BEA bids adieu to trusty--sort of--mainframe
Lee Price, acting undersecretary of Commerce for economics and statistics pulled the plug on the dinosaur, a Honeywell 66/80 mainframe. It slowly fell quiet as the cooling fans spun down in various hardware components spaced throughout the cavernous computer room. A red trouble light began to blink as bureau technicians looked on.
Ricoh's CD-rewritable drive, the MF6200S, needs fine-tuning
That keeps practically every agency systems professional busy figuring out how to manage, distribute and archive the increasingly voluminous data. One method that won quick popularity is the compact disk. Given the hardware and recording media, anyone can publish a CD-ROM. You get an almost permanent archive, a distribution medium and secure storage, all wrapped into one.
Bring on the Beans
In this context, bean counter is a compliment--and it's just what FTS needs as it moves into the era of FTS 2001 and desktop seat management. By all accounts, Fischer, now GSA's chief financial officer, is a deliberate and thorough executive. The massive FTS 2001 telecommunications contracts, like the waning FTS 2000 program they will replace, will need a steady hand to guide them through evaluation of bids and final awards. Telecommunications vendors are a
States' old systems can't track welfare recipients
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.--States track more than half of all welfare cases nationwide using systems that date back to the 1970s, according to the Health and Human Services Department. Three states use systems first installed in 1972, said an HHS official who recently detailed the findings of a soon-to-be-released HHS report.
AF seeks procurement change
MONTGOMERY, Ala.--The goal of an 18-month procurement cycle continues to tantalize Defense Department brass. Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, commander of the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., said ESC will adopt the computer industry's 18-month buying cycle to develop its service-unique command and control systems. Kadish, who spoke at the annual Air Force Information Technology Conference, warned that the Air Force can no longer afford to operate under its current procurement practices
DISA will design DISN with ATM model suite
The Defense Information Systems Agency will use an early version of a network modeling suite it co-funded to help design one of the world's largest asynchronous transfer mode networks. DISA partnered with Make Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., to ensure that NetMaker XA 3.0 had functions for building ATM infrastructure into the modernized Defense Information Systems Network. A commercial release of NetMaker XA 3.0 is set for release by the end of the year.
Agencies want their apps off the shelf, survey reveals
After decades of catering to its own unique requirements, the federal government is newly eager to try commercial software, according to an exclusive GCN survey. Leading integrated business application vendors such as PeopleSoft Inc., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG are more than willing to oblige. Part of the heightened appeal of commercial software comes from improvements in the applications, which let users tailor functions through simple table changes rather than writing new C code.
Agencies need telecom savvy
HERSHEY, Pa.--Regardless of new laws and industry price wars, consumer savvy will be the key to agencies cashing in on telecommunications reform, one of the government's top telecommunications chiefs has predicted. "There's a $43 billion local telecommunications market that will lead to chaos or at least significant changes in competition and more complexity," said Margaret Binns, assistant commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Telecommunications Service for regional services.
Energized TravelMate notebook runs six hours on one charge
The TravelMate 7060, one of Acer America's first portable offerings after acquiring Texas Instruments Inc.'s mobile computing group, is a fairly impressive addition to the 166-MHz Pentium MMX notebook market. Most notably, it operated for more than six hours on a single lithium-ion battery under normal use--a feat made possible by Acer's power management and suspend technology.
FEDCAC will connect IT puzzle pieces
Ron Decker defines his new job as Washington's matchmaker. As the incoming administrator of the General Services Administration's Federal Computer Acquisition Center, Decker will be responsible for expanding FEDCAC and creating a local presence in the nation's capital. Unlike his predecessor, Stephen Meltzer, Decker will work in Washington. "Right now, most of FEDCAC's resources are in Boston, where we have had a very positive history with large contracts," he said. "But the truth is that
Splinter networks will fix bandwidth ills, but development is slow
It seems that good ideas come in twos on the Internet. A perfect example involves Internet 2 and UseNet II. They're taking a while to get off the ground, but they hold enormous promise for government users who can take advantage of them. Of the two, Internet 2 shows more promise. It's an effort to develop ultra-high-speed private TCP/IP networks just for government research centers and universities.
Direct e-mail access opens door for unwanted spam
Should agencies provide employee mailing lists? Under the old Freedom of Information Act, agencies could hand out hard copies of the agency telephone book. But the new Electronic FOIA says that agencies must provide the information in electronic media if available. With the rapid growth of electronic mail directories, most agencies are consolidating and integrating their e-mail directories.
Tread carefully in dealings with vendor teams
It has been said that second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience. In that sense, choosing teaming partners for information technology is like choosing mates. Having represented both large and small companies, I have an array of anecdotes that range from horror stories to tales of bliss.
Gateway weighs in with contender to NetPC
Gateway had sealed the diskettes in baggies inside a plastic bag almost as big as the E1000 itself. This starter kit might be necessary if the E1000 didn't have a CD-ROM drive, but it comes with one as standard equipment. Price is certainly a consideration for network computers and NetPCs, and a single CD-ROM would have cost less than 87 disks.
Fed market will see faster Epson ink-jet printers
SUWA CITY, Japan--Government buyers can expect a range of high-end printing products previously unavailable to federal customers, Seiko Epson Corp. officials said at presentations at their headquarters. For example, Epson's two latest ink-jet printers, the Color Stylus 1520 and 3000, can print on paper as large as 13 inches by 19 inches.
OMB cracks 2000 whip, might suspend IT funds
Although the Office of Management and Budget this month issued get-tough year 2000 warnings and threatened to bar systems modernization spending at four agencies, it is unlikely that any agency will lose much--if any--funding, administration officials said. In the wake of its latest quarterly report to Congress, OMB told the Agriculture, Education and Transportation departments and the Agency for International Development that unless OMB sees immediate improvements, the agencies risk severe information technology budget limits
Big Blue backout deals potential death blow to Microsoft's NetPC
Is the NetPC a goner? Although I never really doubted the survival of the standalone PC, I've been keeping an eye on the NetPC and network computer. NetPC is shorthand for the Microsoft Corp.'Intel Corp. vision of a Network PC, a crippled client that would run software from servers and over the Internet. It's sort of an enhanced terminal, priced as low as $600 and too short on storage and memory to run most of
If it seems spam rains on your e-mail, here are two umbrellas
Spam Shot, still in beta testing, works hand-in-hand with your e-mail client's filters. It operates like a virus program, creating a kill filter full of identifying data from known spammers. The program scans your e-mail header fields such as From, To and Subject. When it finds something that matches your filter data, Spam Shot zaps the information into the trash.
100 new brushes improve Fractal Painter's effects
When Fractal Design Corp. and MetaTools Inc. merged to form MetaCreations Corp., they upgraded Fractal Design Painter to Version 5.0.1. It has the largest collection of mind-blowing image brushes I've seen in a single program. Painter installs easily and takes up about 37M on a hard drive. It will run on Apple Mac OS, Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT, but unfortunately it no longer supports Windows 3.x. If you don't have a Pentium
The AJ-D200 digital videocamera archives and edits like a pro
There's no comparison between the resolution of a $5,000 digital still camera and the far better resolution of a good $500 single-lens reflex film camera. The bother of paying for film and processing, then scanning images into a computer is what makes the digital still camera's extra cost and lower image quality acceptable to buyers.
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