Outside The Box blogs, Autodesk University anecdotes, articles, blog digests, and product news in chronological order. See Writing for the same material by subject.
One type of support request that I occasionally receive from CADVault users goes something like “when I create a vault, AutoCAD crashes”. I’ve learned that problems like this are usually drawing-specific, so before going any further in simplifying the problem I ask the customer to check whether the problem occurs in an empty drawing. But there’s a trick to this.
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One of the most important skills in resolving technical problems is not problem solving, but problem definition. Stripping a problem down to its essence often makes the solution obvious. I think this is generally true, but especially true in my experience with software tech support and tracking down software bugs.
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Excited news stories this morning about how your computer is vulnerable to attack from a phone plugged into your USB port made me chuckle. This “novel hack” involves making an Android phone mimic a USB keyboard in order to send keystrokes to the computer. Cool, but why wouldn’t a hacker just use a USB keyboard in the first place?
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