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I have closed the Which of these is most evil? poll, which had been running from 20 February 2009. It attracted 2,351 voters, each of whom could distribute up to three votes among thirteen (yes, that number was deliberate) candidates. Here are the ranked results: Satan (36%, 846 Votes) Microsoft (31%, 721 Votes) Apple (26%, 614 Votes) [...]  14 November 2011, 1:53 pm |  One comment | Tags: Apple, Autodesk, Big Content, Brown list, Dell, Disney, Evil, Gaahl, Google, Microsoft, Miley Cyrus, RIAA/IFPI/MPAA, Satan, Sony, Spam, The Pirate Bay | Category: Apple, Autodesk, Fail, Fun, Hardware, Microsoft, Music, Polls, Rant, Thoughts …the Ribbon, according to your selections in the What are the worst features ever added to AutoCAD? poll. As in the best ever poll, the winner (loser?) in this race had no serious competition. I’ve listed eleven top (bottom?) features here rather than ten, partly because the popular (unpopular?) choice Memory Overuse isn’t exactly a [...] 9 November 2011, 12:45 pm |  13 comments | Tags: Action Recorder, Help, Ribbon, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Cloud, Development, Fail, Nostalgia, Polls, Rant Akamai is an Internet/Cloud infrastructure company, used extensively by Autodesk. To be polite, my experiences using its services over several years have been somewhat negative. Back in March, when trying to download the AutoCAD 2012 trial, I went through the usual Akamai download manager struggles before being informed of the wonderful Opera workaround (thanks [...] 3 November 2011, 10:19 am | 4 comments | Tags: Akamai, Cloud | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff One of the more painful aspects of dealing with installations of recent releases of AutoCAD and related products is that although you might run a single setup routine to install what you think is a single application, the end result is a mass of different components being installed. Each of these components is considered a [...] 1 June 2011, 12:27 pm | One comment | Tags: Installation | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, AutoCAD 2011, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Customer Service, Interoperability, Other Autodesk Products, Rant Note: this post is not an April fool’s joke. It may be ridiculous and hard to believe, but unfortunately it’s all true. After I managed to overcome Autodesk’s obstructive download manger and download AutoCAD 2012, it became available on the Subscription site (when that site wasn’t running unusably slowly). Or it became kind-of available. Here’s [...] 1 April 2011, 11:47 am | 4 comments | Tags: Bloat, Download, Fail, Geography | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Performance, Rant, Subscription Let’s say you’re trying to download some software and it insists on first installing some intermediary download manager. Do you think, “Great, this will make my life easier, things are bound to go quickly and smoothly now”? No, didn’t think so. How about when it’s by Akamai? Does that make you feel more confident? [...] 23 March 2011, 7:46 pm | 21 comments | Tags: Akamai, Download | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Fail, Rant, Subscription, Web Stuff As I have stated before, I believe Autodesk to be in the right (morally, not legally) in its battle to prevent Vernor’s resale of old, upgraded copies of Release 14. In the latest installment, Autodesk has won its appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. There will be be further legal moves yet, [...] 15 September 2010, 5:16 pm | 13 comments | Tags: EULA, Licensing, Vernor | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Fail, Legal, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Rant Following on from the AutoCAD 2011 productivity study I critiqued earlier, there is now an LT version. Do the same credibility problems apply to this study too? Yes, and then some. In addition to the drawings and operations being deliberately hand-picked to demonstrate new features, no direct comparison is performed at all between the [...] 25 August 2010, 1:23 pm | 4 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Fail, Spin | Category: AutoCAD LT, Autodesk, Fail, Rant, Spin Heidi Hewett just reported the following on her blog, about a productivity study: According to a recent independent study, AutoCAD® 2011 can help you work up to 44% faster with the latest productivity enhancements. I have a couple of problems with that sentence. First, it’s not an independent study. It’s a study conducted by [...] 4 August 2010, 4:04 pm | 8 comments | Tags: David Cohn, Heidi Hewett, Performance, Productivity, Spin | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Fail, Other Blogs, Rant, Spin, Thoughts I will be airing my own views on the Autodesk discussion group changes in a future post. In the meantime, I have collected some reactions from other users. For the record, there has been only a little censorship in this area. Here are some of the comments that made it through unhindered: I’ve given it a fair shake [...] 30 June 2010, 12:36 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Discussion groups, Fail, User Interface, User Reaction | Category: Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff After an interminable delay and a complete absence of information from Autodesk (no, “contact your reseller” doesn’t count, especially when they don’t know anything either), it seems Raster Design 2011 is going to be released on 20 July. If that’s correct, those of you who use, say, image formats not directly supported by AutoCAD [...] 28 June 2010, 6:34 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, Delay, Raster Design, Release date | Category: Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Raster Design, Subscription I do. If you’ve added a couple of toolbars and changed a few settings, it’s probably fine for you. But I think it’s been effectively broken for significantly customised setups ever since Autodesk “improved” it by introducing the CUI mechanism in AutoCAD 2006. It’s undocumented and whenever I’ve tried it, unreliable. I ran some [...] 26 May 2010, 8:25 am | 2 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Feedback, Migration | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Customisation, Fail, Rant My poll on this subject is still running (see right), but so far about 2/3 of respondents rate AutoCAD 2011′s new browser-based Help system as 0, 1 or 2 stars out of 5 (total fail, very poor or poor). Frankly, I’m surprised it’s doing as well as that. Have a look at this discussion [...] 23 April 2010, 3:48 pm | 9 comments | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cluelessness, Comments, Fail, Help, Newsgroups, Rant | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cloud, Comments, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff This evening, I needed to know exactly which operating systems were supported by all AutoCAD releases from 2004 to 2011 inclusive. I have a pretty good idea, but I needed to confirm that my mental picture is completely correct. So I hopped over to the Autodesk Knowledge Base and entered “system requirements” in the [...] 14 April 2010, 10:35 pm | 7 comments | Tags: Documentation, Fail, Knowledge Base, Rant | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Other Sites, Rant, Video, Web Stuff Personally, I find most April fool jokes to be pretty lame. I considered doing one myself, and had what I thought was a pretty convincing idea, but finally decided against it. Maybe next year. This year, there was one definite exception to the lameness rule. It was well set up, clever and funny. Siemens [...] 2 April 2010, 12:57 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Cluelessness, Siemens | Category: 3D, Autodesk, Cloud, Fail, Fun, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Rant, Web Stuff One of the blogs I read regularly is Photoshop Disasters, which recently posted a picture of a Ralph Lauren ad. In common with many fashion photos, this showed a skinny model that appeared to have been further skinnified on somebody’s computer to the point that the poor waif was ridiculously deformed. Like this:
8 October 2009, 2:50 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Dolts, Fail, Idiots, Image manipulation, Legal, Morons, Other Blogs, Pictures, Ralph Lauren, Rant | Category: Advertising, Fail, Fun, Image manipulation, Legal, Other Blogs, Photography, Pictures, Rant, Thoughts Most of you reading this blog are fortunate enough to live in democracies, and can only look on with sympathy at those who are denied the right to choose who represents them. What must it be like to live under regimes where the people are denied basic rights such as a free choice over [...] 23 June 2009, 2:28 pm | 6 comments | Tags: AUGI, AUGI Election, AUGI Forums, Democracy, Freedom of speech, Rant | Category: AUGI, Fail, Rant, Thoughts In a recent blog post, Deelip Menezes appears to be shocked by the very idea that a particular CAD company (no, not Autodesk) would ship software that contains known bugs. I thought he was joking, because he’s surely aware that practically all software companies with highly complex products release software with known bugs. As [...] 15 June 2009, 1:49 pm | 9 comments | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Bug, Deelip Menezes, Feedback, Listening, Other Blogs, Polls | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Bug, Cadalyst, Other Blogs, Polls, Rant, Thoughts |
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Censorship on the Autodesk discussion groups
The Autodesk discussion groups have quite a few problems at the moment, which I will discuss at length in future. One unnecessary problem that has been added to the mix is censorship. Having praised Autodesk in the past for allowing discussion to go unhindered, it’s only fair to slam heavy-handed moderation when I see [...]