 Chris Goh's "On the Net"
As I walked down a Vancouver street on my holiday, it struck me how fortunate I was.
I've never walked down the streets of Bombay or Calcutta, the shanty towns on tips in Indonesia and the Philippines – yet here I was witnessing poverty on a different level. I watched homeless people wheel all their worldly possessions in trolleys acquired from the local supermarket. What struck me was their sense of dignity and desire to make the most of their circumstance. In spite of their poverty, two of the homeless people tied the Canadian flag on their movable home. They were as patriotic as the next person – even if their nation was not as generous towards them as it is other citizens.
It was then that I came to realise the extent of my ignorance about how much poverty there is in the world. And in all of that there's an extraordinary human spirit that keeps them alive.
A short time later, I passed a primary school owned by Intel, where the children were often lectured by Intel's head technicians, and their fundamental grounding in mathematics, physics and material science would be incomprehensible to many HSC students.
The Intel plant in Phoenix Arizona, which I had a look at, is like a miniature town. It runs 24 hours a day and provides a community network. It's so big that busses shift employees from one site to another. The plant's private cafeteria, among other things, has its own McDonalds – the symbol of franchise capitalism.
It seems to me – and I'm not the first to say it – that the disparity in educational levels will in some way dictate how wide the gap between the rich and the poor grows.
I thought of that old man who searched the garbage bin I'd just thrown my napkin into. He eagerly gathered the scraps, then picked up his trolley and strolled down the road to the next bin. The tattered Canadian flag tied to his trolley was flapping. I could have sworn I saw a grin of contentment.
Hotnews
New US anti-terrorism legislation, which gives law enforcement agencies new levels of access to peoples lives through surveillance and access to records, has been given a two-year lifespan to allay fears of privacy groups that the information may be misused and infringe on privacy rights.
A lot of computerologists have a deep affinity with Star Trek movies. Now with the launch of a new series that pre-dates Kirk, Trek fans will need to brace for impact. The new series removes a lot of that Brady Bunch varnish. Captain Jonathan Archer (played by Scott Bakula from the Quantum leap series), creates a federation 100 years before Kirk – shaking up the formula Roddenberry utopia of happily co-existing human race. It's all about ratings, but to me a great shame because aside from being a rare moment of ‘clean' television, Star Trek offered intelligent morality lessons. Now we face virtual reality TV meant to provoke emotions rather than thought. Spock will be confused.
AMD's Duron goes head to head with Intel by announcing a new speed of 1.2 GigaHertz. The on-paper comparison seems to indicate that Duron's speed will outclass Intel's celerons. AMD also plans to announce their answer to the PIV in a couple of months. And AMD's latest partnership with chipmaker Transmetta will help see them making lower voltage chips for the mobile market.
Gateway has followed Osborne and departed Australia. I'm going to miss those cow boxes. At least it was an orderly retreat rather than a spectacular crash. Gateway offered a refund to customers who'd paid for a PC that hadn't yet arrived. And there will be technical branches left in Australia to do the servicing. Gateway has really felt the pinch in international and national sales in the current economic climate.
As part of the USA's post-terrorism defensive plans, the e-world is also to go under increased surveillance. The US government is checking its agencies to ensure they can tolerate viral worm and Trojan attacks. The threat of electronic infiltration is great, especially since networks aren't protected by geographical restrictions. Another matter of great concern is that the source code for the recent Nimda virus is now widely available on the Internet. Variants of the virus are imminent. They can be launched and altered by students to cause serious problems (which they stupidly think is just mischief), it's only a matter of time before they become more sophisticated and are used for purposeful attacks.
Hotsites
www.cybergeography.org
We've mapped a globe, we've mapped our DNA and we're about to move to mapping man's largest typographical achievement, the Internet. Cyberographers are attempting to map the exploding virtual world of the web and some of the 3D models are stunning.
www.trektoday.com
www.stenterprise.com
Here are a couple of sites for Trekkie fans to keep them talking about favourite episodes and discussing historical references with fellow Trekkies. Live long and prosper in the meantime.
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