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There are five standard stages in the process.
Focus - identifying a question or theme that provides a basis for a common act of attention
Gather - generating, articulating and displaying separate MMs as a relevant set as in a gathering
Organise - arranging and aggregating MMs to form (separate) higher order MMs
Integrate - systematic or aesthetic unification of these MMs into a whole system
Realise - creative or 'willed' outcome
Instructions:
Write a word in the middle of a sheet of paper.
Circle it.
Write down the first word or phrase that comes to mind and circle it.
Draw a line connecting the second circle to the first.
Repeat. As you write and circle new words and phrases, draw lines back to the last word, the central word, or other words that seem connected. Don’t worry about how they’re connected — the goal is to let your right-brain do its thing, which is to see patterns; later, the left-brain will take over and put the nature of those relationships into words.
When you’ve filled the page, or just feel like you’ve done enough (a sign of what Rico calls a “felt-shift”), go back through what you’ve written down. Cross out words and phrases that seem irrelevant, and begin to impose some order by numbering individual bubbles or clusters. Here is where your right-brain is working in tandem with your left-brain, producing what is essentially an outline. At this point, you can either transfer your numbered clusters to a proper outline or simply begin writing in the order you’ve numbered the clusters.
Grinder and Bandler (both of whom had personal contact with Bateson) asserted that a message could be constructed with multiple messages, whereby the recipient of the message is given the impression of choice - even though both options have the same outcome at a higher level of intention. This has application in both sales and therapy. A salesperson might ask "Would you like to pay cash or by credit card?" Both outcomes presuppose that the person will make the purchase, whereas the third option, that of not buying, is intentionally excluded from the list of choices. Strictly speaking, "cash or credit card?" is not a double-bind because there is no contradiction involved.
If the salesman was selling a book about the evils of commerce, then it could perhaps be a 'true' double bind, but only if the buyer already believed that commerce was evil, and felt compelled or obliged to buy the book.
Problem definition
A well-defined problem is formulated in an iterative process, described in terms of objects, attributes, and a single unwanted effect. Objects are reduced to a minimum number required to contain the problem (not to "explain" the problem situation). Multiple root causes are discovered using the plausible root causes heuristic. Abstraction of the problem statement is achieved using verbal and graphic metaphors. Exercise of the "plausible root causes heuristic" carries the problem solver well into problem analysis.
Problem analysis
Following plausible root causes analysis one of two lines of thinking is followed: 1) a “closed-world” analysis of the problem to understand intended functional connectivity of objects when no problem existed or 2) a "particles method" that begins from an ideal solution and works back to the problem situation.
Solution techniques
Three strategies for problem solving are based on the metaphorical interaction of objects, attributes, and effects: "utilization", "nullification", and "elimination" of the unwanted effect (see Heuristics for Solving Technical Problems — Theory, Derivation, Application).
object – attribute
\
effect – attribute – object
/
object – attribute
Graphic metaphor for the interaction of objects and attributes.
Five solution heuristics are used to support these strategies.
1) "Dimensionality" focuses on the "attributes" available and new ones discovered during problem analysis.
2) "Pluralization" focuses on "objects" being multiplied in number or divided into parts, used in different ways, and carried to extremes.
3) "Distribution" focuses on "functions" being distributed differently among objects in the problem situation.
4) "Transduction" uses "attribute-function-attribute links" to reach new solution concepts. This is modeled metaphorically after transducers, which convert information from one form to another.
5) "Uniqueness" characterizes effects of a problem according to their activity in "space" and "time". Each technique is logically tied to one or more of the underlying features in the well-defined problem: objects, attributes, and effects.
"Wicked problem" is a phrase used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.
Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber introduced the concept of wicked problems in a 1973 treatise, contrasting "wicked" problems with relatively "tame," soluble problems in mathematics, chess, or puzzle solving
Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues. A problem whose solution requires large groups of individuals to change their mindsets and behaviors is likely to be a wicked problem.
Specific examples of wicked problems include global climate change, healthcare in the United States and elsewhere, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, homeland security, and nuclear energy and waste. In the United States, wicked problems at the national, state and local levels include drugs, crime, mental health, education, poverty, urban decay and issues related to the foregoing list.
Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber
Rittel and Webber's (1973) formulation of wicked problems[2] specifies ten characteristics, perhaps best considered in the context of social policy planning. According to Ritchey (2007), the ten characteristics are:
- There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
- Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
- Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
- There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
- Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no
opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.- Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
- Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
- Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
- The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
- The planner has no right to be wrong (planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).
Jeff Conklin
According to Conklin, the four defining characteristics of wicked problems are:
- The problem is not understood until after formulation of a solution.
- Stakeholders have radically different world views and different frames for understanding the problem.
- Constraints and resources to solve the problem change over time.
- The problem is never solved.
Wicked problems in software development
In the last decade, other computer scientists have pointed out that software development shares many properties with other design practices (particularly that people-, process-, and technology-problems have to be considered equally), and have incorporated Rittel's concepts into their software design methodologies. The design and integration of complex software-defined services that use the Web (Web services) can be construed as an evolution from previous models of software design, and therefore becomes a wicked problem also.
Although clustering reveals the major topics in the top 200, 500, or more search results, there are always more topics than can be shown, without overloading the user with a very long list. There hasn’t been any better approach, until now.
With a single click, remix clustering answers the question: What other, subtler topics are there? It works by clustering again the same search results, but with an added input: ignore the topics that the user just saw. Typically, the user will then see new major topics that didn’t quite make the final cut at the last round, but may still be interesting.
Remix clustering was introduced in Vivisimo Velocity 6.0, our enterprise search platform which also introduced other user-experience capabilities.
Hey guys, if i search for something with google toolbar, everything has the *this site may harm your computer* warning, even google itself (lol)
Joel on January 31, 2009 06:40 AM
Well for my all of the results on Google have the warning at the current time; even Google itself.
Jeg on January 31, 2009 06:40 AM
Well, I go onto google this morning
and under every website it says,
"This site may harm your computer."
And yet these are sites I go to everyday.
I type in yahoo just to make sure,
and there is says:
"This site may harm your computer."
What?
Christine on January 31, 2009 06:41 AM
I'm having the same problem. All of my search results suddenly have that "this site may harm your computer" warning and I can't access any of the results. Did google get hacked?
Johnny on January 31, 2009 06:42 AM
I just started getting the warning today. In fact, not only am I getting it, it's on EVERY DAMN RESULT. I had to copy the URL just to get to this page. Is this some kind of bug?
Albert Mond on January 31, 2009 06:43 AM
Are you aware that _this_ very page, to which we're all posting comments, is identified by Google as being potentially harmful to my computer?
Similarly unlikely threats include ESPN and newspaper websites with sports news, which is how i _first_ encountered this stupid feature on Google.
I think they've totally botched it.
jeff on January 31, 2009 06:44 AM
Well I am seeing this on every search result too, time to switch search engines (until they fix this mess)
rod on January 31, 2009 06:44 AM
That's funny. I "googled" up "google" on "www.google.com" and "google" is coming up as a harmful link. When I click on www.google.com in the search results, I get a Warning page. =D
Matt on January 31, 2009 06:48 AM
Google has done this to every page on the internet today! They have messed up big style
Craig on January 31, 2009 06:48 AM
Me tooOO and even the "Cached" page link has gone.
D on January 31, 2009 06:48 AM
We're under attack, turn on the tv and watch the news, telephones are going to be next.
Steve Butters on January 31, 2009 06:50 AM
Google must be having a bad day.
As of today, be it on www.google.com, www.google.com.tw or www.google.com.hk, every search results I get back has "This Site May Harm Your Computer" under it. Even the link to this page.
Alex on January 31, 2009 06:50 AM
This is sad, I had to use yahoo.com to find this page. What happened to google.com?
Jason on January 31, 2009 06:50 AM
Even GOOGLE pages (help pages specifically) are being tagged as "this site may harm your computer". Pretty funny, but there is not one single hit on the google search page coming back as safe.
Irritating that it's now everything is unsafe, can't click through, and now I'll be using another search engine, email & homepage.
Good job Google! You've big brothered yourself right into no longer being user friendly.
Pk on January 31, 2009 06:51 AM
i'm getting that warning on every search result also. I'm glad I ran into this forum (actually the only one turning up on search that had this issue) because I thought google was targeting my IP or something... I think google finally went nuts with power and went trigger happy
Collin Q on January 31, 2009 06:53 AM
Well, I'm not saying they don't help. Just that 99% of the time, if you have a PC with these things enabled, you already have a user that can easily be informed of this problem because they already have Firefox or Opera installed. Such scraper sites with adsense/adbrite/adigy on them are even featured on google results, i don't understand how can google give us results of such sites.
I think services mentioned below can be used to take these sites down.
# Phishtank (another opendns sister project)
# Web of Trust (Firefox plugin available)
BTW good job for pointing it out, Scannie-mahesh2k (January 31, 2009, 05:43 AM)
Nice find scancode! How long did it take you to create the table?-Paul Keith (January 30, 2009, 09:40 PM)
Anger gives me phpbb supahpowaz!
Hehehe, nah, perhaps an hour including finding all domains and such.
There _MUST_ be a way to stop this kinda scams. (Google banning them from AdWords, as a first step)-scancode (January 30, 2009, 09:44 PM)
Hey all. I was just working with some files trying to clear stuff out and I found a discrepancy with two copies of TrueCrypt v5.1a. Both were downloaded months apart, the first was downloaded during its initial release, along with the PGP verification that was provided by TrueCrypt.
A couple weeks ago I downloaded another copy of v5.1a (After the release of v6.0) as I wanted to test something and couldn't find the original archive that I had downloaded. This second download is .12MB larger. I downloaded the associated PGP verification, which also verified as accurate.
The PGP verifications don't work with each other, just the version that was downloaded at the same time (two different signatures obviously).
Anyone notice mid-term changes in TC applications before? Are they updating it without actually releasing new version numbers? I can't ask on the TC forum because it is still down over a week later.
For comparisons, here are a couple hashes from the files:
TrueCrypt v5.1a Install dated 15MAR08, 2,585KB
MD5: 0b02b6a8b9437f8968cbe8719722079b
SHA512: 3200e65995dc655c29b06f3ee363c16591e9526f219fc3a8531d9b76b2cbe72e4a35d3136a74292a79aa2decd9c7a530be066b6d3f12f94f094d8712c70441d2
TrueCrypt v5.1a Install dated 3AUG08, 2,696KB
MD5: 9f2c390917d60aa2f729516cd1a6818f
SHA512: be80093e9946654320e6689fae149779df45fba4959d7b7ff2d70503b0ef84ea750b08b12bd0f02924c2c1a81ff7fdf66f672817125bd959998ffe9c66f8e857-KookyMan
Just fired up my VM. I found the first (if multiple) differences between 5.1a-original and 5.1a-new. The new 5.1a during installation wants to disable the page file as v6.0 does, but the old 5.1a does not.
The question is, why this change? Trying to fix a problem in an old version that they didn't want to admit to? The fact that they made the change, and any other changes, without acknowledging it bothers me.
I can't wait for the TC forums to come back up to put this out there.
Actually, this also creates a new problem. The source code was never released for this version of TrueCrypt. You can only get access to the source code of the current version, and if they changed 5.1a when they moved it into the "old" releases, you can no longer access the source code of the new modified version.
I asked someone who is involved with TrueCrypt quite closely as he had in the past developed two add-ons for it to take a look.
According to him, the installers for 4.3a and 5.1a have both been changed in the recent past. They are almost identical with v6.x's installer which disables the pagefile now by default (user selectable option.) They also updated the included license file. The program itself, as well as the driver files, remain identical with their pre-6.0 selves.
In his words, "In my opinion they have just polished the license and the installer to be up to date."
So it appears that things are still kosher, but I wish they would have made some sort of indication that the installer was changed.
Genre: RPG
Developer & Publisher: Interplay
Released: 1997
PC Requirements: Pentium 90 or faster (P120 recommended), 16MB RAM (32MB recommended), 30MB available hard drive space (150MB recommended), Direct X certified SVGA video card, Direct X certified sound card, 4x or faster CD-ROM drive, Windows 95/98/NT, 100% Microsoft compatible mouse.
Anyone ever get tired of the endless numbers of CRPG´s we get, where we must "battle a horde of goblins and orcs, rescue the kingdom and in the meantime collect our huge reward enough to build a golden bridge across Faerun? Anyone? Well, not me anyway, but I thought it would be time to get something a bit more refreshing and original. So here I sat and remembered a quite unique and some say, revolutionary game, released in 1998, called Fallout. Made by interplay, it is still considered by some one of the best CRPG´s ever.
So what was it that made this up-comer so well-liked and praised? Let us enter the wasteland...
An old LP-player is playing the slow and so-very-30´s song made by The Ink Spots, called "Maybe" from a radio somewhere. On the TV there are some of the usual commercials, followed by a propaganda-program showing "our" victorious forces, and showing us the US flag.
The picture slowly zooms out of the TV, the radio fizzes a bit, and then goes quiet, when the camera reveals a world of ruins, shattered, destroyed and utterly smashed to pieces, making no sound but the faint howling of the wind around the burned ruins of what once was a big city. This is the world of Fallout.
This intro-sequence still sends shivers down my spine when I watch it today, and I can easily say it is one of the best, if not the best intro of all time.
The following part, where the narrator tells the story of a world gone insane with desire for power and which was eventually destroyed by its own inhabitants, a very atmospheric music plays in the background, and all this adds to the already very in-depth feeling of the game.
Without revealing too much, I hope to be able to explain the main plot of the story.
So, the world as we knew it ended in a devastating nuclear war, somewhere around 2090,
when war was waged over the few resources left on earth.
A very small part of the population was able to take shelter in large vaults which were built underground, constructed to protect the "vault dwellers" (as the people in the vaults are called) from all the outer world's hazards.
Very small groups, which lived in quite remote places, also survived the war, and these have started to build a new civilization. A civilization where resources still are scarce, and nobody is far from resorting to violence in order to get what we want. A merciless cruel world, and one which the player has 100% freedom in order to explore.
The player becomes (and yes, I say "becomes", not "plays", because the first is much more in order in this case) a dweller of vault 13, which has managed to stay shut for almost 100 years, but now it faces a catastrophic turn of events.
The part of the vault computers which supplies them with fresh food and resources, the Waterchip has broken, and it is up to the player to go out into the recently described world and find a replacement. Also, when searching for the waterchip, he or she also understands there are much more evil forces at work, and the results can be disastrous, not only for the surface world, but also for his/her own vault.
So what is the game like? The interface may be a bit complicated the first time you play, but after an hour or so, you easily click around the menus, use items, steal things, and most importantly, wage war against all who oppose you.
Ah yes, combat, the most exciting part of the game. You should know, that this game is turn-based, and it works absolutely marvelous.
You have a certain amount of Action Points (AP), which you can choose to distribute in different ways each turn (shoot, walk, use your inventory).
One piece of warning: If you have the UK or German version of the game, there will not be many graphic scenes of violence, but if you have the US or other European versions of the game, it is VERY graphic to say the least (not that I mind, just thought I would put a warning there).
What I found most appealing is the option to shoot "aimed shots" at certain body parts (head, legs, arms, groin, eyes), having bigger chance to hit certain parts and smaller chance to hit other ones, doing different damage.
Also, the damage caused to opponents can cause them to run away (or, if stupid, attack you). For example, cripple their legs and they can just move 1 or 2 hexagons (yes, everything with movement and also the ground at all to do is built with hexagons) in their round. Cripple their
arms, and they can not use a ranged weapon.
On the mention of weapons, there are many different kinds of weapons and to be used,
and some may also be upgraded.
One thing making it very interesting as well is the "Special Encounters", where the developers have put some interesting Easter eggs, and where you can get certain items unavailable in any other place. (A well-known example: The UFO with the Elvis Picture)
The character creation seems very much like any other CRPG's, but the fact that you must choose two "traits", which gives you a bit of advantage in a certain aspect, but a disadvantage in another, makes it very much more interesting to create your PC.
Otherwise, you put skills as usual on different skills, and configure your attributes as you wish to have them.
Leveling up is one of the most interesting aspects of the game, most of this due to the things you get every 3rd level, called "Perks". These gives you special bonuses in some skills, and can give you a better skill when talking to people, make they like you more, and much more like them. There are a lot to choose from, but not all can be chosen depending on your attributes, so you would do well to choose these well when creating the PC after checking the Perks in the manual.
The graphics seem very much outdated today, but trust me, when playing, you practically live in the world, and not much else seem to matter.
The sound is good, although there are a bit of lack of some background sounds, such as people talking when in the city and the likes. There are however, some great performing made by actors at Interplay when it comes to the NPC's you can talk to who have their own "heads" in the dialogue part. (I especially liked Loxley in The Hub)
The background music is not much of music (more like faint sounds of howling and the sounds of a desert landscape), but it is perfect and suitable for whatever environment you are in (it changes with the location).
What about npc's? Well, of course there are a few, but these you have very limited control over, and they don't seem to bright either, as one of their greatest joys seem to be to fire a burst of bullets in your back as soon as you turn your eyes in another direction. Besides, you can't tell them to wear armor, or to choose what weapon to use.
I played through the game solo, without any NPC's at all, since I found them quite useless and mostly annoying. But it is still a lot of fun, and never does the people you talk with feel "empty" or "just another person" (as I thought it to be in Morrowind due to the limited dialogue).
Another thing I feel I unfortunately must take into consideration are the bugs. There are numerous of them (people stop talking to you, people attacking you without reason, crashing bugs, long loading times), unfortunately. So the first thing to do when having the game installed is to install the patch, but remember to do this before you start the game, since the patched version wont be able to load your old saved games.
The bugs and small problem of npc's apart, this is a must-have for all Roleplayers, no matter if you like action, adventure or just a good story. Also, the number of ways you can actually play the game, the fact that it is quite big, with different ways of completing quests, and the refreshing kind of character shaping it promises for quite a bit of replayability value.
And most important of all, there are no elves, orcs, or goblins.
My Rating:
Graphics: 7/10
Sounds: 8/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Story: 10/10
Replayability Value 8/10
Overall: 9.5/10
