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Idea Exchange Environment
mebreathing writes: "ShouldExist.org is an idea exchange environment, where users post good ideas and then talk about them. One such idea is about the possibility of extending mp3 or id3 to contain tracks, so whole albums could be encoded into a single mp3, making them easier to find and eliminating skips between tracks. Another idea involves the new DivX codec, and making clickable mpegs that link to URLs of affiliate programs, so movie companies can release movies for free and then make their money by taking a percentage of the profits from all the consumption they induce." This shouldn't feel abnormal to anyone who has ever participated in an open source project, but its kinda nifty. I wonder if anything will come of it.
Maybe I'm cynical (paranoid?), but how do we know that this site wasn't set up (or monitored) by someone wanting a free think-tank that might produce a market-viable idea?
Halfbakery.com is similar to shouldexist, but less full of itself, more active (but that will probably change) and with a somewhat different structure. There are a lot more interesting ideas on halfbakery right now; it's worth checking out. Specifically, the proprietors of shouldexist will need to watch out for some of the problems popularity has brought to halfbakery. (Stupid people posting lots of stupid ideas; flamewars; discussions that go off-topic; duplication; difficulty sorting and categorizing the ideas...)
Ideas are fun to banter around, but people shouldn't kid themselves that a good idea is really worth something. A good idea (vision) and lots and lots of effort implementing it is worth something. "99% perspiration" and all that.
Venture capitalists, for example, must constantly educate people that they don't fund ideas, they fund companies -- and there's a lot more to a company than an idea. Ideas, I'm sad to say, are a dime a dozen; people willing, able, and committed to carrying them out are much more rare.
I imagine sites like halfbakery and shouldexist are more useful not as "think tanks" but as ways for people interested in new ideas to meet each other.
I'd like to remind you that even if you first had an idea.. up until 8 months from now, if I go and impliment it and patent it, there isn't a damn thing you can do. Think twice before giving someone an idea of yours.
The question is: what is a "good idea" and how can an "idea exchange environment for good ideas" not degenerate into an endless stream of flame-wars?
This problem is as old as the Usenet newsgroups. Sometimes, people get pretty opinionated about stuff, turning any technical or social question into a religious issue. Add some incompetency, some hot heads, and you get the usual stream of sneering, insults and anger that's so prevalent in Slashdot or the newsgroup.
The real question is: how to keep it from getting out of hand? Some sites, including Slashdot, have chosen moderation. Moderation has basic technical problems: moderators can get overwhelmed by the traffic. Moderated newsgroups or mailing-lists are often late in transmitting messages because the moderator has to exhaust a backlog; in systems where moderation happens after the message has been posted, such as Slashdot, idiots can post messages faster than the moderators can bring them down. Furthermore, moderation tends to promote established ideologies on the detriment of minority opinion. The notion of what is irrelevant rant tends to be belief-dependent. Think of this: a libertarian will tend to moderate down communist speech as irrelevant, stupid flamebait; a Linux advocate will moderate down Windows advocacy as irrelevant flamebait etc.. etc..
The question remains: how to keep public Internet forums readable? Think of this: in the old days, researchers would read scientific newsgroups. Nowadays, few do, since many scientific newsgroups are filled with spam, crackpots claiming they solved , teenagers asking people to solve their homework, and American politics.
There doesn't appear to be a Tru64 version of the DivX codec installer. This renders it almost useless to me, at work. My workstation is a Tru64 machine.
When will we see a Tru64 version?"A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933