70 CPUs add up to big power
Researchers at the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory—tired of prohibitive pricing and long queues for supercomputing time—took matters into their own hands and wired 70 CPUs into one of the fastest and cheapest supercomputers in the world. Their homespun improvisation, called Avalon, can perform 20 billion floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS).
MathSoft boosts reporting feature of latest MathCAD
MathSoft Inc.'s MathCAD 8 Professional draws 2-D and 3-D charts and has rich OpenGL graphics features for reporting, said Chris Randles, vice president for sales and marketing at the Cambridge, Mass., company. Users can mix different measurement units, such as meters and feet, within the same MathCAD 8 document. An IntelliMath feature attempts to automate routine calculations by anticipating the user's next move.
Feds find uses for cameras, scanners
"It's a super little camera. We've used the daylights out of it.'' —Ronald Phelps, project manager, John F. Kennedy Space Center, about Ricoh's RDC-2 digital camera "We've had [an Epson 1200C scanner] for about a year and a half. However, we just started using it not too long ago because we didn't have anyone who knew how to use it and the software that goes with it. And I don't have the extra time
IT workers view 2000 through rose-colored glasses
There are no deadline extensions for the Year 2000 problem. We can rail and curse like King Canute, but the tide of time is rolling inexorably on. Ready or not, that magic New Year's Day of reckoning is coming. Unless you've been off on a desert island for the last 18 months, you know that computer types worldwide are finding they must pay for the previous generation's shortsightedness. Three decades of "this will be someone else's problem"
TECH REFRESH
GE Capital IT Solutions Inc. has added Hewlett-Packard Co. 9000 K-class enterprise servers to its General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contract. The high-end HP 9000 K380 server starts at $61,983 with up to six 240-MHz, 64-bit PA-8200 processors and 8G of RAM. The seven-slot server supports up to 32-way symmetric multiprocessing under HP-UX 10.20.
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
24 Y2K vs. American Prosperity:Liability and the Links Conference. Washington. Contact Discovery Institute, 1402 Third Ave., Suite 400, Seattle, Wash. 98101; tel. 206-292-0401. 27-29 Space and Naval Warfare Systems Conference. San Diego. Contact National Defense Industrial Association, 3525 Del Mar Heights Road, #377, San Diego, Calif. 92130; tel. 888-816-2618. 29-30 MIL-STD 498 on Software Development Seminar. Washington. Contact System Technology Institute, P.O. Box 6907, Malibu, Calif. 90264; tel. 888-299-9071.
Panafax UF-770i suffers from difficult installation routines
Pros and cons: + Can save long-distance charges in some cases + High-quality fax machine – Difficult to configure using standard documentation – Cannot handle e-mail attachments Panasonic's Panafax UF-770i gives more than just the fax. The high-end fax machine can transmit not only over ordinary phone lines but also via the Internet, circumventing long-distance charges. But there are a few glitches.
Internet will treat you to cool info along the way of your research
One neat aspect of Internet research is that, on the way to look up something, you generally stumble across something else of significance. Here are some significant things I've stumbled across in recent weeks: Internet 2. It's going to be Indiana-based. The forthcoming national research network will operate at rates up to 1,000 times faster than the current Internet. The so-called Abilene portion, a dedicated network sponsored by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, will connect
Bombings keep security hot topic
Tightened security against terrorist attacks at federal buildings and facilities will not translate into an immediate strengthening of security in government systems, leading security experts predicted. In fact, the barricades placed around the Washington Monument to block car bombs in the wake of the embassy bombings last month in Africa have little correlation to the cyberworld, experts said.
Lee says she'll continue on reform path
OFPP's Deidre A. Lee says she has been studying the best way of keeping reform on track. Deidre A. Lee has not finished decorating her new office in the Old Executive Office Building, but she has been busy setting priorities for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.
Directive will help shore up security, experts say
The directive will guide agencies in securing against cyberattacks, CIAO's Paul Rodgers says. Defense Information Systems Agency networks that failed a well-publicized 1996 security test would not pass it today either, DISA personnel acknowledged at a General Services Administration seminar in Washington last month. Sixty-five percent of the 1996 intrusions were successful, and only 4 percent of networks detected the attacks. Defense Department managers reported 1 percent of the attacks to DISA.
450-MHz Pentium II appears in PCs, servers for a price premium
The newly released 450-MHz Intel Pentium II processor arrived in leading PC and server makers' lines last month, priced at a premium above the fastest Pentium II systems from a year ago. Near the end of last year's buying season, a 266-MHz Pentium II Vectra system from Hewlett-Packard Co. went for slightly less than $2,000, without monitor, on a General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contract. It had 32M RAM, 4G hard drive, 24X CD-ROM drive
Postal Service sets a new systems course with first CIO at the helm
With its first chief information officer at the helm, the Postal Service is embarking on a program to blend the systems and automated equipment it uses to process mail. "We have applications; what we need is overarching information," said Norman E. Lorentz, the service's vice president for quality, who last week became the CIO and head of the modernization effort. "An integration capability will have to be created."
Micron bests Dell on PC sales through Air Force BPAs
MONTGOMERY, Ala.—Micron Electronics Inc. has taken the lead over Dell Computer Corp. in sales through recent blanket purchasing agreements with the Air Force. Micron is outselling Dell more than 2-to-1, according to Col. Delbert Atkinson, commander of the Standard Systems Group at Gunter Annex, Ala. The Nampa, Idaho, company has racked up $7.6 million in business from its BPA, and Dell has secured just $3.1 million in sales, Atkinson said.
VBA puts class on CD-ROMs
The program has the potential to save tens of millions of dollars, systems specialist Griffin said. The Veterans Benefits Administration delivered three training programs on CD-ROM to its 58 regional offices this year, the first in an ambitious five-year computer-based training effort. The training has the potential to save tens of millions of dollars and improve nonmedical programs for veterans, said Steve Griffin, instructional systems specialist on VBA's employee development and training staff in
Travelers can tap the Web while away
The Web can be a big help to a government traveler, not just for planning trips but literally on the fly. If your office is like most, only a few people are out traveling at a time, so the entire office can share access on one of the Internet services that have local phone numbers around the world. Some, such as CompuServe, offer reasonably priced toll-free numbers for connecting from truly out-of-the-way locations.
Application service assurance suites have a multitude of tools for various networks
BMC Software Inc. of Houston coined the phrase "application service assurance" to position more than 160 utilities and other tools it now markets for mainframe and client-server networks. The products extend umbrella protection for availability, performance and recovery services at the network, hardware, operating system, database, middleware and application layers, company officials said.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
I believe that your coverage is accurate and balanced; you point out weak and strong points of Microsoft Corp. as well as the alternatives, such as Linux. It is time for the Microsoft bandwagon propaganda to be countered with an independent view, and I find it fascinating that GCN is in the forefront of spreading the knowledge.
Defense rethinks Y2K strategy
The Defense Department admits it isn't fixing date code quickly enough, according to its latest quarterly report to the Office of Management and Budget. DOD systems aren't being repaired fast enough to meet the department's own deadlines, deputy Defense secretary John Hamre told OMB Director Jacob Lew in a letter Aug. 17.
Air Force installs servers for top-secret DMS mail
MONTGOMERY, Ala.—The Standard Systems Group here at Gunter Annex will host two high-performance servers to provide Defense Message System top-secret-level services to about 1,000 Air Force users servicewide. Air Force officials have decided there is not sufficient demand among the service's DMS users to warrant the installation of top-secret servers at each base, SSG officials said.
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