It's not and people don't typically use a mouse for CAD. Sure a mouse is used, but most of the actual work is done via keyboard shortcuts because it's both more accurate and faster.
So by "people don't typically use a mouse for CAD" you mean people do use a mouse. Uh.... OK.
Sorry, but the mouse is heavily used for CAD. The hot setup is a Space Pilot Pro and a multi-button mouse. Greatly reduces the use of a keyboard.
In a nutshell, he shows a gesture-operated wireframe or shaded model viewer. All that was shown was zoom, rotation and moving the clipping plane. It must be impressive for the non-CAD crowd, but I didn't see anything new that was practical, and there are far better viewers already available.
Elon Musk tweeted "Will post video next week of designing a rocket part with hand gestures & then immediately printing it in titanium". But the video says he designed the parts in Unigraphics, so it was NOT designed using hand gestures - unless you count using a mouse as "hand gestures".
Anyone that has used a solids modeling CAD application with a Space Controller in the last 17 years has been able to do pretty much all of this and more (not counting the use of Ti in the printer). But Space Controller + mouse users keep their arms on the desk, rather than waving their arms in the air (fatiguing). So thanks for thinking of us, be we designers do NOT want to hold our hands in the air. We had enough of that crap with light pens.
In all fairness, the one nice thing the video suggests is the gesture-operated viewer might make sense for a standing presenter. The Space Controller requires a flat surface to rest upon, so gesture-operation might make sense for this application.
You don't have to be a successful automotive engineer or car designer to take one look at the Reliant Robin and see that someone somewhere, in more ways than one, fucked-up monumentally.
The suits wanted to buy licenses for RHEL to upgrade the nodes, the IT staff wanted to use CentOS
so the IT staff didn't want to use RHEL, they wanted something identical to RHEL instead.... stupid.
If it was just down to some anti-corporate kind of dumb thinking, then surely said IT staff should be handing back their salaries..
Or.... It could be that the IT budget was fixed, so they had to make a choice between spending on line-of-business issues vs. (what is in effect) an expensive support contract so the FEA guy can run his simulations faster. Frankly, we just don't know all the facts to second guess their decision.
This lesson keeps getting learned every few years or so, going all the way back to the first light pen on the SAGE. It was called Gorilla Arm back then.
Things are different now. With flat panel monitors, you don't need to stick it up vertically in front of you. You can stick it flat on the desk, or have it in your lap, or have it in some way that rests your arms. So gorilla arm is a solvable problem..
Actually, that would be much worse. Try this: hold one hand in a position you'd use for a vertical screen. Do likewise for the other hand, but extend it for a horizontal monitor. See how long you can hold those positions (it won't take long). You'll discover the horizontal monitor requires you to extend your arm in such a way that it will fatigue first. Or at least it did for me when I tried it.
2x2 gives 5 possible shades (between 0 and 4 out of 4 dots covered) and 4x4 gives you 17 possible shades (between 0 and 16 out of 16 dots covered). In many cases (such as photographic images), image processing can give an effect that appears better than this, but for sharp edges your subpixel count needs to equal the number of shades of gray that you want to reproduce. But even that only gives you a linear shading scale. The eye is more sensitive to relative intensity differences than absolute differences so you would need even more subpixels in this method than actual gray scales that you want distinguishable by the viewer.
Sorry, but you are making the mistake of assuming that the quantity of black dots dictates the "shade" and the position of the black dots don't matter. But they do.
Remember, in my example I'm talking about a monochrome laser printer. A array of black dots on paper can create the ILLUSION of shades of gray, and the pixels around it alter our perception.
Not quite. In a 2x2 array, the number of black pixels can be 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4, that is 5 different values. In a 4x4 array, you have 17 different values.
In a way, we are both correct. My example shows the maximum number of combinations, while your example groups them by the number of black dots possible. Yes, in a 4x4 array there are six possible arrangements of 2-black and 2-white "dots". But those six arrangements may give you the appearance of different shades of gray - depending on the surrounding dots.
As an example - a 4x4 array with the two left dots black and the right side white. Imagine what that would look like if the same array is repeated vs. surrounded by black dots. Or if the arrays to the left are one color and the arrays to the right are a different color. Remember - you are looking at a group of 4x4 arrays, not just a single 4x4 array.
Didn't laser printers show us that 300dpi is still a bit jaggy, and 600dpi is perfectly smooth at arm's length? When screen resolution is around 400dpi then we are probably done.
300dpi didn't cut it for dithered images - 600dpi was close, but not quite enough. The winner was the 1200dpi laser printers.
When you have a grayscale image you want to print on a single-color device, you use dithering to create the illusion of gray shades. A 1-to-1 mapping of pixels to printer dots gives you 2 colors - black and white. Photos look horrible. Double the printer resolution so you have a 2x2 dot array for each pixel and you have 16 possible shades. Double it again for a 4x4 dot array per pixel and you have 256 possible shades. So if you want a 300 pixel-per-inch gray scale image to look good, you need a printer resolution of 1200dpi.
Now, all this changes for RGB displays, since each pixel can be from 16 to 256 shades each. But less depth per pixel might be compensated for by smaller pixels and a higher density.
I remember in the early days of computer graphics, it was believed that 24-bit color (8-bit each Red, Green and Blue pixels) was the pinnacle. But once 24-bit color became widely available, we discovered it wasn't enough. When edited in Photoshop, often a 24-bit image would show banding in the sky, due to rounding errors in the math involved. Adobe added 48-bit color (16-bits per RGB channel) the rounding errors became much less visible. Today cameras capture 8, 12,14 or 16 bits per RGB channel, and using HDR software we get 96-bit color.
My point is we have a history of thinking we know where the limit is, but when the technology arrives, we discover we need a little bit more....
You also need a catchy name. Rape Seed Oil doesn't sound as good as Canola Oil. Perhaps Nano-Lobster?
You need a "hero" to be seen using it. New hot actress, athlete or the new "cool" guy. "Steve Jobs 2.0 says Nano-Lobster raised him from the dead, cured his cancer and asshole-ness. Says iPhones will have removable batteries and OS-X will be available on PCs."
But, IBM though of the PC as a glorified terminal with which to talk to their big irons. They didn't see much interest in providing much RAM.
Maybe. But my recollection is different.
IBM salesmen reported that they were seeing Apple II computers in their customer's accounting departments. They traced the problem to Visicalc (the first spreadsheet) and realized the Apple had software they didn't, and it was cheap. IBM must stop Apple before it grows too large. Things were happening very quickly, and IBM was way off the mark. There were feelings of panic.
Their response was to build a basic personal computer from existing parts - stuff like Intel CPUs, Shugart floppy disks. Make it better than the Apple, sold and serviced by IBM, but get it to market quick.
Here's a great idea! Let's put the BIOS at the high end of memory space! That way we make sure it will be easy to replace when we come out with the REAL IBM personal system in a few years (PS2) - filled with IBM proprietary components. We'll have a REAL operating system developed by then, and can get rid of this Microsoft stuff.
People are going to compose documents, spreadsheets, etc. on a tablet??
Maybe I need more coffee, can someone explain why anyone would want this?
Sure - it's for editing existing documents that need polishing.
The use case is you are on your way to visit a client after an all-nighter. You spot a few issues that need editing, and this product has just enough functionality to let you do that. Or you're at lunch and realize a better way to say something. Whip out your phone and edit the doc.
I have a few hand wired 9 pin to 25 pin connectors with the CTS-RTS and DSR-DTR pins shorted together as they can simplify your life immeasurably.
Better be careful about shorting hardware flow control pins. I've seen CNC mills where someone did that. (Google "CNC Drip Feed"). The feeding PC didn't know the CNC controller buffer was full and kept sending data. When the CNC controller began accepting data again, it had missed hundreds of lines of code. The move commands drove the cutting tool into a bad place and people almost got hurt.
Your advice to learn RS-232 was excellent. But one must understand the flow control issues before you can know how to cable it.
The $50/month is for the full suite, not a single product. My example is for a single product - Photoshop. Upgrading the Master Collection Creative Suite is rather expensive, and I was unable to find an upgrade price.
My guess is Adobe is targeting those legitimate customers who buy their software and use the same version, without paying for upgrades, for 4+ years. With the Cloud model, you are forcing them to (re)pay full price every year.
BINGO! It's my understanding that most Photoshop users surveyed a few years ago said they skip 1 or 2 upgrades. Their upgrade income is dictated by the addition of new features. The cloud removes that pressure.
Notice Adobe compares the cost of the cloud with full retail price. But in the real world, skipping 1 or 2 upgrades save a lot of money. Based on $699 initial price, and $199 upgrades, a 12-year cost is:
$3087 - Upgrade every year $1893 - Upgrade every 2 years $1495 - Upgrade every 3 years $2879 - Cloud @$19.99/month
So the Cloud looks OK if you already upgrade every year. But if a new version is bad, you don't have the previous disks to downgrade. But for those of us who skip upgrades, it can double our cost. And anytime Adobe needs a boost in income, they just raise the price. If we don't pay, we have no software to use.
This is an opening for Adobe competitors. This makes Microsoft look like really nice people - quite a feat!
Yes, in fact, it really is your fucking fault. Because you're a bitch, that's why. You simply accept whatever is put around you and don't start complaining until you have to start taking it up the ass, when you should have known very well beforehand that it would happen.
In short, stop being a coward, take a stand for yourself, and make a bloody effort to fix the damn situation. Sometimes, I have to put in additional upfront work (and sometimes I don't, even), but I never find myself complaining in retrospect.
You on the other hand, seem to support taking the easy path, even though you know very well that you're putting your fate in your vendors' hands. In other words, you're compromising on yourself, and making the situation worse, not just for you, but for everyone else as a result. Yes, you are entirely at fault for that.
My mistake. I thought we were having a technical discussion. I didn't realize this was a religious discussion.
Both Microsoft and Apple look like they are seeking lock in. Apple looks to be far worse to me, but that's beside the point. The tools I need don't exist in Linux or Free BSD. While OS X does have MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD, it lacks Solidworks and many other tools I need. I can run all those tools on my Win 7 workstation, so that makes it the best choice for my personal workstation. You can argue that some similar tools exist on Linux, but I need those exact applications. That's the reality of the work I do. Arguing otherwise simply demonstrates that you don't understand my industry.
I run Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Win server 2008R2 and Windows 7. Once upon a time, all the best CAD and publishing programs ran on Unix workstations. I really like Unix and wish the Unix wars didn't allow Microsoft the opening it needed to get a foothold in the server/workstation OS market. You can blame that on AT&T, Sun, HP, IBM, Digital, and SGI. But you don't, do you?
But the bottom line is the OS is simply a platform to run my tools and any of them is acceptable as long as I get the job done and meet the demands of my clients. In my world, when my customer requires a Solidworks file, I will be using whatever OS that product run on. If you get that - great. If not, then I hope you get a job with my competitors. Go ahead and hate me. I'm one of the guys that gets things done so you can sit in your mom's basement spewing insults.
In your religion, you appear to think that you are fighting evil. Good luck with that.
Quote: "Windows 8 sucks because it flips between the classic and the metro interface seemingly at random"
Exactly. Metro on a phone is not bad at all. I KNOW I don't know, so I'm OK with exploring the interface. But Win 8 gives me a lot of "WTF - when did $X go?" Is it in the metro interface, or in a new location in Control Panel, or was it dropped, or...."
I've been using AutoCAD since about '84, and Solidworks after that. Just an FYI - neither can hold a candle to Rhino (www.Rhino3D.com). Rhino is a true 3D modeling package with a wealth of fantastic surface modeling tools. It sells for US$995.
So the price barrier has been lowered, but that's not to say there's not a significant learning curve for both the software and the design process. Just as PowerPoint makes it easy to create horrible boring presentations with distracting text, jarring color combinations, and badly scaled pictures, learning a 3D CAD package does little to help you learn how to design and build something.
The sad truth is CAD software has become its own discipline. A separate silo of knowledge, if you will. When I was taught board drafting, the focus was on communication. Object lines were drawn darker and thicker to cause the object to "jump" from the page, while meta data (dimensions, text) was drawn with a thinner line in order to make it less visible, unless you were looking for the data. When CAD drafting came along, so much effort went into teaching the operation of the software that we no longer had time for the communication aspect. Pretty much all CAD software uses artificial tools that do not exist in the physical world, and are thus difficult to teach. The net result is we have some of the most visually confusing documents in history being churned out in massive numbers. Old drawings are now being considered as collectible works of art.
Contrast that with the Desktop Publishing Revolution. In effect, PageMaker was a "paper simulator". All your skills of pasteboard layout applied directly to PageMaker. Word processors were also difficult to use until the What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) word processors arrived. When was the last time you heard of someone going to training for a word processor?
I actually know of a CAD interface that directly models the subtractive manufacturing method. If you know how to machine, it is simple to use. If you don't know how to machine a part, learning the software teaches you a lot about the process. But I'm sad to report that the major CAD vendors show little interest in rocking the boat.
Lots of good ideas here. But nobody mentions an isolation station.
Assume someone brings in a PC or laptop that is infected with something really horrible. If you connect it to your internal network, it might spread to your own PCs and servers. So - first stop is to the isolation station, where we can test it and see what's broken without any danger to our network. Our's has a "server" running in a VM that is effectively read-only. It contains all the service packs, patches and tools. We can kill it and relaunch it with zero danger to the next PC.
How do we know what is infected? We assume anything with an OS installed is infected.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not and people don't typically use a mouse for CAD. Sure a mouse is used, but most of the actual work is done via keyboard shortcuts because it's both more accurate and faster.
So by "people don't typically use a mouse for CAD" you mean people do use a mouse. Uh.... OK.
Sorry, but the mouse is heavily used for CAD. The hot setup is a Space Pilot Pro and a multi-button mouse. Greatly reduces the use of a keyboard.
In a nutshell, he shows a gesture-operated wireframe or shaded model viewer. All that was shown was zoom, rotation and moving the clipping plane. It must be impressive for the non-CAD crowd, but I didn't see anything new that was practical, and there are far better viewers already available.
Elon Musk tweeted "Will post video next week of designing a rocket part with hand gestures & then immediately printing it in titanium". But the video says he designed the parts in Unigraphics, so it was NOT designed using hand gestures - unless you count using a mouse as "hand gestures".
Anyone that has used a solids modeling CAD application with a Space Controller in the last 17 years has been able to do pretty much all of this and more (not counting the use of Ti in the printer). But Space Controller + mouse users keep their arms on the desk, rather than waving their arms in the air (fatiguing). So thanks for thinking of us, be we designers do NOT want to hold our hands in the air. We had enough of that crap with light pens.
In all fairness, the one nice thing the video suggests is the gesture-operated viewer might make sense for a standing presenter. The Space Controller requires a flat surface to rest upon, so gesture-operation might make sense for this application.
The patent has been weaponized.
Nope. It was always a weapon. Always.
You don't have to be a successful automotive engineer or car designer to take one look at the Reliant Robin and see that someone somewhere, in more ways than one, fucked-up monumentally.
Fixed that for ye.
The suits wanted to buy licenses for RHEL to upgrade the nodes, the IT staff wanted to use CentOS
so the IT staff didn't want to use RHEL, they wanted something identical to RHEL instead.... stupid.
If it was just down to some anti-corporate kind of dumb thinking, then surely said IT staff should be handing back their salaries..
Or.... It could be that the IT budget was fixed, so they had to make a choice between spending on line-of-business issues vs. (what is in effect) an expensive support contract so the FEA guy can run his simulations faster. Frankly, we just don't know all the facts to second guess their decision.
Who said you had to use a computer?
This lesson keeps getting learned every few years or so, going all the way back to the first light pen on the SAGE. It was called Gorilla Arm back then.
Things are different now. With flat panel monitors, you don't need to stick it up vertically in front of you. You can stick it flat on the desk, or have it in your lap, or have it in some way that rests your arms. So gorilla arm is a solvable problem..
Actually, that would be much worse. Try this: hold one hand in a position you'd use for a vertical screen. Do likewise for the other hand, but extend it for a horizontal monitor. See how long you can hold those positions (it won't take long). You'll discover the horizontal monitor requires you to extend your arm in such a way that it will fatigue first. Or at least it did for me when I tried it.
Yes. That will be $375,001 please. Would you like fries with that? Only $50,000 more.
Bullshit. I've never seen any banding on CRT.
You must have missed this sentence:
"When edited in Photoshop, often a 24-bit image would show banding in the sky, due to rounding errors in the math involved."
Google "photoshop banding in sky" to see examples.
2x2 gives 5 possible shades (between 0 and 4 out of 4 dots covered) and 4x4 gives you 17 possible shades (between 0 and 16 out of 16 dots covered). In many cases (such as photographic images), image processing can give an effect that appears better than this, but for sharp edges your subpixel count needs to equal the number of shades of gray that you want to reproduce. But even that only gives you a linear shading scale. The eye is more sensitive to relative intensity differences than absolute differences so you would need even more subpixels in this method than actual gray scales that you want distinguishable by the viewer.
Sorry, but you are making the mistake of assuming that the quantity of black dots dictates the "shade" and the position of the black dots don't matter. But they do.
Remember, in my example I'm talking about a monochrome laser printer. A array of black dots on paper can create the ILLUSION of shades of gray, and the pixels around it alter our perception.
Not quite. In a 2x2 array, the number of black pixels can be 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4, that is 5 different values. In a 4x4 array, you have 17 different values.
In a way, we are both correct. My example shows the maximum number of combinations, while your example groups them by the number of black dots possible. Yes, in a 4x4 array there are six possible arrangements of 2-black and 2-white "dots". But those six arrangements may give you the appearance of different shades of gray - depending on the surrounding dots.
As an example - a 4x4 array with the two left dots black and the right side white. Imagine what that would look like if the same array is repeated vs. surrounded by black dots. Or if the arrays to the left are one color and the arrays to the right are a different color. Remember - you are looking at a group of 4x4 arrays, not just a single 4x4 array.
Didn't laser printers show us that 300dpi is still a bit jaggy, and 600dpi is perfectly smooth at arm's length? When screen resolution is around 400dpi then we are probably done.
300dpi didn't cut it for dithered images - 600dpi was close, but not quite enough. The winner was the 1200dpi laser printers.
When you have a grayscale image you want to print on a single-color device, you use dithering to create the illusion of gray shades. A 1-to-1 mapping of pixels to printer dots gives you 2 colors - black and white. Photos look horrible. Double the printer resolution so you have a 2x2 dot array for each pixel and you have 16 possible shades. Double it again for a 4x4 dot array per pixel and you have 256 possible shades. So if you want a 300 pixel-per-inch gray scale image to look good, you need a printer resolution of 1200dpi.
Now, all this changes for RGB displays, since each pixel can be from 16 to 256 shades each. But less depth per pixel might be compensated for by smaller pixels and a higher density.
I remember in the early days of computer graphics, it was believed that 24-bit color (8-bit each Red, Green and Blue pixels) was the pinnacle. But once 24-bit color became widely available, we discovered it wasn't enough. When edited in Photoshop, often a 24-bit image would show banding in the sky, due to rounding errors in the math involved. Adobe added 48-bit color (16-bits per RGB channel) the rounding errors became much less visible. Today cameras capture 8, 12,14 or 16 bits per RGB channel, and using HDR software we get 96-bit color.
My point is we have a history of thinking we know where the limit is, but when the technology arrives, we discover we need a little bit more....
You also need a catchy name. Rape Seed Oil doesn't sound as good as Canola Oil. Perhaps Nano-Lobster?
You need a "hero" to be seen using it. New hot actress, athlete or the new "cool" guy. "Steve Jobs 2.0 says Nano-Lobster raised him from the dead, cured his cancer and asshole-ness. Says iPhones will have removable batteries and OS-X will be available on PCs."
But, IBM though of the PC as a glorified terminal with which to talk to their big irons. They didn't see much interest in providing much RAM.
Maybe. But my recollection is different.
IBM salesmen reported that they were seeing Apple II computers in their customer's accounting departments. They traced the problem to Visicalc (the first spreadsheet) and realized the Apple had software they didn't, and it was cheap. IBM must stop Apple before it grows too large. Things were happening very quickly, and IBM was way off the mark. There were feelings of panic.
Their response was to build a basic personal computer from existing parts - stuff like Intel CPUs, Shugart floppy disks. Make it better than the Apple, sold and serviced by IBM, but get it to market quick.
Here's a great idea! Let's put the BIOS at the high end of memory space! That way we make sure it will be easy to replace when we come out with the REAL IBM personal system in a few years (PS2) - filled with IBM proprietary components. We'll have a REAL operating system developed by then, and can get rid of this Microsoft stuff.
"If you do not own the software that is used to provide access to your data, you do not really own the data in any meaningful sense."
THIS.
Adobe - this is why we are pissed off about the Creative Cloud. You attach rent to our data.
People are going to compose documents, spreadsheets, etc. on a tablet??
Maybe I need more coffee, can someone explain why anyone would want this?
Sure - it's for editing existing documents that need polishing.
The use case is you are on your way to visit a client after an all-nighter. You spot a few issues that need editing, and this product has just enough functionality to let you do that. Or you're at lunch and realize a better way to say something. Whip out your phone and edit the doc.
I have a few hand wired 9 pin to 25 pin connectors with the CTS-RTS and DSR-DTR pins shorted together as they can simplify your life immeasurably.
Better be careful about shorting hardware flow control pins. I've seen CNC mills where someone did that. (Google "CNC Drip Feed"). The feeding PC didn't know the CNC controller buffer was full and kept sending data. When the CNC controller began accepting data again, it had missed hundreds of lines of code. The move commands drove the cutting tool into a bad place and people almost got hurt.
Your advice to learn RS-232 was excellent. But one must understand the flow control issues before you can know how to cable it.
The $50/month is for the full suite, not a single product. My example is for a single product - Photoshop. Upgrading the Master Collection Creative Suite is rather expensive, and I was unable to find an upgrade price.
My guess is Adobe is targeting those legitimate customers who buy their software and use the same version, without paying for upgrades, for 4+ years. With the Cloud model, you are forcing them to (re)pay full price every year.
BINGO! It's my understanding that most Photoshop users surveyed a few years ago said they skip 1 or 2 upgrades. Their upgrade income is dictated by the addition of new features. The cloud removes that pressure.
Notice Adobe compares the cost of the cloud with full retail price. But in the real world, skipping 1 or 2 upgrades save a lot of money. Based on $699 initial price, and $199 upgrades, a 12-year cost is:
$3087 - Upgrade every year
$1893 - Upgrade every 2 years
$1495 - Upgrade every 3 years
$2879 - Cloud @$19.99/month
So the Cloud looks OK if you already upgrade every year. But if a new version is bad, you don't have the previous disks to downgrade. But for those of us who skip upgrades, it can double our cost. And anytime Adobe needs a boost in income, they just raise the price. If we don't pay, we have no software to use.
This is an opening for Adobe competitors. This makes Microsoft look like really nice people - quite a feat!
Yes, in fact, it really is your fucking fault. Because you're a bitch, that's why. You simply accept whatever is put around you and don't start complaining until you have to start taking it up the ass, when you should have known very well beforehand that it would happen.
In short, stop being a coward, take a stand for yourself, and make a bloody effort to fix the damn situation. Sometimes, I have to put in additional upfront work (and sometimes I don't, even), but I never find myself complaining in retrospect.
You on the other hand, seem to support taking the easy path, even though you know very well that you're putting your fate in your vendors' hands. In other words, you're compromising on yourself, and making the situation worse, not just for you, but for everyone else as a result. Yes, you are entirely at fault for that.
My mistake. I thought we were having a technical discussion. I didn't realize this was a religious discussion.
Both Microsoft and Apple look like they are seeking lock in. Apple looks to be far worse to me, but that's beside the point. The tools I need don't exist in Linux or Free BSD. While OS X does have MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD, it lacks Solidworks and many other tools I need. I can run all those tools on my Win 7 workstation, so that makes it the best choice for my personal workstation. You can argue that some similar tools exist on Linux, but I need those exact applications. That's the reality of the work I do. Arguing otherwise simply demonstrates that you don't understand my industry.
I run Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Win server 2008R2 and Windows 7. Once upon a time, all the best CAD and publishing programs ran on Unix workstations. I really like Unix and wish the Unix wars didn't allow Microsoft the opening it needed to get a foothold in the server/workstation OS market. You can blame that on AT&T, Sun, HP, IBM, Digital, and SGI. But you don't, do you?
But the bottom line is the OS is simply a platform to run my tools and any of them is acceptable as long as I get the job done and meet the demands of my clients. In my world, when my customer requires a Solidworks file, I will be using whatever OS that product run on. If you get that - great. If not, then I hope you get a job with my competitors. Go ahead and hate me. I'm one of the guys that gets things done so you can sit in your mom's basement spewing insults.
In your religion, you appear to think that you are fighting evil. Good luck with that.
seriously, its your own damn fault.
Yeah - I guess it's my fault for needing Photoshop, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Excel, Word, etc. to share files with my customers.
Quote: "Windows 8 sucks because it flips between the classic and the metro interface seemingly at random"
Exactly. Metro on a phone is not bad at all. I KNOW I don't know, so I'm OK with exploring the interface. But Win 8 gives me a lot of "WTF - when did $X go?" Is it in the metro interface, or in a new location in Control Panel, or was it dropped, or...."
I told the bees that they needed to contribute to both parties if they wanted a voice in these matters.
I've been using AutoCAD since about '84, and Solidworks after that. Just an FYI - neither can hold a candle to Rhino (www.Rhino3D.com). Rhino is a true 3D modeling package with a wealth of fantastic surface modeling tools. It sells for US$995.
So the price barrier has been lowered, but that's not to say there's not a significant learning curve for both the software and the design process. Just as PowerPoint makes it easy to create horrible boring presentations with distracting text, jarring color combinations, and badly scaled pictures, learning a 3D CAD package does little to help you learn how to design and build something.
The sad truth is CAD software has become its own discipline. A separate silo of knowledge, if you will. When I was taught board drafting, the focus was on communication. Object lines were drawn darker and thicker to cause the object to "jump" from the page, while meta data (dimensions, text) was drawn with a thinner line in order to make it less visible, unless you were looking for the data. When CAD drafting came along, so much effort went into teaching the operation of the software that we no longer had time for the communication aspect. Pretty much all CAD software uses artificial tools that do not exist in the physical world, and are thus difficult to teach. The net result is we have some of the most visually confusing documents in history being churned out in massive numbers. Old drawings are now being considered as collectible works of art.
Contrast that with the Desktop Publishing Revolution. In effect, PageMaker was a "paper simulator". All your skills of pasteboard layout applied directly to PageMaker. Word processors were also difficult to use until the What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) word processors arrived. When was the last time you heard of someone going to training for a word processor?
I actually know of a CAD interface that directly models the subtractive manufacturing method. If you know how to machine, it is simple to use. If you don't know how to machine a part, learning the software teaches you a lot about the process. But I'm sad to report that the major CAD vendors show little interest in rocking the boat.
Lots of good ideas here. But nobody mentions an isolation station.
Assume someone brings in a PC or laptop that is infected with something really horrible. If you connect it to your internal network, it might spread to your own PCs and servers. So - first stop is to the isolation station, where we can test it and see what's broken without any danger to our network. Our's has a "server" running in a VM that is effectively read-only. It contains all the service packs, patches and tools. We can kill it and relaunch it with zero danger to the next PC.
How do we know what is infected? We assume anything with an OS installed is infected.