From New Guinea, with love

But this did not satisfy Peter Johnson, member for Angoram on the Sepik, who declared: “I do not like Mr. Middlemiss. I do not like his political views neither do I respect them, but I do respect his right to have and to express these views. This motion, even in its watered down form, that this House set in vestigations afoot to victimise an individual for his political views and the fact that he expresses them outspokenly reeks of the possible establishment of a police state within this country, and I hope that mem bers will think again and now reject this motion”.

Mr. Johnson’s hopes were ill-founded.

Only 15 of the 43 members who were in the House when, a few minutes later, a division was taken, agreed with him. True, 43 is less than half the total voting strength of the House, but I do not think that he would have been supported by a bigger proportion of members if the attendance had been larger.

There are some people who say that a newly independent nation, like the old Niuginian village communities, cannot afford to be tolerant. I respect the sincerity of those who hold this view, but I believe that they are wrong.

We sure need that Bill of Rights.

From DENIS FISK, in Port Moresby

in ?h D e worm hM^? compuS E r “attet o h r g ame en n . * T ., r Com P. u *f rs Pt y- td *» P °* ore . whlc *J ™us the only c^m P fii ter m Pa P ua-New Guinea, has firm* 6 P ro S ra J*J mes t 0 United States twen C^o^ Ul fn^\^ e o^^AnA tle^ and s l2o>°°o.out0 >°°0.out of eas it farst developed for its own u e ' The Port Moresby firm only began in March, 1967, with a staff of two, and an IBM-1130 computer which rn^ ded . t 0 oil and other mineral searcn data.

But the firm’s biggest market turned out to be in the commercial/ business field. The IBM company dnint “support” the computer well enough for this type of work, and afford develop its own programmes V ge° the performance it wanted from the Its programmes—or “software” as they are called inThe computer industry—turned out to be wav ahead of anything developed in theVnUed

SSj?" 4 ’° o ° ° f the U 30 ’ S .Th- programmes were written by the firm s tec hmcal wizard—Englishman David Lee who migrated to Australia 10 years ago and to Papua four years ago. One, a sorting programme, was found to operate eight - ime A S fa ? ter than an Vthing in use in America; a second increased the speed of the computer’s printer six times; and the input-output system for disc records was improved to 10 times its original speed of operation.

Australian, David Podger 34 of is the manager of the firm which now employs 14 people, made up of nine analysts, computer operators and programmers, and five keypunch machine operators.

Podger is proud of the fact that already four of his staff are Papuans f Milne Bay who m^ ch . lne J S3I kev are also T 5)n I t he Be” Y ule MSd^wh^b/^ 106 , la ? d w + ho L has g iven c^mpm^Togrammer. ‘° h* o ™ 3

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£ word about the new programmes and signed an agency agreement with DNA Systems Inc. of Flint, Michigan.

The royalties he expects would come f rom only the normal shallow pene tration of the software market in the United States—between 2 per cent, and 5 per cent, of the computer users with IBM 1130’s.

Credibility dan

gap

He had to go over, to get around the credibility gap, which he calls “the Tibet complex” . . . “you know, say, two Tibetan monks ring you up with an offer ’ y° u wouldn’t believe lt > would y° u? ”

The first sale of the programmes * as made t 0 a P la f which couldn't

Spts&R *S3S?

Alas^ a - A computer firm there wants L° ' mprove , its Performance in hand mg oil search and mineral LTaiSh otf fields" “ b °° m -

The computer girls: Left to right standing, Pauline Beni, Eunan Ani of Pari village, and Kaikanu Eai from the Gulf District.

Seated is the firm's second key-punch operator, Mea Mallard.