Very true. The personal risk is what's holding me back. If I were single, no kids, and about 24 years old, I'd be all over it. I might be willing to put a financial stake into it, if I could really, scientifically prove it's feasible, if others (mathematicians and developers) concurred, and if I knew that I could get return on my investment. very tiny (about 11 bits)
I think yaoluv is trying to be helpful here. Of course most things we know now could change, but w/ the amount of research already done in this field Wild will face far more criticism and skepticism than a basketball bbs in his pursuit. It is better to be prepared for these situations. Researchers face constant scrutiny, it's a direct part of their work and process. Otherwise in a vacuum they may have spent 2 years just to find they already made a major mistake on day 3! Which kind of leads me to another possibility, maybe you can approach a professor/researcher at a university. This could be a project that the professor could oversee while he/she gives it to his/her PhD candidates as their thesis projects. Yes, it will take some time, but it will not cost you a thing up front. Obviously you will need to make a convincing argument here to have a professor take up your project.
So, you're married with children. Is your wife working? What can you do to get other sources of security for your family so that you can take on risk? Do you have parents or in-laws or siblings that will bail you out, or at least your children, if things go bad? I don't think you can do this without risk. But hedge where you can and be smart about taking risk. Someone else stealing your idea and cutting you out of the profits isn't any worse than doing nothing with the idea at all. Talk to the angel network people. You at least won't go into debt doing that. The chance they'll steal the idea from you isn't very high (especially with you as paranoid as you are).
Thus the conflict: It would be a shame if my idea was revolutionary, but got squelched because of such barriers as you mentioned. On the other hand, it would be devastating to me and my family if much money, effort and time were put into this and it turned out to be unfeasible. This is an excellent idea that I am already pursuing. I have spoken with a Ph.D computer professor at U of H downtown and I intend to contact someone in their mathematics dept. soon.
To put it blunt...you're acting like a puss. If you've got a genius idea that has unlimited potential, then you're a chicken to not take it for all its worth. Risks are what separate the rich from the poor. You can be happy with your 9-5 and live a nice, steady lifestyle - but if you're not willing to put it all on the line then you're never going to reach the next level. The richest people in the world have failed way more times than the average Joe - why? Because they've taken that many more chances before something finally paid off. Pay the money - go for it...and you'll have no regrets in the end, even if you fail. At least you'll know you tried.
Wife works at the school that my kids go to. Some family members could afford to bail me out, but they probably wouldn't. I'll look into the angel network people. Let's continue to be blunt, shall we? You don't have any clue whatsoever as to what it means to secure the future of three other people. Yeah, dude. I was completely fearless, too. Until a little baby came a long, and scared the bejesus outa me. With me and my wife working full-time, on average salaries, it is hard as hell to provided a great environment and great future for a family. Don't go around calling people like me a puss until you've had a kid and know what it's like.
If what you said is true, you are for certain going to get the Turing Award (aka the Nobel prize in Computer Science) if you can publish in a reputable journal. After you get your Turing Award, you are basically set for life even though you might not be as filthy rich as those Google kids. But anyway, I am very skeptical of your claim. I wish you can prove us wrong.
From the way you're talking about it - you speak as though it can revolutionize the way the world stores information... ...answer this - how the hell could you not secure financing for such an invention? Seems like it would be simple enough, if what you say is actually possible. (by the way...sorry about the "puss" thing, maybe a bit harsh - but my thoughts are still the same. there's always an excuse to remain comfortable -but remember, you're probably living a better lifestyle than 99% of the people in this world, so stop acting like you're so hard done by.)
You might want to follow the footstep of Andrew Viterbi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Viterbi He invented an algorithm to solve HMM. It is no way as revolutionizing as your claim but he still made millions off it. I think you can learn from him and make 100x he made. Good luck!
I'm positive that, if the theory gets proven, I could secure funding to take off with it. But I don't know how to get funding to prove the theory. I know what ya mean, dude. Yeah, I'm (admittedly) afraid of taking the risk. And, yeah, I live a better lifestyle than a lot of people. But a lot of my slow, steady and major accomplishments have come from not taking risk, but from being conservative. I don't want to know that my son and daughter can't go to college 'cause their quack dad blew his money on an idea that didn't work and put the family into debt for 10 years.
Looks like your program is not ready for prime time yet if you can't scientifically prove it. Have you implemented your code? If you can't prove it, at least you can test it on millions of cases first. Although it would be a bit strange if you can't prove it but you can implement it if this is a loseless compression...
Why do you need money to prove it? I think analytically prove your algorithm only requires time and paper.
First off, I gotta commend you for not being rattled (with your civil reply)...even I feel as though I'm saying things harsher than what I'm meaning to say... ...fear is an obvious thing - and it's understandable. I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is...GO FOR IT! It really sounds like, if what you say is true, you've got something that could make a LOT of money. Of course you should make sure it works before pouring money into it...but if it actually does, there's no reason why you can't have one lean year for the many fat years to come (lean & fat being in your wallet, not gut...or maybe both...).
Here's the deal: I've proven that it works in an isolated environment. What I mean by that is, I can prove that it works on a certain, specific tiny dataset that has been created specifically for the purpose of demonstration. BUT I haven't proven that it can work on just any old chunk of data you have lying around, nor have I proven that it can work on a large chunk of data. It may be that there are mathematical limitations unknown to me that will prevent it from doing so. I will need to have mathematicians learn my theory and build the technology with me a little bit to know that for sure.
Wish I could lend you the money to go for it. Just remember, after you've made your billions, that your little brother was supportive of your plan!
do your homework and go for it. how many times have we seen people coming out with an idea that was so obvious to everyone but they just did not think of it and the one that did became super rich?????? your worry about family and everything is legit, because there is always a chance of failure and family breackage and that will go down to the grave with you, but not money. However, if you have a gutt fealing that this is a good idea you can't afford but going for it, because going through every moment of your day thinking that "I could have been" or "What if I had done it?" is the worst feeling ever.
WS&C- You can always go the open source route. That community is very active with presenting due credit. If you can prove to them it works, then you'll always get the credit. Many startups arise from open source ideas. www.sourceforge.net is a good community. You can also e-mail some prominent people in the storage industry who are open to discussing new technologies and respect intellectual property. Look up Garth Gibson; he wrote the original paper on RAID and presented the problem statement to IETF on the limitations of NFS. He's always on the board overseeing the draft of NFS v4.1 which incorporates his theory of parallel NFS. He's also the CTO and founder of Panasas. They are one of the first commercial vendors to deploy object based file storage vs traditional block or file.
