Archive for August, 2006

Download Center: Corporate Product Idea

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

I think most of us have seen the Microsoft Download Center and those provided by others. For example, the Visual Studio Service Pack 1 was released yesterday. Somebody downloads it then puts it on a network drive and tells everyone. Wouldn’t it be nice if this were automated. This process will happen over and over with various software downloads throughout the year. It would conserve quite a bit of bandwidth if 1 person got the 130 mb file instead of 10. There are also huge packages from Installshield and all the patches to update a Windows XP box.

It would be a help to network bandwidth to make certain files download once to a “local” download center for a company. This should be down on the router level so that when the router sees a request for that file again it could fill it from itself instead of downloading again. This is the idea of caching on the proxy server, but instead of piddly 20 kb web pages your doing it for 100+ mb files. There would need to be an admin screen to view and tag the large files that came in. Surely, you don’t want to save every large file. And you may want to save a product key or some other metadata so the file can be installed or activated.

Posted in Ideas, Technology | No Comments »

Who pays for Stupid Laws?

Saturday, August 12th, 2006

By the above title the characterization of stupid refers to laws which are unconsititutional at the time of signing. This doesn’t include long standing laws which are later revoked by another law or judicial decision. But laws which are struck down on the first court decision. Such laws have only one purpose to make the signatories look good. At a later time they can blame others for a failure to act on such a law. It’s an easy game to play. There have been some examples recently. The flag burning amendment, which never seems to pass. In Illinois, a video game law was struck down as unconstitional less than a year after it was passed.

The law itself is not my concern. It’s the blatant and wanton waste of money and resources for these provisions. As is usual in these cases the state pays the court costs for the winning party, the losing party (itself), the legislature, judiciary and perhaps the enforcement. To guage the scope of this waste the above law paid $510,000 to the winning party. The actual costs for this one instance are over a $1 million.

The problem with this system is there is little or no feedback mechanism. The legislature gets elected based on passing this law. Some time after the election it’s reversed. The only negative fallout to come on the instigators of this proccess would come some years later, assuming voters remember or care enough. The delays in the system are easily exploited.

My solution is to provide a feedback mechanism directly to the legislature. Simply divide the bill and charge the members who voted for the law. This may sound a little extreme, but think about it a little more. They already recommend the same for teachers. The teachers do not pay for poor performance, but they get paid more for better than average performance. This is simply the converse. I strongly suggest we hold our legislatures accountable. A very popular phrase these days. Make the people who cause the expense pay for it. I know I don’t want to. And I don’t feel that I should have to.

Posted in Ideas, Rambling | No Comments »

Meditation MP3s

Tuesday, August 1st, 2006

For my Lucid Dreaming and Meditation class, the link to the mp3s is here. If you like anything leave a comment.

Posted in Events | No Comments »