With pcTelecommute, you really can work at home
Real-life requirements: Win9x or NT, 16M RAM, 166-MHz processor, 56K modem for fast performance, CD-ROM drive for installation, Caller ID-capable modem for monitoring calls and faxes In spite of the General Services Administration's long-standing support for telecommuting, it has yet to see substantial savings in terms of federal office rents or highway congestion. But telecommuting has made inroads at a number of agencies. Whether their employees telecommute occasionally or regularly,
Buzz Lightyear, you have mail
Astronaut John Grunsfeld is pushing to improve e-mail connectivity between Earth and space so that crew members can exchange e-mail in space as easily as they can on the ground. "E-mail makes living in space a lot more utilitarian," said Grunsfeld, who is chief of the Computer Branch in the Astronaut Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "If we're going to be living and working in space, we need these tools" to help crew
Consortium team are the real People of the Year
I was dismayed when, late last year amid the usual hoopla, editors of Time magazine picked Bill Clinton and Ken Starr as men of the year. I guess if the objective is to be controversial and peddle a lot of magazines, Bill and Ken form an unbeatable pair of cover boys.
STARS stores reports on tape, saves money
The Navy's Standard Accounting Reporting System has made significant cost savings and productivity gains by storing financial reports on tape, said Dan Hestor, who supports STARS users at the Defense Megacenter in Mechanicsburg, Pa. The megacenter has trimmed its disk storage requirements to one-third of what they were in 1995 when STARS came online, Hestor said. "We saved the equivalent of more than 10 packs of direct-access storage devices," he said.
State's globe-trotting employees will get wired, IT chieftain vows
But State's recently arrived chief information officer said he plans to turn the situation around by making the department's primary responsibility, diplomacy, the heart of its new information technology plan. CIO Fernando Burbano said the agency is gearing up for the 21st century and shedding its fuddy-duddy ways. A new long-term IT plan, systems staff organization changes and a renewed focus on management issues will help the department sweep aside its reputation as a second-tier systems
For now, SSA will keep issuing PEBES off line
The Social Security Administration has no immediate plans to make Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statements available online again. "I think we're going to keep PEBES the way it is," said Kathy Adams, SSA's assistant deputy commissioner for systems, in a speech this month at the GCN Forum luncheon in Washington.
Trinium servers execute up to 3,200 MIPS
The first copper-based Skyline Trinium servers from Hitachi Data Systems Corp., announced today, will run nearly twice as fast as current Skyline servers under IBM OS/390. The Trinium servers' ACE/2 processors hybridize bipolar and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technologies. The second-generation ACE/2 chips have 0.20-micron copper circuitry and silicon-on-insulator fabrication. "We had to move beyond just another turn of the crank on the mainframe," said Bill Tudor, director of systems architecture for Hitachi Data Systems of Santa Clara,
Letters to the editor
Widespread fear exists on the issue of real-time clock testing and little was clarified in the recent article "PC managers seek the real deal on real-time clocks" [GCN, Nov. 23, 1998, Page 48]. Why the confusion? Some years ago, for performance considerations, PC vendors agreed that the RTC would not be responsible for updating the CMOS memory-stored century data and that the BIOS software would carry the burden of the Y2K issue. This agreement was part
The search is on for ways to navigate invisible Web sites
Some of the newsiest sites on the Internet are the ones you can't see. Conventional search engines never visit a vast area known as "the invisible Web." Instead of Hypertext Markup Language pages and eye-catching graphics, this invisible world consists of databases searchable only by special forms. Say you routinely check airline schedules for government travel. Much of the flight information appears on the Web but not on static pages. To set up a flight via the
Network printer specifications
Of five network printers, the Mopier performs like a dream--but it will cost you IBM InfoPrint 20 IBM Printing Systems Co. Boulder, Colo. tel. 800-358-6661 HP Mopier 320 Hewlett-Packard Co. Palo Alto, Calif. tel. 703-204-2100 HP LaserJet 8100N Hewlett-Packard Co. Palo Alto, Calif. tel. 703-204-2100
VirusScan now handles hostile Java applets
In VirusScan 4.0 Enterprise Edition, Network Associates Inc. has combined the scanning engine from recently acquired Dr. Solomon's Software Inc. with the ActiveX and hostile Java applet protection developed in previous versions of VirusScan. Some users had thought that the Santa Clara, Calif., company would discard the Dr. Solomon's technology, but the company has tried to retain the best features, said Sal Viveros, director of marketing for Total Virus Defense at Network Associates.
Vinca OffSite Archive for NetWare can run on a standalone or standby server
Novell NetWare users can set up Vinca Corp.'s OffSite Archive for NetWare either on a standalone server or in conjunction with a primary standby server pair. OffSite Archive uses Vinca's SnapShotServer technology, which makes snapshot duplicates of the data stored on the primary server. The data archiving does not affect the primary server's performance, Vinca officials said.
USPS gains lots of knowledge, if not sales, as smart-card pilot concludes
Four post offices on Manhattan's Upper West Side rang up only about $51,000 in smart-card sales during a one-year bank-sponsored pilot [GCN, June 22, 1998, Page 40]. But the Postal Service did gain a wealth of information. "We were not one of the merchants who were disappointed," said Terry Carter, USPS assistant treasurer for payment technologies. "We didn't go into it because we expected to get a significant amount of business, but more for the data. Based
Replicator will let you daisychain CD-Rs to copy hundreds of CD-ROMs at a time
Microboards Technology Inc. has designed a $7,995 eight-bay CD-recordable replicator and a $9,995 four-drive desktop CD-R publisher for offices with integrated multimedia systems. The DSR8800 CD recorder-replicator comes in a tower configuration and hosts seven CD-R drives plus one 12X CD-ROM drive. In master-slave mode, users can configure the DSR8800 with up to three seven-drive CD-R slave units. Each master can direct as many as 28 recorders at the same time.
Mainframes are easier to fix than LANs | Interview with Chris Weiss, Y2Ktechnologist
GCN: Some agencies have been slapping color-coded year 2000 readiness stickers on their PCs—green for OK, red for needing replacement and so on. Is this happening everywhere? WEISS: Many organizations are putting on Y2K stickers that say "checked" or "not checked." This whole issue has forced them to look at everything they have.
Library goes online bit by bit
After digitizing about 1.5 million items from its special collections for the National Digital Libraries program, the Library of Congress continues to process other items for Web access at the rate of about 1 million files a year. In spite of the experience gained in preserving old items by reducing them to bits, each collection still presents new difficulties.
NWS vet will get systems up to speed
Computer issues will demand a lot of attention from the new director of central operations at the National Weather Service. "We are in the first phase of installing our new supercomputer and ensuring that every part of the installation is year 2000-ready," Carl Staton said. "We're also busy migrating weather models from the Cray C90 to the new IBM supercomputer."
NerveCenter quiets alarms, tackles problems
A new version of the NerveCenter network management tool from Seagate Software, a subsidiary of Seagate Technology Inc. of Scotts Valley, Calif., suppresses redundant alarms from downstream devices, and it automatically fixes some problems by itself. Product manager Brett C. Cooper said the downstream alarm suppression feature helps small network administration staffs by fixing up to 80 percent of problems without their intervention.
Study reveals that IT is key to agencies' performance
That the Social Security Administration gets top grades for its year 2000 efforts is old news. But a new review of government practices earned Social Security an A for overall performance as well as for information technology management. Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs did the two-year review for its Government Performance Project, which the Pew Charitable Trusts is funding through a four-year grant.
Is a competitive Postal Service good business?
The rapid pace of change in computing, telecommunications and imaging technologies—and their imminent convergence—has a cadre of proud and powerful federal agencies sweating their future. Several are charting courses of self-protection through legislation, while others are adopting a strategy inclined toward increased competitiveness with the private sector, in many cases through heavy investments in information technology. The issues are of greater importance than mere tinkering with the procurement system. Both courses present serious policy issues that
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