Outside The Box blogs, Autodesk University anecdotes, articles, blog digests, and product news in chronological order. See Articles for the same material by subject.
There have been rumblings (http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2009/04/i-need-your-input-on-autocad-for-the-apple-mac-os-x.html) and rumors for a while now about a native Mac OS X port of AutoCAD. The ObjectARX 2011 SDK header files contain clear evidence of a native Mac port in the works. The evidence comes in the form of code comments and changes made to the files so that they work with the GCC compiler and the Mac OS X libraries.
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There is a relationship between what we call something (or someone) and how we feel about it. This relationship works both ways. We use names to convey feelings, but a name can also affect how we feel about something.
This leads to some interesting, and sometimes funny, names. For example, it leads to gimmicks like the authoritarian “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”, and bug fixes called “updates” (or “stability improvements” as I saw recently).
Using a craftily devised name to project an image is not new, but I think the practice is abused to such an extent these days that the value of names has become worthless. Furthermore, all the good names are already taken. Therefore, I propose to abolish all names and henceforth use only GUIDs (or for the less democratically inclined, serial numbers issued by a central numbering authority).