Halfbakery: Idea: Generator
Automatic Idea generator   (+5, -1)  [vote for, against]
Too lazy to make up an idea....

A little program that automatically generates halfbakery ideas by analysing the already posted ideas of that individual. The new idea is consistant with the general style of that individual and is posted automatically. The whole thing is possibly activated by clicking on a little "Generate idea for me" button.

PS: Yes I know this is impossible but I can wish cant I?
-- imagooAJ, Nov 20 2000

I had one of these but the wheels came off.
-- rayfo, Nov 20 2000


One of my buddies did the Markov-chain thing for a scientific conference of which he was the publication chair. He trained it on the titles of all the accepted papers in order to calculate the probability that a submitted paper with a given title would be accepted. That way he could tweak his titles to optimize acceptance. I don't know how well this worked in practice (though I urged him to write a paper about it). This would probably work really well for low-entropy information sources such as action movie plots or articles in fashion magazines.
-- rmutt, Nov 20 2000


What makes you think this hasn't already happened? (Steak trousers, anyone?)
-- bookworm, Nov 21 2000


My line of thinking is we recently had a rash of exploding items - all from the same person.
-- imagooAJ, Nov 21 2000


Rather than have a button which generates a random(ish) title, what you could have is another couple of options on log in. The first would be Add Orphan, which would enable you to add a title to the halfbakery for which you've yet to think up an idea and the second would be Adopt Orphan which enables you to grab somebody else's unused title and add an idea to it.
-- DrBob, Nov 21 2000


The Halfbakery random button is the best idea generator I've encountered.
-- rayfo, Nov 21 2000


that`s not impossible, it merely needs a little more AI than we currently have. maybe in the Analog AI Age.

if we would have a program that can interpret human language, as well as 'teach' itself from data it gets. you can stuff in all the HB idea`s there are. and based on that, it will generate new idea`s. heck, you could even put in the news in there, and the thing will think up idea`s to improve current situations. :P
-- Keeper of the Blue Flame, Jul 06 2004


It is impossible - At least at the moment. If, as Arthur Clark said, sufficiently advanced technology can be described as magic, then this idea surely deserves an mfd.
-- zen_tom, Jul 06 2004



random, halfbakery