WorldCAD Access

Will ChatGPT Replace CAD Programmers?

Opinion by Nikita Vorobyov, LEDAS You must have heard of ChatGPT, that artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. It interacts with humans in a conversational way by supporting queries made in natural languages. (Image at left created by AI.) For developers, ChatGPT’s most attractive feature is its ability to generate code in any programming language. But how useful is AI-generated code? Let's find out by asking ChatGPT to solve some simple tasks that arise in CAD development projects. (We conducted this study some time ago; since then, ChatGPT has perhaps become smarter.) In our experiment, we asked ChatGPT to solve... Read more →

Does Apple Despise Seniors?

Opinion As a computer-aware kind-of-guy for 42 years (longer, if you include my mainframe days at the University of British Columbia), I help out neighbors and family who don’t really get them. Elderly people, even me, grew up in a world of stable technology. We had two ways of communicating, by letter or by telephone. The only irritant to ever occur with letter technology was the price of postage stamps going up; for telephones, the only technological change was the interface changing from rotary dials to push buttons -- which I never liked, because telephone push buttons (with 1, 2,... Read more →

What Happens When You Get That Letter from Autodesk

EULA on the attack When it launched AutoCAD, Autodesk was lauded for the cheap price ($1,000), the ability to run on many different kinds of personal computers, and being customizable -- rare at a time when traditional CAD software could cost $100,000 a seat, ran on proprietary hardware, and could not be customized by users. Also, making copies of it was easy. So with version 2.5 in 1986, Autodesk began its decades-long (and unsuccessful) crackdown on copying by initially adding a hardware lock. The lockdown was a near-instant disaster, as (1) the hardware made it difficult to print drawings (due... Read more →

Why Tech Companies Sell Complex Ideas

CAD isn't a cell phone, yet In his DeZign Stuff blog, Matt Lombard explains why we can't understand the marketing jargon of some CAD vendors (*koff*Dassault*koff*). The tl;dr explanation is that these companies aren't marketing to end-users but to upper management. Read his article here, please: https://dezignstuff.com/why-technology-companies-have-a-hard-time-selling-complex-ideas. It’s certainly always fascinating for me to watch the blank looks of Solidworks users at Solidworks World 3dexperience World as Dassault execs ask in vain for applause for their high-level pronouncements. If they were politicians, they might be tempted to ask for a better class of attendee. Mr Lombard mentions how terminals-attached-to-mainframes fell... Read more →

The Twitteratti snarks on Facebook's revenue decline

Even Walmart is down this quarter @devilslayer1802: This is the first time EVER Facebook has had a quarter year-on-year revenue decline. Anthony DeRosa / @anthony: Facebook parent Meta posted its biggest drop in daily users and its first decline in revenue as the company struggles to adjust to macroeconomic forces and growing competition from rival TikTok. @infographx: Gen Z is literally ditching all the other social apps, except TikTok. Chaotic Goode / @laurengoode: “Meta shares have lost about half their value since beginning of the year, underscoring investor concern about the health of the co's advertising business. That unit has... Read more →

Canada proves the folly of single-source tech

Rogers goes oopsie In July, the entire Rogers system collapsed for a day. Rogers in Canada forms an oligopoly in communications services, along with Telus and Bell -- landline telephone, cell phone, cable tv, Internet access, and commercial data flows. People who were signed up with Rogers could not phone 911 to access emergency services or get work done remotely or text their friends. The outage impacted the economy, as stores could process no debit card transactions and in some cases not process credit cards either. Some hospitals were reduced to contacting staff by announcements made through local AM radio... Read more →

Benchmarking the M1 vs Pentium

Slowing, slower There was a lot of hype generated by Apple's marketing department and echo'ed by the in-love-with-Apple tech media over its new in-house CPU, the M1. The specs were so amazing that excitement ran high over what subsequent CPUs would be able to do, M2, et al. To infinity and beyond, to quote a cartoon character. I was relieved to hear it would be amazing. The first Mac mini I bought was pretty good. (See figure at left.) It still had all the accouterments that Apple, in its need for every higher profits, stripped out of subsequent models: DVD... Read more →

Apple dangles Facebook

Live by the ad, die by the ad Facebook was this week kneecapped for being a one-trick revenue pony in pretty much only selling ads based on skifing (local slang for taking things without permission) our personal details. Facebook's underwhelming financial report was due to Apple increasing privacy in its products, making Facebook less attractive to ad agencies. One estimate* is that 70% of the loss of ad revenue was due to Apple's hardening of privacy, which, over time, Apple will make more stringent. And so for Facebook, this will not be a one-time drop, which the stock market noted... Read more →

Best tweets on Zucker's recent disinvolvement

Cuomo blast radius (@benyt) As the head of CNN leaves the network following a sexual relationship scandal, Twitter voiced its opinion: "Breaking news from the Caligula News Network. CNN could completely solve their ratings problem by turning their studio cameras 180 degrees in the opposite direction." - @iowahawkblog "Over the last year, CNN has made more news than they have reported." - @KateHydeNY "Jeffery Toobin is the only person at CNN that keeps his hands to himself" - @Richard_Harambe "congratulations to jeff zucker for his new show on CNN+" - @SaysSimonson "CNN blames Russia for Zucker's illicit relationship" - @zerohedge... Read more →

Why people left the workforce

Rat race status: no longer normal One of the puzzles of our era is over the large numbers of people who didn't go back to work. As someone who was laid off (during a recession in 1984) and quit a regular job (to become self-employed in 1991), I find the puzzle fascinating. Of those not returning to the workforce following the Great Coronavirus Lockdown of 2020 Why did they not go back? What are they doing instead? - - - GCL'20 was a disrupter, an event in history so significant that it dramatically changed human behavior for good: what once... Read more →

Best Tweets: Facebook Ad-ifies Oculus

Facebook destroys what's left of VR It's all a game. Advertisers lie to themselves that we can't get enough of their ads, while we bob and weave to avoid them like a goalie at the World Cup. (Of hockey. Which game did were you thinking of?) The goal always has been to figure out how to best force us to view ads. With radio, we switch to another station. On tv, we go to the bathroom. In magazines, we flip to the next page. On Web sites, we install ad blockers. But what if there were a technology that could... Read more →

Two core weaknesses of Onshape

Kernel and browser I've come across a couple of Achilles' heels for PTC regarding Onshape. The two weaknesses are inherent to what makes Onshape Onshape. Kernel Incompatibility. At the kernel level, Onshape is incompatible with PTC's CAD software. Onshape runs Parasolid (licensed from an arch-competitor to PTC, Siemens), while PTC has its own Granite geometric modeling kernel. I wonder how well Onshape and Creo work together; I have not heard PTC address this problem. The drawback to any translation is, of course, that data can be lost or, worse, mangled, and so it helps when two CAD programs share at... Read more →

The Reverse Network Effect

Millions of lost users In my previous post, Why Google (Cannot) Fall, I wrote about the Network Effect, which tends to insulate giant social media companies from decline. When more people use a network service, like Facebook, then even more people have a reason to use it. Barely a week after I wrote that, we saw the effects of the reverse network effect: the more people are banned (or quit) from social media, the more depart. By coincidence, my daughter-in-law and I quit Facebook the day before Twitter banned the president of the United States. We quit, because Facebook had... Read more →

Why Google (Cannot) Fall

A reader writes, Here is an article that claims the reign of Big Tech is coming to a close because the huge amounts of data, that currently require huge server farms to process, will soon be replaced by inexpensive and more efficient software and hardware, that can fit on your dining room table (that seems like a wild exaggeration)! I read this with a faint sense of hope that the monopolies of Google, Twitter, and Facebook could be broken up with inexpensive competition, but I find it hard to take the author's argument seriously. It seems to me that Big... Read more →

Canadian gov't tries cracking bitcoin secrecy

Encrypted transparency Canada's tax man, Canada Revenue Agency, is asking the federal court to force Canadian cryptocurrency trading platform Coinsquare to identify every client going back to the start of 2013. CRA says it needs the data to fight tax fraud and the underground economy. It may also be an issue that Canada's left-wing federal government has condemned the country's children and children's children into paying back a $1.5 trillion debt. Coinsquare, which has 200 thousand accounts, says "we understand our customers comply with all applicable Canadian laws relating to their cryptocurrency trading activities." The firm, however, had earlier got... Read more →

Google is a virus

It's not evil if we don't consider it evil Google becoming more aggressive about inserting itself into my world. Here are couple of recent examples. It has begun demanding that I use my Google credentials to log into Web sites, ones where I already have independent passwords. In the screen grab below, after I am logged into eBay, Google interferes, and in virus-like fashion tried to hijack my login credentials. Google hijacking a login One morning, I had an interview with a developer. When he sent a Zoom invite from his Gmail account, Google inserted its own Meet link, as... Read more →

Now is the time to cancel MailChimp

"In our sole discretion" About five years ago I was looking around for the mass email service to take over my homegrown effort. I was spending too much time updating the mailing list, and there were firms who promised to take the work over for me -- for a fee, 'natch. I settled on MailChimp, and for the most part it worked mostly to my satisfaction, at first. I have just two needs in sending out my weekly upFront.eZine newsletter: Take care of additions, subtractions, and changes to the mailing list Let me create my newsletter in the way I... Read more →

How I work from home

Spare not the efficiency A reader asked if I could write about having to work from home. I was blase in my reply, as I've been working from home for 29 years now. Transportable Licenses He was relieved, he said, that he could get a home-use license for his CAD software, which normally is locked to a computer at work. Siemens is one of the companies allowing that, albeit for only 30 days. I reckon an extension will be coming for that. Companies like Bricsys and Graebert allow you to easily move the license to another computer: just unlicense the... Read more →

What determines the end-game

Is there one? News Item Gov Cuomo: “We have to plan the pivot back to economic functionality” Says we may not have to isolate everyone. Could allow the healthy, less vulnerable to work. #COVID19 survival rate is 98%. NY Forward plan to look into restarting economic engine. "What is the endgame?" is the question being raised by Cuomo and Trump as they say it's time to get people back to work. We assume that one day this will all be over, because we assume the infection rate follows the bell curve. But perhaps this horror follows a sine curve, where... Read more →

The Determinism Future of AI

You will be harmonious I've told my kinds, if you don't like where you're working or who you are working for, quit. (In my job, I get to fire clients who are too annoying.) And so we read that "Organizer of Google Sexual Harassment Walkout Leaves The Company." Actually, organizer Meredith Whittaker is one of four out of the six organizers who have left Google by this point. Meredith Whittaker is not the only whistleblower speaking against Google mis-culture. James Daemore did, too. For the mainstream and tech media, however, Whittaker is a martyr to be hallowed; Daemore is an... Read more →

I Bought a $275 Lossless Music Player, then Returned It

F.AUDIO FA1 I've looked for years for a huge capacity music player, one that could hold my entire music collection, which is about 122GB. I got a 64GB iTouch (which one of my daughters took over), and then a 120GB iPod, but Apple's big, big failing is it doesn't allow playback by folders. I suspect the failing is due to how it sets up its protection system. (So create playlists, Apple-hugging friends tell me. Why, I ask, when I already have all my music sorted into folders. No need to take the extra step of creating dozens of playlists.) My... Read more →

MX Performance 2S is Logitech's expensive mouse mistake

The MX devolves As a professional technical writer who often puts into 12-to-14-hour days writing and typesetting, I rely on an excellent keyboard (currently loving AZIO's MGK 1-K backlit, aluminum-bodied brown-switch that is such a joy to use that it makes me just want to type more) and Logitech's MX Performance mouse; see figure 1. I use the MX, because it is a big, tall mouse on which I can rest my hand; has plenty of buttons; feels hefty; and it... Figure 1: Logitech's (old) MX Performance mouse with its band of steel ... switches between freewheel scrolling and clicked... Read more →

Why BIM is not happening (as it should be)

by Rene Dalmeijer I have spent many years using and implementing CAD in many fields, ranging from architectural floor plans, electrical ladder diagrams, to CAM [computer-aided manufacturing]. One of my very first major projects was the coupling of Prime Medusa with Oracle to create a BIM [building information model] for the design HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] systems for hospitals and comparable major building projects. To us back then, this BIM type of capacity was well worth the effort required to implement it, which was and still is a major task. I like the analogy of leading a canoe through... Read more →

Miscellaneous Tips about Storage Media

My friend Don writes Slashdot is mostly devoid of useful info nowadays, but there were some useful comments about the value of CDs/DVDs/BlueRays in this article: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/08/26/1420259/ask-slashdot-do-you-still-use-optical-media He made for me this summary of important comments, which I am happy to share with you: - - - I have collected almost a thousand audio CDs over the past 25 years. They served as masters for the digital copies I keep on my PC. Now I've discovered that a few of them are suffering from visible bit-rot, with the aluminum layer slowly being eaten / corroded in from the edge. -... Read more →

Consumer VR is virtually useless

If the nausea doesn't get you, the poor-fitting glasses will I've watched virtual reality technology for 25 years. The earliest encounters were fictional, such as in the writings of Bruce Stirling. While I was at CADalyst magazine, we did a cover story on the VR developed by Autodesk using technology from VPL. I got to try Cyberspace for myself during an AEC Systems show of the early 1990s. I donned a heavy headset that made me look like Alien, with the thick cables connecting to an extremely powerful PC. It worked, but barely. Due to the computational load, the scene... Read more →

It's 2016, and AutoCAD Still Can't Do This One Thing

Relative Angles are Relatively Hard CAD software is nothing more than a geometry calculator that does vector math, the stuff we learned during our first year of science or engineering degrees. Those matrix transformations that took us minutes or hours to work through manually are these days calculated instantly by CAD. Fast forward to 2016, and I'm working on several online AutoCAD courses for a technical college in the Eastern USA. I found that one of the student homework problems could not be solved by AutoCAD, at least not easily. The problem involved a series of relative distances and relative... Read more →

Why I no longer wear a smartwatch

Not so smart, after all A year ago I got myself a Pebble Steel smartwatch for myself as my Christmas present. I chose the Pebble because it has a 5-7-day battery life (instead of 1 day), was on Black Friday sale for cheap, and came with a stainless steel strap (which I need, as plastic and leather straps don't work well with me). When I ordered it, I also ordered a spare charging cable so I'd always have a spare, as the cable had a proprietary magnetic attachment. No cable, no watch. I liked being able to read it easily,... Read more →

Bricked twice

Android and Windows I've managed to brick two computers in two months, and it wasn't even my fault! Android Agony I bought earlier in the year a new Android tablet, and each month the manufacturer issued a system update. After I applied the September update, the tablet would not reboot into Android. (See Figure 1.) Figure 1 "No Command" means Android can't find the code it needs to finish booting I spent quite a lot of time using different methods Android has for self-resuscitation, but to no avail. One brick. Windows Woe Last week, the same scenario occurred in Windows.... Read more →

Fixing the sound that Dolby breaks

Better sound through less software One thing that's puzzled me over the years is why computer manufacturers claim the sound on their laptops have been optimized by one sound company or another -- Dolby, Beats, and so on. Their tiny speakers all sound like tinny transistor radios from the 1960s. Well, come to think of it, my transistor radio had a speaker larger than any laptop, and if I positioned it just right between the end of my bed and the wall, I even got some respectable bass out of it. OK, let's reverse it. Why would a respectable-sounding sound... Read more →

Technology that I couldn't get working

HDMI out -> USB in I have this Surface-class tablet I rarely use, because it is underpowered. But it is a full Windows 8.1 (well, Windows 10 Tech Preview) computer that is wonderfully light. Side rant: I think Microsoft could have had a runaway hit on their hands if (a) the keyboard were sufficiently attached to use the computer on one's lap [like Asus does with their's] and (2) it were 3/4 the price, so that the most expensive was $1,200. People like me'll spend $1,000 on a good very-portable computer, but not $1,900. Thing is, Microsoft has always dreamed... Read more →

Apocalypse nearing as computers slow down

Now! Slower than 1GHz! 2014 was the year the computer world began running backwards. Those of us growing up with personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s experienced ever increasing speeds. Some of us remember desktops with TurboBoost! buttons that sped up the PC from 4.7MHz to 10MHz. (The reason for the button: some software was written for 4.7MHz in mind, and would not work properly at other speeds.) My policy was to buy a new desktop computer anytime a newer CPU was at least 3x faster. The last time I bought a new desktop was quite a few years... Read more →

Hardware review: Logitech K480 triple-Bluetooth keyboard

Intriguing concept, flawed implementation My wife Heather is becoming sufficiently comfortable using her iPad that I suggested she take it as her "computer" the next time she travels. She would need a Bluetooth keyboard with which to type emails. The local flyer of BestBuy that week featured Logitech's new portable keyboard, the K480. I had read about this keyboard, it intrigued me, here was my excuse for buying one, and now it was available locally, finally. Well, except it wasn't. None of the outlets in our area carried it in stock; a helpful store employed finally located the elusive keyboard... Read more →

The paradox of UAC

A reader asks: Windows User Account settings? What is it? Apparently were "turned Off", supposed to be "turned ON" -- H. G. It's one of those safety things that Microsoft constructed poorly. The purpose of UAC (user account control) is to prevent programs from running maliciously, such as when you click a link on a Web page that downloads and runs a dangerous application. When turned on: each time you start a program (or when a program starts another program) UAC asks you if you want to run the program. But there are several problems: When the warning dialog box... Read more →

Why LogMeIn switched from free to $100-$450/yr

I actually don't know why LogMeIn switched from free to charging $100/year to remotely access two computers (or $450/yr to access six or more). But the reason may be similar to why SugarSync shut off its free Dropbox-wannabe service, as well as other pop-up software firms whose management actually believed the "information wants to be free" hoax. Free doesn't put food on the table (because farmers recognize that food has a cost associated with it) nor does it satisfy investors. The problem faced by LogMeIn and SugarSync is that consumers don't pay for intangibles. Intangibles are things we cannot touch,... Read more →

Graphing electrical energy consumption

The government-owned electricity monopoly here in British Columbia last year converted (almost) all electrical meters to "smart" meters that use WiFi to communicate consumption data to head office. (About 20,000 home owners refused the new meters on health grounds, and so they pay an extra $35 a month for man-powered meter reading.) This means we can view our daily electrical consumption in a Web browser. Here is the chart for our house over the last 30 days. Ours is in light-blue; the average of surrounding houses is dark blue: A few notes about these numbers: Our consumption ranges from 12... Read more →

The future of computing

The dystopian future of computing: Read more →

Three computer repairs this week, two successful

I have been working this week on fixing three computers. MacBook Hard Drive Replacement Daughter #1's Macbook has a small 250GB hard drive, and because she takes many photos, the drive quickly filled up. I read on the Internet that it is easy to switch drives and move the data on Macs (not so for Windows PCs!). I removed the 640GB hard drive from my daughter-in-law's old, broken computer. It took about 3.5 hours to move the data from MacBook hard drive to the external one, and then another ten minutes to physically swap the drives. Well, that and a... Read more →

My failed toy: LaCie network drive

I've written before about the dreadful state of LaCie and its line of hard drives. I am slowly getting rid of the ones I have. At one time, I thought that a network drive would solve the problem created by Microsoft, in which they make it difficult to access data on networked computers. Since networked printers had worked well in our office, I got LaCie's Network Drive so that data could be easily stored and shared among multiple computers. Short story: didn't work. The LaCie Network Drive is a beautiful beast outwardly, but inside it is a nasty beast. Because... Read more →

Clashing headlines on 9/12

From today's Drudge Report: Years of warning about embassy security preceded Libya attack... iPhone 5 revealed... Read more →

My dad's first-day experience with his new iPad

My dad decided he wanted an iPad so he could do computing laying on the couch. He is 88, and is no computer dummy, having used DOS and then Windows desktop and notebook computers for 20 years. He wrote his life story in Word, formatting the text and scanning in old photographs. He did look briefly at my Android tablet, but for some reason prefered my wife's iPad. Staples had an unheardof $40 off 'new' iPads last weekend, and so I bought him one. My daughter gave him a tutorial, and then he took it home. Here is an archive... Read more →

LaCie power supplies nullify their external hard drives

Continuing on with LaCie's unhelpful attitude, their tech support tells me my solution to their power supply breakdowns is to buy a new one for $35. Since this is the second LaCie power supply to go bad on me (the first was bad out of the box), I think I'll decline purchasing the replacement. I now realize that buying LeCie drives is a mistake, because of two crucial problems with their power supply: Many of their drives use a proprietary DIN-style 12v/5v connector, which means they cannot be easily or cheaply replaced using third-party products Their power supplies break down... Read more →

LaCie admits to cluelessness about power requirements for its hard drives

I used to think that LaCie made good hard drives, but the problems I've encountered makes me now avoid them. There was the 1TB drive I bought some years ago (around the time such a big drive became first became affordable), and it turned out to be just two 500GB drives stuffed into one large case. It didn't really work properly, and time spent with LaCie tech support resulted in them shipping me a replacement power supply. The last drive I ever bought from LaCie was a network drive. It would power up and down all day long. Time spent... Read more →

Biased headlines

Fortune ran a story on a comparison test made by well-known analyst Gene Munster (of Piper Jaffray). He asked 800 questions of voice search services in a quiet room, and then another 800 in a noisy Minneapolis street. Google's voice search got a B+, Apple's Siri got a D. See http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/29/minneapolis-street-test-google-gets-a-b-apples-siri-gets-a-d/ Other bloggers re-reported the results, and it is an interesting exercise to compare the difference in wording of headlines. Many are neutral, others are biased and try to spin the results to suit the perceived reading preference of their respective audiences: Pro-Apple Bloggers Eric Slivka / MacRumors: Siri Shows... Read more →

Clashing headlines

Adjacent headlines in this afternoon's National Post: More than 26,000 uninsured Americans die prematurely every year: study Hosni Mubarak off life support but in a coma after suffering a stroke Read more →

Why "Designed for iPad" is spin (UPDATED)

In today's keynote at the annual Apple developer conference, company ceo Tim Cook repeats the spin that Android tablets don't have as many apps as do iPad tablets, as reported by Engadget: There are now 650,000 apps on the App Store, 225,000 of them are iPad-specifically designed. "This compares to just a few hundred for our competition." This is spin, because it is a negative for Apple. It is true that there are fewer apps designed specifically for Android tablets than there are for iPad tablets. The difference is that apps have to be redesigned for iPads; on Androids, they... Read more →

I see now why pundits want Apple to enter the tv biz

We have smartphones that do everything we want, thanks to Apple's original iPhone. We have smartTVs that do... nothing much of we want. Especially for those outside the IP confines of the USA. I'd've thought that a smartTV would be like a smartphone: install any available software you like, effortless interface, full array of communications, access any file supported by software. Turns out I was wrong. I learned that after Christmas, when I bought a new Bluray DVD player for $99. It was pretty fabulous, what with the touch-sensitive front panel, WiFi access, smartTV, and Samsung's great styling. After a... Read more →

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Who killed the electric car? Consumers did. Read more →

TV Couch Potatoes Have Nothing on Facebook Clickers

Oh yes, and Saturday was "KONY 2012 Day" when 30,000 Canadians pledged on Facebook to raise awareness. As we know now, only a handful showed up in-person. In our town of 140,000 I saw one hand-made banner on a building and pre-printed posters on two power poles. Ah, the Facebook generation. Generous in its clicking. Read more →

Is this the year I buy no PCs?

It seems I end up buying several PCs each year, and by "PC" I mean personal computing device, ranging from smartphones to desktop computers. Last year, the list consisted of: - new Acer notebook computer for my daughter, to replace her dead HP. $500 - new slim Acer notebook computer for me, powerful enough to run PTC Creo on the road. $600 - new Android smartphone. $25, on a three-year plan - new Mac Mini to replace the MacBook my other daughter took over. $900 - new cheapo Android tablet. $85 So that was two thousand dollars thrown at the... Read more →

Lose some OTA Canadian digital tv channels? Here's the fix

September 1 was the day that most Canadian tv stations were required to turn off their analogue signals. In August, I bought a digital tv converter so that our outdoor rotatable antenna could feed its digital tv signal to our analogue, picture-tube tv. It worked, and the females of the family were impressed by the better picture. (OTA = over the air.) While away on a business trip in September, my wife emailed that she could no longer pick up CBC or CTV. I figured the problem might be that I had moved the antenna due to renovations at our... Read more →