 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group PC (President's Comments) George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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Ethics Subcommittee
After an absence of over a year, once again we have an Ethics subcommittee.
The purpose of this subcommittee is to resolve possible conflict arising from strong differences of opinion
among our members. This group consists of members who have not been involved with the committee for a number
of years, or have never been on the committee. They are all of high standing within the group, perceived to
be persons of high integrity, to be wise, level-headed and impartial. After a lengthy debate by the committee
three members were unanimously chosen. I am please to say all nominees accepted the role.
As someone who has been the head of the Ethics subcommittee in the past I feel this is the most unenviable
position any volunteer can have. You are between two usually bitter factions and your job is to help them
reach a consensus. I thank the three members who agreed to fill this position.
They are:
Lloyd Borrett, manager of a large IT company and the founding member of Melb PC. Lloyd holds
membership number 1 and has the unusual distinction of twice having been made an Honorary Life Member for the
massive effort he has put in during the earlier years.
Colin Macauley is a Patent Attorney and spent countless hours over several years building up
and maintaining the BBS when this was the only source of electronic communication for Melb PC.
John Talbot is a retired economist who has been a Melb PC member for many years and is a
regular user of the newsgroups.
Internet Improvements
Many members who use an ISP other than Melb PC, typically country members and some who have a work-provided
ISP, have often requested access to the MOTD (message of the day). Although most of the information contained
there (such as phone numbers, the rare notice of an interruption to some service etc) is of interest only to
those members who use Melb PC as their ISP, some of the more general information has been made available for
external users.
Of interest to all members may be steps to trace why the phone lines drop out. Also users who have had to
format their hard disk and consequently lost all their Internet settings now can obtain this information as
well as the latest software, namely our MPCKIT that will do all the setting up for you. However, you
may have to ask a friend or go to the library to download this file if you have no Internet connection.
The bonus time is proving to be very popular and over 100 members benefit daily by approximately 60 hours per
day as a result of this initiative. The bonus time was explained in PC Update, June 2000.
EISA and Our Internet Service
Some members may be aware that we receive the bulk of our Internet data via EISA. Recently EISA has been in
the news in regard to its financial situation and although its service is continuing to be very good and I
believe that will continue, the Internet team has a fall back plan in place. In the unlikely event that EISA
was unable to supply our needs, we should be able to receive data from an alternate source with an hour of
such an event occurring.
Training
Training has two new courses starting:
- The first MYOB course is scheduled to commence on 7 August and comprises
four 3-hour sessions.
- We will also be running for the first time a new Internet course, Upgrading and Installing Software downloaded from the Internet. This is a short 3-hour course and will run on Saturday afternoon 19 August. See page 48 for more details.
The new format of having one industry representative and two Melb PC members giving presentations is proving popular and the attendance at the last meeting was quite high despite the poor weather.
On 5 July Adobe will present the new Illustrator 9 software used for creating vector line art for print presentations and for the Web.
In the presentations by our members, Albert Vanzet will demonstrate Non-Linear Video Editing with footage taken at the June meeting. Stan Rosenthal will show useful and valuable programs used for tracking share investments via the Internet, including sites and tools.
There is also Random Access (your chance to ask the experts), the usual giveaways and raffle, shareware library sales, etc. Hope to see you there.
Reprinted from the July 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
