Month: August 1994

A telephone call from the Central Australian desert to Canberra yesterday marked the opening of Optus’s new Australia-wide satellite mobile telephone service, MobileSat.

The call was put through to the Minister for Communications, Michael Lee, from a phone in a car near Uluru (Ayers Rock). The signal was bounced off an Optus satellite 36,000 kilometres above the earth to a ground receiving station and into the general network.

The service is the first of its kind in the world and was designed and built in Australia. Present satellite phone services use stop-point-and-setup technology and are much more expensive. Present radio-based services are less reliable and can be intercepted easily.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_optus”

I like to glance through people’s bookcases. Some people have books tucked away, but usually the main reference books are in the loungeroom _ a dictionary or two, an atlas, an encyclopedia and perhaps some hobby reference books, like Marine Invertebrates, Birds of Australia or the Joys of Chainsaw Sculpture.

But the computer is tucked away in an study or kid’s bedroom.

More reference books are going to CD-ROM _ the little silver disk that can hold the words in books that would take six-metres of bookshelf.

We have a problem here. The computer is in the study but the reference book is needed in the lounge.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_oed”

The Noise Act will be reviewed following a complaint by a Canberra pub owner that he has been hit retrospectively by its provisions.

the Noise Act.

The licensee of Sails Waterfront Pub, Toni Sarri, says that when he bought the lease, there were no residences nor any residences proposed within 150 metres of the pub.

He therefore thought that when he built the pub, on Emu Bank in the Belconnen Town Centre, he would be able to run disc-jockey music without falling foul of the Noise Act.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_noise”