FAA probes citizen space race
Lower information technology costs have made it possible for private companies to develop space programs, a trend that has piqued the interest of the Federal Aviation Administration. Patricia Smith, FAA's associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said two commercial space facilities are already operating in the United States and more private companies are expected to join the space community.
It's about time to look at legalities of date code flaws
Superstitious people who believe that the cosmos is attuned to the Julian calendar expect a cataclysm of apocalyptic proportions when the calendar flips over to the year 2000. They probably don't have computer failures in mind, but software crashes are much more likely than earthquakes, deluges or collisions with asteroids.
Standard is set; XML awaits search engine for procurement info
Government procurement offices could be the force that pushes the Extensible Markup Language (XML) onto agency World Wide Web sites within a year. It's likely to happen that fast because XML can speed up searches for equipment and best prices. But we'll need new search engines to take advantage of it.
Remote-access servers protect your net
Now that most offices have at least one road warrior, the trick is to make network access efficient enough that users won't be tempted to construct their own back doors. Connecting modems to computers inside the firewall invites disaster. Few users worry about this kind of security breach, and the network administrator cannot see a hacker entering from behind the firewall until it's too late.
GSA figures show Dell as MAS sales leader
So far this fiscal year, Dell Computer Corp. has a $100 million lead on its closest competitor, Gateway 2000 Inc., in sales through Multiple-Award Schedule contracts. Citing long-standing questions about the accuracy of MAS sales figures tallied by the General Services Administration, industry analysts questioned the figures that GSA released this month. But GSA officials stand by the numbers.
SHARP(G) is MIA
What if they had a contract and nobody came? That is precisely what has happened with the ill-fated SHARP(G) contract administered by the Defense Department's Tricare Management Activity. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicle has been open for orders for more than six months but has generated not a lick of business--not one order, nada [GCN, Feb. 23, Page 6]. SHARP(G), which stands for Support Hardware and Automation Related Products (Generic), was designed to let military health
DOD task order system is ready for Iraq air strikes
If American warplanes eventually carry out air strikes against Iraq, Defense Department planners will use a newly completed system to pick daily targets and manage the air campaign. The Contingency Theater Automated Planning System is a portable network of workstations that links aircraft, weapons, terrain and target databases. The information is combined to create daily air tasking orders. Each day's ATO runs to several hundred pages and lists air strike targets.
$99 package can translate 25 languages with aplomb
One of Star Trek's most fascinating devices was the universal translator that let the crew communicate fluently with alien life forms. Many World Wide Web surfers today wish they had one for deciphering Web documents in different languages. Wouldn't it be handy to push a button on your PC and see a rough translation? Language Force's Universal Translator package makes it almost that easy.
It's OK if Java turns out to be just another programming language
I like Java. As programming languages go, it's relatively easy to learn, and its code has the virtue of running on several hardware platforms. Its strong object orientation lets me reuse my own code or build software from libraries of prewritten code. Of course, I could say all the same things about C and most of them about Visual Basic.
What sort of laws will affect health data?
It is time to take a fresh look at a tough information policy issue now at the heart of the debate over health privacy legislation. The issue sounds simple: Should federal privacy law pre-empt state laws? The implications of the debate are indirectly important to managers of federal systems containing individuals' health information. Should federal prevail, it would be more likely to foster a single, governmentwide privacy policy as opposed to a patchwork of agency-by-agency
DOE gives systems makeover
The Energy Department is giving a major face-lift to information systems for its Chicago Operations Office, upgrading servers, workstations and PCs, and constructing an intranet that will tie all the pieces together. "We're hoping to have the intranet up and running this spring," said Ronald Kuziel, systems design and analysis manager for SVRS of Argonne, Ill., DOE's contractor.
SSA faces a training challenge
Almost 10 years after the advent of Microsoft Windows, Social Security Administration employees are getting client PCs with graphical user interfaces. The agency has installed more than a third of the 1,742 LANs running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 through the Intelligent Workstation/LAN contract with Unisys Corp., said Tony Urreta, vice president of operations for Social Security programs at Unisys' Federal Systems Division.
StatServer analyzes situation
StatServer 2.0 brings World Wide Web publishing capabilities to the S-Plus statistical data mining tools from MathSoft Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. Built for sharing multidimensional data sets over intranets or the Internet, StatServer performs more than 2,000 analysis and visualization functions, MathSoft officials said. The S-Plus 4.0 statistical data mining tools do exploratory data analysis, visualization and statistical modeling, all of which aid analysts in generating hypotheses, said Rick Bohdanowicz, vice president and general manager
Dreamweaver brings ease to HTML coding
Just when you thought you had Hypertext Markup Language authoring down pat, the World Wide Web Consortium goes and changes it. The latest HTML specification, Dynamic HTML, promises slicker presentation, tighter browser integration and multimedia without plug-in hassles. Although DHTML can be complicated, its blend of JavaScript, style sheets and HTML may do wonderful things for your Web site.
Date code crisis spreads
Just 20 months away from 2000, it's dawning on systems managers that client-server networks might pose even more insidious date code problems than the mainframe systems they have concentrated on fixing. Government organizations cannot deal with the client-server crisis until they have accurate inventories of their networks, said year 2000 consultant William Ulrich, president of the Tactical Strategy Group Inc. of Soquel, Calif.
Suit of armor fits 21st century
ORLANDO, Fla.--The Army is developing a weapons and body armor system that will give foot soldiers a digital battlefield map on a helmet video display. The system, known as Land Warrior, is a combination of body armor, weapons system and command and control system. The soldier wears a helmet assembly subsystem with software and radio communications.
The Rat takes his show on the road and finds train travel on track
The Rat's agency headquarters has tightened its security following a wave of pie attacks on the information technology hierarchy over the past few weeks. No one can pin down the identities of the attackers. The only thing they have in common is a strange war cry: "MEII--Minimum Essential Information Infrastructure--nincompoops!"
Disk Mapper does spring cleaning of your hard drive, anytime
As hard drives clog up with ever-larger files, it's getting to be a real challenge to clean them out properly. Disk Mapper shows all your files graphically, so you can pinpoint the largest ones for deleting or compressing. It has handy management tools for large and small files, too.
Clinton nominates Lee for OFPP post
President Clinton has nominated Deidre A. Lee as the next administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. If the Senate OKs her nomination, Lee will replace Steven Kelman, who left the Office of Management and Budget post in September to return to his teaching job at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
FBI suspects two teens in DOD systems attack
The FBI is investigating whether two California youths are the culprits behind a hack attack that breached 11 Defense Department systems last month, an FBI official said. "We did two searches on [Feb. 25], and we seized hardware, software, printers and other peripherals," said George Grotz, an FBI spokesman in the agency's San Francisco office.
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