Recent Posts

1501

Developer's Corner / Re: Amit Patel's Red Blob Games and Game Programming Pages

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 07:30 PM »

There's a bit of a spinoff topic here:

"With modern web browsers, there’s no need for explanations to follow the formats used in magazines, technical papers, and books. We can combine learning by reading, learning by watching, and learning by doing."

I DO believe there's a need for "magazines, technical papers, and books".  I cut that quote pretty hard - I'm not sure if he's only talking about the "comp game" industry or going broader to "learning theory".

I'm moving into the topic that the types of info in a "manual" isn't the same info-theory-wise as all the stuff he was saying. We're skipping the DeadTreePaper vs PDF discussion here. Manuals are about telling you stuff like "Oh, yeah, right, this year you have to unclick the boxes 1,7 and 14 to get this year's return to file or it won't work at all, and if you miss boxes 13 and 14 it screws the client and you have no idea why at a ten second look".

So, we need manuals. Pop articles on the web don't cover that.

1502

Site/Forum Features / Smiley Extra Spaces

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 07:24 PM »

When I click a smiley, it adds an extra space. Is there a reason for this?

At the start of the line (which is where I like to put them) I have to delete the space to not have them look ugly!

  (before)
(After)

1503

Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Baby Cody 2014!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 07:22 PM »

I want Baby Cody to visit NY City when tax season is done!

1504

Post New Requests Here / Re: For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 07:19 PM »

Heh that means you, Mr. Kormanik, you of the "giant unsorted data chunks". You're the thread opener! Let's play!

1505

Post New Requests Here / Re: For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 07:09 PM »

...
Instead, I've just adopted some of the basic principles, such as:

- bite-size notes (c. 200 words on ave., 500 words max. per note). One major idea per note.
- no hierarchical organisation (flat alphabetical or chronological list). I keep them in a chronological order.
- make it easy to find the notes by:
-- having descriptive (long) titles, inc. date and time note captured, author's name, year of publication, main topics
-- having categories, labels.
...

-dr_andus (February 19, 2014, 09:10 AM)

We're def. getting into personal prefs.

My answer to tags would be a bit like an Excel/clone page with extra "sort columns". So then if "shuffling data" is your thing, with a medium amount of work up front, your data can be presented hierarchically in X ways.

I'm pretty big on at least fluid hierarchy because I believe almost all data exists in *some* hierarchy. Even if you're not sure if you want to deal with it as Compounds/Molecules/Atoms or Symptom/Causes/Suspected, purely flat data just feels wrong. I think I'm hearing there's need for flexibility in organization, but not all notes are created equal! So even if you "tagged" three different sort methods, it's like in Excel "sort by Column G, or F, or B".

And for Note size, I haven't done word counts (though I'm almost the type to do that!!), but I'm a "Completeness Maven". Short notes bother me because they tend to feel they are not complete. The only unclear part is whether it should all go into one big note (length) or subnotes (structure). So I def. see some style prefs going on!

As a friendly comment, I'm barely able to even imagine how you deal with stuff without either longer notes or structuring! Someone please give me a PM example of a minor-mini data-set for chatting! I basically can't even handle 500 words before it becomes a tree! But ya know, this might be because I merge "Getting Things Done" (GTD) themes into my notes.

So holler at me!

Cheers,

--Tao

1506

Living Room / Re: Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 06:54 PM »

...
So, after all that, why I have troubled you with this little tale?

It's taken 30 years to pass for me to find that book, a genuinely special book that must have influenced the person I became (I hated school and studying so I didn't read any books as a child, yet I persevered with that one). I could have searched for the book sooner, I could have tried to work out where I was going wrong with my cube solution sooner. It didn't matter until now.

-nudone (October 07, 2010, 04:21 AM)

I'll see you James Nourse and raise you!

This next bit will sound "snarky" but I mean it in a blended "humanistic-technical sense"! So try not to get upset!

If you had "wanted to" find that book, you could have found it 10-15 years ago and maybe 20 years ago. But you "didn't try very hard" aka "thinking laterally", so you "accepted" that it took you this long for slow nostalgia to kick in and you eventually succeeded.

I know, allowing for better engines, watch this:
Yahoo search (aka Bing, "second rate" not even Google!) Rubik's Cube Solution books 1981
Bang. First result:

The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse 1981 ...
www.ebay.com/ctg/Simple-Solution-Rubiks-Cube-James-G...   Cached
The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse (1981, Paperback) : James G. Nourse (1981)

Even Back in 1998 it might not have been First Result, but only about eight books about the Rubik's Cube appeared before about 1983, and then you just check them.

"That Was Easy". (Staples)

I'll raise you "Phoenix".

Turns out, after many scattered weeks of research over twenty years, the "Phoenix" (Western version) is way at the top of the list of myths with "exactly three words". Birdy. Reborn. Flames. And then suddenly you discover no one else knows ANYTHING.

But the story I read 30 years ago was a take on the myth that gave me my handle. Brilliantly done. Go on, try to find it. Children's Book. Phoenix. Go on, try to search THAT!

You'll get crappy results about Phoenix Arizona, Phoenix Suns teams, and seven other businesses.

Lemme save you the misery.

One random day through a once-a-decade bit of inspiration, I found a (now forgotten) search path that pulled it in. By beautiful pure chance, a fresh new copy was made in the "search era". Cleaned up, see below.

http://en.wikipedia....avid_and_the_Phoenix
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Edward_Ormondroyd

Look at that last name. *Completely* unmemorable. And this was a book I'd read as a child about age 10. (Unknown if it was the 1957 or 1981 edition but it felt quasi old, even chances being the 1957 copy.)

Heh - so I bought three copies for Old Times sake.

So here's to Nostalgia books!

1507

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 06:37 PM »

Tomos missed my 2100th post, a few days ago, so I'll put it here myself
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Ath (February 19, 2014, 02:42 PM)

Heh well I didn't think this was solely on Tomos! I'm amused you both saw it yourself and photoshopped kept a copy!

I'm as Number-Happy as it gets, but I just haven't been looking in this vein for a while!

1508

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Warning: Time is the single biggest cause of stress in our western culture

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 06:35 PM »

Heh Necro Thread Arise!

But we're here, so I'll just add that "Time" is also one of the X concepts that makes basic civilization work. If for example you are dealing with an entity that has no concept of "time", it ruins your basic life efficiency!
(Examples include ditzy artsy friends, and "Please Hold (for 82 minutes), your call is important to us." (But not enough to staff the line better!!)

1509

Living Room / Re: Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 06:20 PM »

Misc notes:

- Long after that college hobby, I had no use for the cube for a decade. But I like "projects of the week/month" and a couple of different times in homage to the nostalgia I checked up on the evolving theory of the speedcubing world a few years ago.

- The Cube really was prone to a bit of "Sequel-itis" more often seen in movie theory. The Cube is stunningly brilliant. See this snip from the Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia..../wiki/Rubik%27s_Cube
"In the mid-1970s, Ernő Rubik worked at the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest.[12] Although it is widely reported that the Cube was built as a teaching tool to help his students understand 3D objects, his actual purpose was solving the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He did not realize that he had created a puzzle until the first time he scrambled his new Cube and then tried to restore it.[13]"

Heh Oops... total "What Have I Done" moment! So, brilliance part 1 is that it was a structural study in a professional environment!

- The complete set of "basic" solving concepts really is pretty tough to get "cold out of the gate". See my note above - "Any dedicated child can get the first two rows", but then that last 80-20 conceptual wall kicks in and you get hosed. (By "Basic" I even mean the current speed-cubing practice. See below.)

- The cube still holds important study material for professional mathematicians dealing with combinatorial-informational theories etc.

Whew!

Unfortunately, his later projects rapidly went downhill.
- Rubik's Magic has a stunning "technology concept" in the link pattern of the vinyl fibers, but the actual solution is pretty rudimentary.
- Rubik's Clock was even more basic. Even lil' ol' me in *high school* figured that out and I even created a term paper enabling my English teacher to solve it.

(Spoiler: Rubik's Clock is two sided, has mechanical wheels, and each wheel moves two sets of four clocks out of two sets of nine laid out in a three-by-three pattern on each side. The innermost clock moved by all four mechanical wheels on the object is the center clock. 9 clocks. Move 4 at a time. The middle one is the common linked data-point. Go on, take a beer, fiddle with it for an hour just to see the movement, and then the solution comes to you. Your "One minute advice" clue is that it's really similar to Algebra's isolating down to one variable in a multi set of equations and then you fill in bit by bit. In Rubik's Clock, you can do it intuitively. Come on, 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 9. Even. Odd. Right.

Yes, it really is as simple as you think it is.)

1510

Living Room / Re: Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 06:01 PM »

Wow that brings back memories!

The first time I saw that book was a couple weeks after the first time I saw a Rubik's Cube. A friend bought one and then spent 2 weeks trying to solve it before giving up and buying the book. He was pissed when he figured out he had gotten within about a dozen moves on his own.

-Vurbal (February 19, 2014, 03:25 PM)

Heh depends on "Which Dozen"!

That method in the Nourse book is interesting as a semi IQ-test. Provided it is "an important goal" (to prevent things like my brand of laziness!), "any bright person (including child sub-prodigies!)" can do the top row as long as they get the concept of the difference between a "color" and "cube placement". I'll leave it for another day about what it takes to discover that "on your own". But kinda like "free advice" from a business, even if you didn't get that concept because you were stuck on a blind alley, a five minute explanation is enough and then the Bright Person *can* work out the easy combos but it's far from giving the show away.

A "Dedicated" bright person can get the middle row. The moves to do that are slightly longer, but still pretty easy relatively. Only a genius would see it "pure" and do it right the first time instantly, but good intuition and some fiddling for "moderate" lengths of time should be enough.

It's that last row that's the real cruncher. I could not possibly have gotten any of the move sets required. And I don't care to spend eleven hours diagramming that last 30 mover!


I think I recall Mr. Nourse said he only got the last bit of inspiration because his day job was as a chemist and he was used to large interactions of swirling elements.

1511

Living Room / Re: Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 19, 2014, 02:52 PM »

Haha! This is a fun topic for me! Here's Nudone's note, ((With some insertions for comic effect!)) and then my own afterward.

I learnt to solve the Rubik's Cube during the ((third)) craze by reading this book: The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse.

It was ((1996)), I was ((20)) years old, bored out of my brain ((procrastinating studying college classes)).

((Immediately)) after, I forgot a few of the algorithm solutions ((because I was lazy!!)) but would muddle through with what I could remember and still solve the cube, albeit taking longer than necessary ((But five minutes was fast enough in 4-hour dorm hang-outs)). I couldn't ((be bothered to learn)) the correct algorithms ((Because seven can solve the cube in those five minutes but it jumps to like 20 to get your time down to three minutes)). ((I have since lost the book in the mists of time.))

So, I spent ((2)) years ((during college)) solving the cube with my messed up method. Knowing that it ((is as bastardized as possible while still working!!))  but also knowing that it would always work - eventually. (There's a moral in there somewhere. ((Yes - Sometimes it's possible to get by with the smaller things in life by just being lazy. Like not doing dishes.- Tao))

...Speedsolving the Cube by Dan Harris. ((During one month being bored at work I looked up the current theory of speedsolving about 2010. I didn't know Dan Harris had written a book.))

...I already had my own method, I haven't the time nor patience to learn a new method; ((and the Rubik's Cube is old-hat enough  that it just wasn't wasting my already feeble memory on for me.)) ...

It didn't take long to realise when and why I should use some of the half remembered algorithms, they were quite obvious in the end.

((I disagree. The key of the Nourse book is that the last algorithm is it's 30 moves long but it "Just Works" in the Apple sense. ))

Now, the sense of knowing exactly how to approach a particular pattern with a specific algorithm is very satisfying. ((No, it's not, for me. I like the 30 mover at the end because it's muscle memory and it Just Works. But there's the spot in the middle with a set of about eight patterns that actually takes work to memorize and that's the part I skipped because its only use was speed, not being essential.))

But, I knew that I didn't have the complete method for my solution - I could remember the book demonstrating more algorithms than I used; or that is what my faded memory told me - who can say what was in a book that you've not seen for 30 years.

((I DO remember exactly what is in it, 18 years later. The first chapter is about the top row, and he doesn't care "how you do it" because his point is solving the cube is not about "the top is blue", but the "blue-yellow cube can ONLY go on the intersection of those two sides. So once you get it there it just stays there. And all the moves are about you retain the progress you made at each step, barring blunders.

So the top row is a snap because you can let the entire rest of the cube go to hell to save time.

Then there's the middle row, and you just put the cubes where they belong one at a time, and the move is pretty easy.

The fun is that for the bottom row, that method's concept is it retains the progress you already have made. But now there's less "entropy" to waste, so the moves suddenly get WAY harder. See my comment about the 30 mover - it's because it has to switch EXACTLY two cubes with no room to spare. But it "Just Works". The step *before* that is the one  you're supposed to look at the series of eight/whatever configurations and pick *which one* of the eight patterns to use - BLEH!! But if you just learn two of the eight they're cyclical so if you "don't mind wasting time" it just rotates through the configurations so you just do the move three times in a row and then it works out. ))

Last night, I decided to try and find the method used in the book. I knew it was an unpopular method, cube solving has progressed over the years, but I thought that after a lot of searching online I'd find some mention of this outdated solution.

((It's unpopular because it's absolutely de-optimized for speed solving - it's designed to lock in your progress so you can't lose it at any time, barring blunders. The problem with the speed methods is you get those "decision points" where if you DO learn the 138 patterns, your time rockets down from that lazy five minutes to forty five seconds. ))

-nudone (October 07, 2010, 04:21 AM)

Whee! Does that help?

1512

General Software Discussion / Re: Processing Delays!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 18, 2014, 08:25 PM »

This drives me bonkers.  It started happening on an XP install of mine and I could never find a way to identify what was causing it or to fix it.

I think the fact that it doesn't show up in the Task Manager cpu suggested that it is a low level system driver of some sort.

However, I strongly suspected it was caused by ESet antivirus/firewall  the fact that it was happening always during disk access was one clue.

-mouser (February 18, 2014, 08:18 PM)

I don't *think* I have Eset active (what even is that? It sounds vaguely familiar to something I thought I nuked a while back) - but it's popped up a few times. How can a stall not be processed by Task Manager?! ( I might have screwed up these quotes.)

1513

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 18, 2014, 08:22 PM »

...
For the last week I've been trialing AVG internet security.  I tried a dozen others but AVG was the one that I found least offensive.  I might try outpost again, as I always liked Outpost, but right now AVG is doing pretty well by me.

I did not install the optional stuff like web browsing guards, identity guards, etc. -- and thankfully those are optional installs.  Those seem too likely to cause problems and slowdowns to me.

AVG does *not* offer the kind of fine granularity control of the powerful firewalls like Eset and Outpost, but it does offer more control and transparency than some of the truly minimal ones.  But my patience for micro-managing firewall access control rules has diminished over the years, so that's not bothering me as much as it would have in the past.

In terms of basic antivirus and firewall, i'm not unhappy with AVG, and the system performance and stability seem really excellent, which is my main concern these days.

-mouser (February 15, 2014, 06:41 PM)

Wow Mouser, you demigod of DC you, how does all this compare to the entry conspicuously absent from these ratings, aka MS Internet Essentials!?

Heh So if that's my "C" (3rd hand suggested) program, how are your A and B programs worth it and better?

1514

Post New Requests Here / Re: For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 18, 2014, 08:16 PM »

Looks like an interesting system, especially for complex issues, scientific books, and journal articles. Could you recommend some readings on the topic?

-Attronarch (February 16, 2014, 03:59 PM)

It was this article by Manfred Kuehn that got me started: Some Idiosyncratic Reflections on Note-Taking in General
and ConnectedText in Particular

He blogs frequently about Zettelkasten.

Christian Tietze's blog posts on the matter are also helpful.

And here is the original Luhmann article: Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account

-dr_andus (February 16, 2014, 05:11 PM)

These are some power articles.

But maybe there's "theory" that goes down-level as well as up-level.

I like MyInfo as one of Four Two One winner app that just lets me smash out info. I'm "just a customer" aka no hidden agendas, but as a User I spent over a year and over twenty programs came up short.

Per these articles, years ago I got fascinated by that kind of high level theory. But if the "Implementation" has a fatal flaw, in real life you lose months of your productive life. (Speaking from experience!)

(Your choice of who) have taken smaller goals and implemented them well. In Data Mgt to me that's huge - do a smaller subset tightly and maybe I can work around my edge case, than get too big and have the whole thing implode.

1515

General Software Discussion / Processing Delays!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 18, 2014, 08:06 PM »

A few times I have noticed that certain apps pause while doing something, while Task Manager "swears nothing is going on".

Does anyone know of a tool that covers this?

Just now I loaded a couple of programs and got stalled, but Task Manager was indicating cpu activity near 10% or less etc.

I'm on XP, it happens at work on Vista too.

How can a program delay and Task Manager not know about it?!

1516

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 17, 2014, 08:10 PM »

...
To be fair even the ones coping quite well with using it want rid because it just annoys them all the time. If your main use of a computer is Word, Excel and Outlook what exactly is the point of the not-Metro interface.

And lets face it the ONLY reason for the new interface is to push the app store (which like Apple and Google stores is full of crap and scumware) - it doesn't really add much else to Windows of use. The apps are pretty lacking in most people's opinion. Haven't looked recently but is there a Facebook RT app yet - there wasn't for a hell of a long time!!

Have to say I use Android a lot and I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with that too - I hate all the functionally crippled apps - eg. the GMail is pretty annoying compared to the web interface allowing virtually no convenient ways to actually manage your email (yes you can read and write emails but everything else is clunky) - Android Mail app by comparison is in the stone age.

Facebook apps on Android and the Apple eco-system are all pretty terrible compared to the full browser based version - there is just so much you can't do!! Hell you have to have a separate app to manage pages (which is even more limited in functionality than the main app) and if you manage a FB group most of the settings are missing in the mobile apps.

For all these companies this is all just about money ... none of them give a toss about what customers/users actually want or need.

-Carol Haynes (February 17, 2014, 04:06 PM)

I'm actually kinda surprised that for twenty years even fourth rate desktop programs do more than most of the truly awful apps in those stores. It's almost an ironic reversal of what the "cold hard cash economy" of the apps were supposed to do! And the proportionate space used by iAd or whatever it's called is apalling - maybe 15% of the screen space!

Heh xkcd nailed it a little while back.
http://xkcd.com/1174/

1517

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 17, 2014, 12:11 PM »

Personally, this reminds of when Windows XP first hit the streets and everybody swore up and down that it was a terrible, no-good OS with a horrible "kindergarten GUI". Look at it now, we can't get rid of the friggin OS. I, for one, enjoy the metro start screen (although I boot to desktop). The start screen is actually fairly intuitive and allows me to hide unnecessary clutter caused by menu after menu of new program folders. Heck, I never used the all programs menu in vista/7 with the type to search feature.

-Josh (February 17, 2014, 11:06 AM)

Well, way back then they were kinda right - XP didn't get really stable until about Service Pack 3. And it is pretty easy to "theme away" the "Kindergarten" look.

1518

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 17, 2014, 11:36 AM »

...
@Tao - you could just save time and load Win7 today and be done with it.

Seriously, how much more does anybody really need an OS to do that isn't already being handled (quite well) by Windows 7. Or Linux Mint 16 too for that matter - if you don't need specific Windows apps.

Mint is my goto productivity environment. And I also keep a Win 7 environment for those times when my own needs dictate it must be used. That's my current path. Get something that works today - that will still be supported for the reasonably foreseeable future - and not waste time trying to second guess what Microsoft will eventually do. First, because the thrill is gone. And secondly, because that way madness lies.

-40hz (February 16, 2014, 08:07 PM)

Hmm, a couple of points here -
First, I do indeed need Windows apps, everything from DC stuff here to MyInfo and more.

But part of it all was conceptual. Win 7 will "always be there" as an option. But first, I recall seeing MS's new support policy being about "only supporting two editions back". So if they follow that aggressively, then we'll see the same drop in support for Win 7 in a couple of years that we now see for XP.

But also I really do want to see what they officially decide for Win 9 from the conceptual point. Metro/etc is "baked" pretty hard into Win 8. And Win 9 will be the first new edition of Windows with that new CEO at the helm, without Steve Ballmer or Steve Sinofsky. And it will indeed be the close of that ten year plan when I built my project machine to purposely wait out the intervening years' worth of bad decisions by MS. So maybe the "thrill" is gone but I really do feel that Win 9 will be important as "the Post Win-8 World".

Meanwhile Paul Thurott is a Microsoft "Apologist", so when he decides to say something against MS, it usually means other people have been saying it first. Meanwhile his conclusion that Win 9 should "focus on productivity" is a lot of what I was saying elsewhere above about "lean and mean".

1519

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 16, 2014, 04:04 PM »

We then saw 1-2 (depending how MS counts them for support rules purposes) Win 8 and 8.1 releases. Yuck.

-TaoPhoenix (February 16, 2014, 09:45 AM)

Have you actually used Windows 8 and 8.1...

-Innuendo (February 16, 2014, 10:56 AM)

Nope. Not used them. According to my design theory specs, I wanna see what that ex-engineer new CEO cooks up for Win 9 or even 9.1.

That skips Vista, 7 (tempting), 8, 8.1, and I'm banking hard that 9.1 might be the new Go To OS for Microsoft.

That's my path.

1520

Living Room / Re: Security breach at Kickstarter

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 16, 2014, 09:54 AM »

Not really.  Yes, name and address are valuable information for scammers, but only in combination with other things- and there are easier ways to get those than breaching a website.

-wraith808 (February 15, 2014, 11:02 PM)

Maybe but the disclosure included five items - Usernames, emails, mail addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords.

That's a good haul, on the order of "it only takes three more things" to ruin someone.

1521

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 16, 2014, 09:45 AM »

To add to some melodrama:
Way back in 2004 I built a system on XP with a buddy with the specific intent to ride out these shenanigans into the next "safe harbor". We put a few bucks into quality parts, and except for OS crankiness that annoys Skwire, Mission Accomplished.

I could have bailed at Win 7, but I have held on.

We then saw 1-2 (depending how MS counts them for support rules purposes) Win 8 and 8.1 releases. Yuck. But then they changed CEOs, and that new guy is supposed to know his nuts and bolts and not be a mere marketing hack. What if he went "back to basics" and stripped the 23% of cruft in the Windows code and made a lean mean copy of Win9?

That would be the completion of my decade-long goal.

1522

Post New Requests Here / Re: For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 16, 2014, 09:38 AM »

TaoPhoenix likes MyInfo ($49, pro-$99).  What other programs have you, and others, found worthy of holding your vast and growing supply of information?

Is this sort of program beyond what we might hope for on donationcoder.com?

-nkormanik (February 15, 2014, 05:39 PM)

Hi Nick.

On this "other topic" a while back I investigated the idea of "Coding Snacks" and "Coding Lunches" and even "Coding Dinners". DC's special niche is that for other people you can usually get a "snack", which is a cute little low level program to do one super-useful thing that you cannot program yourself. One of my favorite examples is the TranDesk desktop Splitter that allows you to force WinXP / other into multiple desktops. Or MilesAhead's BBSS that lets you save the URLs of a bunch of Firefox tabs into a text file. (Somewhere else I swear I saw the other half that lets you load them all back in again.)

The problem is there is a gap in the middle I call "Coding Lunch". Most of the quality well done "NANY" apps are people's labor of love, so maybe you can sneak a small feature in, but otherwise they either work for you or not. It's a bit tricky to get people to make you a medium app here. I've tried.

I do have to say that even leaving off the fancy stuff, I thoroughly respect the backend problems of an info manager program. MyInfo was one of actually TWO programs with the killer feature I wanted - a beautiful Web export. Last year my recommendation would have been the other one. But that one somehow decayed with a deadly core level structural integrity data destroying problem, and I had to let it go.

I totally get how adding features is Additive and support is Cube-Exponential.

Does that help?

1523

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 16, 2014, 09:29 AM »

Heh I'm always liked wordplay jokes, and add a dash of Tax Season insanity, and then three days off, and I get to make a little joke that I've had in my head for a couple of years now!

Boring Exec Summary: Lloyd Blankfein, CEO & Chairman of Goldman Sachs admitted that he and his company were part of the banking meltdown. But he didn't just say that. His precise phrasing was picked up by The Gregory Brothers of Autotune the News.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=-fTh2GffJsM

(P.S. We need more hearings like this! That Younger Gregory pwns as "FCIC Commissioner"!)

And Blanky's precise phrasing screamed for a Venn Diagram!

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Post New Requests Here / Re: For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 15, 2014, 12:50 PM »

Thanks dr_andus for answering that question.
@Tao, I think it can also depend on the topics. I dont write but I do tend to gather info -- topics which overlap and merge one into one other. Tbh a lot of it I havent orgnaised, and yeah, in a good organiser you can give an item/entry multiple parents ("clone") and tag it. Tagging can end up like another outline with decisions as to where I put this tag in the hierarchy (if it has a hierarchy - if not could be a pain too if there's a lot of tags).
Ease of linking to other items is very important I think. Hence my interest in the wiki suggested by dr_andus.

-tomos (February 15, 2014, 11:42 AM)

Sure, and I'm believing more that how one's mind works is crucial. Given the same set of info, for example I heavily think in trees in every corner of my life. So certain facts can float a little into being parents of two trees, but then all the subsidiary info tends to be unique. I think I have found that for many of my projects the "flatness" of a Wiki works against me, because I take pains to try to avoid scrambling different levels of a tree branch.

So a really good example is I might have a little trouble working on a tree about "Dopamine, Norepinephrine, ADD, and Parkinsons" because I would get confused whether it's "Neurotransmitter Oriented" or "Diagnosed Condition oriented".

But below that the tree gets pretty simple - "Dopamine, Parkinsons, Media, Awakenings, Robin Williams". But if I drifted into brainstorming about "Medical Movies", sure the Awakenings node gets copied over, but then the entire rest of the branch drops and it's time to spin off a new node! Yay!

But if stuff is so blended, then maybe I'd just leave it "flat level" and let it all just sit there like idea soup Like Nick K has it now. But I like structure.


I also have a theory about "human assisted partial AI". Conversation is like building a tree structure. We talk in trees, going up and down branches. Use the human as a "pre-processor" to get past the raw basic coherence problems that usually sink AI, and then let the machine start diagramming out the chat. : ) More on that topic elsewhere !

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General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on February 15, 2014, 11:14 AM »

I zoomed in on this snip:
"Looking for the smallest, lightest protection available? The installer for Editors' Choice Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete (2014) would fit on a 3.5" diskette (if you could fine one). Its unusual antivirus component doesn't use virus signatures; rather, it detects threats by their behavior and other characteristics."

A, being a fan of Small and Light, that was nice! But see the note about behavior vs signatures. What if you got that to behave with a second AV program without them fighting each other? Could the combined power of the two approaches synergistically become "more than the sum of the parts"?