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Yeah--so I clicked on the 'Related Solutions' button and picked the first result--one about if statements in batch files.
It asks me to sign up to see the answer.

They have a few pages that are free, but most require a subscription.

For example, scroll down on this page: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Scripting/Shell/Batch/Q_22848900.html

the article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen)

Like you said, "I don't know Approach...". You should find a way to look at it from who the TARGET audience is. Home users of a database don't want nor NEED to become developers. Lotus Approach took me about 2 weeks to get really comfortable. Access, never, for me. Filemaker, ehh. It was too developer-aimed, IMO.

Lotus Approach IS used by some serious development types of work, mainly as a front end to Oracle, MySQL, mssql, and some 10 or 15 other db back ends. The data and forms are separate, and have always been, unlike what, Access, which took YEARS for ms to "get it".

Approach is WYSIWYG, so right from the word GO no one NEED be a developer.

NO ONE should be using spreadsheets to do non-statistical storage of data. This happened because for years either the tools didn't exist to appease the desk-side data analyst-- they had to rely on IT. The other part is some developers were lazy or territorial, and LOTS of companies and IT staff are mixed on hoard the data (not just from protection of data, but for IT job security), or share the data (so IT can concentrate on OTHER more important tasks than to risk backlash of "THAT'S not the report I ASKED FOR...".

The other problem is that ms popularized excel, and businesses did, too. LOTS of bad habits grew up around the kludge excel is. It is an abominable excuse for a database wannabe.

Approach lets people GET WORK DONE. People who need databases and never before saw one get sample database tables and applications in Approach. They can reverse engineer these and customize them.

The biggest drawbacks of Approach:

-- no runtime executable (royalty free, or otherwise)
-- not a big enough widget set (compared to FMP, Access, et al...
-- poor or non-existent ERD
-- only runs on windoze
-- not separable from Lotus SmartSuite (except the Japanese version IS separate...)
-- only in maintenance/patch mode, since IBM is SITTING on Lotus SmartSuite, letting it die a slow, worthless death, as if even IBM's OWN want it to die, despite their "10 million S/S users..."
-- not built-in way to record and reuse queries; but users created this and sell solutions

Pluses:

- I use it as a front end to my Linux & win98-based MySQL engine
- I am writing a screenplay dialog and script tracking database
- I can build in minutes or hours what would take me and MOST non-developers days or WEEKS to do in access
- It's GREAT for an ad hoc WYSIWYG prototyping tool

You admit you don't know Approach, yet you could almost single-handedly dissuade most readers here from even considering it. Approach -- if IBM opened up its code-- could almost single-handedly kill Rekall, Kexi, and a slew of others that still retain the giant framework, geek-appeal that most END USERS will run from. Approach is good enough that user- and developer-based solutions are sold all the time.

C'mon man, check out Approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_SmartSuite

http://xpertss.com/

http://orderdeskxpert.3dcartstores.com/Order-Center_c_1.html

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Office_Productivity/Office_Suites/Lotus_SmartSuite/Lotus_Approach/Q_22816555.html

http://jabrown.customer.netspace.net.au/approach/index.htm

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Lotus_Approach

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/smartsuite/approachfeatures.html

What COULD happen but isn't is that IBM could:

-- partner with Sun/OpenOffice.org
-- open the code to Kexi, t

The idea is that you are paying directly for the assistance in finding what you want, not the good you finally decide on, thus removing the conflicts of interest and getting the "best of both worlds".
This is the business model of Consumer Reports. They research products and then write about them. Usually they give them a rating. I have a subscription.

My history on other forums has nothing to do with the idea.
Basically what you are proposing is a support forum where people interested in a particular electronic appliance get together and help each other, to their mutual benefit. They have these all over the web. You can visit them without even getting in your automobile! And if you only knew enough to be a web admin, you could even host one for a very minimal cost, without having to rent floor space, hire security guards, or form a corporation.

Basically, you acted like a jackass on a support forum. Now you are proposing a "great new idea"-- support forums.
Ever hear about irony?

This reminds me of experts-exchange. http://www.experts-exchange.com/

When was ExpertSexChange.com not cybersquatted? The Experts Exchange site has been http://www.experts-exchange.com/

How does Yahoo compare to Experts-Exchange ? I used to like that site a lot, and I still use it, but their semi-recent redesign (filthy inline ads, sidebar ads, popup ads, light blue on slightly lighter blue text, ads between comments) has sent me searching for something better. But, I have to admit that the quality of the answers I get on Experts-Exchange is still superb.

While not exactly like what you are describing, the service that comes to my mind when I read your suggestion is Experts Exchange.

Project Tools for group projects
Forums for classes
Something like http://www.experts-exchange.com/ for answers to questions

Just my 2 cents for things I'd like to see us implement.

QueenB

I have been "in the industry" for about 12 years now and opened my own computer support company about 2 years ago. Early on I came across the site http://www.experts-exchange.com/ . I found it in a google search for some wacky problem on a client's computer that I hadn't seen before. I could see the question, but the answer...for that I had to take out a $9.95 per month subscription.

I decided to subscribe figuring that I would cancel it once I fixed this one problem. Turns out that I use it a couple of times a month to find the answer to some obscure problem in just about any area from Programming to Desktop tweaks and Linux to MS Exchange Server.

For me it's well worth the money because I'm the guy they call when no one else can fix a problem. It might not make sense for a regular user who has an occasional question with an easy answer to pay the fee...but if your time is worth a lot to you, I'll say you can find just any piece of information on the site.

What has really been pissing me off lately is when looking up common programming issues or error messages I get links to dozens of sites that just link to common, or link to parts of the actual result I am looking for - stolen from a legit site - but no usable answer.

I don't know that a law is the right fix for this, but yeah I could see some of the less scrupulous sites putting up "barbie+pony+furby" metatags and farming for banner views/clicks, and perhaps some repercussions should be available.

The only real way it could work (well) in realtime would be with a VERY LARGE pool of people, and/or with better AI expert agents down the road. You're right about the database having to be freely available though.

As for incentive: done right, micropayment BS money isn't it - reputation and "altruism" is. e.g. If you want some live help now on opensource subjects, you can join an IRC server like FreeNode, then pick the topic/#channel, and ask away.

A problem shared by Experts-Exchange (previously ExpertSexChange.com) and Powergen Italia (used to be PowerGenitalia.com)...

Note that when you open an Experts Exchange page without logging in, a popup ad window appears. If you leave that window open behind your question page, you can scroll down to the answers. If you close that window, the question page excludes the answers from your view.

I will say that the unregistered EE is heavy on the advertising, and they make it fairly difficult to register for a free account. This signs you up as an "expert," although any registered user, paid or not, can answer questions.

You get a limited number of points per month to ask questions with, and need to earn 10,000 expert points (answer a question for 500 points with an 'A' grade, and you get 2000 expert points) to get free premium membership, then 3000 pts/mo to maintain that membership. If you are knowledgeable about anything tech, you can do it easy.

The tech forums are extremely well moderated, and the caliber of people who answer questions is fairly high.

I did a simple and quick test based on your incorrect statement:

Simple Google Search for "access VB experts exchange"

I got this result first from Google.

I then clicked the first link on the result (under Experts Exchange) and was given this gem.

Right there, see that BIG orange circle with, "View Solution" in the middle? What does it link to? Yeah, register.

Nice troll though!

I did a simple and quick test based on your incorrect statement:

Simple Google Search for "access VB experts exchange"

I got this result first from Google.

I then clicked the first link on the result (under Experts Exchange) and was given this gem.

Right there, see that BIG orange circle with, "View Solution" in the middle? What does it link to? Yeah, register.

Nice troll though!

I did a simple and quick test based on your incorrect statement:

Simple Google Search for "access VB experts exchange"

I got this result first from Google.

I then clicked the first link on the result (under Experts Exchange) and was given this gem.

Right there, see that BIG orange circle with, "View Solution" in the middle? What does it link to? Yeah, register.

Nice troll though!

I'm glad these people have suddenly gotten the idea that there is a lot of knowledge in the global community that can be shared, but seriously, how is this better than Wikipedia, Expert's Exchange, or plain old Google?
What does this tool offer that's better in any way?
Move along. There's nothing to see.

Okay, I've actually done some research to backup the comment I saw here, that USB drives do not use autorun. Try reading http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_20953875 .html .

I dare you to make the same claim about sites like http://www.experts-exchange.com/

Of comon, you dont know how to google-hack experts-exchange out of giving you any answer you want, free and immediately?

Nowhere else can I find people with the experience, breadth and width of skills, and general good-naturedness of character than right here at Slashdot. This site features the presence of the creme de la creme of the programming world, and has experts in any particular field always ready with answers to difficult questions.

Not only is this site good for getting good answers to technical questions, legal questions are also pondered thoughtfully and expounded on by knowledgeable experts. You can find exceptional quality of legal advice here at all hours of the day.

And best of all, this site is absolutely free (as in beer), so you don't have to pay a dime for answers to your technical questions, nor a penny for legal advice. I dare you to make the same claim about sites like http://www.experts-exchange.com/ or http://answers.google.com/

1: Game search results and charge companies to make them appear first.

2: Make ads for Microsoft Products, come up 1st, appear slightly larger etc.

3: Use flash ads and or other distractions.

4: Cram as many ads in as possible, making stealth links that seem like answers but really always take you some service that is paying MS. Ala http://www.experts-exchange.com/

5: Use their bundled search engine that Vista will assuredly be hard coded to use, to apply pressure on companies who have paid for #1 to only work with Windows, or in the case of tech journals, promote MS FUD, Maket MS Crap, do their dirty work.

It's in their DNA , it starts with the view that the unwashed masses are all below them and are only good for getting money from.

Precedent? Interesting how you immediately jumped on Firefox and didn't consider any other possible causes, of which there are many, such as spyware inserted as a layer between the system and TCP/IP.

Why didn't you tell the original poster to just try the page with Internet Explorer? I mean, their system is otherwise clean, and while I too would hesitate to get them to open a suspicious site with it, they could simply crank the security to full and be equally protected, assuming they had all their patches.

Sounds like you had a solution waiting for a problem, and this one didn't quite fit but you threw it in anyway.

To the original poster: What are the sites showing this issue? It might be that they are actually using Unicode characters that your system isn't setup to recognize. In any case, try reinstalling Firefox. If that doesn't resolve the issue, try reinstalling TCP/IP; try the easy way first, and if that doesn't fix the issue, try the harder way. Being that you're running AOL, you will probably have to reinstall that as well for both of these methods, as it sometimes uses its own drivers.

PS: You should post messages requesting help in a forum appropriate for them. Slashdot is not a good place to request support, usually (as evidenced by your 100% Off Topic moderation). Check out Experts Exchange for one such forum, though you may have to pay for the points to ask questions. You should also take a look at How to Ask Questions the Smart Way by ESR, as posting questions on the internet (esp. to volunteers) is somewhat different from calling technical support.

From my experience Experts Exchange lets you see all answers to questions, but you can't post your own question unless you register. Posting questions is also free I believe, but you get better results if you offer a bounty [-- totally based on anecdotal evidence. I've never used EE to post questions before.]

I've never used it either, but it looks quite clever.

1. If you don't register, you browse an ad sponsored site, and you can't ask questions.
2. If you register, to gain the premium/expert benefits of an ad free site and the ability to ask questions, you either pay, or qualify as an expert by answering some questions.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_21272116 .html

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:GyTRLbavSIgJ: www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_21272116.html&h l=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Interesting. Some links I dug up while looking for details:

More/better links welcome.

I forced the URL to HTTPS and it worked just fine. The browsers already support HTTPS and that translates directly to JavaScript.

I make sure the initial page it HTTPS to start with. I do not know how to have a HTTP page, and a HTTPS Javascript transaction.

Here is another link that talks about the same issue. http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Web_Languages/ JavaScript/Q_21636735.html

PS: GREAT QUESTION! VIVA SECURE SOLUTIONS! :)

I spend atleast one lunch break a week answering questions in the programming forum or some subforum at experts-exchange.

To keep a premium account with them for free, you need to get atleast 3000 expert points a month ... it's always a good excuse to spend time answering people's questions, which usually involves coding - i always write/test the code for people so I A) practice coding B) can get the source later if i need it for a project.

They have forums for abunchof languages ... depending on the forum, the questions may generally be too easy for you, but most questions are posted by IT professionals like yourself, so they can be fun to figure out and answer.

Besides that ... I read a lot of books and I refactor old projects using new methods or I test design patterns or ... I do a lot of .NET coding so I couldn't live without my MSDN firefox search engine (also made one for the codeproject, which has some GREAT articles).

I spend atleast one lunch break a week answering questions in the programming forum or some subforum at experts-exchange.

To keep a premium account with them for free, you need to get atleast 3000 expert points a month ... it's always a good excuse to spend time answering people's questions, which usually involves coding - i always write/test the code for people so I A) practice coding B) can get the source later if i need it for a project.

They have forums for abunchof languages ... depending on the forum, the questions may generally be too easy for you, but most questions are posted by IT professionals like yourself, so they can be fun to figure out and answer.

Besides that ... I read a lot of books and I refactor old projects using new methods or I test design patterns or ... I do a lot of .NET coding so I couldn't live without my MSDN firefox search engine (also made one for the codeproject, which has some GREAT articles).

Umm no that's not what I meant.

I meant Encrypted FS - secure against booting into Knoppix. Data is encrypted on disk, not just locked as the post I was replying to stated.

However, EFS could be cracked in theory if you had a util that could extract the keys from the profile. I don't know if this has been done, because I don't use it and have never had to get access to encrypted files.

Syskey is designed to be _more_ secure - the idea is that you move the keys to a floppy and then lock it in a safe. In which case, you can't get the keys off the hard disk - you need the floppy to get access to the files.

But you can't use syskey to crack an encrypted box because it requires that you can log on to. You can't even reset the password with a hacker tool, because that gets hashed into the encryption key. If you reset the password, the data is essentially gone.

Mind you if you have (local|domain) admin rights and can still boot there are ways around this

http://www.brienposey.com/kb/working_with_ntfs_enc ryption.asp
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Security/Win_Secur ity/Q_21446371.html

So if you were admin, you could repair the machine, making sure you don't do anything that will damage the user's profile, change their password with the NT tools, which won't cause the encryption keys to get screwed and get access that way.

What caused the machines to be borked to the point of unbootability BTW. That's some hard core borking.

You're wrong.
That's 65535 rows * 255 columns * 255 sheets
Over 4B possible cells.

Plenty of room to work with, but who wants to write a memory manager for sheets in VBA? Not to mention 100MB+ files are a real pain to load. Also, macros are single threaded and interpreted - better get a dual-proc workstation unless you like coffee breaks. Excel does have a couple nice features - web queries and it can be used to kill processes.

Name: Experts-exchange question
URL: http://www.experts-exchange.com/*/Q_*.html
XPath #1: /html/body/table[2]/tbody/tr[1]/td[2]/div/table[p osition()=3 or position()=4 or position()>5]
XPath #2: /html/body/table[2]/tbody/tr[1]/td[2]/div/table[2 ]/tbody/tr[3]/td/div

Take a look at this http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/ WinXP/Q_20916214.html story about someone who got screwed but then worked to unscrew himself. Pretty interesting I think especially since even the experts didn't think he could get his data back.

Um... yeah, you can pay, but you can also scroll down about 2 pages of advertisements and a listing of catagories and find the answers lodged beneath. Unless there are yet more answers to these questions?

For example: a question about Java. The question first, then the SIGN UP! bla bla, then a bunch of catagories, but if you scroll down further, you'll find answers to the questions, including the 'accepted answer' and such.

Hope this is useful to someone.

Cheers

Thing about google that really pisses me off is that for a lot of the things i search on, it pops lots of sites that require pay registration and doesn't make it clear. I'm not going to pay for these sites when there are so many free resources available to find my answers, but I have to waste my time visiting them over and over. Experts-exchange in particular really pisses me off. I don't know if there's something better out there, but I'm actively looking for one, because using google just wastes too much of my time.

I know everyone loves google, and I use it too, but I find that where it used to be an efficient way to find information, it's becoming less and less so as time goes on because of this sort of crap. As far as I'm concerned, if I need to pay to access the information, google should not be indexing that information and putting up links to the sign up page for me to waste my time with when the answer is already freely available elsewhere and that freely available source is in their index. If I wanted to use pay sites to provide my answers, I wouldn't be using google in the first place, would I?

For some unexplained reason VBScript evaluates the expression "" = Empty to True, but IsEmpty("") to False.

The issue has been discussed here

I'm surprised no one mentioned using an "alarm line" dsl system.

For instance: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Networking/Q_21070 551.html

http://www.experts-exchange.com/M_1296800.html

MrYowler? Cyberarmy? Oh boy, its attack of the script kiddie wanna be's.

This is kind of the "who's watching the watchers" question, except, who's editing the writers (and editors).

You need a peer rating system where authors and editors can be given points as to the quality of their material and corrections. I think Experts Exchange and probably others offer something of this kind. This, as always, required community participation to work effectively. But beyond that, for an encyclopedia people should have an overall rating and a rating for subcategories, for example a lot of ./er's can tell you a ton about Star Wars, but probably very little about the Easter Island heads.

I currently work as a full time system administrator.

I give back by working on some open source projects like mon.cgi (which I currently maintain). Indirectly it helps my work because we use it in my work environment and the work done is free and not owned by my company.

Also, I help out at Experts Exchange at times when I've got the time.

I pressed F8, selected the menu item, "Disable automatic restart on system failure", which let me see a blue screen with a rather generic message saying:
STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Windows SubSystem system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000005 (0x7ffe0297 0x0015fab8). The system has been shut down.

I disabled Date Execution Prevention (DEP) by editing boot.ini with emacs under Knoppix and added /NoExecute=AlwaysOff This had no visible effect.

This link smugly claims to have a solution if I fork out $10 US on the VISA card.

After a multitude of reboots and selecting Debugging and Safe mode, found that it was getting stuck at Mup.sys. That, presumably, is a critical component of the Muppet system :-).

In the recovery console, I used the command:
disable mup
but this did not change the behaviour in any useful way that I could see.

I also disabled and reenabled many drivers loaded before Mup.sys. No visible effect.

Selecting "Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked)" had no visible effect; the machine still rebooted after about 5 seconds.

Googling led to many blind alleys, but I am still unable to boot the machine to XP, except with the recovery console from the installation CD.

One very long exchange (related to Mup.sys, but not really SP2), ends with this exchange:

AnalogMan: I deleted the partition and re-installed Windows XP. All
is happy now ^^

per: Cool! have a nice night.

I am sure that there must be some well-known solution (besides reinstall). I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

The machine still runs Fedora Core 1, Windows 98 okay. Windows XP worked okay before SP2.

There is actually a better way of getting rid of these rather than contaminating your code with unecessary #includes. Check this out. Basically add the same pragma command to YVALS.H which is in the include dir for the Visual studio installation.

In case you are wondering whether you are really going to break something, the error message relates to the debugger not being able to handle >255 chars.

The problem with this warning message is that it can obscure real error & warning messages.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Laptops_N otebooks/Q_20934463.html

that suggests there are a few laptops anyways that can boot from USB HD's. A Google search for "motherboard bootable USB" returned >250 hits.

Read closely - VM process limitation (for Windows programs). OS/2 itself had no such limitation, and I believe the non VM processes could go up to the full 4GB (finding info on this now is more difficult, of course). I suppose I could dig through the paperwork accompanying my curiosity copy of Warp Server at home.

On the other hand, I did find some stories while researching the exact memory limitations that .NET appears to crash when exceeding 1.2GB in a process.

I wouldn't normally do this, but I'm pretty bored. Maybe this link will help?

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/ Q_20877715.html

BTW, if anybody knows Javascript workarounds for Combobox functionality, I'd be very happy if you could post them.

I know there's others out there, but I don't have the time to track them down right now. But...

Combo box

Combo Box

Experts-exhange, for instance? Crops up all the time when i Google for solutions to programming/configuratin problems. Seems they have quite a big suite of answers. Subscribtion to get at them, though. All provided by the users of the site, of course.

Seems kinda strange to let the users provide the content of your site. Oh wait...

I stand corrected, here.

"The only way to clear the BIOS password is with a Master Reset Password provided by Dell for that Model No. and they will not give you the master unless you can give them the name. address and telephone of the registered owner. However the password is universal for all laps with the same model no., so if you know someone who is a registered owner, you can call Dell and get the master."

Reference here. That being said, the master for an Inspiron 5000 is BLVJCH. Booyah!

try asking this question at experts exchange. You'll find people there will be much more helpful with this issue.