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Scoble Agrees With Calcanis, Startups Cannot Afford Slackers

Scoble (Robert) has voiced his opinion on Jason Calcanis’ "opinions" about (Web) Startups and Slackers. Ha ha, Techcrunch has an amusing take on it.

I’m not sure how many "startups" of the Web 2.0 nature exist within the Clarion universe. Probably zero or less.

But I think this opinion is valid for any team seeking to excel. Of course, you can bury yourself more easily in a large bureaucracy. Still, this is just a question of drive, character, determination. All those things that Robbins and his ilk mesmerise us with.

There are days where I’m a slacker. But there are more and more days (and nights) where I work like a fiend, late and later into the night.

Working hard means nothing. So being a slacker, by that logic, means nothing too. What counts is working smart. If you can work smart for 4 hours a day and make a living, upholding your responsibilities, then kudos.

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Code-Signing Your Applications

There’s been some great discussion on the Skype channel about Code-Signing your software applications. Especially with Vista this is something that we cannot ignore. Vista’s UAC makes it difficult for the User to install un-signed applications. This in turn will establish doubt and annoyance in them, at _us_, the developer.

The conversation led me to three links.

After reading the article I still don’t like UAC, but I do understand it better.

How has UAC affected your development?

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Topspeed File Size Limit

Jorge opened up the discussion with the following post:

2 Gb is a bit small for today standards…\r\nAny chance or plan to improve the file format to increse this limit?

There are a number of differing answers, although most people were in agree-ence that 2GB is getting crazy big anyway. A move to SQL is more appropriate at that stage.

Some of the answers were:

1. SV increased the number of records to 4GB-ish (?) but didn’t increase the table addressable size.

2. The 2GB limit is based on the use of a Signed Long for it’s internal system index.

3. The way the TPS driver handles record locking would mean a change in file format to increase past 2GB. This would mean it would only work on NTFS file systems.

I would think that, as said above, if you are getting to the stage where your files are that big .. take 6 months to change over to SQL (a far more stable arena for large amounts of data). That, or sell your system and start again with something new.

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Microsoft Changing Stance on IE8 Default “Mode”

This is a change that rings throughout all the fiefdoms of Nerdland!

In a post on the IEBlog (I got there from theRegister), Dean Hachamovitch posts:

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

This is good.

But now we’re done with that, take a look at the IEBlog. It’s good!

They are posting frequently, they use nice images, and what they post is actually interesting. I’m adding it to my NetVibes.

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Version Control Systems

Arnor started a very useful post on the newsgroups regarding Version Control software.

The following are the systems that came up in the discussion (apologies if I missed any). Some of these aren’t full systems, but helpers in the process:

Seems like there’s a few out there. Apparently Serena is quite expensive, and VSS generates contention as to it’s usefulness :).

ClarionMag has some fantastic articles on the subject. Here’s a good search list. There’s a couple of Tortoise articles in particular, Dave Harms, and Mark Geisinger.

Also, here’s the Topical Index for Source Control at ClarionMag.

Tortoise SVN is good. I use it, although not properly. My main use is for incremental backups, at which it rules. I can "Commit" and know that my changes have been backed up right away. No fuss. I can also "Revert" to any of the previous points. That is an awesome ability, and very easy to navigate through.

It takes a little setting up, and I’ve still got to put my head around the actual Version Control part. Those articles will help.

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Selling Domain Names

Jesus Moreno has posted on the newsgroups about his selling of some domains (most/all of which have "clarion" in their name).

This has prompted some very aggressive conversation. It’s one of those topics that sounds pretty harmless until you actually talk about it.

On one hand we have the very real choice that is Jesus’ alone. He owns the domains, he can do whatever he wants with them.

On the other hand, there is the moral question that people have raised, implying that people buy up domains with the sole reason of selling them later.

Thankfully most every reply gives the proper response .. which is: It doesn’t matter!

1. You can’t raise moral questions.

2. They are owned. Owned.

3. An Owner can do what they want with what they own.

4. This is a pretty useless thing to argue about. The topic _should_ have been harmless.