I'm trying to get a job so I can buy a new hard drive for my laptop. It crashed. $50 isn't in the budget right now, but I do admit this is an idea I hadn't thought about.
To anyone that's interested: I've updated the article, taking some recommendations into account and I invite you all to give me one more shot.
This version provides a more detailed solution and discusses other companies such as YouTube and Netflix and how these companies are trying to solve the problem.
Of course it's a half-assed solution, but why does that matter? This was simply a proposition and a call to action. If I this were actually a project of mine, don't you think I'd give it more thought?
EDIT: After giving it a second thought, perhaps "disrupt" would have been a better word to use than "hack". What do you think?
I do not refute this, I simply try to play devil's advocate. In fact, I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't watch a lot of television because I enjoy being engaged in what I'm doing, but there are people out there who watch a lot of television and removing commercials could be a good thing for such people.
I suppose you have a good point. I've never had DVR and don't know many people who have, so this was never an option for me. With that said, I feel obligated to point out that these people wouldn't need to skip the commercials if they didn't exist in the first place.
Coursera just blew me away by offering courses that aren't related to computer science! I am definitely looking forward to seeing how those blow over. Udacity doesn't have the funding that Coursera has, but also promises to be great. Udacity, however, is focused solely on computer science education. I believe this is a mistake and free education should be for everyone, not just computer dorks.
I noticed that 'Top Ideas' page ranks ideas by the number of 'Awesome idea' votes. The number of 'This sucks' votes aren't taken into account. You should change this to take downvotes into account as well. +4/-20 (0.167 approval rating) should not be ranked higher than +3/-1 (0.750 approval rating). [1]
Also, seeing as the site is titled 'HackerIdeas', you should target it specifically to hackers. I don't care about a company that prints advertisements on toilet paper. That's just annoying.
[1] Approval ratings calculate using this formula: up / (up + down)
That's a fair argument, but surely there is a way to incorporate Codecademy's mechanics into sites that cover more advanced material? I suppose that Udacity's "Programming a Robotic Car" wouldn't have had much luck using this method, but perhaps an introductory algorithms and data structures course could.
I will definitely look into this in the future!