Archive for 'July, 2010'

1. I don’t care about what you’re doing.
2. You don’t care about what I’m doing.
3. I don’t want to use anything that has the word “twit” in it.
4. I was scared to use anything that Britney Spears is known to use.
5. I don’t like being stalked and murdered (See 10 reasons why I don’t like FaceBook)
6. I don’t want to accidentally geo tag my posts and have everyone know that I shop at ALDI.
7. The concept of random people following me, listening to what I’m saying and not speaking to me directly is something that I’ve been trained by my culture to consider as a precursor to a violent attack and thus avoid.
8. My attention span is already microscopic enough and I don’t want to throw mental alum on it by consistently thinking in 140 characters. kthxbai.
9. I don’t need to start using yet another web based service that has availability issues. Google and EC2 are about all I can handle, thankyouverymuch.
10. Tweets are like IMs that are public and never go away. Ever. Think about that for a few minutes. Yeah, it scared me really bad too.

Do you tweet? Post your Twitter name below. Do you not have a Twitter account? What are your reasons for avoiding it?

“Standards!!” I shrieked, hands partially extended in front of me, palms up and fingers bent and twisted like a long dead Joshua tree.

I was working the tech bench at a SMB near the beginning of my career. An old desktop PC that was on a losing streak with the second law of thermodynamics sat before me. I was trying to log in as the local administrator to perform some banal task that was the technological equivalent downing a box of Nytol.

“Let’s try this one…” I mumbled and clattered for a brief moment on the keyboard. “GAAAAHHH!” Once again I burned two eyeball sized holes in the ceiling as I turned my contorted face upwards in an expression that would have made Colin Clive petition for my Oscar nomination.

The IT department had attempted to put the same local admin password on all of our PCs. However, maintaining nearly 30 separate images for the various PC models that we accrued over the years insured that a few things would be nonstandard here and there. Also, there were long forgotten back-room and warehouse PCs that were never blessed with an image-based deployment and were instead set up as one-offs with who knows what settings, accounts and passwords.

“I seem to remember this one being used at one point…” Clickety-clack. “WHAT HIDEOUS MONSTER OF NON-CONFORMITY DEPLOYED THIS STUPID… ?!?” I growled through clenched teeth. I couldn’t make too much noise lest people passing the back room that we techs performed our rituals in get worried and call security. The IT department had a close relationship with security, however the officers couldn’t turn a blind eye to me going all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on company property. I took a deep breath and regained my composure.

There were several local administrator passwords that had been used in times past, and I had tried them all. I even tried the domain admin password hoping that someone had made a mistake and put the wrong password in. I even tried some generic passwords like ‘letmein’ and ‘password’ (hey, it had worked once or twice before). This time nothing was working.

I sat, head in hands, contemplating my next move. I could reimage the aging machine… that is if it even had an image that was made sometime after Lycos was the hip new way to search this World Wide Web thing. The computer had programs and data on it that were of indeterminate function and worth. I ‘d have to copy the data and hope I could reinstall the apps the proper way. This was turning into a nightmare.

There I sat, head in hands, a sad figure that was on the brink of being vanquished by my ancient foe. I tried to quiet the frustration by emptying  my mind of thoughts. I took a deep breath and composed myself in a peaceful blank. Nothingness.

Blank.

“Wait…” I looked up and stared at the Windows login box. “Administrator” as the username, the cursor strobed in the password box. It rhythmically taunted me in the blank input field. Blank.

Face frozen in an expression of distrust, but edged with hope… I tapped the enter key. I was greeted with the hopeful, breathy Windows login chime.

(Thanks to Richard Holloway‘s comment on my post “Before you Ask are you Ready for the Answer” which reminded me of this anecdote that happened several years back. You might be interested in Ed Bott’s article “It’s OK to use a Blank Password“.)

“So what’s your password?” I casually asked the CEO of a small business I was doing work for.

However, since this small business is owned by family friends whom I trust I decided to cave in for a little while. For a little over a year I had been attempting to impress some order on the technological maelstrom that existed, but I knew that I still had to pick my battles carefully.

“Ahhh…” I heard on the other end in response to my question. Then there was a brief pause. Silence. The hesitation surprised me. Did I detect some uncomfortableness in his voice? I think I did. Surely after years of passwords being freely divulged it wouldn’t suddenly be a taboo now.

I knit my eyebrows together as I hovered my fingers over the keyboard. “In? In what? ‘In the heat of the night?’, ‘In the nick of time?’, ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle?’ “

My index finger twitched over the keyboard. The cursor blinked silently in the password field. I tapped ‘N’ on the keyboard.

“Capital N!” the person chimed in.

I pressed enter. The Windows login chime cheerily greeted me.

Question:

Is there such a thing as a free Experts Exchange account? One that doesn’t require a credit card? One that does not expire after a trial period?

Short Answer:

Yes! Yes you can get a free Experts Exchange account that does not require credit card information! Just click here, read all of the text to make sure you understand what you have to do (It’s simple! Really!) and then sign up by clicking the “I want to be an expert!” button at the bottom of the page!

Long Answer:

Most every IT professional is familiar with Experts Exchange. Started in 1996, it became one of the premier gathering places for IT pros to discuss their technical challenges and dispense their wisdom to others. It is also made from raw evil. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement.

The biggest problem I and many others have with Experts Exchange is that the site shows certain content to search engines (based on the user agent given) and other content to regular browsers. If you browse the website normally, all answers to questions are hidden. However, if you land on the Experts Exchange website through a search engine link, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and see the discussion and accepted solution(s).

The deception and filthy lies are what bothers me the most. Look at this graphic that is taken from Experts Exchange after clicking through a search engine link:

The verbiage in the text makes it seem that the only way to view the solution is to sign up for the service. Of course, you can have a 30-day free trial, but that requires credit card information. Look at another graphic from the page:

Again, the verbiage only suggests that a 30-day trial is what you must use to see the comments. What I find most disturbing is that the revealed comments in the thread including any accepted solutions are just a few pixels away. If you clicked through to Experts Exchange from a search engine URL, you can merely scroll down past the filthy lies and you will see all of the comments and accepted solutions at the bottom:

And Experts Exchange knows it too! What does a person see when they scroll down to see the full thread? This little floating gem graces the right side of the browser as soon as the actual comments of the thread appear:

It is true that these days (as of July 2010) Experts Exchange is a bit more forthright about advertising their free account. As you can see in the above graphic, the option to “Answer 3 questions/month” is displayed. Also, on the side of the site you see the three possible ways to sign up for an account where the bottommost option is “Answer for Membership”:

Not too long ago, you used to have to slog through their FAQ and find an obscure link to get to the free registration page.

Another way of seeing the hidden answers on Experts Exchange is to change the user agent that your browser displays to web sites. You can do that in Firefox using the User Agent Switcher extension.

The free account is not without a few little hoops that you must jump through. In order to have access to the answers on the site, you must earn at least 3,000 points per month. That’s not an unreasonable amount of points to gain, and it can be done by contributing three good answers. You can also earn a premium membership by earning 10,000 points in a month (supposedly about 7 questions answered).

If you’re willing to put a few minutes a month into maintaining your membership, then it could be worth it. Indeed, there is good content on Experts Exchange. However, if you feel compelled to contribute to Experts Exchange beyond the mandatory 3,000 points (or 10,000 if you want a premium membership), consider giving your time to sites that are not evil such as ServerFault, StackOverflow and SuperUser.

Fie on thee, deceitful Experts Exchange. Long live the StackExchange Trilogy!