Too late once again
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Last night I had an interesting idea for a website. A beautiful concept of exploiting human nature with the minimum bandwidth possible. My very next thought was that it's impossible that someone hasn't thought of this before. I even knew where I'd find it. And true enough here it is: www.itoldyouso.com. Judging from the copyright I was only 3 years late.
Has anyone else ever had an idea only to find out that someone has already built it?
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I think that happens all the time. Too many people, too few good ideas.
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Yeah .. you're not the first to suffer this problem. A few years ago I had the idea of putting an RFID reader on the exercise machines at the gym and issuing the gym members with RFID tags. The idea was for the machines to recognise the users and record the workout rather than relying on the manual system that pretty well every gym uses. So last week I was doing a tour of a fancy new gym in town, and there it was .. my idea already implemented. It was one of those ideas that I was going to get around to exploring but never did due to too many other distractions.
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@ammoQ said:
I think that happens all the time. Too many people, too few good ideas.
Of course it does. That's because most new ideas are just incremental improvements that are not revolutionary. That many people would independently arrive at the same obvious conclusion given the same starting point is neither unusual nor interesting. In fact, just having ideas doesn't mean squat. You could have an idea but if you don't bring it into successful realization then the guy who actually does has done far more for society, even if he had the idea 5 years after you did.
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This is why you have to invent a time-machine... that way, for any great idea you have that you find out is already taken, you can just go back in time and beat the other person to it.
Of course, what if another person also invents a time machine to beat you to your invention of the time machine...?
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@WeatherGod said:
This is why you have to invent a time-machine... that way, for any great idea you have that you find out is already taken, you can just go back in time and beat the other person to it.
Of course, what if another person also invents a time machine to beat you to your invention of the time machine...?
Why, in that case, you make a boardgame out of it:
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@DOA said:
And true enough here it is: www.itoldyouso.com.
what was it ?
all i'm getting is a CF error.
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@Nelle said:
@DOA said:
It's a site to make predictions which you can later use to show everyone that you were right.And true enough here it is: www.itoldyouso.com.
what was it ?all i'm getting is a CF error.
"<cfthrow type="Hack" message="Please stop hacking :)"> " wth...
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Yeah, I had an idea for a website just like this one about f'd up code and general programming WTF's... and then I found this site.
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@amischiefr said:
Yeah, I had an idea for a website just like this one about f'd up code and general programming WTF's... and then I found this site.
Heh, taken from itoldyouso.com: "Someone will claim that he thought of TDWTF on his own before he discovered it already existed. - 07/24/2008"
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hm let's see... i think i know a good idea though. maybe a website where people can sell items online in auctions. i think i'll call it 'e-auction' or maybe 'e-bid'.
