Gore proposes an Electronic Bill of Rights to protect the privacy of personal data
Vice President Gore last month announced steps to create an Electronic Bill of Rights to protect citizen privacy in an increasingly electronic world. The administration plans to discuss its plans with state and local governments to find a balance among the protection of personal information collected by governments, the right of access to public records and First Amendment protections.
Navy to build net infrastructure in Tidewater area
The Navy has placed an order with Lucent Technologies Inc. to build a metropolitan area network in Norfolk, Va., under the $2.9 billion Voice, Video and Data program. Ultimately, the Navy would like the MAN to give Army, Navy and Air Force installations a single infrastructure for voice and data services in what the Defense Department calls the Tidewater region.
Sun pushes parity pricing with vendors
Sun Microsystems Inc. has enlisted nearly three dozen Solaris enterprise tool vendors in a price-parity program to compete with Microsoft Corp. The independent software developers have agreed to price their application development, middleware and systems management tools the same for the Solaris and the Windows NT operating systems on Sun Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 workstations.
Workers at GSA come one step closer to new, agencywide e-mail
Lotus Domino Mail Server should be running by the end of December, Herdt said. General Services Administration officials last month expanded their Lotus cc:Mail migration pilot from 20 employees of the chief information officer at headquarters to an additional 30 workers in Arlington, Va., and Boston.
Diskeeper cuts backup time for network at Sandia labs
When Bob Foster wanted to cut his backup time for a 30G RAID data set, he used Diskeeper for Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0. The disk defragmenter package from Executive Software Inc. of Glendale, Calif., shortened backup time for a Digital Equipment Corp. 2100 server with a 190-MHz Alpha processor and 128M of RAM. It condensed the stored files that had become scattered across disks.
FAA faces congressional criticism on status of agency's date code fixes
FAA has budgeted enough money to finish date code fixes, Ray Long, the agency's year 2000 project director, says. Federal Aviation Administration officials this month had to defend their year 2000 progress at a hearing of the House Science Subcommittee on Technology. FAA administrator Jane Garvey late last month said that FAA had fixed date code in 67 percent of its mission-critical systems and would have its systems ready by 2000.
This suite tool makes it a snap to prepare glitzy presentations
These tips will help you draw conclusions If your graphics needs are small, your office suite might have the right tools. Before upgrading hardware to accommodate new software, check to see if old versions running under Windows 3.x are available. Leave the high-end products to the pros. They require lots of time to learn before they give you good results. If you have a pro doing your in-house graphics, don't restrict him
DOD revs simulation models
Government designers of simulation models still work in stovepiped groups that are only beginning to face reuse and interoperability issues. Defense Department groups soon will have no choice about interoperability. Beginning Oct. 1, DOD organizations will get no funding for simulations that cannot or will not comply two years from now with the department's High-Level Architecture standard for simulations.
FTS takes command of federal security hotline
The General Services Administration has chosen Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center to staff a government computer security hotline. The Pittsburgh CERT, together with the Energy Department's Computer Incident Advisory Capability group, has been handling the hotline under a two-year Federal Computer Incident Response Capability pilot. A FEDCIRC Management Center will be set up within FTS' Office of Information Security, said Judith Spencer, director of the office's Center for Governmentwide Security.
Risk Manager can assess an agency's year 2000 preparedness and survivalchances
Managers can monitor their agencies' year 2000 survival chances with Risk Manager for Year 2000, a Microsoft Windows 9x and Windows NT package from GartnerGroup Inc. of Stamford, Conn. Risk Manager does not diagnose, fix or test any date code. Instead, the $19,000 standalone application presents lengthy checklists to measure a senior manager's knowledge of readiness in six areas: information technology infrastructure, facilities and equipment, supply chain, products and services, applications and procedures, and process systems.
AF sees push-pull apps as threat and keeps ban
Lt. Gen. William Donahue says push-pull applications consume bandwidth and threaten security. The Air Force's ban on push-pull applications will remain in effect indefinitely, the service's director of communications and information has decided. Concerned about potential security threats to Air Force networks, the service ordered the ban late last year. The threat still exists, and the applications put too much demand on limited bandwidth, said Lt. Gen. William Donahue.
USPS awards date code verification contracts to the tune of $10 million
The service has ranked each system by importance, Celentano said. The Postal Service has awarded two $10 million contracts to test and verify its date code fixes. SRA International Inc. of Arlington, Va., and Unisys Corp. will ensure the year 2000 code corrections continue to perform at least two years after the date change, Postal Service purchasing specialist Michael Celentano said.
NOAA site holds natural data
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site supplies sophisticated coastal data to local, state and regional agencies that protect natural resources and develop economic growth. NOAA's Coastal Services Center's information directory, at http://www.csc.noaa.gov, electronically links databases about sea surface temperatures, tides and weather. The searchable databases conform to the Z39.50 Library of Congress standard, and searchers can view text descriptions of pertinent documents.
Despite weak video controller, monitor delivers room with view
Pros and cons: + Supports large range of resolutions – Utilities don't work properly – Costlier than other vendors' cards with similar specs Color 50/95 Cornerstone Peripherals Technology Inc. Price: $1,100 Pros and cons: + Excellent value for 21-inch monitor + Easy-to-use screen scontrols – Suffers in comparison with Professional line
NIH finds power in numbers
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute watch very small events that happen very fast. "We study the quantum chemistry of systems," said Eric Billings, a staff scientist in the Computational Biophysics Section. That means tracing the movements of individual atoms at picosecond, or 10-15-second, intervals.
Senate bill would give GPO new name, power over govt. data
Some call the bill a step backward for procurement reform. The Senate Rules Committee is considering a bill that would make the Government Printing Office responsible for ensuring public access to government data, even Web postings. But the administration, which opposes the bill, contends it would be a step backward for procurement reform and would give GPO too much power over government information.
Software foils floppy-disk file fluster
DiskCataloger Sheridan Software Systems Inc., Melville, N.Y.; tel. 877-347-5228 http://www.shersoft.com Price: $50 Pros: + No training necessary + Floppies treated as virtual hard drive + Zip utility a nice extra + Color-coded folders ease organization Real-life requirements: Win9x, 16M RAM, 10M free on hard drive, CD-ROM drive
Navy enlists tool to amass disparate electronic documents
The Naval Air Systems Command has adopted integrated work management tools to improve its engineering change proposal process, according to officials of Universal Systems Inc. of Chantilly, Va. The company's work management applications send out small Visual Basic programs called device servers, which grab whatever electronic documents are needed to assemble a work package. The tools lend themselves to managing executive correspondence or processing claims, for example.
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
9-11 Federal Database Colloquium Exposition and conference. San Diego. Contact Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, 4400 Fair Lakes Court, Fairfax, Va. 22033; tel. 703-631-6133. 13-16 High Density Interconnect Technology Conference and exposition. Tempe, Ariz. Contact Miller Freeman Inc., 525 Market St., Suite 500, San Francisco, Calif. 94105; tel. 800-789-2223. 15-17 Documentation '98 East Conference. Boston. Contact Charles A. Pesko Ventures, 600 Cordwainer Drive, Norwell, Mass. 02061; tel. 781-871-9000. 28-30 Engineering
Come 2000, will Chicken Little be peeping or will he be squawking?
If you were to ask Chicken Little, he'd say the sky will fall on Jan. 1, 2000. A weather forecaster, however, would say there's merely a chance of stormy weather. A week rarely goes by without someone touting a miracle tool for ferreting out the double-digit year codes buried in every PC and server.
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