or How I stopped whingeing and became part of the solution ;)

Much in the manner of jon and phillip's "you sure do think a lot", "I sure do!" [goats.com] exchange I would like to open the floor to people's ideas which are great, but they know, deep down, they will never have the money to develop. This is in the vain hope that at least they'll get made by the rich and powerful lurkers around here (i'd prefer a goats fan made the money from my idea than no one - they may contribute to goats).

So my opening idea. Chuck a small eprom onto every plug in card / device. The prom has a basic driver for a couple of operating systems.

When the OS loads it can probe the device and grab the driver (which may be old but at least works) and installs.

Then has a site reference it can go to and grab a more recent version.

Wouldn't that make building a system great if the NIC was just there ready to go?

I would make an alarm with a sensor that wakes you when you've had one sleep cycle and come around to the point where you're in the least deep stage of sleep (hey, that rhymes!), which I believe coincides with the point at which you're in REM sleep.

That way, you could take a power-nap in the middle of the day and be assured that you'd wake up without being groggy.

JUnk food with an appetite suppresant. That way you'd eat one candy bar, or a small bag of chips, and not feel the need to continue pigging out. While you wouldn't make large amounts of money off of people consuming mass quantities of the product, you might be able to corner the market on hungry fat people who wish they didn't eat so much. The only problem hear is that no coorporation is going to take that risk.

I would invent a noise suppressant device so that when obnoxious people speauw nonsense, dribble, tripe, or annoying voices or comments i would hit the mute button and WHAAALLAAAAAHHHH!! instant peace and tranquility!

In Response to Gentoo666 (#1370):

An idea I had at school would do this for you. Basically get a couple of speakers and microphones. like so:

person mic you speaker

then when they speak the mic picks up the sound, inverts the phase and plays it through the speaker. The sound waves cancel out and you sit in a silent world of happiness. You need more than one mic and speaker to cover as many angles as possible. With small mics and speakers and some decent software you could mount the speakers in your collar or behind your ear.

In Response to tor (#1373):

Have you ever read Tales From the White Hart by Arthur C. Clark?

In Response to tor (#1373):

What, you mean like this [pentek.com]?

In Response to annabanana (#1377):

Can't remember but probably I did in my "so nerdy, I don't actually realise that I am a nerd and figure I am popular with the others, I'd just _prefer_ to read in the library at lunch than play with them" phase of life.

I may have to dig up a copy though and refresh my memory, the amazon review makes it sound kind of fun. Although, that reaction itself may indicate I am still a nerd and unpopular...

In Response to tor (#1373):

Yes, very true, but remotes are more fun, and have buttons, everyone loves to push buttons. For example in elevators, there is a subconcious button pushing competion, with the losers instantly becoming silent. Then theres that horrible situation when you get into elevators and the floor button you want is already pushed, and you look around to see who is that dispicable person who robbed you out of that pleasure. Lastly, You Can Never Have Too Many Remotes!

A little thing that clips on the end of a toothpaste tube and slowly rolls it way up the tube as you use it. That way you'd always have a tube without the extraneous paste in the bottom of the tube... I think it would involve springs, little gears and possibly and elf or two.