Shlomi Fish's Random Ideas
Introduction
Ideas are the lowest level of value-production and comprise of 1/1111 of the effort it takes to materialise a tangible value. Nevertheless, I have a lot of them, which I cannot or don't have the time to realize right now, so I decided to put them here for all people who wish to be inspired.
I don't put here things that are sort of pipe-dreams (solve any NP-complete problem at polynomial time; prove Goldbach's Theorem), but rather think that can be materialized given enough time and effort. If you do materialize them (or know of someone who did), write me a note and I'll mention you on this site.
Non-computer related
An Affordable Private School Network
Objectivists can tell you only too much about the evils of public education. They are right. But being a bit proactive, I think the solution is to create a network of private schools that will compete (and eventually out-compete) with the public schools. As opposed to traditional private schools, they should aim to be affordable.
With enough schools like that, that would still offer a superior education, the need for public schools would be very much decreased and eventually completely eliminated.
Discotheques Playing Music at a Decent Volume
I hate going to discotheque because the music is so loud and I don't like to ruin my ears. (which happen for discotheques patrons all the time). I believe a discotheque that would make it its policy not to play music too loudly can actually make a lot of money from people like me.
Stand-up Philosophy
Ludwig
Wittgenstein said once that A serious and good philosophical work
could be written that would consist entirely of jokes
. Well, stand-up
philosophy is based on the opposite conjecture: that philosophy is good
enough to be funny or at least entertaining.
Computer Related
Computer Games with a Sensible Budget
It is well known that to accomodate with today gaming "standards", computer games became more and more pricy to produce. However, while having better graphics and special effects, they are by no means better. Hell, they are all pretty much the same.
Instead of producing one $2,000,000 game, isn't it possible to produce 5 $400,000 with lesser graphics, audio and effects, but better playability? I think it is possible and that this course of action would be better in the long run. Think about it.
Fortunes Mania
An idea for a community site for the collection of fortune cookies.
Tucan - Interfacing High-level Languages
From a conversation I had with TDDPirate on IRC, we came to the conclusion that it would be desirable to have a framework that will enable code written in a certain high level language (say Perl) to make use of code written in a different high level language (say Python) and that from every high-level language to every other high-level language.
Currently there are:
- SWIG - enables writing one interface that will eventually generate bindings to a C library for any high-level language. However, it cannot interface a pure-Perl code into a pure-Perl code.
- Parrot - a virtual machine for dynamic languages. Its main problem is that it requires all such languages to implement compilers for its bytecode (along with any bindings they have to C).
- The GIMP contains a procedural database that allows registering functions in any language and calling them from any other language. However, this is limited to the GIMP and uses custom GIMP datatypes.
It may be a good idea to use YAML and/or dbus to implement Tucan.
Unixdoc
An integrated documentation framework for UNIX-like systems.
