Freesteel Blog

Onlining distractions

Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 3:20 pm Written by: Julian

Rather than do anything useful with wikifying machining algorithms (someone has to start me off by making the pages), I’ve been getting involved with Wikiscuba, which is far more interesting, as it allows me to write a page on Kayak Diving in the hope that some other buggers out there are going to start doing it, and the fact that I got out to sea for only the second time this year and it was glorious.

Back to machining stuff

I was pleased to find a forum for users of Delcam hosted at the Delcam website, which does it properly. I don’t know how much moderation and censoring goes on with it, but it’s a huge step in the right direction. You get to see gripes, bugs, and work-arounds as the users struggle or succeed with the software. At last a CAM company that is confident enough to encourage users to form a community and do this, and allow members of staff to apparently freely post to it. This is the way forward. Normally, it’s this two-way communication between development and users that the management normally wants to block from happening (or at the very least not encourage), because that’s how they grow their power. You wouldn’t need any management at all if there was no barrier between the users and developers, and programmers just got on with doing stuff that was designed to be used, rather than simply sold.

Ideally users should be talking to one another somewhere that isn’t branded, so if they want to share something that is of great benefit to themselves and to the wider efficiency and productivity of the economy, but slightly detrimental to Delcam’s share value, they can’t be stopped. A place that would almost suffice is: CNC Zone CADCAM area, but even here there are controls. There’s a lot of advertising, and you are forbidden from talking about alternative forums that users could join. Also, Delcam employees aren’t going to be posting to there, so you will be more or less talking among yourselves.

I often keep eyes on Surfware to see how much success they’re having with marketing Truemill and advertising their bogus software patents and funny trademarks. Not much changes from month to month. The cute little dog with a rocket strapped to its back has disappeared. The real information can only be found users discussing that company and its products, half the time hoping that someone in the company might eventually read it and understand what they want.

For eye-candy, I’ve got the Ministerial Whirl going again. Click on the button marked “Today” and skip back and forward a day to inspect how Tony Blair has reshuffled the cabinet. The guesses are that he’s moved the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw out of his job so he can’t go round the world telling everyone that the idea of bombing Iran is “Nuts”. This is so they can scare the American people about the mortal danger from Iran, bomb or threaten to bomb it in self-defence during September and October, and win the mid-term congressional elections in November as a reward for their prowess. What worked in 2002 can work again in 2006, particularly as (a) they have no other options, and (b) they have no scruples whatsoever. They do not care how many bodies they climb over on their way back into office, unless it completely blocks the doorway.