Ad - Wednesday, February 22, 1984 - North Shore News

FROM PAGE A1 filters used in air conditioning.”’

Cooper added he was con- cerned about the possible moorage of boats in the Fibreco area. ‘‘It’s a tidal mud flat. At low, low tide it’s mud,’’ he said. ‘‘The cost of dredging that area would be well over $1} million ... I’m very much against this whole proposal.’’

Allan Fowlis, President of ‘Seaspan International, cau- tioned council that the pro- posed boat moorage facility may not be needed due to the problems being experienced by the fishing industry.

He also stated that the cur- rent traffic surveys con- ducted in the area are not ac- curate since Seaspan is cur- rently operating at only ‘*two-sevenths of our total employment level. Parking needs will not be met with this proposal.’’

Gary Tyler, an employee at Vancouver Shipyards, a sub- sidiary of Seaspan Interna- tional, told council the rail crossing in the Pemberton area already causes long delays to vehicle traffic, which led to shift changes at Vancouver Shipyards.

He cited the numerous times he has come out of work to find paint on his car from the shipyards, or saw- dust from Fibreco, but added he accepted this as ‘‘a condi- tion of employment. But would the ordinary public ac-

Industries

for wharf

‘cept it?’’ Tyler concluded by

saying he would support the project if it was located in the Lonsdale Quay area.

in his presentation to council, Bysse said the Pemberton Waterfront Deve- lopment would be a smaller version of the Granville Market, intended to fuse the area’s industrial and com- mercial atmosphere with the public’s needs and desires.

He said the project would supply a boost to the local economy, providing at least 300 jobs to young people on the North Shore.

He added the project would assist in the overall re- juvenation of the Marine Drive area and that ‘‘all con- cerns have been or can be resolved.’’

In separate cor- respondence, the Port of Vancouver stated it has con- sidered the application but feels it cannot support the proposal in its present form. No officials of B.C. Rail were present at the public hearing but a position paper submittedtocouncil states the corporation does not oppose the proposal in principle. (This ‘‘position paper’’ was not on B.C. Rail letterhead but on plain paper.)

Council reserved discus- sion on the issue, pending their consideration of the correspondence and reports submitted to and during the public hearing. The proposal was referred back to the Policy and Planning Com- mittee for discussion February 27.

Watch out for flying pianos

LOOK-UP in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It's — a piano??

Be on the lookout for a fly- ing grand piano near Eagle Island off West Van over the next two weeks. Council has said yes to a request for per- mission (O move, among other things, a grand piano by helicopter from a residence on the island to the

1731 MARINE DR.

West Van mainland.

‘‘The operation must be completed within one hour total, and the helicopter must take a route over water,’’ Council ruled.

The unusual request came from Okanagan Helicopters Lid. on behalf of the resi- dent. The company will use a Bell 206B Jetranger to per- form the task.

ov

Strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

COMPUTER SALESMEN tend to be a breed

apart.

I’ve interfaced with quite a number of them in the last few months. And as a rule, the best commentary is still the clerk in the computer store: ‘‘Do you have any user-friendly sales reps?”’

As a rule, they are clean- shaven, they wear ties, and they speak calmly. Very calmly. Sometimes madden- ingly calmly.

After you’ve had your first major screw-up with your computer, this quality of in-

finite serenity on the part of’

the sales rep can GET to you. ‘*Are you sure you aban- doned your modified buffers, Bob?’’ **You’re positive there’s no

filter command in the directory?”’

‘*‘Maybe it’s in the microphazer.”’

“Okay, VU walk you

through again.”

Or, most irritating of all: **Strange, never heard of that happening before.”’

It took me a while to realize why it was, in terms or personality impact, that when a computer salesperson walks into a room it is often as if they have just left.

I’m not being cruel,

honestly! It’s the old business of set and setting. Just as undertakers are quiet because computer

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sales reps spend a lot of time gathering and moving text around in their heads, copy- ing regions of data, giving commands to the cursor of their thoughts, as it were, and preparing for query options.

When an actual customer comes on stream, they go in- to a down-linking mode. That’s the nicest way | can put it.

To a neophyte computer buff, they do sound weird. They emit an even flow of words, a print-out rather than a conversation. This is definitely in sync with the mood of a computer store.

1 am reminded of nothing so much as a science-fiction classic by A.E. Van Vogt, titled The Weapon Shops of Isher. it depicted a world where ordinary citizens could purchase high-tech means of self-defence in a politically corrupt system.

Buying a computer, it seems to me, is a bit like buy- ing a gun, especially in an era of tax snoops, civilian spies and costly accountancy. If the bureaucrats are going to keep fattening their files on me, | figure I might as well fatten my files on them.

If you accept the argument that information has become power in our society, and ac- cess to information means ac-

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cess to power, then when one enters a computer store one is laying one’s hands on a device that has replaced the Colt .45 as the great equalizer.

One becomes a data cowboy. How about the right to bear computers? Is that contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Notice, upon entering a eomputer store, that you are in something much like a dead-sound zone. Maybe the swish of shoes against the carpet, the Deiphic background tinkle of

keyboards. People speak in the same inhibited tones they use in a church or a bank.

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Some computer salesmen, I should point out, are ge- nuine philosophers. Zenith’s Peter MacDonald falls into this category, .

The question he poses is this: .

Supposing we command a computer to go live on an island. Supposing we in- structed the computer to go down to the beach every ten years and make another com- puter. Supposing a nuclear warcame along and wiped out all the people.

After umpteen years, the island of the computers would start to get overcrowd- ed. Consider the situation the computers would find themselves in. They’d be wandering around, scrat- ching their heads, wondering about the meaning of life, but still driven to reproduce.

Sound familiar? 1 mean, can you relate?

Let it be said that you had

_an interface that launched a

thousand chips. Happy modes. And may your access be total.

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