Speed bumps slow e-mail routes on Capitol Hill
At agencies, correspondence can often be ignored without major consequence. But members of Congress neglect voters at great peril. Capitol Hill is a special case in the ongoing adaptation to communicating via e-mail. There are some real problems and perhaps some lessons for other parts of the government. Congressional offices are vast mail machines. A distressingly large percentage of the staff spends its time sorting and answering mail.
The sky's the limit at Defense
"If you look at what drives the engine of the information age, I would argue that it is driven by space. In the information age the lines of communication will no longer run on the surface of the Earth but they will run into space," said Air Force Gen. Howell Estes, commander of service's Space Command, at the MILCOM '97 conference this month.
USPS will spend $14 billion to keep IT edge
USPS needs to spend more money on IT to ensure private-sector competitors such as DHL, Federal Express and United Parcel Service will not siphon off USPS' business, Postmaster General Marvin Runyon recently told the service's Board of Governors at a September meeting in Boston. "There are those who do not want a strong Postal Service," Runyon said. "It is clear: 1995, 1996 and 1997 will go down as the best three years so far in
Let 'em type
You'd have thought he proposed leading in a camel by a nose ring, given all the indignant and bipartisan opposition he aroused. It turns out there is a Senate rule barring mechanical devices on the floor. Maybe the rule was written in a time when senators dueled, and they wanted to keep pistols out of the chamber.
Visions Corp. changes the face of the PC security
Try Visionics Corp.'s FaceIt PC 3.0, which works with a digital video camera to secure a desktop computer against intruders. The GCN Lab staff members were skeptical at first. After all, OCR and voice recognition are still not mature technologies, and face recognition applications are greener still. FaceIt surprised us--pleasantly.
Semper Mobilis--Marines test Windows CE for battle
During Gates' keynote speech, Marine Corps Maj. James C. Cummiskey of Camp Pendleton, Calif., said the Corps has tested the Microsoft Windows CE 1.0 operating system on what he called Marine-resistant handheld computers. The Corps used the portables last summer to feed near real-time situational data to troops over wireless intranets.
Dell's OptiPlex is first with a tower that's easy to open
Not anymore. Dell Computer Corp. has improved on what we thought was already an administrator-friendly system with a minitower chassis for the easy-access OptiPlex line. The OptiPlex GXa has only one button. When you press it the side panel opens. The interior, as in previous OptiPlex models, is neat and accessible with a card cage for three PCI, two ISA and two shared PCI/ISA slots.
DOD will recognize IT management structure
Under the organizational changes, the office of the assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence [ASD(C3I)] will split into separate C3 and intelligence components, while the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology will take over duties from the ASD(C3I) as DOD's chief information officer. Jacques Gansler was sworn in Nov. 10 as the new undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology. He is the former executive vice president and director of
Hey Larry, you better rethink Oracle's grand plan for selling the NC
During downtime, he happened to see the most incredible piece of fantasy ever to air on television: Oracle Corp.'s advertisement for its network computer. Based on the ad, the cyberrodent figures NC must stand for "no clue." Oracle's ad showed a kid in a housing project coming home to the friendly glow of a network computer and participating on an equal footing with rich kids in a chat room, which seems to be equated with
Geiger: Civilians add continuity to Navy
Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support practices have transformed naval logistics in only a few years, according to Cliff Geiger, the service's chief logistician. The outgoing assistant deputy chief of naval operations for logistics spent more than 25 years in the Navy before his Nov. 6 retirement. He reported to Vice Adm. William Hancock and helped oversee an OPNAV staff of 160 with a budget of $10 billion a year.
Adopting China's ideals could cure office ills, but workers would see red
"My networks would really buzz," he mused as Jiang explained once again how the Chinese had emancipated the Tibetans and raised their standard of living. Utopia revisited The Rat drifted off into megalomaniacal fantasies. Why, if it weren't for all the clutter in the Constitution, he could even use Bureau of Prisons labor for his help desk.
DOD three-star wants to fine bandwidth hogs
If DOD doesn't find a way to constrain its communications demands, supply will never catch up, said Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Buchholz, the Joint Staff's director of command, control, communications and computers systems, at the MILCOM '97 conference last week. How would the tax work? Simple, Buchholz said. He gave an example of an office presenting a system plan to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and saying it requires 5 megabytes/sec of throughput, when the
Tillamook chip adds punch to Dell, Compaq notebooks
But two out of three ain't bad, as Dell Computer Corp.'s re-engineered Latitude CP and Compaq Computer Corp.'s updated Armada 7700 each illustrate. Both production units came with Intel Corp.'s newest 233-MHz Pentium MMX processor, known as Tillamook. That's the fast portion of the equation, and boy, are they speedy.
Ruling means agencies need plan for wiping electronic documents
In a decision late last month, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman threw out a two-year-old National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regulation that let agencies wipe out electronic documents regardless of content. The sharply worded ruling criticized archivist John W. Carlin, who proposed the rule, General Records Schedule 20.
Code goof mars FedWeb '97 site
Federal Web Consortium program manager Valerie Gregg, a National Science Foundation employee, told the workshop attendees that a GCN reporter had notified FedWeb '97 organizers late last month that he had seen credit card numbers on the registration site. Gregg said the organizers then investigated and found that sensitive information had been posted on the site for about four hours.
System runs crashes for safety's sake
The National Crash Analysis Center is giving the crash test dummies some time off. The center, which is funded by the Federal Highway Administration and the National Highway Traffic Administration, is using supercomputers to wreck virtual vehicles and improve the safety of real ones. The wrecks are brutal and very detailed. Each day virtual cars and trucks slam into walls, guard rails, road signs and each other.
Sun and Microsoft must cooperate, or java will become a foul language
Whenever I write about Java, I get e-mail from true believers who take me to task for not coming down harder on Microsoft Corp. for failing to implement all parts of Java and for creating proprietary Java extensions. I also get notes from Microsoft Windows fans who insist the only way to make Java powerful is to let it interact with most Windows features.
Who owns what when support contracts end?
Eventually, Japanese companies succeeded in producing so-called plug-compatible mainframes--clones--to compete with IBM machines. In the federal market, the Competition In Contracting Act required federal agencies to buy such computers competitively, and the clone makers won lots of these procurements. Over time, third party companies sprang up to provide maintenance and support for IBM and clone systems.
From rear projection to a Cobra cockpit, battle simulation has changed
I have wanted to be a pilot for as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I read practically every book written about fighter pilots. I realized part of my dream when I became a helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam. I experienced another part in something called a differential maneuvering simulator.
Which PIM is the best one? It's a toss-up
When the GCN Lab last reviewed office suites from Corel Corp., Lotus Development Corp. and Microsoft Corp. [GCN, Aug. 25, Page 39], the Lab held off discussing the suites' personal information managers for the sake of a fair comparison. Microsoft had already released Outlook 97, but Lotus' and Corel's new PIMs weren't ready in time to be covered. Now they are, and they promise to bring lots of new features--and failures--to your desktop PC.
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