Deelip Menezes asks what got me started on lamenting the sad state of the CAD industry in my previous post. Good question. It all started with a Fox News story about a French architect’s claim to have solved the “Pyramid Secret”: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,262981,00.html. The article links to Dassault Systemes’ web site: http://khufu.3ds.com/introduction/. My snake oil alarm …
In some ways the CAD software industry is a lot like the fashion industry. The movers and shakers are trying to establish new fads that are just recycled from older fads, while guiding the unwashed masses into adopting new trends that have been carefully molded to ensure perpetuation of the system. Meanwhile the up and …
No, Microsoft didn’t really try to patent photons, but check out the the ironic twists described in this account of a recent US Supreme Court hearing. Here’s a summary (exaggerated a bit for effect):1. Microsoft argues that software is not patentable, therefore it is not guilty of patent infringement.2. The US Government argues on Microsoft’s …
Continue reading ‘This Just In: Microsoft Patents Photons’ »
I pointed out in a previous post that while the press release headlines pronounced that Vista will support DWF natively, the fine print says otherwise. What Vista does support natively is Microsoft’s new XPS (XML Paper Specification) format. Autodesk has since clarified that they are working on a new DWF format called DWFx that is, …