11.20.2007

New Features: Several new features have debuted at Experts Exchange in the past couple of weeks, and it's only the beginning.

• Code snippets: As motivation for the Expert Choir's rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus, we have now implemented the ability to post monospaced code, with the insertion of line numbers and color coding. No more trying to figure out if that's a double quote or two single quotes.
• Multiple email addresses: You can now have more than one email address listed in your profile, and can create a custom group to have notifications and the newsletter sent to more than one location. Each email address will have to be verified, but if you answer questions from both home and work (we won't tell the boss), this will make it easy.
• Was this solution helpful: Each comment in an answered question has the text "Was this what you were looking for?" and "YES" / "NO" buttons. The Yes button will bring up a little survey. The No button will bring immediately vote NO and give no verification. Your responses will help promote the best solutions to the top of the search results.

New Zone Advisor: samtran0331 has joined raterus in patrolling the ASP.NET zone. Welcome aboard!

Milestones:

• TheLearnedOne went over the 2,000,000 point mark in the ASP.NET zone and joined lrmoore as being the only members of Experts Exchange with more than 2,000,000 points in two zones.
• Sembee has earned 19,000,000 points overall. 17,000,000 of those are in Exchange. Both numbers are the most at Experts Exchange.
• CEHJ went over the 7,000,000 point level.
• TechSoEasy went over the 5,000,000 point mark in the Small Business Server zone.

Kudos: We see lots of posts that say "thanks for the solution" and such, but it is rather rare that compliments are directed towards a whole group of members with whom a member has no direct experience. Recently, Futureman9 was stumped by a problem with Microsoft Access. He posted in the Community Advisor zone:

On behalf of the 5,046 Experts who have contributed answers in the Access zone, thank you for your support!

richardlh had kind words for kacor when his problem with an Excel macro got solved: "You are truly an expert and offer exceptional customer service. The sub does exactly what I need it to do. I wish you continued success." Thanks, Richard!

A moment as huge as this is an opportunity for the staff and the community to appreciate how we, collectively, have accomplished such a feat. 2,000,000 solutions means that 2,000,000 questions have been asked by stressed, frustrated and confused members. In turn, Experts have volunteered their time and expertise to relieve these members' woes with 2,000,000 solutions.

This triumph belongs to the members and Experts just as much as (if not more than) it belongs to the staff here at EE. The community of members and Experts is the lifeline of Experts Exchange. We, the staff at Experts Exchange, appreciate every question, every Expert comment, every assist and every solution that you have contributed to this community that belongs to all of us who are a part of it. Congratulations to us all!

The 2,000,000th Solution at Experts Exchange was the answer to the question, Problem with PHP limit page and header, asked by satmanuk of the United Kingdom. He got a response from hielo 14 minutes later, but the question was eventually answered by steelseth12 of Cyprus at 5:04 pm Experts Exchange (Pacific) time on November 13. FernandoSoto of Florida came the closest to the correct time and date.

Each laptop is outfitted with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz processor, a 17-inch wide screen display, 2GB of memory, and dual 120GB hard drives. Our superb designers mocked up some flashy desktop wallpapers for the winners new laptops, but in the end we decided it would be a crime to hold out on the rest of the community, so be sure to spice up your desktop by downloading some art from the 2 Million Limited Edition Wallpapers page. These winners will also receive limited edition Experts Exchange 2,000,000 solutions shirts, and recognition in their member profiles as being part of EE history.

But that isn't all...

We also asked six questions in the special Power Questions zone. The Power Questions were derived from significant questions in Experts Exchange history. The winners best answered the questions by providing complete, concise, and easy-to-understand solutions that anticipated potential problems without the benefit of additional information from the question asker.

Power Question 1: Case sensitivite Win31 HTML Editor. Original question, asked October 8, 1996 by jonathan and answered the next day by wormzer, was the first solution. Answering it best were Taconvino, chilternPC, saviturb and wrenhal.

Power Question 2: Can't connect local network. Original question, "W95 to DOS Network?", asked December 30, 1996 by Ken and answered the same day by schraderc, was the 100th solution. Answering it best were wayfarer1210 and dheiskala.

Power Question 3: Ethernet to Fiber Optic. Original question asked January 31, 1997 by canfield and answered the same day by peterr, was the 1,000th solution. Answering it best were JoseParrot and mcannet.

Power Question 4: Win32 code that fixes itself. Original question, "Self-modifying code in Win32", asked May 29, 1997 by Shrif and answered the next day by byang, was the 10,000th solution. Answering it best was itsmeandnobodyelse.

Power Question 5: Adding images and audio to resource file. Original question, "How to add sounds, pictures to resource file?", asked March 23, 1999 by EdStout and answered the next day by Mirkwood, was the 100,000th solution. Answering it best was Rog.

Power Question 6: Is it possible to run an applet without JRE installed?. Original question, "How do I run an applet in Internet Explorer without JRE installed?", asked August 31, 2004 by skip1000 and answered the same day by Giant2 with assists from TimYates and objects, was the 1,000,000th solution. Answering it best were darron_chapman and ebertk.

17 businesses that now work smarter

Within just the past two weeks, Experts Exchange has added 17 new clients to its portfolio of Corporate Account users. Please help us welcome the following organizations to Experts Exchange:

These new accounts have just discovered the benefits that major organizations including eBay, PayPal, the United States Census Bureau, Lockheed Martin, New York University, the Carlyle Group and Spectra Energy already know. Whether you are the world's leading online auction website, or a small company with mammoth ideas, Corporate Accounts provide you total technology insurance and allow your business to save money and time by working smarter.

Increase productivity with a Corporate Account. Upgrades are available for current users.

This week, we are breaking from our normal fare and responding to an email sent to us by DaveBaldwin last week about an article he read having to do with how Microsoft updates its operating systems without specifically telling the user what it's doing. Not being the most highly technical of people, we turned to the Zone Advisors for their takes.

DrDamnit: Most noticeably, there are two sets of people who should be worried about this:

1. Bootleggers who have automatic updates turned off so they don't get the genuine advantage check and its subsequent annoying boxes (that some users get even if they are running genuine software) and
2. Companies running customer software. Changing DLLs and other resources on a system can, and will, break programs that companies have developed, which may constitute the underpinning of an entire organization.

Bootleggers need to buy a legit copy, so I don't particularly care if they cry uncle. People / users in Category 2, however, do not deserve to have their files and programs broken.

It comes down to digital free will and security in my opinion. I need to have the option to take or refuse updates depending on how I am using the machines. Moreover, if Windows can update files on a user's computer without the user's consent or knowledge, that gaping_security_hole is just dying to be exploited by worms, hackers, and other nasties.

Afterthought: I just sent this to a colleague of mine, and here's his reply:

redseatechnologies: Sensationalist bull. Automatic Updates doesn't download and install this update; it is installed "when you visit the WindowsUpdate website". That it doesn't prompt you could be human error. Considering none of those files are related to anything useful (like genuine validation) what is the hidden agenda? This is a conspiracy without a cause, from a website which seems to specialise in that.

I realise I am probably pro-MS, but were the files in question something important that would affect privacy or computer health, I would be on the phone right now, rescinding my MVP and Gold Partner statuses.

ShineOn: This arrogant behavior is a sterling example of the questionable activities that have left so many people with an inherent distrust of Microsoft. If anyone was wondering why so many people are cheering for Linux on the desktop and are so quick to assume the worst from Redmond, they can stop wondering. IMHO, the arrogance and unmitigated gall of the company is but one reason among many why Vista was met with such underwhelming adoption, forcing Microsoft to fudge the numbers yet again in an attempt to convince the great unwashed how wonderful their latest OS is.

DanRollins: If what MS is doing is updating the program that does updates, then there is a pretty good chance that we have already, at some point in the past, approved such actions. I vaguely recall clicking a button that allowed Microsoft to install something that would "check for needed updates." I also have never read that box full of end-user legal-eese goblety-gook that always comes up. One either trusts that it's a reasonable license, or one does not.

What's more, it seems to me that this is nothing new. Even when we manually download an update/patch to be installed at a later time, the first thing that gets downloaded is the downloading/installing software. We implicitly approve the execution of that code on our machine, even if we are insisting that the patch will only be installed later with a manual operation.

I say it's a tempest in a teapot.

LeeTutor: Yeah, I subscribe to Windows Secrets and saw that article. There have been a couple of followups on it too. For instance, see this article by Scott Dunn on how their stealth update messed up XP repair. (Editor's note: this is the same article noted in DrDamnit's comment above, which is an interesting, albeit not necessarily relevant, commentary on how different people can interpret the same information.)

ahoffmann: Hmm, I don't see any problem with that 'cause all users agreed to pay for and then use beta software ;-). Since the beginning of dawn I have avoided using beta software, except for what I get paid for. Just my 2 pence (as sarcastic as usual). KISS - keep it simple stupid.

JDettman: Personally, I think it's making mountains out of mole hills and Windows Secrets has always had a tendency to do this.

The reason given for the update is that without it, Windows Update simply won't work. I don't like the "Big Brother" concept and Microsoft doing things without consent, but imagine the uproar that would occur if a user continually went to the Windows Update and was told "no updates available", even though there were some and one of those updates would have stopped something that messed up a customer's PC in a big way. Then the headline would be "Microsoft once again provides lax security and Windows Update fails to correctly install needed patches".

You can't have it both ways sometimes...

stone5150: I have too many systems to manage and too little time to do it, so Auto Updates are great for workstations. If they start doing this for servers, I will be more than a little annoyed.

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

We've written a lot of articles about the media -- probably not surprising, all things considered -- and how, as an industry, it just doesn't get it when it comes to this new fangled Internet thingy. Well, the chickens came home to roost in a big way last week, when this year's circulation figures were released. It's not just the dead tree folks who are having problems, though; the television networks are suffering the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune perpetrated on them as well.

And they never saw it coming. If there's anything that makes the "woe is me" attitude among the corporate bigwigs worth laughing about, it's that they reported on it, lived in the middle of it, and treated it like the Pet Rock. And now they are seeing circulation (or viewership) -- and advertising revenue -- headed to companies that didn't exist much more than thirty years ago -- or even ten.

One has to wonder, though, if the whole business of advertising isn't one big Ponzi scheme. Think about it. Advertising is a service; its mission is to compel someone to part with their hard-earned cash for some product or service, and companies and people spend billions of dollars to get a slice of a very large pie. The web has made it possible for my neighbor -- who is trying to sell a car -- to compete for money with General Motors, who spends millions every year trying to sell theirs, right?

But at some point, someone has to make a decision about where to spend a limited amount of money. My neighbor isn't going to spend as much as GM, but she only has to sell one car, and her survival isn't tied to selling it either. But GM's entire business model is based on selling lots of cars. The question we have: at what point does GM, or IBM, or any other company currently writing checks to the relatively small variety of web advertising companies, look at the bottom line? What happens when the newness wear off, and the crushing weight of the bottom line take hold?

In simple terms: we know who is paying for the banner ad across the top of a website. What we would like to know, though: is anyone actually buying what the ad is selling? Or is everyone just trading dollars in the ad sales business?

Here's what made us think of it. We've been following the story about how the telephone companies in the US handed over data on their customers' Internet use to the National Security Agency just because they were asked (AT&T being the obvious exception -- they took the easy way out and created a duplicate version of everything, letting the NSA sort it all out), and then last week, we came across a story asking Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard? that was linked on a site we get a newsletter from. By the time we actually went to read the story, the page had changed -- so we copied the headline, and pasted it into a Google search.

We eventually found the story -- remarkably (because it usually isn't), it was the first one listed -- but there are 77,000 copies of the story out there (actually, it's usually just the first paragraph). Most of those are blogs, and a good percentage of them will get hits, and maybe a few people will click on the advertising linked on those blogs. But it is astonishing to us that so many websites are getting their hands wet in the advertising stream. Where is the money coming from?

Question: I posted an answer to a question a while ago, but the person who asked it hasn't come back and awarded the points. What do I do now?

This has been a problem at Experts Exchange pretty much since Day One. Experts Exchange isn't like other forums, where you ask a question, get the answer and that's the end of it. We think EE is unique because it is collaborative (or at least, it is supposed to be), where the Experts will work together with the asker of a question to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that, so questions get abandoned. We consider a question abandoned when it goes three weeks without a comment.

About six years ago, we began a formal process, listed in the Help page, in which volunteers go through the old questions in a zone and make a recommendation about how it should be disposed of. The Cleanup Volunteers are generally Experts in the zone, so the recommendation they make is a well-educated estimate of whether a comment is the answer or would have led to the answer. They leave a post asking for comments, and after four days, a Moderator will close the question. We usually accept the recommendation, but not always; if you think you have a good answer that isn't recommended, you can use that four-day period to explain why it should be, and we will pay attention to you.

That doesn't mean you can just start posting lists of questions, though. There are some pretty specific procedures we follow, mostly in the interest of being fair to everyone, but also so we don't have people tripping over each other. If you're interested in helping out at Experts Exchange, doing Cleanup is the best way to start; just contact AnnieMod, the Cleanup Administrator (her address is in her profile) and she will get you started.

Doing the right thing costs Yahoo an undisclosed amount of cash...: and no small amount of humiliation at the hands of Congress. The company has settled lawsuits filed on behalf of two Chinese journalists who were jailed for ten years after Yahoo gave them up to the Chinese government. We mentioned this a few weeks ago, but someone needs to be reminded of it: China is not the US's buddy.

We're still not going to mess with Grandma (thanks, Jürgen!): It's that time -- Black Friday is just a few days away -- but we won't be taking the Chevy when we go shopping.

Does Sergey get to okay the pre-nup?: Larry Page, one of the two founders of Google, is getting married in a couple of weeks. We're amused that Al Gore sent his regrets because he's picking up his Nobel Peace Prize (which makes him the answer to a future trivia question: who is the first person to win an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year); there is something delicious about having a champion of the conservation of resources toasting via teleconferencing the founder of a company that uses as much energy as it does.

CTO wanted: ... assuming, that is, that the startup venture called the "Barack Obama For President" campaign gets past its first few rounds of primary funding. Obama announced last week that he wants to establish a technology czar whose mandate it is to ensure open government by having, among other things, webcasts of public agency meetings. We'd be happy if he could just get the tubes unclogged.

Who looks at this stuff in a public library anyway?: Software that will filter certain kinds of images from the computers at the San Jose, CA main library would cost the city $285,000 to install, plus another $210,000 to pay people to unblock websites. No one has suggested installing a couple of vending machines across the street yet.

We're not sure why we like this article, but for whatever reason, it seems very cool: The Pythagorean Theorem.

Maybe not, but if they do, sign us up: It must be obvious to readers that we're not huge fans of AT&T, so we chuckled -- knowing how Google operates -- at the headline of the story that the search company isn't going to take on the phone company in the battle for the hearts and souls of mobile computing customers (of course not -- tell that to the folks in Redmond, who probably aren't competing back either). Google is just putting together a consortium of AT&T's competitors and suppliers -- nothing special. But all things considered, The Phone Company is giving us any number of reasons to look for alternatives:

• It has a new service that lets you watch someone remotely using your cell phone. The cats will love seeing what the mice are up to.
• Allegedly, AT&T will tell the NSA anything, and we mean anything. Lawyers are rejoicing.

The good news? It shouldn't be that difficult to find a million or so missing emails. After all, Donald Kerr, one of the nation's top intelligence officials, doesn't think we should have any expectation of privacy anyway, so why should the White House?

God may not play dice with the universe, but he loves a good joke: Three weeks after Apple shipped Leopard, it shipped patches, the same week that an unsecured PC running Windows XP was hacked in six minutes.

They may all speak different in different tongues, but there's one language they all understand: Fresh off the resounding success of its seige against Microsoft, the European Union has let Google know that it won't get the same free pass it has mostly gotten from the US government. And while the EU doesn't have any authority in the US, there's always the chance that the Justice department will follow its lead in other industries as well.

Fun and games department: c|net took the time to create a little video that describes the top five differences between a Mac and a PC with Vista. Cute, but not as entertaining as it could have been. We would be interested in reading yours, but please, keep it clean.

Sign of the Apocalypse: Spoof forums for political candidates. Who would know the difference?

It's the time for giving, and for the next five weeks or so we will all be seeing lots of Santa Clauses ringing bells and asking for donations. I'm a soft touch, usually; if I have any spare change, it usually goes into the cup, and I just had my other half drop off a case of canned food at the local elementary school for needy families. But one thing I'm not likely to be doing is sending donations on line. About six months ago, Microsoft posted a list of things to do to protect yourself against online donation scams -- so Merry Early Christmas.

I read a lot of news sites, and I came across a story on one that has some scary implications. The story (edited) is as follows:

Now, I don't know about you, but I normally trust news sites, at least as far as this kind of thing goes, and you would think that news sites would be pretty careful about who they sell advertising space to, or in the case of these third-party advertising providers, who they would sell advertising to. Think about it; there are really only two possibile ways in which this could happen. Either the advertising company -- be it the newspaper or a third party provider -- was hacked to the extent that the ad was placed on the site, or someone sold the malware guys the space, just like they would an ad for Netflix or Symantec or Intel. It's not like someone put up a link to a malware site and used an image of a ZoneAlarm ad; this was your standard "we'll fix your computer for free" hook.

The San Jose Mercury-News ran a three-part series called Ghosts In The Browser, all about how cybercrime is a huge threat that almost everyone ignores. It's some fascinating reading, even if it is a little depressing. Even more depressing, though, is the story about a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide over a MySpace prank. Please, parents -- take care of your children.