Nata's Corner

We are all saddened by the loss of Steve Jobs last week. I admit that I'm not the most adept person when it comes to Apple products, but at the same time there's no question that he made a huge impact on what we all do every day. Unfortunately, there are people out there who will take any opportunity to scam people. You have to wonder who they can live with themselves.

Bank of America announced that it is going to start debit card users every month, and the reaction from its customers was predictably unhappy about the fees, but BofA isn't even the first bank to start charging, and a few people have started actually doing something about it while some other people who aren't necessarily customers think it's a huge mistake.

First it was Oracle's Java that the Mozilla people thought about blocking, because of a vulnerability related to SSLs. Then about a week later, Mozilla blocked the McAfee plug-in beccause it causes the browser to crash "excessively".

The US government has discovered that a keylogger has been introduced into the Air Force drone fleet being used in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As if thet isn't bad enough, the Air Force is having trouble getting rid of it, and specialists can't even tell if it's done any damage. And while I'm thinking about things that are annoying, Forbes magazine had an article about all the information Facebook keeps on you, and true to form, Gawker borrowed some instructions from Reddit to tell you (if you're in Europe or know someone there) what you can do about it.

Finally, if you happened to be a member of Borders Rewards, the bankrupt company's list was purchased by Barnes & Noble, and you have only until October 15 to opt out of B&N's membership system. Barnes & Noble is offering Border's members through January 31. Also, if you're as irked about all of Facebook's new features as I am, the San Jose Mercury-News published a guide.

The Quarterly Leaders

The people who are at the top of the various leaderboards for the second quarter of 20111 are listed below.

In Brief

Just a little perspective: The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, whose toe-to-toe confrontations with racism in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s led directly to the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, died in Birmingham Wednesday, October 5. He was 89. Other things soon to reside only in our memories: Rambo nemesis Murdoch, AKA Charles Napier; Eastman Kodak (you tried, Mr Simon, but apparently the Microsoft Zune is done too); and evenually, life, the universe and everything.

The Book of Jobs: Steve Jobs wasn't a saint; he was a brilliant man who had the exuberance to build a company, the arrogance to lose it, and the audacity to bring it back from the near dead -- and along the way, he managed to oversee the reinvention of industries and products and the way we communicate. Love him or hate him, love Apple or hate it (the two have been inseparable), one thing is undeniable: Apple started rotting when Mr Jobs was pushed out, and got healthy when he came back, and the products and services created under his watch have changed the world. That alone is worth all of the millions of words that have been written in the past week.

"Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction," Mr Jobs said. He didn't steer -- that's what his executives were for. He didn't plug the holes; he had engineers and designers and HR departments for that. He barely sold anything; he didn't have to, because he knew that whatever he came up with people were going to want it -- and yes, you can point to the Lisa or the Newton as colossal flops, but you can also make the case they were just ahead of their time. But the Mac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad? Say what you want, but if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then other manufacturers were following Mr Jobs like lemmings to the sea.

What Mr Jobs brought to the table was that he was an incomparable leader. Depending on who you believe, he had either prophetic insight into what people would want, or he had the force of will to impose his vision of products onto others by the millions; when push comes to shove, it doesn't really matter, because if one takes him at his word -- that he wanted to build incredible, amazing products -- then by either measure he was successful.

Some of the more notable items from last week:

• The New York Times obituary.
• Mr Jobs' commencement address at Stanford.
• A Quora engineer contributed a crossword puzzle as a tribute
• Wired magazine's obituary
• All Things Digital's collection of interviews
• The tech world (and others) share their thoughts by email and Twitter plus Walt Mosberg and our own Jason Levine
• Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the YouTube nation, and The Onion's uniquely touching commentary

And the winner is... The IgNobel Prizes have been released.

Not what they had in mind: Apple announced the iPhone 4S -- but not the iPhone 5 -- to less-than-enthusiastic reviews, which might open the door a little for Android. You can pre-order one Friday.

Ooops: Netflix changed its mind.

Bringing down a botnet: Microsoft convinced a federal court to order the shutdown of 21 domains that caused the dismantling of the Kelihos botnet -- but overlooked the fact that Kapersky Lab did most of the heavy lifting in actually shutting down the botnet.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Best Help Wanted ad of the week: And if you're looking, a few companies at which you might consider applying.

It's not like we didn't know this was coming: AT&T is starting to throttle high bandwidth users. That is... they're limiting users' access to the Internet. We know they have a reputation.

Sign of the Apocalypse: A pattent on booing the Yankees. Or the Phillies -- take your pick. Or simply check your emotional baggage if you're a Dodgers fan. It's all the emoticon's fault. Also, Google hosts malware. Microsoft agrees.

Milestones

New Genius: hanccocka has become the first Expert to earn 1,000,000 points in the Virtualization topic area; it is his second Genius certificate. Congratulations!

My First Million: Three members of Experts Exchange reached the 1,000,000 point level for their careers last month. They are Neilsr, ded9 and Bill-Hanson. Well done!

Milestones:

• capricorn1 has become the second member of Experts Exchange to reach 19,000,000 points in a single topic area. He achieved the level in Microsoft Access.
• matthewspatrick has reached the 4,000,000 point level in Microsoft Access; he is the fourth EE member to reach that level in more than one topic area.
• Ray_Paseur has earned over 8,000,000 points in the PHP Scripting topic area.
• acperkins reached the 6,000,000 point level in Microsoft SQL Server. Only two other Experts have earned that many points in that topic area.
• leakim971 and garycase have both earned 8,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange.
• schwertner has earned 4,000,000 points in the Oracle topic area, more than any other Expert.