TriniCom has its day in court
Today the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida conducted its first video hearing. Lawyers in a Fort Myers courtroom pleaded their cases before Chief Judge Alexander L. Paskay in Tampa. The Sony TriniCom 5100 videoconferencing system installed in each of the courthouses synchronizes audio with full-motion video and provides document imaging. Florida court officials hope the system and its Integrated Services Digital Network connection will eliminate 125-mile trips between the two cities.
Domain mastery
The General Services Administration is wise to take over civilian governmental Internet .gov domain name registration after Oct. 1. Notwithstanding the trend toward outsourcing and using commercial services, the federal government needs to control its own domain, at least for now. In fact, GSA should extend the service to governments at all levels--federal, state, county and municipal.
Fed users want light, speedy and long-lasting notebooks -
Federal notebook users want faster processors, longer-lasting batteries and less weight to tote on the road, according to an exclusive survey of 127 GCN readers who routinely use notebooks. As for favorite brands, Toshiba American Information Systems Inc. topped the list. Twenty-two percent of respondents said they carry Toshiba notebooks.
GOESnet rains satellite data -
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Science Center in Camp Springs, Md., had to pull the plug on its two IBM Corp. 4381 mainframes. They were choking on satellite imagery flowing down from NOAA's newest geostationary satellites. In their place, NOAA's Satellite Services Division has put in GOESnet, a network of servers named for the pair of geostationary operational environmental satellites that feed the network 48G of data every 24 hours.
Domain naming game gets more confusing as more players join -
This is a good time to move the .gov registration back under government control to protect it, because the Internet's Domain Name System is about to fall into a state of chaos. To avoid problems for federal users, the General Services Administration will begin to register new .gov Internet domain names starting Oct. 1.
IrisPen 1.1a takes a stab at translating but disappoints -
Imagine waving a wand to translate documents from a foreign language and then paste the text into your favorite application. Imagine if the wand could teach you to speak and read that language. Sound too good to be true? You're right, it is. But the idea is great.
Despite stumble, GILS deserves second chance -
How can people find federal government information? This has always been a challenge for agencies and for users. In the 1940s, the Federal Register was one answer. In the 1960s, the Freedom of Information Act offered another approach. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 proposed a Federal Information Locator System.
New Navy ship would have made Grace Hopper proud -
SAN FRANCISCO--The new USS Hopper runs on a LAN. A portrait of the late Rear Adm. Grace Murray Hopper, mother of Cobol and a computing pioneer, hangs in the wardroom of the Navy destroyer. It was commissioned early this month to honor her as the Navy's first female admiral.
IRS seeks proposals to expand electronic filing -
The agency wants vendors to offer proposals to expand electronic filing and make it the preferred filing method. IRS will issue a final RFP late this year and award the contract early next year, said Terry Lutes, acting assistant commissioner of IRS for electronic tax administration. He said IRS might choose more than one contractor.
The procurement process is different, not better -
Mystified and amazed by the GCN editorial that lionized the recently departed Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, Steve Kelman, many of us were given pause [GCN, August 4, Page 30]. Perhaps Kelman will be judged by history to be a "happy warrior," but it will take several years for some of his bizarre initiatives to play out in the real world of information technology contracts.
DOD and Lockheed are pleased with DMS test -
Defense Department and Lockheed Martin Corp. officials are guardedly optimistic about results of the Defense Message System's initial operational test and evaluation, which took place last month at nine military sites. The Defense Information Systems Agency will not make the IOT&E results public for another two weeks. DMS program manager Tom Clarke said in a statement that the preliminary results "confirm DMS Release 1.0 is a viable baseline system" that likely will evolve to full
Here's the skinny on flat-panel monitors -
The first thing people say when they see a flat-panel monitor on your desk is "Cool!" The second is, "I want one." I speak from experience. Over the last four months, four active-matrix liquid crystal displays on my desk have drawn just those remarks. My Reviewer's Choice designation goes to Compaq Computer Corp.'s TFT500 monitor. Compaq is not known as a monitor maker, and the company's TFT500 is not a perfect monitor. My early production
Hayes' 56-kilobit/sec modem comes close to its touted speed -
Modem speed and price wars are causing some casualties. The first thing I noticed when I opened the box containing Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc.'s external 56-kilobit/sec Accura 56K modem was that there was no serial cable. I happened to have a couple of spare cables squirreled away, but buyers who expect ready-to-install products should be aware that few modem makers include cables anymore. A notation to that effect on the box would save
Agency will sell bonds online -
About 55 million people own U.S. savings bonds. Another million have Treasury Direct retail accounts for buying Treasury securities. The Bureau of the Public Debt, which finances the nation's indebtedness from an operating center in Parkersburg, W.Va., is upgrading its computer network to handle these accounts electronically. If all goes well, the bureau will begin selling savings bonds online late this year. Customers eventually will have access to their Treasury Direct accounts via the World
OPM puts career advice online -
To help agencies plug staff holes and create their own technical experts, the Office of Personnel Management has established a new online career counseling service. The USACareers system gives agencies an automated toolkit for evaluating a person's job skills, interests and training needs. OPM officials said the new interactive personnel testing program is intended to help federal employees chart direct career paths and cope with downsizing pressures.
DOD integrates best sim tools -
The Defense Department is putting the final touches on specifications for a modeling and simulation system that will integrate Army, Navy and Air Force systems into a seamless battlefield training and analysis tool. The Joint Simulation System (JSIMS) will let units from different services hold joint simulated training exercises. The framework for a common systems architecture blends the service-unique features of different mission models into an interoperable whole.
Cobol cognoscenti come out of their burrows and rake in all the lira -
Somehow the Rat wasn't surprised to see the year 2000 problem rear its ugly head in a Page 1 story above the fold in his local newspaper. The buzz this time was about Maryland's $100 million code crisis. The state has had to commit to spending about $20 per taxpayer to straighten out its discombobulated code. Now that's a figure the Rat really can sink his incisors into.
ATM adapters give backbone to servers and nets -
A synchronous transfer mode adapters are great for the backbone, but they're not ready for the desktop. Deployed on a WAN, backbone or desktop, ATM is becoming the big gun of bandwidth. When National Software Testing Laboratories Inc. looked at the newest crop of PCI 155-megabit/sec ATM adapters, it found several useful server cards. But no vendor has yet mastered the formula for bringing ATM to the desktop. The prices of some adapters exceed the
It is time for the government to cut bait on GILS -
The 21/2-year-old mandate for the Government Information Locator Service is being re-examined by the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration. Intended to improve access to federal information sources, GILS seems to have had little success meeting that objective. This disappointing showing is in sharp contrast to the many excellent World Wide Web services from which the public can choose. Therein lies the cure for what
SBA proposes new minority preference rules for contractors -
The Small Business Administration's 8(a) program is changing again. No stranger to controversy, the 8(a) program has had a series of recent tremors. In 1995, the Supreme Court's decision in Adarand Constructors Inc. vs. Pena signaled a need to focus more narrowly on minority preferences in Government contracting. A 1995 General Accounting Office report concluded that most 8(a) companies derive little benefit from the program, but the top few dozen received 25 percent of the
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