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diff --git a/html/blog.tmpl.html b/html/blog.tmpl.html index cabf63e..8c03934 100644 --- a/html/blog.tmpl.html +++ b/html/blog.tmpl.html @@ -8,6 +8,17 @@ <h1>Blog</h1>
<p>A collection of thoughts, life updates, projects, and images in reverse chronological order.</p>
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+ <article id="202409251">
+ <h2>SaaS</h2>
+ <p>I have a digital modeling instructor who did most of his work back in the "good old days" of computing. He goes on these great tangents talking about business, corporate politics, and learning. I enjoy his lectures. Within his stories, and others like it from other instructors, though, is the concept of computers having software installed on them which means they're inherently valuable.</p>
+ <p>Bear with me if that doesn't come across correctly. You have a computer, and on the computer is some installed software. Microsoft Word. Adobe Photoshop. Autodesk Inventor. You (or someone) paid for the license to use this software, and it's been entered into the program to activate it and stored on your machine. That's it. You can edit your documents, photos, and create 3D objects until the end of time, offline, without internet. Of course of course, if the hard drive fails in some way and you lose your key, then it's over. Unless you can get another from the company (I should do some research, this is a bit before my time) if that is possible. The important thing though, is that your computer is its own unit. It's differentiated by the fact that there is a piece of software installed and activated until the end of time. It has a value greater than its parts and base OS.</p>
+ <p>In 2024, and well before, companies have moved towards Software as a Service and online licenses tied to accounts for the software. You still install the software. It takes up disk space on your computer. But now, having the software means nothing. It's tied to an account which must be logged in to before the software will load. Some programs allow you to use the software offline, but it's not indefinite. At some point, it will ask to be connected to the internet for a license check.</p>
+ <p>This is nothing new, obviously. Most people my age only know of this model, or if they had any experience with the prior, it meant very little as they probably weren't the ones paying for software in elementary school. And there's an obvious reason companies do this of course. It allows them to keep getting paid after the software's initial sale with the promise and trade-off of perpetual upgrades to subsequent versions. This is fine for businesses as it's a money-making tool, and they would probably rather stay up-to-date on the latest workflows and bug fixes. But, for the average consumer or student, it's a disaster. Even if they wanted to pony up $15,000 or more for the software (which is not a made-up number by any stretch of the imagination), they would have to keep paying that yearly... I guess there's a debate about "normal" people not needing enterprise/professional level software (they could use Rhino, instead, for example.), but the financial cost wasn't even what brought me to write this. It's the user experience.</p>
+ <p>I have six or seven applications with online licenses through my school. Most of them Adobe products and the others Autodesk. When I boot up my computer, log in, and click an application, I expect to be getting work done. To be completing assignments. To be learning. What I don't expect is a login box. A ten-minute side quest to figure out what the password was, or why the license isn't recognized even though it's part of my school's subscription. Yet that is the current experience. When I open up Blender, I get the old experience. Not because it's open-source but because it's "old" in the fact that you own the rights to use it indefinitely. It may not be a better experience for the company, but it's better for the user.</p>
+ <p><b>Autodesk side story:</b> In regards to the above, there is a real issue that I had to troubleshoot instead of getting started on my assignment which was the following. I re-installed VRED from a previously downloaded .exe file directly from Autodesk. I went to log in. Pause. Side-side story. Autodesk has a "feature" where it continually is in doubt as to whether or not you're a student at the worst possible times. They keep changing the verification methods as well, gradually making it more complicated for obvious reasons. Each time you re-verify, it seems to reset your licenses or something to that effect on the back end. Continuing on. After logging in, it told me that my account does not have access to this software. Okay. I go online, verify I'm a student, and click VRED as one of the software packages that I want as part of the subscription. Back to VRED. I log in again. It says the same thing. WHAT? I'm connected to the internet. I have access on the website. Why does it think I don't have access? I went back and forth for what felt like hours, but was probably twenty minutes of pure frustration, trying to get it to work. Maybe I needed to wait. Maybe I needed to do things in a sequence. Maybe I needed to chant a magic spell. Whatever it was, I wasn't getting it to work. Then. In a stroke of pure rage-filled luck, I thought, "What if they did something as stupid as tying the trigger to the download button because they expect everyone to download the executable each time?" And that was exactly what they did. Before the download even finished, I tried again with my already installed software and it worked. Why. Why would they do this? Is this a "good" experience? I sure don't think so. At least Alias pretends to be old and lets you bypass the login for a while so you can get work done. VRED won't even launch without being logged in. Since that incident, I've moved to Blender for visualization because it's faster, has more guides and resources, and doesn't put you through that. It does other weird stuff like hard crashing for unknown reasons, but Alias does that too with even fewer chances of generating a backup file, so I don't care. No more VRED.</p>
+ <p>Anyways, I came here just to say that I never thought much about the pain online licenses give to users because I was too young and never needed to use any software that required one. Our high school moved to the G-Suite which was fully online and free to use, and the first university used MS Office which was a lot less naggy than Autodesk VRED once it was set up. I also want to mention that I pay for software with "old" perpetual licenses. Synergy. There's an open-source variant, but I liked the software enough to pay. You just copy the license key into the software and boom. You'll never be bothered again.</p>
+ <p><b>Created:</b> 2024-09-25</p>
+ </article>
<article id="202409231">
<h2>00s PC Watercooling</h2>
<p>I'm clearly in a watercooling phase. I was going to do a writeup about 00s watercooling, but I don't really know what I'm talking about.</p>
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