you guys are awfully quick to criticize someone else's ideas.
Perhaps some ideas aren't worth much. There is no such thing, however, as an idea that is entirely and completely rubbish.
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
It is a very bad idea to shoot down someone's idea, no matter how foolish it appears on the surface. If, rather, you were to embrace the idea and learn about it, you will soon find that you learned something or met a realization that you would not have otherwise. A better tactic would be to discuss the merits and downfalls of such a design. Perhaps deep inside there is a good idea (such as obtaining higher efficiency from wind using an active drag-elimination system) rather than tossing the idea out as a whole.
The term "box" (as in "think outside the box") comes from people who dismiss others' ideas en masse. Those people sit squarely inside a box, figuratively speaking, where ideas worthy of attention exist within the box, and unorthodox or unusual ideas exist outside the box. Usually, the box is of their own construction, because, by God, that's how its done and anyone who does it any other way is a damned fool. In short, evolutionary ideas exist within the box, and revolutionary ideas exist outside the box.
In reality, (yes, those inside the box have walled themselves away from reality,) one must be outside "the box," and be open to other's input no matter how foolish it appears at first glance, in order to progress one's own ideas, one's own knowledge, one's own expertise, and one's own experience, as well as to give the new idea the scrutiny it deserves.
One must be willing to adopt the thoughts of others for the purposes of learning, and in this case, building a better VAWT, even if those thoughts seem ridiculous and foolish at first glance. At the heart of those thoughts is often a brilliant idea, executed without the experience that you guys have that could make it a really brilliant final design.
So take the idea (active drag-elimination) and make something worthwhile out of it. Even if it turns out the idea is ultimately unusable, you will have learned lessons that you would not have learned by simply dismissing the idea entirely and remaining within the box.
So think about new ideas with the same fervor you give your own ideas, even if at first glance the idea seems without merit. It may be a brilliant idea waiting to be discovered.
