Postal worker tries on IT hat
For three weeks in 1994, Christopher J. Malone left his place in a Postal Service assembly line to become a spreadsheet developer. Malone, a data conversion operator at the Postal Service's Remote Encoding Center in Lumberton, N.C., keys in street addresses for mail that's unreadable by machine and is headed out of state from USPS' General Mail Facility in New York City.
Among 19-inch monitors, three perform as champs
A quick peek at Acer America Corp.'s AcerView Vivid 99c, NEC Technologies Inc.'s MultiSync E900+ and Panasonic Communications & Systems Co.'s PanaSync SL90 confirms it: Price and performance are at their peak with a 19-inch monitor. Each of the three monitors is a flat-screen, shadow mask CRT with a full 18-inch diagonal viewing area. All have a maximum resolution of at least 1,600 by 1,200 pixels, although their optimal resolution is 1,280 by 1,024 pixels.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
I can find no mention of any testing of anything other than Pentium-based CPUs. You really should correct this and examine CPUs based on PowerPC processors. Apple Macintosh computers are faster, easier and cheaper to set up and maintain, more secure from hacking and have fewer risks of viruses. They are also capable of running office applications as well as other applications and can share information with computers besides the ones with Intel Corp. chips and Microsoft
ZDS may be gone, but its PCs live on at several AF sites
Thousands of Z-248 systems are still running at DOD agencies. In the heyday of the Air Force's massive desktop indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity procurements, Zenith Data Systems sold more than 1 million PCs to the government. Thousands of the old Z-248 systems are still running at Defense Department agencies, and a dwindling number of ZDS notebook PCs also are still in service, primarily in the Air Force.
For customizable apps, try getting vendors to take some of the risk
It's a common scenario: An agency needs a custom network application, but up-front development funds are limited. So the agency persuades a systems integrator to foot the development bill in hopes of selling the result to other users in the future. It has worked many times for many government departments. But when an application is highly customized, the idea is a tough sell.
NIST lists 15 algorithms to compete for standard
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has selected 15 algorithms to compete for the honor of being the federal government's next encryption standard. The Advanced Encryption Standard submissions from companies, scientific organizations and individuals meet requirements the institute outlined in its September request for proposals, NIST officials said. NIST unveiled the candidate algorithms at its First Advanced Encryption Standard Candidate Conference in Ventura, Calif., this month.
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
9-11 Federal Database Colloquium Exposition and conference. San Diego, Calif. Contact the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, 4400 Fair Lakes Court, Fairfax, Va. 22033; tel. 703-631-6133. 15-17 Documentation '98 East Conference. Boston. Contact Charles A. Pesko Ventures, 600 Cordwainer Drive, Norwell, Mass. 02061; tel. 781-871-9000. 27-29 Space and Naval Warfare Systems and Industry Conference. San Diego. Contact National Defense Industrial Association, 3525 Del Mar Heights Road, #377, San Diego, Calif. 92130; tel. 888-816-2618.
The Rat comes clean for past actions, but do not worry—words will flow
The atmosphere in Washington being what it is, the Rat figures it's time to clear the air about his own personal scandals. Confession is good for the soul, or at least for deflecting investigation. To avoid being investigated by Ken Starr for recent comments about online betting on Monica Lewinsky's testimony and to avoid becoming the target of the next cover story for the Brill's Content Web site, the cyberrodent is coming clean.
HP gives 2000-ready upgrades
Future servers will be able to host Unix and NT simultaneously. SAN DIEGO—Holding out both a carrot and a stick to HP 9000 server users, Hewlett-Packard Co. executives at the HP World '98 conference here early this month announced free upgrades for the HP-UX 9.04 operating system, which they said is not ready for 2000.
Agencies, find ways to lower buying costs
Frye, who has worked in uniform and as a civilian for the service for three decades, says the strategy requires that SSG use a mix of blanket purchasing agreements and indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts. Frye came to SSG in 1995 after seven years as head of the Communications-Computer Systems Directorate at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass. SSG, part of Hanscom's Electronic Systems Center under the Air Force Materiel Command, has 1,700 federal employees. It manages three major
Flat-panel monitor dips under $1,000 price barrier
Box Score B Sceptre FT15 Sceptre Technologies Inc., City of Industry, Calif.; tel. 626-369-3698 http://www.sceptre.com Price: $950 Pros and cons: + Breaks price and footprint barriers + Good enough for most office tasks – Image distorted when not viewed straight-on
GSA sustains Boeing protest of Seat Management awards
The General Services Administration last week upheld Boeing Information Services Inc.'s protest of the agency's Seat Management Program contract awards. It is unclear, however, what the ruling will mean for the company, the PC outsourcing program or the eight winning Seat Management vendors. In agreeing that the Vienna, Va., company's protest had merit, a senior GSA procurement official did not opt to halt work on Seat Management, award the company a contract or nix the contract
Informix Software sees Linux going enterprisewide
Linux, the freeware operating system that has made it through a few federal doors, is starting to look much more commercial now that several leading application vendors have declared their support. "We believe there will be a wave of Linux moving into the enterprise," said Steve Lambright, senior server product marketing manager at Informix Software Inc.
Octane graphics unit has a full tank
Pros: + Best-of-class visual rendering + Designed to maximize throughput + Impressively flexible features and connectivity A substantial group of government computer users do their daily work at Unix workstations. Most users, however, have no experience beyond Microsoft Windows running on PCs with Intel Corp. chips.
Enterprise distribution send client apps over the Net
Lucent Technologies Inc. has an enterprise software distribution (ESD) system with the same name as the Murray Hill, N.J., company's intellectual property business manager, Noel Terranova. Terranova Express—which runs under Microsoft Windows NT—orders, upgrades and distributes client applications via intranet. Its secure client and server software bypasses download hazards inherent in Web browsers and Internet protocols.
Adobe improves on an already good thing with Photoshop 5.0
Pros and cons: + History Palette finally allows multiple undo + Vastly improved text handling – Not for novices Real-life requirements: Win95, NT or Apple System 7.5.5 or higher, at least 32M RAM, 80M free storage, CD-ROM drive Now that Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect have reached their eighth editions, Adobe Photoshop 5.0 sounds like a relative newcomer. Surprisingly, though, the image editor has been at the top of
Agriculture: Paychecks will get doled out come 2000
Government employees often wonder if they'll be paid after Dec. 31, 1999, Agriculture CIO Anne Thomson Reed says. The year 2000 problem won't stop the National Finance Center from getting paychecks to hundreds of thousands of government employees, the Agriculture Department's chief information officer said recently.
Another View | Agencies must begin planning for FTS 2001
There is some controversy in the federal information technology arena regarding whether agencies are ready to make the transition from the FTS 2000 contracts to the pending FTS 2001 ones. Now that the General Services Administration has released its solicitation for the FTS 2001 worldwide long-distance telecommunications service, Dennis Fischer, commissioner of GSA's Federal Technology Service, is exhorting agencies to get on the stick with their preparations for switching over to the resulting, nonmandatory contracts. The
Toll-quality voice is now a measurable specification
The final judgment always rests on human opinion, Steve Voran said. Toll-quality voice is a big selling point for voice-over-IP and other computer telephony products. But who decides what toll quality means? The Commerce Department's Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) has been working on the question for several years. ITS has come up with a set of digital signal processing algorithms to evaluate the quality of audio transmissions.
AF test ranges fall behind in date code work
Systems officials at some ranges seek more funds to fix mission-critical systems, the report said. Managers at some of the Air Force's test ranges were unaware of year 2000 problems and failed to manage date code repair, the Defense Department inspector general reported this month.
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