The Garrett update

The Garrett has been changed from 'Sarcasm' to 'Snarky'
This is a more accurate reflection of what I am trying to do. Make a punctuation that adds a level of clarity to online conversations.

Warm beds

Imagine a cap over a heating vent in the home. A plastic tube comes out of the cap and attaches to your bed.
Now hot air is blown into your bed or box spring whenever the heat comes on, or A/C I suppose.

Swine Flu

How come there hasn't been any stories of news people looking into the illegal alien culture to see if people are getting sick but are to afraid to report it?
Maybe someone has and there isn't a story, but still I would ahte for there to be an underground spike in swine flu that suddenly blossoms into the main stream media without warning.
Not that I think this is the end of the world, just to be prudent.

Spiral Solar Thermal

Traditionally Solar Thermal is trough about 100 yards long with a Fresnel lens focusing light to super heat a liquid. This heated liquid is stored and then used to heat water, creating stem and turning a generator to produce electricity.
The holding take holds the liquad through the night providing 24/7 power. There are also concentrated mirror types.

No imagine the top 10 floors of a high rise dedicated to solar thermal. Use a spiral design, the windows would be your lenses. Put the steam generator in the middle, even without an holding tank it would go a long way to offset energy costs.

Actually with the much smaller foot print, they could be used anywhere there is a little open space.

Vista twittter cloud

I would like to see a dynamic twitter cloud background for Vista. I would also like there to become a new name to replace 'cloud' when used in this regard. With Google over ten years old, when something new comes out, there needs to be an attempt to give it a unique original name.

Maybe 'Cl00d5', or 'Dynamic Twits', or whatever.

All Digital content exist on all harddrives.

Let's say you have a terabyte hard drive. That means any digital content that exists, will exist and might exist up to a terabyte exists on your hard drive. You just need to organize the bits.

I am creating something that you feed a hex number, it is save as a .zip, and then an attempt is made to unzip it.
If it fails to unzip go to the next one and so on. If it opens, write that to a log and then take a look. Yes, this will produce a lot of garbage but the hits will be interesting.
Now imagine google dedicating a cluster to something like that, it would be awesome.

I wish I acted on this when I first thought of it; a 10Mb hard drive is easier to get ones mind around.

Criminal trial experiments

For year I have wondered what the outcome would be if a group of 12 people decide a case by only reading the transcript of the case, with all mention of anything 'stricken' from the record removed. really all non pertinent information. Remove gender, race, and anything that was strictly supposed to be what the Jury rules on.

If this was done in a thousand random cases, would the outcome be significantly different then what the actual jury had decided?

I have not studied law, so I have no idea if this has been done. If it has, please post a comment with a link.

USB Key NAS

How about a Hub you can plug USB keys into that the computer see's as a Network Attached Storage Device?

The hub connects into your LAN, and can be powered from a wall plug or from the USB port you can plug in? Or better, A USB wall plug.
Got an old 1G USB key? plug it in and now you have a bigger NAS. Log intot he web interface and create mirrors of other keys in the storage Device.

Are Wii developers intentionally missing the boat?

once again another game comes out for a console besides the Wii first. I wonder if this due to the average age of new game developers? Developers looking at whats cool to their recently departed teen years and using that to drive their business decisions instead of just looking at who is selling the most consoles. People can discussed it's graphics, but the market seems to be wanting Fun before Looks. And Wii games are fun.

What I really like about Nintendo is the number of games they have for young kids. As a parent and a gamer I want to enjoy gaming with my kids.

Help the home owners, NOW.

We need to stop giving money to these financial institutions, and give money to the home owners. IN a much earlier post I talked about why the 700Billion dollar giveaway was wrong. I am going to elaborate on that a little here. Funny how it took, what 2 weeks for a bill to pass, but it is taking forever to get any real help to the citizen.

A) It turns out banks lied an several fronts.

B) Lenders took advantage of new borrowers who didn't understand the fine intricacy of the finance system

C) Banks were aware of what was coming, and kept lending.

D) Helping the home owner in default gets the economy moving faster then giving it to banks.
Maybe, Maybe if there was a sound plan when they wanted to give the money to these financial institutions it might work. It worked in englans during their crisis.

No, I'm not going to remove blame from the home owner. That's not what this is about, it's about helping the economy as a whole.

Personally I would do the following:
1) Foreclosure get's put off 90 days. If payment can restart at that point, it starts as per normal. No foreclosure penalties.

2) If it can't then restructure the loan to see if that helps.

3) Drop the interest rate to 4.5. If people still can't make payments, guarantee 4.5 to the next qualified buyer. This is to entice some to get into the home.

Now, I am having a hard time telling how bad it really is, reports are all across the board. Usually that means it's worse, but it's not a sure thing.

If it is extremely bad add the following.

Walk away. Someone can opt to walk away from the home, no credit hit.
Yes, the banks take it in the shorts on this one. But it will cause an immediate adjustment to the actual current value, and gets someone in the house.

This would all have to be passed by congress to force this issue becasue of Collateralized loans. where many people own a loan.

The banks have lent way too much, and the reaper as came to collect it's toll.

PSA

Instead of using PSA to tell me to read to my children(something I don't need to be told) How about useful ones that actually help society in more practical manners.

Example:
"Hi, this is [Insert sports star name] here to remind you that there is about 1.6 Kilometers, or 'clicks' to a mile."

"Hi, This is [Insert teacher name] just reminding you that there are 2.2 pound in a Kilogram."

"This is [Car driver] just reminding you that properly inflated tires saves lives and gas."

"Id like to take a moment that putting non violent criminal in jail costs you 50 thousand dollars a year plus health benefits, per criminal."

"Hello, this is Inigo Montoya reminding you that you killed my father, prepare to die."

"This is Garrett Moffitt reminding you that LIVE FROM NEW YORK IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!"

I've always wanted to do that, and I doubt I'll ever get the chance to actually do it on Saturday Night Live. For the record I would be AWESOME at it. Second only to John Belushi trying to hold the show up and demanding Frasier / Ali tickets to say it.

Wireless Pay booths

There could be a wireless pay machine. You put in a quarter and it's spits out a number that lets you connect to it's wi-fi point, for say 5 minutes.
For those people that needs a quick connection to check email, or get a map.

Even better would be wi-max points run and maintained by the local government. Not having easy access/free wi-fi on a major city is quickly going to be like not have paved roads in a major city.

Teachers

Teachers should follow a class of kids from K-5. This would allow the class and the teacher to know each other very well, kids would become more comfortable with the teacher, and the teacher would know how different kids learn and are motivated.

Pop up side for wheel barrels

Back from vacation! Camping for a week with my son..and 100 other 10 year olds. It was a blast.

While watching people load stuff onto a wheel barrel, and then watching it fall out, I realized a wheel barrel with sides that could be raised would be nifty. Possibly collapsible extenders for the side.
Some clamps to attach it to the wheel barrel, a frame work that extends up 18 inches, with nylon acting as the sides.
You wouldn't want a wheel barrel that top heavy full of dirt or rocks, but a bunch of sleeping bags or other bulky but light items it would work great.

Elections and Budget

Every politician is claiming th want to cut taxes, and every person says there are too much taxes.
You here this a lot, but no one recommends any thoughtful advice.
When a politician says there going to cut taxes, we need to ask "Which taxes and what service will we lose?"
People never seem to care what taxes, as long as they are cut. Of course, they they complain ab out the schools systems, parks, and other service as the dwindle.

There needs to be a website that government agencies need to put their budget information on that is laid out in a fashion that is readable by non accountants.
Not some spread sheet with a 1000 lines and 400 column pivot table. A simple pie chart.
Each section represents a high level view of the budget. When you click on a section if drill to another pie chart a level lower, and so on.
This makes it easy for a lay person to see how much money services cast verse Taxes and rates and other revenue items.
I do know the budgets are complex, especially for government bureaus. We should continue to publish a complete breakdown for people who like to dig to the penny.


This would allow citizens to have a better chance at understanding how much services cost, and how complex it is to maintain services. It allows us to say "what taxes will you cut?" And then discuss if it is really the right thing.

Reagan cut the metric system to "save taxes". Was that really the smartest thing to do? how much has not converting to metric cost us?

Over 21 Cinemas

Why don't cinemas have a quite showing of movies?
No one under 21, no communication devices, and a strong reminder not to talk.
Have some Ushers standing in the Cinema, and as soon as one of these rules is broken, they escort the person out.

I'd pay an extra 25% to go there.

Now I know there are some cinemas that have drinking, but I don't want to hear some yahoo ordering a drink, or eating while I'm watching a movie.

That would be the other thing, if you leave the showing, you can't come back in.

Edit:
Changed ba to Pay, ahve to have , and here to hear. Thanks for that last one iamthewhale.

Olympic broadcasting

The Olympic committee is missing the boat. A boat filled with cash.

Instead of making an agreement with one broadcaster, what they should do is run all the cameras and equipment themselves, and license the feed to who ever wants it.
Get som competition going.

You could do a whole package and ala carte. So you specialty shoow or internet cites could by the feed they are interested in.

This would allow that pretty much every event would bea vailable some where.

Oh, and don't even try to crack down on internet rebroadcasts. You can't stop it, and it will only cost you lots of money. You may not like it, but history pretty much shows that to be true. In fact, a savvy person can capitalize on that aspect.

I would gladly sell this idea to the Olympic committee for 5 million dollars.

Weed cutter

There needs to be an attachment for the shop vac that allows you to cut a weed.
This was you wouldn't need to bend over.
It just needs to be a metal rectangle. One side you drag across the ground, the other attached to the shop vac.

Reality TV

Kitchen Nightmares really need to have a 'year later' episode.

Even better, there should be a similar show with Click and Clank going to mechanic shops.

Personally, I'd like to see one with software developers. Where I walk in and rip the hell out of their crappy code. This is awesome because you can find fault anywhere; even in more places then a kitchen.

I could goo on with that last one. Hell I can even think how to sell it. Can anyone get me an executive to pitch it to?

Digital voice tags

There need to be a setting on digital camera that allows you to add 5-10 seconds of voice when taking a picture.
You push the button half way, say a 'tag' like "Disney Haunted mansion with the family" or "Out with the girls" and it has a relationship to the picture, along with a geostamp.

We have 4 Gig memory cards, so space should be that big of a concern.