On The Net - Computing News

with Chris Goh

It is a rare weekend that I get time to enjoy where I live. I seem to be commuting quite frequently to Sydney and Brisbane. One of my favourite past times is to just sit at the beach and enjoy the sea breeze. It isn't often I get this privilege but when I do I sit for an hour, walk for 10 minutes and sit for a bit longer. It seems always to be on a Sunday afternoon when the sun is going down, and it is just fantastic to watch the colours in the sky change.

On my last sitting, I saw an elderly gentleman who I realised I had seen several times before. He walked his two dogs, and both were old, and struggled often in the soft sand. The man would go in and out of the dunes and his dogs would slowly walk behind him without complaint. I thought it odd that he kept on going into the soft dunes and not on the harder sand near the water. I watched him walk a distance and then decided I had to go back in the car because my butt and I were awfully cold. I got back in the car and was determined to watch the landscape till all the light disappeared.

After about 20 minutes it was near complete darkness and I was getting ready to go when I spotted the man again. What amazed me was he had returned but with four large plastic bags full of rubbish.

I realised then that every time I had seen him he had carried lots of plastic bags, I always thought he was just picking up after his dogs, but what really happens is that he goes onto the beach and into the dunes to remove all the rubbish left behind by others. It is truly someone special who does this day in day out, without so much as a complaint or a need to be recognised. True humility is a quality that is not often seen anymore, and when you do, you realise how special it is and how special the people are that have it. In a world where people want to be recognised and rewarded for their achievements, it is humbling to see someone who is committed to doing good for the sake of doing good.

HotNews

Tasmania is going to get the first Medicare SmartCards, which will allow doctors to access patient information from a central data repository. The Health Connect project if successful will be deployed across Australia.

Yahoo has now released that it will give a gigabyte to storage space for Email, but the catch is, you have to use its China Portal.

The download.ject bug has been infecting web servers around the world with Microsoft trying to find a patch and people encouraged to use other browsers. Microsoft has now issued a patch, and if you want to continue using it, I highly recommend you download it.

Apple's favourite son Steve Jobs reached front page of IT rags this week as the CEO received surgery after he was diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer. The early detection and type of tumour uncovered means he should make a quick recovery without the need for radiation or chemotherapy.

As most will know, analogue recording devices like tape recorders loose their quality after being played and recorded again and again. So its no surprise that the only audio recording of the assassination of JFK is about to go digital. In 1990 the US national archive recommended that no more efforts to play the tape should be made or else the recording quality would be jeopardised. The recording, made from a police motorcycle in the President's motorcade, will then be able to be analysed again, and with new digital technology, we will soon be able to know for sure where those bullets were fired from.

In Alaska a driver of a pickup is being charged with second degree murder because police discovered that he had a DVD player in the truck and was watching it whilst driving. The man steered across a double yellow line to hit an oncoming jeep, killing a husband and wife.

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