Clarion Folk

I’ve just received word from my “the smoking man” on the inside of the umbrella corporation we all know and love and obey, CapeSoft. Big News!

A significant special on CapeSoft accessories is planned for next Thursday (16th of October in Australia).

Adorning my tweed sleuth hat and wielding my cane, I personally contacted a CapeSoft Representative, who has to remain nameless for fear of Newsgroup Mobbing. They said, and I quote, “We can neither confirm nor deny rumours of an impending special.”

YOU HEARD IT, YOU CAN’T UN-HEAR IT!

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Updated (25th March 2008)

The problem is the answer. It seems impossible for the current Readers to contextually filter and range through the content.

Gary announced the new version of Organise365 on the newsgroups recently, and it’s big feature is Newsgroups.

This got me thinking about Newsgroup Readers.

For the longest time, I used Outlook Express. That was because I didn’t know any better. But the search capabilities really, REALLY, got my goat.

I then tried Thunderbird for a while. There were some _slight_ searching improvements, but not really enough. I really wanted to use Thunderbird, mostly because it’s from Mozilla, who make the wonderful Firefox (soon to be better).

Since getting this beastie, I’ve been using Windows Mail. It’s okay, but really, the searching hasn’t gotten much better.

I’ve heard Windows Live Mail might be better, so I’m going to go ahead and try it out.

EDIT: (25th March 2008)

Windows Live Mail looks pretty good. Not only does the Newsgroup Reading functionality looked beefed up (you’ve got a "View All Posts" ability, which is cool), but it’s got an RSS Feed Reader also. This was mentioned in the Skype discussions, apologies.

What is the problem with Searching Newsgroups? And what is it that we want in this Searching?

The problem is the answer. It seems impossible for the current Readers to contextually filter and range through the content. When I type in "Two Bob’s Code", I want not only any "Bob"’s who have posted, not only any Subject lines with "Bob" in them, but I want any post with "Bob" in the body. And I want them shown to me grouped like that.

This is some complicated searching, granted .. but newsgroups are an important part of development, and other businesses I’m sure. It’d be worth it.

Google Mail seems to track email conversations in the same way the Newsgroups work. But I’d like my newsgroup reader to be better at allowing me to follow the flow of the conversation. When I view without Grouping (that is, for example, all posts in Date order without any Grouping) I’d like it to be far easier to slip into a Grouping, or to see it’s order not only by Date, but by the next in the Grouping.

Not much to ask for :).

Here’s my current conclusion:

If Google add Newsgroup support to GMail the world will tilt on it’s axis and I’ll be a happy little dev.

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Charles and his gang, who don’t seem to feel the need for sleep, have released SoftDefense.

Using State-of-the-art Code Obfuscation techniques and Dynamic Runtime DLL loading, SoftDefense gives you the ability to render your Armadillo related code virtually invisible to Hackers.

SoftDefense leverages Clarion’s own ability to write code to overcome the near impossible task of using these advanced obfuscation techniques at such a high level.

On the newsgroups Charles has already answered a few questions.

Here’s one of them:

How would you compare armadillo-softdefense to secwin please (IF they are comparable) as far as licencing only is concerned ?

Here’s an excerpt from Charles’ answer that I found pretty cool.

My new PageSnip product is about to be sold on Amazon alongside the other software there.  To be able to facilitate this with the company that will actually put it there I simply provide them an Armadillo encryption key and they generate permanent codes that ship with the orders.

Armadillo then, will make the sales process easier in some "Wider World" situations.

Charles wraps up the question with this:

But again – all these points aside, it really all depends on what works best for you and where your comfort level lies.

SoftDefense looks exciting. Security is an important issue in Software Development. Don’t get caught out.

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Roger has posted his recent experience with using True Image (the Wikipedia entry) to restore windows after a bad installation experience.

Taking a squiz at True Image has convinced me I need to get myself hooked up. It’s not very expensive, and the peace of mind it seems to inspire (see the newsgroup post, this Whirlpool thread, or many other google-related linkages) would far and away cover any concern over shelling out.

So Acronis, I think you have another customer.

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