Messages

951

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: Install/startup problem wit GridMove

« on: May 08, 2007, 09:38 AM »

Could it be that when you're putting it into your Startup folder, you're not putting a shortcut there, but a copy of the executable itself? Then the programs local directory would be the Startup folder itself, but there's not .ini or .grid files there for it to use...

952

Developer's Corner / Re: Netflix contest: $1M to developer of best movie recommendation engine

« on: April 20, 2007, 11:34 AM »

I made a stab at this late last year with a friend. The amount of data isn't a big deal for the storage capacity of a modern PC. More difficult is being able to process it in a reasonable time.

We started with a bit of success. Our very first attempt was enough to beat Netflix's baseline and yield a score that qualified for the leaderboard (at the time). Doing this was surprisingly easy. Nothing but a good working knowledge of statistics was needed to beat their baseline. Simply normalizing the scores of all the users according to their standard deviations was enough to do this.

Our project fizzled out after just a couple of weeks. The problem was that neither of us has an understanding of the collaborative filtering techniques that appear to be necessary to do really well. And experimentation was difficult. The size of the data set is such that we could only really make one run a day (we were using MS SQL Server, if you're wondering).

Also, I was a little frustrated because I think that their criteria measure the wrong thing. At first it was an intellectual challenge anyway, but that wore out. The challenge is to predict the score that a customer would assign for each of a set of movies. The thing is, this isn't really an interesting question to solve. I don't care very much if Netflix thinks that I'd give this movie a 3.1 or 3.5. What's really interesting is only selecting a list of movies at the top end of the scale, so Netflix can give me a list of recommendations when I ask "what good movies have you got for me today?".

953

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: drag window to edge automatically resizes it

« on: April 19, 2007, 11:59 AM »

The author just linked me here to solve a related problem I've got with my system. I have 2 monitors that are arranged as a single double-wide monitor (because of a deficiency in VMWare). I wanted a way to size windows so they'd still respect the physical monitor boundaries, even though Windows in the VM isn't aware of them.

It turns out that GridMove does a pretty good job of this. I've tweaked the built-in EdgeGrid a bit to work in my case, and I'm uploading it here for all to benefit from.

Changes:

• Remove extraneous Monitor2 and Monitor3
• Dragging to left edge only maximizes width to 1/2 of the screen (i.e., one physical monitor)
• Add a similar right edge
• Change the center pseudo-maximize region. There are now 2 regions, one in the middle of each physical display; dropping into it fully maximizes to that half of the display (i.e., within the bounds of that physical monitor)

Caveat: For some reason I'm a couple of pixels off on the width (rounding?), but I think it's plenty good enough.

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Finished Programs / Re: DONE: WinWarden - monitor windows and resize (and reposition) them

« on: April 18, 2007, 11:27 AM »

I was looking for something almost exactly like this, see https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=8157.0. WinWarden does almost want I want but there's some big glitches that I don't think I can live with.

I've got these two lines at the bottom of my INI file:

Creating    , *  ,,,,50%,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Maximizing  , *  ,,,,50%,   ,50%    ,,,,, ,,,,,,,Restore,

The intent is to prevent new windows from straddling the gap between my two monitors on a single large virtual display. I thought that whenever a new window is created, I'd move it just to the right of the edge, and whenever something is maximized, I'd make it cover the entire right half.

The big problem is that the "*" looks at literally every window. I don't see that it's ever useful to look at windows except those that have no parent. As it is, whenever I pull down a menu in certain programs, WinWarden grabs the menu window and moves it.

Secondly, it uses 100% CPU -- except when Firefox is running. WinWarden and Firefox seem to have a real personality clash. When they're both running, they seem to together share hogging the whole CPU.

Not knowing the AHK environment, is there anything that can be done to help these difficulties?

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General Software Discussion / Program to move/size windows

« on: April 18, 2007, 08:33 AM »

I'm looking for software that will automatically size and move new windows when they come up. If it's a "known" window, it should put it into a memorized size and location for that specific window; otherwise, there should be a default location for new windows.

I just got a new work PC -- 6GB RAM, yay! We're doing all of our work now in a virtualized environment using VMWare. The thing is, the only way to get VMWare to use both of my monitors is to spread the virtual machines display across both as if they are a single very wide monitor. So now when a new window pops up, it inevitable comes up in the middle of the virtual display, which means that it's straddling the gap between the two physical monitors.

I'd like to be able to have it recognize, e.g., Outlook popping up, and put it on the right-hand side, the full width of that monitor and 2/3 of its height. When Visual Studio comes up, I want it to occupy the entire left-hand monitor. When some other random program opens, since it's not in the sizer-app's list, it default to the center of the right-hand monitor without changing the window size.

Does anyone know of software that will do this for me?

956

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows "safely remove device" thingie

« on: April 13, 2007, 04:53 PM »

Speaking of annoying USB behavior...

My PC has 6 high-speed USB2 ports. But if I ever plug in a USB1 device, the entire chain is downgraded to USB1 (until I reboot). So the minute I plug in my scanner, my flash drive's data transfers become glacial. Plugging in the drive or my MP3 player gives the message "This device can perform better...". This even happens if I use a USB hub, plugging the scanner into the hub to try insulating the system from the device.
Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? 

I recently got a DV camcorder, and bought a Firewire interface for it. That card also happens to have 2 more USB2 ports. I'm hoping that I can plug my scanner into one of those ports, and since they're connected through an entirely different bus, it won't affect the speed of the original ports.

957

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows "safely remove device" thingie

« on: April 13, 2007, 12:06 PM »

I follow the rules almost always. The exception is when it tells me it can't stop the device, which I guess is because some badly-behaved program is still pointing to it as the default directory after a File|Save or something.

A recent article on the Langa List http://windowssecret...m/comp/070405#langa0 points out other ugly problems that can occur when you break the rules. I've never experienced these, though.

Have you ever had Windows show you a device — perhaps a USB drive or other removable device — that's no longer connected to your system? When this happens, you can run into trouble if software tries to access the phantom device.

Or, because the nonexistent device is still consuming a drive letter assignment and/or other resources, you may have problems when you add additional devices that need the already-assigned resources. I've seen some cases where people were running out of drive letters because their systems were maintaining a whole flock of phantom drives! ...

Phantom devices can appear for any number of reasons. Perhaps the most common reason is a shutdown error with a removable drive...

958

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 13, 2007, 11:59 AM »

Naturally you're free to dislike the Office 2007 UI, and it's really none of my business whether or not you use it. But it really bothers me that people seem to be unjustly poisoning something that might be a revolution in windowing UIs. (and maybe it's not; we won't know until enough real people get to play with it)

The fact is that the O2K7 UI is customizable. Extreme changes require power-user expertise, but simple tweaks are actually easier than ever. And MS's user research (which agrees with my personal experience working with users) agrees with this:

Looking across a hundred million or so people using Office 2003, here's what we found:

• In fewer than 2% of sessions, the program was running with customized command bars.
• Of the 2% of sessions with customizations present, 85% included customization of four or fewer commands.

...
It breaks down like this: in ~1.9% of sessions, buttons have been added, removed, or moved between toolbars and menus...

Of the customized sessions, around 85% of them had only what we'd call minor customizations: four or fewer buttons. Most of these are added toolbar buttons, either from the command well or from a toolbar people don't want to keep up all the time...

So, we took a pragmatic approach and decided to focus on the 99.7% case: people who don't take advantage of customization or only use it to customize four or fewer commands. Out of this goal was born the Quick Access Toolbar.

The Quick Access Toolbar is designed to make it easy to add controls, galleries, and groups from anywhere in the Ribbon: just right-click the thing you want to add and choose "Add to Quick Access Toolbar" from the context menu. We designed the customization model to be efficient but with the goal of "zero customization complexity"; it would be unacceptable for customization to cause the user interface to degrade as it did so often with Command Bars.
http://blogs.msdn.co...06/06/27/648269.aspx

So, 98% of the users do no customization and aren't affected. An additional 1.7% do very minor customization, which is actually easier now than ever before. Only 3 people in 1000 are inconvenienced by the change in customization behaviors. This seems like a big win to me. If you disagree, you should probably take a step back and consider who the primary audience of this software is.

Nevertheless, even if it's intended to cater to the vast majority of users, there's still the possibility that the manner in which it does so misses the mark. But we should let the game play out and see how users are actually able to interact with it. Convincing them that it's bad, before they ever use it, and based on an argument that's an exaggeration at best, is not going to give us the answers we need to better design our UIs in the future.

959

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 13, 2007, 05:24 AM »

The other thing is that you cannot customize the ribbon unlike the old toolbars.

-zridling (April 13, 2007, 01:27 AM)

Why do people keep saying this? Right up above in this same thread I debunked this: https://www.donation...91.msg57106#msg57106

960

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop Search for network files?

« on: April 12, 2007, 08:10 PM »

I'd suggest X1 enterprise client ... I find they are the most reliable. X1 takes a bit more ram but has many more options.

-Armando (April 12, 2007, 07:44 PM)

+1 for X1 if it meets your needs, but I don't think that the free Enterprise Client version supports network drives. I'd LOVE to be proven wrong, though.

961

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop Search for network files?

« on: April 12, 2007, 07:28 PM »

The latest Windows desktop search is also able to do this.

962

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer Update Coming -- Express your feature requests here!

« on: April 12, 2007, 11:16 AM »

PT does a great job at a well-targeted problem. It would be hard to improve on it. But since you insist, here are some ideas.

• Allow the foreground task more leeway -- if it's something that I'm actually interacting with, then allow it to hit a higher threshold before "punishing" it.
• Current Status -- I know there's a log I can consult to see what's happening, but how about a "Current status" to reveal a list of any processes that are currently in the penalty box?
• Misbehavior list -- show a simple list of all processes that have been throttled since the last time the list was cleared, and maybe a count of how many times. (this and the previous item would help me locate problems on my system)
• Temporarily allow a busy task -- Select a currently-throttled process and allow it to continue freely until the process ends (or PT ends), without creating a permanent rule.

963

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 11, 2007, 01:02 PM »

the ribbon may be fine, may even be a better interface, but what does that have to do with taking away the ability to easily customize the interface?

-AndyM (April 11, 2007, 09:02 AM)

They have not taken away the ability to customize, although that capability is radically changed. There's an element of it that's far easier, but doesn't go very far, and an element that allows wholesale changes of almost anything.

The easy method is via the quick-access toolbar. Customization here is limited to choosing your favorite few items, which are then available as small icons at the very top of the window.

The second method requires manipulating XML files that describe the content of the ribbon, and probably not appropriate for anything less than an extreme power user. For your convenience, here are a few links on the topic:

• Customizing the 2007 Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers - http://msdn2.microso...ibrary/ms406046.aspx (fluent? Where did they get that name? They're just asking to be called effluent)
• Custom UI Editor Tool - http://msdn2.microso...ibrary/ms406046.aspx
• Sharing A Custom Ribbon Tab Among Workbooks - http://www.excelguru...tab-among-workbooks/ (this latter showing that the new way is probably more powerful than the old)

964

Living Room / Re: Companies paying people to say good things about their products on forums

« on: April 09, 2007, 01:49 PM »

Where do you draw the line? If we say that you can't accept money for reviews, must we also say you can't accept anything of value for reviews? That is, is it wrong for me to accept a license to a piece of software in order to review it? I'm assuming this is OK (and I've done so myself), but how is the income I derive from free software different?

Of course, I have always disclosed any such arrangement. Is it simply the transparency that's important?

965

Living Room / Re: Favorite Sci-fi movies?

« on: April 04, 2007, 02:11 PM »

In no particular order:

• Serenity
• The Abyss
• Star Wars episode IV: A New Hope
• When Worlds Collide
• The Matrix
• Planet of the Apes (original)
• Back to the Future
• The Road Warrior
• Heavy Metal

966

Living Room / Re: how to find out if external HD uses USB 1.x or 2.x?

« on: April 04, 2007, 01:48 PM »

It's possible to have USB2 and still be slow. There are two different speed modes for USB2: Full and High. "Full" speed, despite its name, does NOT achieve the full speed potential; it's the slower of the two. What you really want is High Speed. Most USB2 devices support this, but some bargain-basement hardware may not.

967

General Software Discussion / Re: Winamp plugins and additional useful stuff

« on: March 26, 2007, 05:35 PM »

I don't use WinAmp, preferring MediaMonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com), but plugins are (mostly) compatible. I wouldn't switch to anything that doesn't support WA DSP plugins because of one thing: Alessandro Tomassini's Sound Solution. I used to use DFX, but SoundSolution produces so much richer and (seemingly) more alive that there's just no comparison. It's extremely complex and I only understand a bit of it, but right out of the box with minor tweaks, I'm stunned.

http://classic.winam...etails.php?id=120741
http://www.soundsolu...fo&filecatid=103 (latest version)

968

Mini-Reviews by Members / 3D Topicscape

« on: March 18, 2007, 12:34 PM »

Basic Info

App Name	3D Topicscape
App URL	http://www.topicscape.com
App Version Reviewed	b1.2.2.1573
Test System Specs	WinXP, 1GB RAM
Supported OSes	Win98SE and newer
Support Methods	online, email
Upgrade Policy	Discounted upgrade from Lite to Pro editions.
Trial Version Available?	Time-limited
Pricing Scheme	Pro: $80; Lite: $50
Reviewer Donation Link	Donate to CWuestefeld, the Author
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product	This review was based on the use of a free license courtesy of the developer, but no commitments were made regarding the outcome. No animals were harmed in the creation of this review.
Other links	Cross-posted from my blog, here: http://www.thewuestefelds.com/blog/?p=89

I’ve been complaining about the problems inherent in mind mapping long and loud enough now that I was excited to find a new application that promised a fresh approach. Having played with it for over a week now, I find myself with strong feelings, both positive and negative. 3DTS really does provide capabilities that I haven’t seen in any of its better-known competitors, in a way that caters to a user serious about organizing himself. But while it’s a leap forward in mind mapping, it carries much of the same paradigm that I’ve complained about.

An extremely effective mind mapper
3D Topicscape’s eye candy is the dialectic that sets it apart from other applications. At first glance one might think that its UI paradigm of three-dimensional flight over a plane of topical pyramids is a gimmick to draw the eye past conventional applications that draw clipart-like graphics on a paper. 3DTS uses its model effectively, delivering a heavy-duty model that MindJet and others can’t touch in most ways.

The illusion of space is important to 3DTS because its model of relationships between topics is much richer than other MM tools . These allow you to draw octopi that enforce strictly hierarchical information, really no different than a text outline drawn graphically. The real world doesn’t work that way, having complex interrelationships between any set of topics you might dream up. And so mind mappers that acknowledge this at all allow dotted-line connections between topics, which in the flat octopus world can obscure as much information as it reveals.

3DTS realizes this, and its fundamental design is intended to facilitate a more robust picture of the relationships between ideas. Most significant is the ability for a topic to have multiple parents – which is frequently how the world works (consider baseball players: you might view them as athletes, celebrities, union members, or frequent flyers, all at the same time). In a world where the lineage of an item shifts depending on the aspect under consideration, the ability to fly around to literally consider the problem from multiple angles is invaluable and unique to Topicscape.

Sibling relationships can also be drawn, but because these can cross the boundaries of families, it’s still possible that they result in “tangles”. Topicscape addresses this by way of its dynamic view. Since its information doesn’t sit on a static page, the selection of a topic can cause its neighbors to reveal their relationships in ways that make them stand out from the other topics. This is done by a combination of repositioning and sizing other topics about the focus, and drawing relationship lines and “lollipops”. Thus, when considering any given topic, its relatives and its weak-association “tunnels” are called out to clarify the picture.

In conventional mind mapping programs, the maps become less useful very quickly as you exceed the size of your monitor. Not only do relationships get tangled (if they can!) and the view zoomed out to illegibility, but in those tools that allow links between cousins, it can be very difficult to scroll to find the other end of a desired relationship. 3D Topicscape offers a feature that’s quite innovative, providing a sort of extra hand that can hold onto a link being dragged, while your mouse is freed for flying.

3D Topicscape’s topics themselves are infinitely richer than that of the typical mind mapping tool (Axon being a notable exception, in its way). Lesser applications allow you to provide a label, an icon, and perhaps a textual description. In 3DTS, a topic can really be a collector for many instances of information concerning the topic. That is, it can contain notes or files of any type (or even Outlook objects – messages, contacts, etc.) about the topic. These files can be included with the 3DTS repository itself, or can be links to documents in their “natural habitat” – e.g., your project repository.

Balances several tradeoffs
All of these capabilities come with some cost. The first that you’ll notice is the learning curve. Topicscape is extremely sophisticated, but sophistication is the opposite side of the same coin as complexity. The availability of controls that go beyond manipulating the information itself, but also simultaneously moving your viewpoint through its space, results in a very broad control surface, one that will take time to master. The problem is exacerbated a bit by the fact that it’s not a native Windows UI (it happens to be built in Java, as far as I can tell), so you will encounter GUI widgets that present visual cues somewhat different from those you’re used to. I’ve been playing with it for a week, and I’m getting the hang of it; I think it will be worth the while.

The developers have gone to great lengths to help new users. For example, there is a UI mode that hides expert features to help novices from being overwhelmed. And when you first set out to use the application, I urge you to give yourself half an hour to work through the Quick Start guide. There are also in-application user-driven demos to familiarize oneself with the controls, implemented in a way that other developers would do well to take note of, and the web site offers a number of example of scenarios demonstrating how to apply the program to various problems. Also offered is a slimmed-down Lite edition, but I have not evaluated this.

The dynamic 3-D view provides opportunities to work with your data in ways that wouldn’t be possible any other way, but they too have a price. The first thing I noticed was the busy look of its UI. For my tastes, anyway, the “grass” planar surface underlying the topics really distracts me. The developer pointed out to me that the texture helps the user feel the perspective in space, and this is a legitimate explanation. I played around and found an alternate texture and color that’s less bothersome. But I wish that one of the choices was just a very pale graph paper.

The developers have fallen victim to some conceits in their 3D world. By default, searching for topics (which is otherwise a very powerful feature) yields results that are stretched out in full perspective , lying as if they are cards on the ground. This is pretty, but not too helpful when you want to scan those results. Luckily, there’s an alternate view that’s more useful.

Most significant, though, should have been obvious to me when considering the dynamic nature of the view. If the user is flying around in space, viewing topics in a context that’s constantly shifting, then printing must be quite impossible. The developers attempt to mitigate this through a variety of export options.

Indeed, this shortcoming reveals the fundamental difference between Topicscape and other mind mappers. The conventional tools are what you want if you need to put together a cute and concise chart to stick in your PowerPoint ™ presentation at a meeting. But if you’re using the tool to really accomplish the organization of your information, then Topicscape is going to bring you much farther than its competitors.

Some of my mind mapping concerns remain
Unless you’re creating the map for nothing but a prop in a presentation, Topicscape is unequivocally a better mind mapper. But it’s still fundamentally a mind mapper.

In my perfect world, we wouldn’t be thinking about the relationships between topics in terms of parents and cousins at all. Topics would be related or not, and related to as many other nodes as necessary. These relationships could be of various types, and carry information of their own (e.g., does the link indicate that one topic is a generalization of the other, or maybe a counterexample?). Topicscape makes an overture toward this, but is still fundamentally hierarchical (i.e., parent-child oriented). I don’t expect that it would be able to make the full leap and shake off that paradigm. However, I do think that it would be possible for them to enhance relationships to carry information – at least a label.

My perfect world also allows multiple views of the information. Topicscape does something of this sort, but not in the way that I envision. My dream would allow me to create multiple static views, each arranged to accentuate the issue it addresses, possibly by excluding some topics and by moving things around. 3DTS allows me to move my point of view any way I choose, but it doesn’t allow (as far as I can tell) to temporarily obscure particular topics. Nor does it allow you to reposition topics outside of its own chosen layout (as far as I can tell). One suggestion I would offer the developers is to provide a way to save and restore specific points of view (currently it’s possible to save Favority selections, which results in a similarly organized view, but not necessarily the same “camera” positioning).

Leaving a guardedly positive conclusion
My emotions are mixed as I use the tool, and consider how to review it. While I’m using it, I’m quite excited. It’s fun to use, and it’s very robust and well-considered software. But when I sit back and look at what I’ve accomplished, I’m still bothered by what is still left unaddressed by this and any mind mapping tool I’ve encountered.

The bottom line is that I expect to continue using Topicscape for the foreseeable future. It’s not perfect, but it’s the top of the heap of mind mappers that I’ve experimented with.

Finding 3D Topicscape
3D Topicscape is available online at http://www.topicscape.com/ , currently for $79.99, an eminently reasonable price for any mind mapping software, let alone one of this caliber. Also mentioned in this review was Mindjet’s MindManager (see http://www.mindjet.com ) , which has a Basic edition starting at $229.

969

Living Room / Re: YouPorn: Like YouTube, but with a triple x rating

« on: March 13, 2007, 07:27 PM »

Wow, pr0n on the internet! What will they think of next?

970

General Software Discussion / Re: nostalgia hour: old software you loved

« on: March 05, 2007, 03:24 PM »

I have to say, the best word processor for me in the DOS days was ENABLE. Anyone remember this one?

-Josh (March 03, 2007, 03:36 PM)

Remember it? I worked for the company! When I was in college, I worked part-time as a tester for their spreadsheet module. I once wrote a full-featured (insurance, double-down, you name it) blackjack game using spreadsheet macros, which inspired the rest of the department to write other games, until we had a whole spreadsheet casino. There's some interesting stories following that, like the random number generator bug that we found because of the craps game. I still think that the last version of Enable's spreadsheet is the best spreadsheet ever made.

The first shareware-type program I bought was long enough ago that I've forgotten the name. It was a terminal emulator for the Atari ST (remember the days of BBSes?). I expect that in the PC era, my first purchases were also a terminal emulator and a D&D-like RPG.

The oldest piece of shareware that I still use is probably Zoot (and we're still waiting for the 32-bit version, promised very soon now).

From the old DOS days, I also fondly remember Sidekick. The amount of creativity and hacking expertise (in the good sense) that went into that program is unsurpassed. Anybody remember the secret "Vogon Poetry"?

971

General Software Discussion / Re: Any app to auto-replace Notepad ??

« on: February 28, 2007, 06:21 PM »

Notepad++ has some kind of shim so that, while not physically replacing notepad, N++ will be invoked for (most) uses.

972

Developer's Corner / Re: grr SQL and C#

« on: February 27, 2007, 06:36 PM »

Perhaps you'l wnat to put in a parameter

-thefritz_j (February 27, 2007, 12:54 PM)

Always, always, always communicate data into the DB via Parameters:

• If you don't, then you're wide open to SQL injection attacks
• Depending on the server you're talking to, it may significantly improve performance by allowing the query plan to be cached
• Depending on the locale(s) that the client and server are in, the ambiguity between date formats may cause errors or incorrect results
• Parameters know how to handle null values correctly, so you don't need to provide special "is null" syntax in the SQL
• Parameters don't require you to escape special characters in the data, like if you're selecting for a person named "O'Neil"

This is one of the few coding guidelines on my team that is non-negotiable. There is simply no reason not to do it correctly.

973

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« on: February 23, 2007, 08:01 AM »

Thumbs down on Microsoft's program. I didn't even get to try it, since it flatly refuses to look at pictures in shared directories. I think that for the kind of people reading this now, storing your photos on a server so that your spouse can share them is a pretty common practice.

I recently wrote a bit more about this particular idiocy at my blog in this article: http://www.thewuestefelds.com/blog/?p=76

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Official Announcements / Re: What changes would you like to see on DonationCoder.com in 2007?

« on: February 21, 2007, 07:45 AM »

Maybe a special page where members can list their projects, or offer their computer-related services (web design, programming, art, etc.). ... Another idea: ... we could show random boxes with info about member sites.

-mouser (January 01, 2007, 03:26 PM)

I like this, especially the "another idea". It seems to me that it's not really advertising. It's almost "fun information" about the community, that might be better targeted to the rest of the community than, say, google ads (although it may need to be policed for abuse).

FWIW, I'm not worried about the censorship angle that's been discussed here. For one thing, this is a private site and not subject to the 1st Amendment. But more importantly, we're not talking about gagging anyone, simply allowing individuals to be selective about what they consume. There's no obligation for me to listen to what someone else says.

Regarding karma, I would mention that /. uses karma, and I refuse to read that site anymore due to the density of offensive flaming, vapidity, and knee-jerk contrarianism. I don't know if these facts are related at all, but it bears considering. Perhaps if only paid members can award karma, the need to put your money where your mouth is would avoid the /. cesspool.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Mind-Mapping Software

« on: February 14, 2007, 02:08 PM »

I've been working for some time on a thought-organizing app, inspired by mind mapping. IMHO, there are some pretty significant flaws in the basic mind mapping approach, and no software (until mine is complete ) addresses them.

Most significantly, while it's intended to be a tool for brainstorming -- that is, to organically develop your thoughts on a topic -- its hierarchical nature forces you to come up with a structure from the get-go. That's a Catch-22. If you're still trying to develop your thoughts, how do you know how to organize them?

Also, it doesn't provide very good support for ideas that are highly interconnected -- that is, ideas that have more than a parent and children, but also rich relationships between them. And another problem is that the structure that's appropriate for considering something varies depending on what aspect you're examining, but current software is almost universally centered around building a diagram as opposed to relating a set of thoughts.

I've blogged a few articles about these problems in detail, see The inadequacy of mindmapping here http://www.thewuestefelds.com/blog/?p=5 and Fixing the mindmap here http://www.thewuestefelds.com/blog/?p=12 .