Experts Exchange Newsletter

What's New at Experts Exchange

New Geniuses: frodoman joined the list of Geniuses recently, becoming the second member of Experts Exchange to reach that rank in the Crystal Reports topic area.
A few weeks ago, we mentioned a couple of experts who had reached the Double-Genius level; now we have one who has reached the Triple-Genius level in Java -- congratulations, objects on a job well done. We also want to mention two new Double-Genius members -- shanesuebsahakarn in Microsoft Access, and CEHJ, also in Java, and before our next newsletter, fritz_the_blank will probably reach that mark in Active Server Pages.
Experts in action: We came across a question about IIS security that is a must-read for anyone who runs a Microsoft web server. It's also a great example of members from around the world working together to keep a problem from spreading.
Browser wars: It's official: the battle between Microsoft and the rest of the world for control of the way you view websites is back. A review in c|net gives the nod to Mozilla's Firefox for a number of reasons -- notably its non-support of Active X controls commonly used by hackers -- but the best reason may be the last one they mention. According to c|net, Microsoft is only going to upgrade IE6 for XP users who have SP2 installed; everyone else gets IE6 with SP1, and that's the end of the line. Microsoft, predictably, doesn't think Firefox is a threat.
O/S wars: Linspire, the company formerly known as Lindows, announced last month that it will begin including technology called Hot Words in its Linux-based internet suite of products. The Hot Words search, which is embedded in the Linspire version of the operating system, opens a popup when you highlight a word; it also has a built-in spellchecker, among other things. A c|net article on the story notes that Microsoft dropped a similar idea for Windows XP when the O/S was released in 2001.
Search wars: Microsoft announced its new search engine last week, but the news was overshadowed a bit when Google's little tag line about how many pages it indexes doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion overnight. Google doesn't say on its site what caused the jump, but we can't help but wonder what we've been missing for all these years.
Just in time for Christmas: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced last week that a supercomputer built for it by IBM attained a record breaking performance of 70.72 teraFLOP/s (trillion floating point operations per second). LLNL will use the computer to "ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile without underground nuclear testing." The system cost $100,000,000; there was no report of whether Bill Gates ordered one for the next Windows release.
Microsoft and Xbox: Halo 2, the newest release for Microsoft's online videogame service (Xbox Live), might well be an acronym for Hacked Access Lock Out. Online forums were flooded last week with notes that the MS service checks for modifications to the original hardware, and if it finds any, blocks the user from using the service.
Chat room study: A little story from the Associated Press didn't get a lot of play last month, but for the last couple of weeks, web forums have been all over a study of chat room surveillance funded by the National Science Foundation. Next stop for the NSF: The EE Lounge.

Your questions and solutions

The asker has figured out how to find some of the processes he wants to have function, and has found them in his Windows/ System folder. But there are other processes he can't find or enumerate, and he wants to do so without using a compontent.

Points: 500 Nov 11, 2004 06:49PM PST

Can you help?

Still open: How can I get printer infomation?

"I need to obtain printer information (like paper name, paper size ...) from windows printers."

Points: 500 Jul 16, 2004 02:05PM PDT

Can you help?

Debugging with MAP file

"I have created a small test project only for debug purposes that triggers a Access Violation error. From this error I would like to use the instruction address provided by the application error and the corresponding MAP file for the application to find the source code line generating the error... From the MAP file and AV instruction address how can I find the line number responsible for the error and maybe the name of the variable not initilized???"

Points: 500 Nov 09, 2004 10:57PM PST

View the solution

From the Page Editor: A Beginner's Guide To Delphi

This is a good guide to someone who is just beginning to learn Delphi programming. It takes you through the fundamentals, including the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the Object Pascal language, and uses some practical examples to help you learn.

Featured Experts

rllibby

If you don't post in the Delphi TA, you might not ever see rllibby; he doesn't venture into vary many other topic areas. But he's well-known and respected for his work and collaborative skills.

Registration Date: May 23, 2001

Expert Points: 369663

Certificates: Wizard, Delphi Programming

Workshop_Alex

Workshop_Alex has been around for a while; he started programming in Pascal in 1984, and gravitated to Delphi when it was released ten years later. According to his profile, he loves his job, but he's always open to suggestion. But be prepared; the electricity bill for his computers has to be pretty significant.

Registration Date: June 9, 2000

Expert Points: 277687

Certificates: Guru, Delphi Programming

kretzschmar

The Page Editor for Delphi has been around EE for some time, and has more tenure than most of EE's active Experts. He was introduced to the IT world by an ex-girlfriend ("she could operate computers, and I was impressed"), so he started studying at night, then got a job running a network and started programming. He now works for a large distribution company, working mostly in Oracle, but still considers Delphi/Pascal his favorite coding language.

Registration Date: October 5, 1998

Expert Points: 1069603

Certificates: Genius, Delphi Programming

Tip from the Page Editors: Use the search engine at Experts Exchange. There aren't very many questions that haven't been asked before, in a lot of cases, so it's quite possible that the answer you're looking for is already there. It's not a bad idea for Experts either; if you sign your posts a particular way, you can type in your "signature" and a few keywords and find a question you answered some time ago without looking through your entire profile.

One of the least-known new features at Experts Exchange is our new Link Exchange. Our Link Exchange program is beneficial to both sites in a couple ways:

The number of resources available to users on both sites will increase
Site relevance is increased within all major search engines when a site provides links to and from quality resources

If you would like to swap links with EE, just fill out the form at the Link Exchange page.

Nata's Corner: A nasty new virus

woman in specticals One of the other newsletters I get reported last week that a nasty new virus, originally thought to be a variant of the MyDoom virus, has hit computers. Called Bofra, there are at least two variants -- one has what looks like a link to one of "those" sites, but it's the second that should worry people. The Bofra-B version looks like an email confirming payment from you to someone using PayPal. While the email doesn't look anything like anything I've ever gotten from PayPal -- the yellow background and red lettering looks pretty phony -- it's only a matter of time.

Sophos also announced that it has discovered the Banker-AJ trojan residing on computers used by a number of banks in Britain. eBay and Amazon have also been recent targets.

Speaking of viruses and worms and stuff, the first significant Internet worm made its debut sixteen years ago last week. The Morris worm -- a research project that was designed to be self-replicating -- overloaded thousands of Unix-based VAX and Sun Microsystems systems. At the time, the Internet was mostly universities and the military, but once the can of -- well, worms -- was opened, it's never been closed.

Lavasoft, the company that makes the popular Ad-Aware software, has announced that it isn't going to support version 6 any longer, and has urged users to upgrade to the SE version. It's still free for personal users.

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Inside the numbers

ameba, one of EE's prominent Experts, provides us with a list of newly earned Certificates. His list of all of the Certified Experts is located at his site. The list below covers the period from October 31 through November 14.

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
flavo dannywareham harfang Bat17 jimbobmcgee mcmonap SashP rdrunner sigmacon apirnia pique_tech rbohac LRHGuy petmagdy sirbounty Debsyl99 1stITMAN robrandon Mikal613 SteH Sys_Prog mrwad99 SheharyaarSaahil nobus	Sage Guru Master Master Master Guru Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Wizard Guru Guru Master Guru Guru Guru Master Master Master	MS Access MS Access MS Access MS Access Visual Basic Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Delphi Delphi Java Windows 2000 Windows 2000 Windows 2000 Windows 2000 .NET C++ C++ C++ Hardware Hardware

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
DoTheDEW335 LucF alandc nobus tosh9iii leew morphman konektor PsiCop JammyPak LeeTutor ptmcomp NipNFriar_Tuck jeverist MalicUK coreybryant meintsi Zyloch vickerleung hsmtp armoghan arif_eqbal Timbo87 AerosSaga	Master Wizard Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Wizard Guru Master Guru Guru Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Master Sage	Hardware Windows XP Windows XP Windows XP Windows XP Windows XP Oracle Oracle Networking Networking Windows 98 C# C# Excel Excel Web Development Outlook PHP Flash Flash VB.NET VB.NET VB.NET ASP.NET

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
mmarinov Thogek Henka madheeswar frodoman rhinok Idle_Mind vinnyd79 jkr meyersd SheharyaarSaahil Dr-IP keneso GrahamSkan ronan_40060 periwinkle hhammash Tintin rid Lowfatspread GwynforWeb SheharyaarSaahil rid lrmoore	Sage Guru Master Guru Genius Master Guru Guru Guru Master Guru Master Master Guru Master Master Guru Guru Master Master Guru Master Master Master	ASP.NET ASP.NET Databases Lotus Notes/Domino Crystal Reports Crystal Reports VB Controls VB Controls C Storage Applications Routers Lounge Word Apache Apache FrontPage CGI Email IBM UDB Math & Science Viruses Email/GroupWare Broadband

1074 experts have 1634 certifications: Genius:21 Sage:68 Wizard:105 Guru:308 Master:1132

Tip for New Members: What's going on at EE?

We try to keep you up to date on the new things happening at Experts Exchange, but there are two places you can check for announcements about new releases, new Moderators, and information of some importance.

First, it's a good idea to take a look at the Community News for official announcements on site happenings. The other way is to keep an eye on the Community Support topic area. The Mods and Admins will frequently post updates on planned server downtimes and other events or appointments.