Tales of Two Woes

Once in a while, my RSS reader lists two headlines in a row that shouldn't be together. From this morning, this unfortunate pairing:

rtara [CAD Insider]: Tony Blair Visits Gasabo3D in Rwanda
Steve Johnson [blog nauseam]: What a crock!

Roopinder Tara recounts meeting Tony Blair today in Rwanda, while Steve Johnson reports in the continuing problems Autodesk's contractor is having overhauling its discussion groups.

CAD Insider

Mr Tara was impressed that the former British prime minister quickly caught on to what Gasabo 3D does: 

"So you take what is given here," says Blair indicating the paper [of a 2D drawing], "and make it into 3D?"

The problem, Mr Tara explains to Mr Blair, is that Rwanda is an unknown, that "the world does not yet associate Rwanda with engineering services" like India or China.

blog nauseam

In contrast, Mr Johnson is unimpressed by the repeated failed attempts by Autodesk and contractor Jive Software at cleaning up the upgrade mess:

Autodesk is listening? Yeah, right. In this case, Autodesk is doing a great impersonation of a fence post.

I rarely visit AutoCAD forums, so the problems do not affect me. Online discussion groups are an early version of cloud computing, however, and so this weeks-long snafu serves as a practical warning about trusting your data to the cloud. As reported on blog nauseam, Autodesk/Jive's problems include:

• Publishing private email addresses
• False error messages
• Inability to login
• Text formatting problems

Would you trust your CAD data to such an enviroment? More here [jivespace].

Comments

[R. Paul Waddington]

"Would you trust your CAD data to such an environment?"

Ralph, users seem to be happy to allow Autodesk, and others, to load - without permission - Trojan software (CIP) to transmit data from their systems without any control or validation.

The answer to your question has to be a resounding NO, never entrust your CADD data the either this company nor similar ones, ever. But the truth is many seem to be happy in their carelessness or entirely oblivious to it!