Month: July 1994

1964: ACTTAB set up as a separate entity to take off-course bets on horse races. It runs a totalisator scheme: bets on a race are totalled and dividends calculated so 85 per cent of takings are returned as winnings. The remaining 15 per cent to go to administration, government and the racing industry.

July 2, 1985: Northern Territory TAB starts. ACTTAB runs computer services and pooling operations, collecting 0.5 per cent of turnover.

1991: ACTTAB made a territory-owned corporation.

Late June 1993: Meetings between ACTTAB representatives and Vitab principals and former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a Vitab shareholder. Vanuatu-based Vitab says it has got the second betting licence in Vanuatu and proposes that ACTTAB provide computer and technical services and access to the superpool in return for a percentage of turnover.
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The ACT TAB has agreed in principle with the Victorian TAB to continue present arrangements for pooling for the next two weeks when it would finalised a contract with the new privatised Victorian TAB, the Minister for Sport, David Lamont, said yesterday.

Six months ago, Victoria gave notice that it would terminate the agreement on July 31. At the time the Victorian Minister, Tom Reynolds, cited the ACT’s contract with the Vanuatu-based Vitab Limited as the reason.

Mr Lamont said he was in no position to comment on the situation with Vitab.
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The ACT TAB will not link with NSW, but has made a new pooling arrangement with the Victorian superpool in the wash up of the Vitab affair, according to racing sources.

The new link is contingent on the ACT Government breaking its contract with Vitab Ltd, which will leave it open to being sued or having to pay out a commercial settlement. The costs of that are unknown. However, when Victoria broke a TAB link with the owner of the other Vanuatu-based TAB operator, Chung Corporation, Chung sued for $10 million. But Vitab is a smaller outfit with a smaller turnover.

The Victorian TAB gave the required six months notice in January that it would end the ACT’s access to the superpool it controls of Victorian, South Australia, Western Australian and Tasmanian TAB money.

That link ends at midnight on Sunday.
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The ACT is to have a no-win, no-fee system soon, the president of the Law Society, Robert Clynes, said yesterday.

The system would enable people who otherwise could not afford it to pursue a legal action.

Mr Clynes said the society had agreed to the system. It did not require legislation, just a change to the profession’s rules of conduct. It would not apply to criminal or family law.

The system would enable lawyers to charge an amount on top of the normal fee if the client won the case, he said. This was for taking the risk of a loss, in which case the lawyer would not get paid, and in lieu of interest.

This is called an uplift fee. Present rules prevent the charging of an uplift fee.

Mr Clynes’s statement comes after a Melbourne firm, Slater and Gordon, announced it was taking cases on a no-win, no-fee basis. However, it would not be able to charge an uplift fee.

Mr Clynes said the ACT would permit an uplift fee of up to 100 per cent of the scale fee set by the court. It would not be the American system of the lawyer taking a percentage of the winnings.
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An Australian company, Boomerang Imaging Supplies, has launched Swap Shops to recycle the thousands of used laser-printer cartridges which are now dumped.

About 1000 tonnes of spent cartridges from Australia’s 300,000 laser printers now go into landfill each year.

Boomerang is setting up vending machines in commercial buildings and retail outlets that will accept the used cartridge (paying a refund for it) and supply a new one and receipt using automatic telling machine (ATM) technology.
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It’s quarterly report time for many US computer majors. Why US corporations law puts US companies through the quarterly hoop is an economic mystery. Politically, it would be like annual elections.

Anyway, if you look hard enough into the quarterly accounts there is always some good news, a bit like newspaper circulation figures.

Microsoft reported an increase in reserves of 24 percent over its fiscal 1993 result. And revenues were up 24 per cent to $US1.29 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1994. Net income was up 20 per cent to $1.15 billion.
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Computer users are untying themselves from the desk.

The independent International Data Corporation reports sales of notebooks and laptops grew almost twice as fast a desk-tops in the past year.

Australian sales of mobiles went from 90,000 in 1992 to 129,000 last year _ a 45 per cent growth. Total value was $413 million and the 1994 projection is $500 million.

Toshiba headed the list with 21 per cent, with Compaq closing fast at 18 per cent and Apple third at 15 per cent.
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The public sector is doing better at “”sticking to its knitting” than the private sector, according to a survey by accountants Ernst and Young on “”outsourcing” information technology.

Outsourcing is management jargon for getting others to do what you do not specialise in yourself _ sticking to your knitting. Thus accountants should contract the cleaning to someone else, rather than hire their own people to clean.

The survey showed nearly 40 per cent of government organisations were outsourcing over half their IT services, compared to only 15 per cent of the private sector.

Public-sector managers cited better service delivery and a means to access technology as the reason; private-sector managers citied cost and the reason for not doing so.
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There are any number of programs to help you find a data file. ISYS, the Find File on Word, Windows File Manager, Norton Utilities, X-Tree and so on.

But what about graphics files?

What if you have images created by several different programs, clip art and faxed and scanned images all over the hard disk? How can you find what you want, when you want it?

An Australian company, Softword Publishing Pty Ltd, has come up with ThumbsPlus which goes through the hard disk, grabs a thumb nail of each graphics file and annotates it for size, dates and location.
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If it is introduced by the Assembly it will break new ground for democratic processes in Australia,” she said.

The move towards citizens’ initiated referendums was a welcome one, but such complex and landmark legislation should be dealt with in detail by a committee, she said. Her fellow independent Michael Moore had indicated a willingness to chair the committee. It should report back before the last sitting of the year so it could be dealt with before the election.
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