PRODUCT PREFERENCE SURVEY
—Gene Best, systems administrator, Marine Design Center, Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia "When AutoCAD went from Version 12 to 14, they changed all the icons to something different. They do the same thing, but they're different.'' —Louis Ackerman, electrical engineer, Marine Corps, Parris Island, S.C. None of this no pain, no gain nonsense for feds who use computer-aided design software: They must produce complex engineering and scientific diagrams, and they want using
Fast installation, sharp OCR accuracy make scanner a good buy
How well does a very low-end scanner work? Surprisingly, quite well. A few years ago, I paid $125 for a low-end, grayscale hand scanner that forced me to open my test PC's chassis and install an interface board—never a fun experience. In contrast, I recently bought the OpticPro 4831P, a 30-bit, 300- by 600-dot-per-inch flatbed scanner that simply plugged into the parallel port. I had the $61 unit running within a few minutes of its arrival.
Transportation awards five contracts to bolster infrastructure protection
The Transportation Department has awarded five contracts worth roughly $45 million to protect the nation's transportation infrastructure. The new systems are intended to bridge the gap between physical and information security risks, addressing the infrastructure as a whole, according to officials at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass. Volpe awarded the contracts last month.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Regarding the editorial, "CIO strength is in ideas" [GCN, July 13, Page 20]: I agree that a governmentwide approach to managing investment and capital planning is a good idea. Speaking as the co-chair of the Chief Information Officers Council's Capital Planning and Information Technology Investment Committee, I can say with great certainty that the proposed IT Investment Portfolio System (I-TIPS) is a powerful tool, a highly beneficial product with potential to help agencies automate their capital
Feds give 50 surplus computers to kids
The Bureau of Economic Analysis had to untangle some red tape to donate 50 computers to a Washington elementary school. BEA officials, motivated by an April 1996 executive order that urged agencies to donate surplus computers to schools and nonprofit organizations, first had to figure out the Commerce Department's policies on donating used computers.
The coming release of OS/390 will bear a heavy resemblance to Unix
When IBM Corp. delivers the latest version of OS/390 next month, the operating system will resemble Unix more than ever. The rewritten TCP/IP stack in OS/390 will run "at least as well as it does on the Unix platforms that have had TCP/IP for many years," said David Carlucci, general manager of the IBM S/390 division.
Eyes are on feds
Do you know the term "cosa nostra"? Roughly translated, it means "our thing." Mobsters allegedly coined it back in the early 1950s to express solidarity with one another, implying that whatever the crime families did to one another was of no concern to society at large. Luckily, that sentiment isn't widespread among systems professionals in the federal government. Most feds express a keen sense of the public nature of their work.
Malicious code can sneak in through e-mail
Security holes newly discovered in leading e-mail clients and browsers are hazardous because they are easy to exploit and affect many users. When Microsoft Outlook 98, Microsoft Outlook Express and Netscape Mail clients receive mail attachments with filenames that exceed 256 characters, they let the attachments dump possibly malicious code into computer memory.
SPOTLIGHT - View from the trenches
What do trenches have to do with people who work in the realm of federal information systems? The word trench derives from the Middle English trenche, meaning a track cut through a wood or in the ground. Many modern locutions using the word issue from the Great War, 1914 to 1918, where muddy trenches were the leading edge of the battle on the Western Front. Thus, the phrase "in the trenches" connotes being on the front
Web site authoring tools
You can run, but you can't hide—the Internet is everywhere. Now that a federal mandate requires agencies to make information more freely available to the public, government interest in gaining an Internet presence is on the rise. As many managers have found, giving the public access to agency information by putting it on the Web isn't a good idea just for democracy's sake. It also can free workers from answering routine telephone calls and conventional mail, freeing
DOD COMPUTING
C2 live. The new Air and Space Command and Control Agency next month will hold Expeditionary Force Experiment '98, a combination live-fire and simulation exercise that puts still-developing command and control systems into the hands of warfighters. EFX '98, which runs from Sept. 10 to Sept. 24 near Elgin Air Force Base, Fla., is the first of several annual experiments conducted by the Air Force to determine how well-advanced C2 systems can halt a surprise attack.
Beat the Clock
Wondering aloud. Remember those Defense Department systems that, by mistake or false reporting, got listed as year 2000-ready when they were not? The DOD inspector general uncovered the discrepancy in an audit and recommended changes to correct weaknesses in DOD's standard for certifying systems for readiness. DOD should independently verify and validate each system's readiness, the IG said.
AF Computer Forensics Lab nabs criminals, byte by byte
"As a law enforcement agency our ultimate goal is prosecution" When Joseph Snodgrass cut two floppy disks into 23 pieces with shears, he thought he had destroyed evidence linking him to his wife's murder. What Snodgrass didn't count on was that the Air Force Computer Forensics Laboratory could reconstruct the disks and cull information that put him behind bars.
Hey Congress, don't try to rebottle that online gaming genie
Attempts to rebottle the Internet genie continue on Capitol Hill. Some senators, it seems, are determined to keep junior from grabbing mom's credit card and betting a grand or two on the Orioles' pennant chances. The Rat is inclined to agree, in view of the ratlings' fast-evolving hacker skills and their attraction toward anything plastic with a magnetic-swipe strip. He shudders at the thought of their emptying the family bank account to reverse-engineer some online casino's roulette
NEC Technologies' Multi CD-R combo gives users recording options beginning at$349
In the Multi CD-R unit, NEC Technologies Inc. has combined a CD-recorder for file distribution and archiving, a 20X CD-ROM reader and a rewritable 650M phase-change dual (PD) drive. Users can record a track at once, a disk at once or a 2X-speed copy of a file onto CD-recordable media. For backup, the product uses removable and rewritable PD cartridges. The PD drive verifies and error-checks files after each write.
SBA redefines rules for 8(a)s and small businesses | Federal Contract Law
New Small Business Administration rules covering federal preferences for minority-owned contractors took effect on July 30. The new rules are reflected in the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Let's start with the new criteria for 8(a) status. To participate, a business must be owned and controlled, as before, by a socially and economically disadvantaged U.S. citizen.
Date code effort delays Education loan project
The year 2000 problem is hindering the Education Department's efforts to integrate systems that administer student loans. "The year 2000 problem is diverting my people resources and diluting my financial resources from integrating the delivery system," said Jerry Russomano, director of program systems service at Education. "Fixing the date code problem in our systems is taking an inordinate amount of time."
Industry leaders debate state of network security tools
LAS VEGAS—Network security took a beating at the Black Hat Briefings held last month. Speakers offered up wildly divergent views. Some called network security adequate, but others said it is irreparably broken and must be rebuilt from the ground up. "I think we're doomed," said Marcus Ranum, president and chief executive officer of Network Flight Recorder Inc. of Woodbine, Md., a maker of network monitoring tools.
Date code work on SBA systems is on schedule, agency official says
The Small Business Administration is on track to have its mission-critical systems ready for the millennium, SBA Deputy Administrator Fred Hochberg told a House committee this month. "As of May, more than 80 percent of SBA's mission-critical systems have been renovated, validated and corrections have been implemented—well ahead of our targeted goals,'' Hochberg told members of the House Small Business Committee.
DOD revamps process for overseeing IT buys
Defense aims to settle IT buying issues at the lowest possible level, CIO Arthur Money says. The Defense Department is replacing a 20-year-old acquisition process for approving information systems buys with a process that delegates more authority to the services and Defense agencies. Deputy Defense secretary John Hamre signed a memorandum late last month that dissolved the Major Automated Information System Review Council and replaced it with integrated product teams. IPTs
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