DOD picks single-chip Rosetta as encryption card for DMS users
The Defense Department has selected the Rosetta Smart Card for use within all branches of the armed forces as a personal identification, authentication and encryption device for the Defense Message System. The Rosetta card, from Spyrus Inc. of San Jose, Calif., is an alternative to the company's $100 Fortezza Type II PC Card.
Is 2000 a budget victim?
Date code funding should be protected, John A. Koskinen says. The Clinton administration will propose that any fiscal 1998 budget extensions take year 2000 funding into account, the White House's year 2000 czar said last week. "If emergency funds have to be offset, we are going to have a funding problem," Koskinen said.
Digital atlas serves up transportation infrastructure data
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics has released a CD-ROM atlas of transportation facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico for use in geographic information systems. The North American Transportation Atlas Data CD-ROM contains geographic and infrastructure data in about 20 data sets for use by transportation planners and researchers, said Robert A. Knisely, BTS deputy director. The data sets include information about public use of airports, shipping ports, highway and railway networks, he said.
OPM told to focus more on ends, less on means
OPM Director Janice R. Lachance called the GAO report unfair and too negative in tone. The Office of Personnel Management can improve its performance goals by focusing more on results, a report by the General Accounting Office said. But OPM Director Janice R. Lachance called the report, Results Act: Observations on the Office of Personnel Management's Annual Performance Plan, unfair and criticized it for its negative tone.
House offices face own hurdles to fix date code
Members of the House of Representatives are responsible for fixing the date code in their own office systems, but most have not even begun the work, a House technology staff member said. Most members have not even thought about fixing their systems, said Harrison Fox, a staff member with the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology.
CIO Council gives its OK to federal IT architecture
In a major step toward creating a governmentwide systems architecture, the Chief Information Officers Council this month unanimously approved the Federal Enterprise Architecture Conceptual Framework. The framework provides a bird's-eye view of an architecture that promotes federal interoperability, agency resource sharing, capital acquisition planning and improving the government's ability to share information across agencies.
Supercomputers make new aircraft simulations fly
Technicians at a state-of-the-art modeling and simulation facility at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River, Md., are using high-performance computers to help develop and test advanced aircraft and weapons systems. The Air Combat Environment Test and Evaluation Facility, managed by the Naval Air Warfare Center's Aircraft Division, is colocated with a supercomputer center built as part of the Defense Department's $1.3 billion High-Performance Computing Modernization Program. The HPC Center processes data for ACETEF at the
Agencies get help testing code
Agencies rushing to fix year 2000 date code problems will increasingly rely on independent validation and verification to ensure systems are fixed, experts said. Many agencies realize that it is impossible to completely test systems for year 2000 readiness, said Robert Deller, president of Market Access International Inc. of Chevy Chase, Md.
LAB NOTES
JavaScript flubs one of three Rs. A Web developer recently ran across an interesting arithmetic problem: When the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator run JavaScript, certain numbers do not multiply correctly. The errors are small. But users seldom go back and check computer math, so wrong answers might go unnoticed.
Visual Basic 6.0 produces custom apps in a snap
Box Score A- Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash.; tel: 425-882-8080 http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic Price: $549 Pros and cons: + Excellent rapid programming environment, good run-time performance, good database support, useful for Web as well as standalone applications. – Less object-oriented than Delphi and less portable than PowerBuilder
AF expeditionary forces will reach back to U.S. via wireless networks
Air Force networks will be weapons systems, Skoch said. The Air Force will someday depend on wireless networks to help it strike anywhere in the world within 24 hours, a top Air Force communications officials said. Because the United States does not know where the next military threat will come from, the service must be prepared to respond quickly anywhere around the world, said Col. Bernie Skoch, director of systems at the Air
New Communication Products
3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., has released its first fiber network interface cards for 10- and 100-Mbps Ethernet networks. The EtherLink and Fast EtherLink XL PCI fiber NICs provide desktop connectivity to networks over distances of up to two kilometers. The cards have parallel tasking to reduce CPU utilization by bursting full packets across the PCI bus.
Navy eyes all-electronic maps
Working toward the goal of using maps that are exclusively electronic, the Navy is preparing to install CD-ROM jukeboxes and storage management software on 115 ships. The jukeboxes will run Fire Series management software from Luminex Software Inc. of Riverside, Calif., and will store more than 200 CDs of maps aboard each ship.
Panasonic hatches versatile PC video camera
Pros and cons: + Excellent color balance + Accurate video e-mail and videoconferencing + Almost no motion blur – Built-in mike a bit weak Real-life requirements: Windows 95, one open PCI slot for video-capture card, sound card, CD-ROM drive, 2M video memory Panasonic's EggCam doesn't crack under pressure. Combined with the included PCI video-capture card, the charge-coupled-device digital video camera makes it easy and cheap to videoconference from a PC over an office LAN or
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
30 ComNetExposition and conference. San Francisco. Contact IDG, 1400 Providence Highway, Norwood, Mass. 02062; tel. 800-545-3976. 4-6 Executive Leadership Conference. Richmond, Va. Contact the Industry Advisory Council, 3601 E. Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax, Va. 22030; tel. 703-218-1965. 5-9 21st National Information Systems Security Conference Conference. Arlington, Va. Contact the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Building 820, Room 426, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899; tel. 301-975-4242.
Marines go to battle stations that are workstations
When the Defense Department sent seemingly contradictory directives to increase training and trim budgets simultaneously, top-level officers were dubious. Flying computer-navigated jet fighters with guided missiles is no cheap matter. But when Marine Corps officers met with some of the best and brightest from the information technology community, an innovative solution began taking shape.
Air Force takes aim at safety with satellite systems
Deep inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, Air Force personnel in gray flight suits gaze at computer screens 24 hours a day, looking for signs of unidentified aircraft and missile launches. They're eyeballing data from 220 North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) radar and satellite warning systems, sent by two or more means to ensure delivery.
DFAS accounting goes online
Before long, desks at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service no longer will have stacks of greenbar "six-footer" reports indexed by yellow sticky notes. Paperless host printing is about to clean off the desktops at DFAS and, if all goes as expected, save the large accounting organization millions of dollars in printing and distribution costs.
FAA awards $1.25b in contracts to small businesses
The Federal Aviation Administration recently awarded 14 contracts worth $1.25 billion jointly for services ranging from help desk to investment analysis support. The Broad Information Technology Services contracts are the largest ever awarded to small and disadvantaged businesses, an FAA official said. "There was some criticism that FAA was not doing anything for small and disadvantaged businesses, many of which are high-tech,'' said Jack Handrahan, an FAA contracting officer. "We wanted to do something to give
Memorial Web sites pay tribute to people, places and projects
Just as tombstones mark graves, Web pages can serve as electronic memorials to things and people of the past. The idea works well because interested visitors need not travel to see the memorials and the creators need not erect costly physical structures. On the downside, such online remembrances are sometimes slanted toward a particular political view.
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