We're O'Reilly readers. We're smart. And we've all had it happen to us.
We're watching TV or browsing through the airline catalog, and then we see it:
HEY! I THOUGHT OF THAT TEN YEARS AGO!!!!!
(Go ahead, reply to this message with the idea you had that somebody else came up with, and which drove you crazy.)
Well, that's a sure-fire way for smart people like us to keep ourselves unhappy, but be unhappy no more: my daughter has come up with a phrase that enables us to partake of Sweet Revenge!!!
Here you go, guys.
Instead of being haunted by thoughts that "They" stole "Your" "Idea," which makes you unhappy, why not put the shoe on the other foot and make yourself happy? Here's how:
First, steal some Joe Schmuck's idea. Hopefully an idea for a product you like, that will make you and only you embarassingly large sacks of sweet money.
Second, get a million dollars and produce the product.
Third, and here's the sweet part, when he complains, accuse Joe Schmuck of being, get this:
An "evil psychic copycat." That's right. An Evil Psychic Copycat.
Then you take the him to court!!! There, you explain how Joe was able to see into the future and steal your idea. I think it's watertight, guys, and a GREAT way to make those Zillions while having fun with the English Language and Spacetime, too!!!
So don't forget, now. Evil Psychic Copycat.
Now, reply to this and tell me what you invented, only to see somebody else walk away with your fortune.
For me, the big one was toothpaste in a pump container.
Categories
Audio
Comments (4)
Read More Entries by The Fat Man.
Lexus stole my idea for their new fuel mixture system. But they didn't completely copy it, my idea is still better. So how do I get funding? Where can I find support for my endevors of making life better?
starbucks' cd burning kiosks. although i wanted them everywhere, right next to the soda vending machines.
(Just found the description of the summing mixer):
I was getting a weird distortion and loss of level in my right speaker recently, and traced it to my mixer, a TASCAM MM-1. Since I do all level changes in the computer, I never move the hardware faders, and the right master fader pot had become corroded. Exercising the fader fixed the problems.
But that got me thinking: Right now, my mixer takes up half my rack, and the only knobs I ever touch are the effects sends. I could really use a unity-gain analog line mixer with lots of inputs and sends. Add MIDI muting on each channel (including on the effects returns), MIDI continuous control of the sends, and a S/PDIF (or ADAT) output of the stereo master mix and I'd buy it instantly.
I'm envisioning a one- or two-space rackmount box with 24 ins and six to eight sends per channel. There should be a trim pot on each channel (perhaps even screwdriver-operated, since you'd only have to tweak it once), but no EQ. It'd be useful to have pan knobs, but not necessary to pass audio through them—pan settings could be stored in flash memory and automated via MIDI-controlled VCAs.
Because all mixing would be analog and there'd be no EQ, the signal quality could be pretty high. I remember MOTU tried a similar idea years ago, but I think it failed because the VCAs were too noisy.
• 1998: Analog summing mixers for digital gear.
• 1999: Software Echoplex:
Being a David Torn fan, I've been thinking for some time about how fun a software Echoplex would be.
Basically, you'd set a tempo and number of bars (or import a pre-existing audio loop), then start recording overdubs. After each pass, you could hit Enter (or a MIDI key) to accept the new overdub, hit Delete to reject it, or use a variety of sliders to change the overdub's level, playback direction, plug-in processing, and other parameters before committing it to the mix.
MIDI sync — or the ability to import a MIDI file and use it as a guide track — would be cool, too, but I wouldn't want to clutter the program with so many features that it ceased to be an easy-to-use jamming/looping aid. I bet a lot of people would record entire songs with this system. It'd be a lot more intuitive to use than a multitrack, and faster, too, because you'd have to make mix decisions as you went along! [MOTU announced POLAR two weeks after I wrote that.]