Nata's Corner

Not that most of you will ever have any reason to use this, but if you open the Windows 7 calculator through the command box (Start --> calc) and then select the Scientific view, you can use the p key on your keyboard to get a slice of Pi.

Last issue, I had a little item about Sanford Wallace, AKA the Spam King, and how he'd been arrested and charged with a bunch of felonies related to his spamming. One of the groups of people he used to spam for was Canadian pharmacies -- you are probably still getting spam from them, because it's a big business, and the cost of sending millions of emails is so low. How big? Well, last week, Google agreed to a $500,000,000 (that's half a billion dollars) fine for selling advertising to the same Canadian pharmacies. So... just to make sure... bypassing US regulations isn't evil? Can I quote you next April with the other half does the taxes?

Back in March, RSA, the company that makes those administrative tokens to access sensitive networks, had its servers breached, and that created all kinds of problems, including breaches at Morgan Stanley, the big financial services company, and HBGary, the company hired by Morgan Stanley to investigate the breaches. It turns out that the original breach was caused when an employee at RSA's parent company, EMC, opened a 13-word email that was a phishing attempt. One. It cost RSA at least $66 million in the April-June quarter alone, plus who knows how much damage it's done to their business.

The other half was an economics major for a while, and he loves explaining things to me in terms of supply and demand. HP kind of got a lesson in that last week after they announced a couple of weeks ago that they were discontinuing production of their WebOS devices at the end of September. The first thing that happened was that retailers cut the price to $99, which caused people to buy them like they were penny candy. That reduced the supply on eBay to increase in price to as high as $300 -- about 60 per cent of the $499 list price. Maybe that should tell people something about the prices they set for electronic devices.

Unemployment rates are dropping slightly (unless you're a worker laid off by the government) as more private sector jobs are being created, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be smart about what you put on your resume... or your Facebook page. Like it or not, people are going to do searches and background checks, so it might not be a good idea to post those funny pictures of you at your cousin's Halloween party.

Finally, and I know I'm going to get in trouble for this, but one of the people in the office said that EE was doing a password audit, and found that a marketing intern was using the following password: "MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento". When asked why he had such a long password, he rolled his eyes and said: "Hello! It has to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital." You can't make this stuff up, honest.

Kudos

thinkpads_user on QuickBooks: thinkpads_user has become one of the more ... ubiquitous Experts, at least to the Moderators, who have become accustomed to his occasional expressions of frustration. But he is also a talented Expert, as tranvangiang17 found out when he had some questions about some apparently damaged accounts in Quickbooks: "He is not ranked GENIUS for nothing!!! Thanks guy."

mark_wills on SQL Server: mark_wills, in additon to being a Page Editor and Zone Advisor for pretty much anything having to do with databases, is also a Microsoft MVP in SQL Server, and his insanely detailed response to gberkeley's question about parsing responses to questions shows why. The answer selected includes four code snippets and refers to articles he wrote over two years ago. "It's a crying shame I can't award you a million points!!!! Your assistance has been so very helpful - I cannot thank you enough. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!"

In Brief

Yes, but is it art: Ten Google logos that won't get approved by Larry Page. And since Steve Jobs quit, you won't see this from most iPods either.

That time of year: Burning Man started Monday. Silicon Valley geeks know the drill.

Lost in the shuffle: Amid all the sound and fury surround the resignation of Steve Jobs, you probably missed the news that CmdrTaco left Slashdot. Since the former only emailed a few folks, we're betting Rob Malda will actually be missed more.

What happens when you hit soft green cheese with a big ham?: The Big Splat.

Okay, so it's a little late for my birthday... but it's not too late to order me one as a Christmas present. Jus' sayin'. Also, compfixer101 graciously took the time to remind me exactly how old I am. Out of kindness, we won't reveal how many had to be explained to him.

Okay, this could get weird: Google is working on taking what you search for today, and using that information to help you with next year's searches. So, if you were a Mickey Mouse Club fan in the early 90s, you would be looking at something entirely different 20 years later, but Google will know.

This never would have happened when Steve was running things: (Yes, we know this came out before Steve Jobs resigned, but it makes for a great tag line.) Even though Lion is the most secure version of the Mac OS X operating system yet, Black Hat reserchers say that Macs in enterprise networks are "inherently insecure".

Oh, and in case you didn't know it: Your web server is probably vulnerable to being shut down.

Of course. How else would they know what ads you really want: Google says that if you want to use Google+, you have to say who you really are. Which is going to send Netminder into an existential crisis, because he says he's really who he says he is.

For all you n00bs out there: Seven sure-fire ways to get unfollowed on Twitter; they forgot #8: Follow Fridays and not slapping Twitter spammers. Also, the glossary.

Signs of the Apocalypse: What happens when you need more money than donations bring in? You sell out, find a venture capitalist or just start charging people when they don't use your service. Also, zorvek sent us a sign that is right on schedule.

Milestones

New Geniuses: Most issues, we would be highlighting the achievements of the two people who earned their third Genius certificates, but we're going to make an exception lead off this issue's list with someone who has earned his first: strung, who by reaching the level in the Apple OS topic area, became the first member of Experts Exchange to earn 1,000,000 points in any Apple technology. Picking up their third Genius certificates were alanhardisty in Outlook and leakim971 in Jquery. Earning their first Genius t-shirts were LZ1 in Cascading Style Sheets and billprew in VB Script. Our thanks and congratulations to all of you!

Milestones:

• CEHJ has earned 12,000,000 points in the Java topic area.
• mwvisa1 has has reached the 5,000,000 point level overall since joining EE.
• CodeCruiser reached the 7,000,000 point level.
• Merete has earned 6,000,000 points since joining EE.
• mkline71 has earned 4,000,000 points in the Active Directory topic area.