Friday, June 30, 2006

Technology: Innovation Wish-List

I'm taking a short break from the ethics series ... something a little lighter for the weekend. Here's a short list of technological advances that I would welcome:
  1. When watching a DVD, scene selection option "Play Only PG" -- right next to "Play All", but this option would allow you to watch more movies with your kids, like movies that have two or three objectionable scenes but are mostly fine.
  2. When watching a DVD, sound selection option "Bleep Profanity". That allows you to watch movies with your kids that are mostly ok, but the writers were more fond of spicy language than is right for the children's ages in this particular household. (First movie on my wishlist: Die Hard. My son is mature enough to handle the violence. But does everybody remember what Bruce Willis says when Alan Rickman accuses him of being a cowboy? My son would be repeating it for a week. It's far too catchy. "Eloquent profanity," to steal a line from Little Feat.)
  3. When writing email, privacy options on whether a new letter can be forwarded to anyone, can be forwaded in-office only (for business email systems), or cannot be forwarded. It wouldn't stop deliberate spread of sensitive information because there's always cut and paste, but it would stop the accidental ones.
Have a great weekend!

4 comments:

LoieJ said...

I changed my own computer to take the Reply to All off the header (Outlook) by changing the toolbar icons available. I've never made the mistake of replying to "All," but I was the victum of this when I sent an email to all relatives, and a nasty comment was made about me to one person, but reply to all was clicked.

BTW, I think it is even more important for people who forward email to a group of friends or send email notices or minutes, etc. to the members of organizations, to use the Bcc line for the addresses. Then they are hidden from recipients. It is all too easy for someone with my low computer skills to "harvest" email addresses. How much easier for someone with sinister motives.

Kevin Knox said...

Lotus Notes has done option 3 for years. Not as selective as you specify, but you can set "prevent copy/forward", and it is prevented. The only way to copy the data is with a screen shot, unless you are a pretty stout programmer. You cannot even copy the text from the back-end properties dialog.

It's no help with the other two options, good though they are. :-)

Weekend Fisher said...

Now if we could just get the Borg --er, I mean, Microsoft -- to implement it ...

Jeffrey Pinyan said...

If you've noticed the change in line-spacing in your blog posts after a bulleted or numbered list (or some other thing like an indented quote) and would like to fix it, I have a solution.

I figured this post of yours was the best place to put this so as not to clog up some other comments with this off-topicness.