Winston the pigeon

In a fascinating wrinkle where those pesky computers are concerned, a story out of Africa should warm the heart of even the most jaded cyber-punk. Coming to us from lovely Johannesburg, it appears that “a business needing to send 4GB of data 50 miles put Winston the pigeon up against the Web – and Winston won.”

It gets better – “Winston arrived after two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds,” says Kevin Rolfe, head of the information technology department at Unlimited Group, a call-center business based in Durban. As for the Internet data transfer, he says, “when we finally stopped the computer, about 100 megs had transferred, which is about 4 percent of the total.”

Let’s hope PETA doesn’t find out!

posted by Mudd