Crispin Hull

In the notebook range, the new design concentrated on portability. In the previous range the in-built mouse or tracker was virtually unusable. It required two hands: thumb of the left to direct the pointer and finger of the right to click.

The new range and a neat button between the G and H keys to control the pointer with two click buttons at the base of the keyboard.

The new range is about one kilogram light. Part of this is achieved by making the floppy drive detachable. Of greater importance for the traveller, is that the floppy drive can be replaced with a second battery pack (with smooth transition between the two) for great battery time.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_upgrd22”

he diagrams are more important than the words.

Blocklines. Diagram 1 shows how Burley Griffin’s triangle is incomplete and how Russell is an enclave not legibly connected to Civic or the Parliamentary Zone and how its internal roads have no sensible pattern.

The other four diagrams show the progressive changes to Russell and how buildings and roads Will integrate to make the Apex and stronger focal point so it can be better used for ceremonial occasions.

story follows:
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The Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, announced yesterday that an eminent town planner would be engaged to lead a strategic study of issues surrounding residential development in Canberra.

The study would examine what sort of Canberra we want in the future, he said.

It would complement the inquiry by the Assembly’s Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee.
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Even if Sports Minister David Lamont restore the link with the Victorian TAB, a lot of damage has been done.

The table shows some dividend figures on a small meeting during the week after the link was cut. They are erratic and punters would feel cheated. Big punters have gone elsewhere.

In the Federal Court, evidence presented by ACTTAB’s Bruce Packard showed that ACTTAB expects to lose $14.2 million a year in turnover because of the drift of big punters.
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Their commercial livelihood depends on it, of course. I suspect that the market of the computer literate has been saturated. The remaining population cannot be bothered with all the techo junk. They want to turn the thing on and it works _ plug and play.

Women, very sensibly, shy away from wasting their time tinkering with computers to make them do things that the manufacturers should have built into them in the first place. Expansion of the kids market will to a large extent depend on women knowing the thing works.

Do you have to read a manual to make a toaster work? No. You put the bread in and press the lever at the side. There is a self-evident knob to turn if you like your toast burnt.

People are rightly demanding their computers do the same.
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St Augustine himself could not have made a more open confession than yesterday’s announcement of a third concurrent inquiry into planning in Canberra. It is an admission that the Government has made a complete hash of planning, especially in the past 18 moths. A lot of the responsibility for that lays at the feet of the Minister, Bill Wood.

The policy failure has been severalfold.

First, in the lead up to the draft Territory Plan, the Government listened to the developers and gave them open slather on residential development.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_vitabchr”