[erikbern]

Author here. It's slightly embarrassing that this turns out to be an old idea – it wasn't my intent to rip it off. I'm fairly sure I must have seen it a long time ago and then forgot about its origin. In retrospect I probably should have googled it.

[franciscop]

I was just thinking about this last week because of that old CodingHorror post so I was quite surprised to see it here as a new idea. I was actually just expecting a link or two at the bottom of the article.

Also, I have misused rip-off here; I didn't mean to say you defrauded/cheated/stole anything, just that it's an old idea already going around. I apologize for incorrectly using this verb and accusing you of ripping off this idea.