Experts Exchange Newsletter

What's New at Experts Exchange

New Geniuses: The last month of the year seems to bring out the best in some people. As we head into the final weeks of the year, two more names have been added to the list of those who have earned Genius certificates.
HemanthaKumar, a member of EE since November, 1999, is the long-time, all-time leader in the Lotus Notes/Domino topic area, and raised the bar for everyone by going over the 1,000,000 point level last week.

Also raising the bar, especially for new Members, was Sembee, who joined EE just last February. He picked up his certificate in Exchange Server, and is well on his way to getting a second Genius certificate in Windows Server 2003.

Speaking of Geniuses and such, be sure to keep an eye open for our first issue of 2005. We'll be announcing the Top Expert of the Year, and we'll be giving you all kinds of statistics about the best of the best at EE. And next week, we'll bring you our picks for last-minute Christmas gifts.
Gilmor calls it quits: For those of you who are tech junkies, Dan Gilmor, the technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury-News, has left the newspaper (and its website) to start a "grass-roots journalism venture." If you've never heard of Gilmor, you've missed a lot. San Jose is the heart of Silicon Valley, and his writing about technology issues has been "must-reading" for over a decade.
AOL woes: America Online accidentally locked out an "unknown number" of AIM users last week. AOL never really did explain why the active users were disabled. Perhaps they didn't have the bodies to do the explaining, because the company also laid off 750 employees last week in a cost-cutting move.
Didn't we do this before?: Okay, we'll show our age. First, it was 8-tracks vs. cassettes. Then it was Betamax vs. VHS. Now, it's Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD for how the home hi-def DVD market is going to shake out. Right now, the movie studios are evenly split about which format they're going to support, as Disney joined the Blu-ray camp last week. That leaves 20th Century Fox as the only major studio that has yet to commit. Thomson, one of the major Blu-ray manufacturers, is hedging its bet by supporting both formats.
Oracle buys PeopleSoft: Press releases from both companies say that talks over the weekend have resulted in Oracle revising its tender offer for PeopleSoft upward from $24.50 a share to $26.50, which was approved by the PeopleSoft board of directors.
The news was a little surprising, since on Friday, PeopleSoft's board had scheduled its annual shareholders meeting for March, and had put up its own slate of candidates, in opposition to a slate offered by Oracle, so the two companies had appeared headed towards a proxy fight. Oracle was also due in court Monday morning in a fight over the "poison pill" antitakeover defense the PeopleSoft board had adopted. That litigation is on hold pending the $10.3 billion purchase of PeopleSoft stock by Oracle.
"So what else is news" department: A story appeared at c|net last week with the title "Microsoft to patch Windows flaws". We know there's a joke in there somewhere; we'll see if we can come up with something for the best one we receive by December 30.
"TMI" department: A story went out last week about a study that says that the use of laptops may increase productivity but reduce reproductivity. Some things are better left unstudied.

Tip from the Page Editors: We see a lot of new members this time of year; they get something new during the holidays -- new software, or some new device, or maybe a new computer with a new operating system built in -- and they have a ton of questions. So they come to EE, maybe ask a couple of questions, and don't know how EE works.
So in the spirit of the season, take the time to help a new Member learn about our community. Help them by pointing to the Help Page, including the Asking Questions and Closing Questions sections.

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: I never noticed THAT before

woman in specticals I don't know about you, but I never really looked at a keyboard. I took typing in high school, so why bother, right? But the other day, I accidentally clicked that key next to the Ctrl key on the lower right side of the keyboard, and a menu popped up. It turns out that the key is the same as right-clicking in whatever program or application you're currently using.

I've been telling everyone about "phishing" -- those emails the look like they're from a bank or eBay or whoever, that say that you have to come update your account information for whatever reason, but they're really just a scam to bet your credit card number or bank account number. Well, things just got worse. Secunia, a website that monitors browser vulnerabilities, found that almost all browsers are susceptible to this one.

Here's the way it works. You get an email that looks like it's from eBay or PayPal that says "click this link to update your information." Since you've been reading Nata's Corner, you check all the links by putting your cursor over the links -- and the links all look legitimate. So you click one. You go to the website, and a popup opens up. That popup ISN'T who you think it is -- you wind up sending your information to who knows where, and two weeks (or maybe two days) later you're in debt up to you know where.

Be careful, people. According to the last research I saw, phishing expiditions are successful about five per cent of the time, and thieves don't take holidays off.

To unsubscribe from this Newsletter, click here (you must be logged in) or send an email.

The Premium Services include a number of features not available to "limited" members. Among them:

> Unlimited question points

> VIP Search

> Bookmarks

> Quick Links

> Collapsible menu

> No ads

You can purchase Premium Services on a month-to-month, semi-annual or annual basis, and take full advantage of all that Experts Exchange has to offer!

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 November 28 through December 12.

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
DanielSKim JTennessen Plamodo rvooijs Jag5x5 Erick37 BlueDevilFan gladxml AgentSmith007 nurbek muzzy2003 leechoonhwee SjoerdVerweij ShogunWade muzzy2003 archrajan alambres Ivanov_G petmagdy kiranhk cfairley mmarinov armoghan	Master Master Master Master Master Sage Wizard Wizard Master Master Master Master Wizard Wizard Guru Master Master Guru Guru Master Master Sage Master	MS Access MS Access MS Access MS Access MS Access Visual Basic Visual Basic ASP ASP ASP ASP ASP Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL JavaScript JavaScript Delphi Java Java Windows 2000 .NET .NET

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
Sembee Marakush The--Captain Henka Chester_M_Ragel BeyondWu sajuks mdmackillop Bartender_1 Idle_Mind Mikal613 Diablo84 Jester_48 ihenry CJ_S iboutchkine planocz sstouk stevenlewis cfairley Chris-Dent HemanthaKumar ryancys	Genius Master Master Guru Master Master Master Guru Master Master Master Sage Guru Guru Master Guru Guru Master Wizard Master Master Genius Master	Exchange_Server Networking Networking Oracle C# MFC Web Development Excel Outlook Programming Programming PHP ColdFusion ASP.NET ASP.NET VB.NET VB.NET Perl Microsoft Network Win Server 2003 Win Server 2003 Lotus Notes/Domino VB Controls

Expert	Certified	in Topic Area
jaime_olivares LucF Cyber-Dude leew PeteLong sunray_2003 acseven seanpowell Squeebee JakobA Zontar LucF grblades cracky humeniuk CarlWarner jlevie jlevie hdhondt rid khkremer schwertner khkremer	Master Guru Guru Master Master Wizard Master Sage Wizard Master Master Master Master Master Master Sage Sage Master Guru Master Sage Master Master	C Storage Storage Storage Storage Applications Applications HTML Mysql Mysql Mysql Windows Security Routers PHP and Databases IIS FoxPro Linux Net. Linux Prog. Printers Laptops/Notebooks Adobe Acrobat Product Info Scanners

1124 experts have 1723 certifications: Genius:26 Sage:75 Wizard:104 Guru:322 Master:1196

Tip for New Members: How many points is a question worth?

Your question is worth whatever it's worth to you. If you only have 100 question points, then a very difficult question is worth as much as half your points. You should remember that you're offering the points in order to get a solution to your problem; they're not a reward that you think about after the fact.

In order to give you some guideline, EE has provided you with radio button choices at the bottom of the Ask A Question page, along with a choice in which you can set your own value. In general, the more points you assign to a question, the faster it will get attention from the Experts, but it's also a fact that a lot of Experts answer questions they see as challenging and don't pay attention to the assigned points.