only shows up with one zone on your Answer history as well. So the natural concern is that you have received points in a zone you really don't care much about, depending on where the question was asked.

Here's the deal. When the question is cross-posted, and if you are awarded an Answer or an Assist, you will receive points in each of the zones, but you will only receive points added to your overall total once. Here's how you can check: When you receive your first "Good Answer" email of the day, go to your profile, and click on Zone Rank. Then enter the date you received the notification -- don't filter for any zones -- then click Go.

While we're on the subject, your filter results will also occasionally show questions asked in zones that aren't part of your filter criteria. The reason is again cross-posting; if someone asks a question in the HTML, ASP and Javascript zones, and your filter looks for questions in ASP, it will show up on the list, even if the "primary" zone is one of the other two. When you look at the question, you will see all three zones listed.

Fourth Amendment still not repealed: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to let the Bush administration use the "it's so secret that we can't tell you about it" argument as a way of avoiding answering the question of whether it engaged in domestic warrantless wiretapping. At issue is whether lawsuits against AT&T alleging its complicity can proceed.

Who's doing what to whom revealed: Wikipedia is one of those great ideas that suffers the slings and arrows is its own outrageous fortune. Anyone is able to edit virtually anything, which means that while it is generally a decent compilation of information for non-controversial subjects, its NPOV (Neutral Point Of View) guideline sometimes gets ignored by someone with an axe to grind. Add to that the relative anonymity of a username -- does anyone REALLY know who Netminder is? -- and you get the picture: the PR flacks for the recording and movie industry can make sure that references to suing 12-year-olds and disabled grandmothers are removed. Now, there is a way to track who is doing the editing.

Would you buy a used voting machine from this man? Diebold, which has been under fire for years now about the reliability of its voting machines, failed to find a buyer for the division of the company that manufactures the machines. Fortunately for Diebold, their major competitor isn't faring much better.

Keeping the lights burning: Just because we like getting mail on the subject, here's an interview with the guy who invented the compact fluorescent lightbulb.

Best line of the last couple of weeks: Steve Wozniak, the "other guy" at Apple, is now into building efficient buildings... which isn't that far removed from developing software or creating websites:

Simple design. Think about the right way to build something and take a lot of time to get it the best that can be done with the fewest resources used. No waste. Build it right and with few parts it does a lot. Don't cover things with more and more and more technology for features. Design them in from the start. It starts with the architect, of a home or a computer, working from a knowledge of the building materials and a desire to choose wisely.

Second best line of the week: c|net had a story about how IT managers are taking their sweet time about upgrading to Vista. AnnieMod may have figured out why: "I think the only thing that MS makes sure of is that any virus can work on the new OS -- they do not care about the programs." The Chinese Olympic Committee apparently agrees.

And no playing with your Gameboy, either: Scott McCausland, one of the administrators of the EliteTorrents P2P network and a devoted Linux user, has been told that he can't use a computer unless it is running Windows. Now that hurts.

Last week, I had an link to an article that said that the Government Accounting Office doesn't think identity theft is much of a problem. Right. But it seems the people who steal are finally beginning to answer the question, "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" There's a report that the Manhattan district attorney's office has indicted five people who were stealing the identities of people on the Forbes 400 list. I don't think that's going to stop them from trying to get to me, even if I don't have the money to invest in their penny stocks.

Speaking of which, the bill for having credit card data stolen from TJ Maxx is now ten times what it was just three months ago when company estimated the costs. The $256 million TJ Maxx is now talking about doesn't include the damages from potential lawsuits or the possible fines the government will slap them with.

We mentioned a few weeks ago about how MySpace managed to help bring down notorious spammer Sanford Wallace. I'm still waiting for someone, somewhere to actually DO something about this guy. It seems reasonable that if MySpace, for all of the issues surrounding it, can go after him, then so can the people who run Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. It's not enough that they filter out the spam; I think they should spend a little chunk of their billions to go after the perpetrators, especially since they're finding new ways of getting past the filters.