The State of Washington just passed a law last week that makes it illegal to text while driving. Ummm, duh? Too bad we need a law for this, but I guess we do...

From the Seattle PI:

"Under the new laws, drivers who read and compose text messages or talk on a cell phone without a hands-free device could face a $101 ticket. The text-messaging ban takes effect Jan. 1; the cell-phone law will be enforced starting in July 2008.

"Drivers are exempt in some situations, including emergencies, and neither offense will be enough to get a driver pulled over by the police."

Where do they come up with fine amounts like $101, I wonder?

I have to admit, I have been guilty in the past of texting while driving and it's a BAD thing to do. Especially since I have a Blackberry. What the heck was I thinking? I know lots of people who text behind the wheel, really - and it's just not a good idea. I guess we could call it driving under the influence of Crackberry.

At any rate, some things just make sense and I guess I agree with this one. I'm not big on generating lots of laws, but where the end result is that innocent people are protected from ignorant dolts, it's probably worthwhile.

But - it's too bad police cannot pull you over just for texting. You have to be in an accident or exhibit some other violation it seems. Isn't that like waiting to chase the Lion through the zoo as he eats bystanders, when you saw the cage door was open half an hour ago?

A friend of mine just yesterday told me a little story about his experience last week getting a product repaired. It was an interesting conversation, and it made me think a bit about why businesses make the decisions they do and what the impact really is.

Before I tell you his story, let me first share my analogy. Say you run a software company, and that you ship software to your customers on a CD or DVD. One of your customers calls up and says that their CD worked great until last week, and that all of a sudden it stopped working. Okay, you tell your customer - Please take your CD to an IT pro and have them look at it and call me. Maybe we can see if it's defective.

Your customer dutifully does so, and lo and behold, you find out the disc has scratches in it that make it unusable. Now, the software on the CD cost your customer a pretty penny, say $40,000 or something, so it's  a big deal to them.

You think about it for a while and then you send instructions back to the IT professional: Please ship us the CD so we can perform a repair on the disc here at our location using a CD/DVD repair system with some fancy goop and special polish. Please courier it to arrive overnight, before 10:30 am, so we can get it in our process tomorrow and ensure we can courier it back out sometime the following day. We will not charge you for the time required to fill the scratches and replace the label (since it will also be damaged by the repair process). We will then ship the rebuilt CD to you overnight, and we will insure it for $60,000, which we figure is the approximate value of the software plus the value of completing the repair.

Ridiculous (and that was probably a loose-fitting analogy, I know). My friend's ordeal wasn't software - it was a transmission. His wife's car had a transmission go out on it, just out of warranty. Saturn, to their well-deserved credit, fixed the problem anyhow without charging since they determined something was wrong that simply should not happen. But rather than replace the tranny, they rebuilt the entire thing, with a stipulation that they use all brand new parts.

Now, I know as well as anyone that buying a transmission one part at a time, plus the hourly labor to break down and assemble it, is freakin' expensive. My friend and I both sat there and wondered why they didn't just put a whole new transmission on the car.

So, the customer is happy. But the automaker - it seems to me - is assuming a greater expense than necessary. In a world where automakers can't seem to stay afloat (well, or at least they can't seem to turn a profit), wouldn't it make sense to do right by the customer, but in a way that maximizes the cost of doing so?

Anyhow - maybe I am missing something. If I am, let me know.

RunAs Radio Show Number Five is now online. Richard and I speak with John Savill about application virtualization. This is not the same things as server virtualization (or virtual machines), but instead is about virtualized instances of software apps. For organizations that are distributed (more and more of us as time goes on), app virtualization is a cool things to look into. John does a great job of explaining app virtualization and gives some examples of how it works and can be leveraged.

RunAs Radio Show #5 | 5/9/2007 (36 minutes)
John Savill on Application Virtualization

John Savill is Director of Technical Infrastructure for Geniant. He is a CISSP, a Security and Messaging MCSE on Windows Server 2003, an eight-time MVP, and a Krav Maga instructor. He is also the author of Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Design and Implementation from Packt Publishing. 

Links: RunAs Radio web site and RSS feed

We welcome your input and ideas - Just email info@runasradio.com and let us know what's on your mind! We might even read your email on the air, and we are always interested to know what you would like to hear about as we book our guests.

You know the best way to get a real grasp of how many people read your blog? Just stop posting. They'll come out of the woodwork with questions...

"Hey I noticed you haven't written much on your blog recently - everything okay?"

"What happened? Nothing new recently."

"Did you stop blogging or something"

"When are you going to start writing again?"

... and on and on. Which is nice. So thanks to all of those who have asked. I am alive and fairly well, thank you very much.

I've been pretty tied up at my job lately, with an even-more-than-usual workload. Between that and all the related (and unrelated) travel, any available time to think and write has been quite scarce. Then add in the fact that Richard and I have been working on our new IT podcast, RunAs Radio, and the situation gets even tighter.

But I am still here, so thanks for the thoughts and there is more to come.

News is that Microsoft is (again) looking at buying Yahoo! That's an interesting proposition. At probably $50 billion, it would be quite an investment to make. But it would be an interesting shakeup move from a search and web-delivered software market standpoint. But the online advertising business is what really needs to work. That's where the money is. At least for now.

More via Reuters over at at news.com.

RunAs Radio Show Number Four is now online. Richard and I speak with Simon Goldstein, who (it just so happens) works with me and is a good friend. Simon has a depth of knowledge and expertise that sets him apart in the areas of risk management, compliance and a variety of other topics. In this interview we discussed the compliance and security world and how it applies to practical IT. Simon distills a lot of broad topics down into the nuts and bolts, so pretty much anyone can understand how compliance works and why it's important:

RunAs Radio Show #4 | 5/2/2007 (44 minutes)
Simon Goldstein on Compliance

Simon Goldstein talks to Richard and Greg about making sense out of compliance with rules and regulations around Information Technology.

Links: RunAs Radio web site and RSS feed

We welcome your input and ideas - Just email info@runasradio.com and let us know what's on your mind! We  are always looking to know what you would like to hear about as we book our guests.