One promoted benefit Software as a Service is that you are always up to date. There are no local applications to install and maintain. You don’t need to go through expensive and disruptive annual updates and/or install service packs or hotfixes; all this is taken care of for you. The latest and greatest software [...]
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It’s probably worth pointing out that if you you have no problem emailing your designs around the place without some form of protection or encryption, there’s little point in getting all worked up about Cloud security. Email isn’t remotely secure. FTP isn’t exactly watertight, either. If you’re still interested in Cloud security issues, this [...]  18 November 2011, 12:02 pm |  4 comments | Tags: 123D, Amazon, Cloud, Security, Terms and Conditions | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Legal, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Thoughts, Web Stuff 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 In all of the Cad on the Cloud discussion so far, both here and elsewhere, there have been a lot of anti-Cloud comments and very little in the way of response from the pro-Cloud crowd. Participation in the debate from Autodesk people has been minimal. In one way I can understand that, because given [...] 10 November 2011, 10:15 am | 4 comments | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Thoughts, Web Stuff …LISP. I have now closed the What are the best features ever added to AutoCAD? poll, and the winner is AutoLISP/Visual LISP, by a long, long way. I don’t always agree with the majority view expressed in the polls here, but in this case I wholeheartedly agree. Adding LISP was the biggest and best [...] This is one of those self-indulgent posts you probably hate, so feel free to skip it and just read the more interesting stuff. Last month, my site statistics went through the roof. Here’s a graph that shows the number of unique visitors and the number of visits per month since I started the blog [...] 2 November 2011, 9:39 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Statistics | Category: Cloud, Navel Gazing, Thoughts, Web Stuff It’s about time I posted about something other than the Cloud, or even CAD. Every year, there are four national-level fencing competitions in Australia. As they are almost all held on the other side of the continent, I don’t get to compete in them as often as I’d like. However, a couple of months [...] 1 November 2011, 7:53 am | 6 comments | Tags: Canberra, Fencing, Saber, Sabre, Video | Category: Fencing, Navel Gazing, Thoughts, Video One of the major attractions of the Cloud for vendors is that it ties in customers, providing a reasonably consistent revenue stream. It is an effective anti-competitive strategy. There are various technical and other methods that can be used to ensure that it’s difficult or even impossible for customers to jump ship. While that’s all [...] 31 October 2011, 12:44 pm | 4 comments | Tags: CAD Management, Tie-in | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Interoperability, Subscription, Thoughts, Web Stuff A few days ago, John McCarthy died at the age of 84. He didn’t make a fortune selling gadgets, he just profoundly affected the world of computing. He will be remembered mainly as the father of LISP, without which it is quite possible that AutoCAD and Autodesk would not have survived beyond the 80s. [...] 27 October 2011, 9:37 am | One comment | Tags: John McCarthy, Vale | Category: Announcement, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Development, LISP, Nostalgia, Thoughts, Web Stuff, Win I guess most of this blog’s readers also read WorldCAD Access and upFront.eZine, so it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that in the latest upFront.eZine, Ralph had procalimed “The Cloud is Dead” and referred to some of my recent posts here as supporting evidence. I’d just like to point out that it’s Ralph announcing [...] 26 October 2011, 1:57 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Cloud, Prophecy | Category: Cloud, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Thoughts, Web Stuff Autodesk recently made a big announcement about its Cloud initiatives, and reactions have been all over the place. Some people can barely contain their breathless excitement while others are outraged to the point of passing out the pitchforks. Why? It’s pretty much business as usual. It’s nothing like Dassault’s disastrous we’re-moving-you-to-the-Cloud FUD campaign against [...] 30 September 2011, 1:00 pm | 3 comments | Tags: AutoCAD for Mac, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Hype, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Other Autodesk Products, Spin, Subscription, Thoughts, Web Stuff The observant among you may have noticed that for many years, Autodesk’s free patches, service packs and updates haven’t added any new functionality. Bugs may get fixed, severe performance issues may be addressed, but design errors generally have to wait for the next release (at the earliest), and new features definitely don’t get added. The [...] 12 September 2011, 1:06 pm | 5 comments | Tags: Accounting, Autodesk, FASB, SEC, Service Pack, SOP 97-2, Update, VSOE | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Autodesk University, ClassicArray, Customer Service, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia, Other Products, Thoughts According to Autodesk, the forthcoming OS X version of AutoCAD has “many of the powerful AutoCAD features and functionality.” So what doesn’t it have? What are the holes? Autodesk hasn’t bothered to let me know a single thing about this software, so I guess I’ll just indulge in some irresponsible and uninformed speculation, based [...] 1 September 2010, 6:06 pm | 8 comments | Tags: AutoCAD for Mac | Category: Apple, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customisation, Spin, Thoughts In a comment in response to a Deelip post yesterday, Brad Holtz pointed to an article he wrote in 1999. It’s interesting to note that while much of the computing world today bears little resemblance to the scene at the end of the last century, this article remains almost completely accurate and relevant. Indeed, [...] 27 August 2010, 12:42 pm | One comment | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, Autodesk, Brad Holtz | Category: Autodesk, Nostalgia, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Thoughts, Writing 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 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 [...] 28 June 2010, 1:24 pm | 9 comments | Tags: Censorship, Discussion groups, Educational version, Plot Stamp, Rant | Category: Autodesk, Cadalyst, Comments, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Spin, Thoughts, Web Stuff According to Shaan, Autodesk does not discuss its future plans. Or does it? In a comment, Ralph reckoned it does. Putting aside technology previews and various NDA-bound circumstances (e.g. Beta testing), can you think of cases where Autodesk has revealed what it intends to do in future? Here are a few off the top [...] 26 May 2010, 1:57 pm | 6 comments | Tags: AutoCAD for Mac, Autodesk, Bizzaro World, Secrecy | Category: Apple, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Legal, Microsoft, Other Blogs, Spin, Thoughts I just wanted to get on the record that I don’t trust claims based on statistical data without being able to review in detail the methods used to obtain and interpret the data. Even with the best intentions, full integrity and honesty, it is not difficult to come to completely the wrong conclusions based [...] 19 May 2010, 8:04 am | 5 comments | Tags: Damn Lies, Isaac Asimov, Lies, Statistics | Category: Navel Gazing, Spin, Thoughts You may have seen Shaan Hurley and I having a discussion (ahem) over the validity of his statement: I really do use the ribbon now with AutoCAD 2010 along with most users as evidenced by the CIP data we receive daily from thousands of AutoCAD users who choose to send the great data. So, [...] 14 May 2010, 4:47 pm | 10 comments | Tags: AutoCAD, CIP, Deelip Menezes, Polls, Ribbon, Shaan Hurley, Teresa Anania, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Other Blogs, Polls, Thoughts |
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Cloud concerns – trust
Using any software involves some degree of trust in the vendor. Using the Cloud requires a much higher level of trust.
Autodesk boss Carl Bass is a maker of carefully crafted things, so I’ll use that as an analogy. Using standalone software requires the sort of trust that a maker has in a tool [...]