LinkedIn "Experts"

About twice a month, I look at the "Answers" section on LinkedIn. If I come across a question I think I am qualified to answer and if I have time, I answer it. Over the past 15 months or so, I have answered 18 questions, of which four were selected "best" and two more - "good".

Today, I noticed that LinkedIn actually lists five most prolific "answerers" of the week (it's called "This Week’s Top Experts"). Ready for this? The #1 expert this week answered 560 questions! In one week! The second best - 513! And he appears to have a full-time job!

Ungraceful Degradation

Today, I was messing with the ubiquitous "Like", "+1", "InShare", and "Tweet" buttons. The "Tweet" button is the only one that degrades gracefully to a hyperlink if JavaScript is disabled. The others just disappear.

I wonder if Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn have even tested their buttons under those conditions. Or, maybe, they are "crappy by design". Either way, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn got a "minus one" from me today.

How to Start and Stop PostgreSQL Service (Actually, Any Service) on Windows 7

On Windows XP, if you were logged in as a user with administrative rights, you could simply run cmd to start what in the old days we used to call a "DOS box" and run something like this:

NET START postgresql

NET STOP postgresql

from the Windows command prompt to start or stop PostgreSQL database server (or any other Windows service).

On Windows 7, however, it is a little more complicated than that. The problem is that, if you simply run cmd and try to start or stop a service, you will most probably get this error message:
System error 5 has occurred.
Access is denied.

Moodle 2.0 Course Backup: DDL SQL Execution Error

Moodle 2.0 fails to backup courses (and quizzes) returning the following error: "DDL sql execution error".

It appears that this error occurs if the database user does not have the permission to create temporary tables.

PostgreSQL Installation Problem on Windows without WSH

PostgreSQL 8.3 and 8.4 may fail to install on Windows with the following error message: "An error occurred executing the Microsoft VC++ runtime installer". PostgreSQL 9.x may fail with a different message: "Unable to write inside TEMP environment variable path", but the actual reason appears to be the same.