In '97, large-screen notebooks and CD-Rs will be hot, hot, hot
As in every other year since the advent of PCs, 1997 will bring many incremental improvements and a few dramatic changes. At the top of the list is a plunge in current notebook computer prices, caused by a new generation of really usable large-screen displays. Better flat-screen manufacturing techniques will produce these 12- to 14-inch-diagonal LCD screens at prices only slightly higher than those of the dramatically smaller 1996 versions.
Next up for Pcs: high-end graphics and power smarts
What's a Klamath? The latest word on Intel Corp.'s forthcoming Pentium Pro MMX multimedia processor is that its AGP, or accelerated graphics port, involves a modification of the motherboard architecture rather than a port in the usual sense. The AGP represents Intel's line of attack on the dedicated graphics workstation market as well as the games market. By inserting this high-bandwidth, dedicated path between graphics chips, main memory and CPU, Intel can offload some graphics
Floppy in, floppy out, CD in, CD out: The Rat smells a Microsoft
With the election out of the way, things have returned to a sort of normalcy at the Rat's agency, except in his own office, where the software upgrade wars have hit the trenches. Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 was anointed the agency's desktop environment of choice for power users, and the side effects of Microsoft's Windows Ponzi scheme have really begun to annoy the whiskered one.
Unlock Ada's grip on DOD, report urges
The Defense Department should stop requiring that all the software it develops be written in Ada, a National Research Council study commissioned by the Pentagon has recommended. DOD should stick with the Ada mandate for warfighting software but let developers of commercial-style military applications use other languages, according to the report by a committee of the research council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.
More of the same
Our unsurprising election results ensure that the next two years are going to look a lot like the last two. What does this mean? For one thing, agency systems people should batten down the hatches for some rough weather. If recent congressional persecutions of the Agriculture Department and IRS are any indication, agencies are in for a wave of hard-nosed oversight of information systems projects. One Washington lawyer familiar with Hill proclivities predicted the oversight
With no muss, no fuss, Millenia 700 distributes CD information
Tired of playing Frisbee with your office's CD-ROMs to distribute information? Worried about security on your World Wide Web server? The Millenia 700 CD-ROM tower might have some answers. This CD-ROM subsystem sports several connectivity options and can act as a Web server itself. If the seven SCSI drives aren't enough to distribute CD information to everyone on the LAN, you can add CD-ROM changers for a total of 49 disks. You can even choose
What to do first? Implement new policy or fix 2000 code News
Hard choices are confronting agencies on their urgent timetables for year 2000 code fixes. The Social Security Administration, for example, is working to implement new welfare legislation while finishing its year 2000 repairs. Because of the time crunch, new legislative requirements may not be fully implemented in software initially, said Kathleen Adams, SSA associate commissioner for systems design and development and head of the Year 2000 Interagency Committee.
Sneaker.net -
Q. "What's a "cookie'? Should I be worried about it?" A. Do you like chocolate chip? OK, so it's not that kind of cookie. When you visit a World Wide Web site, sometimes the server asks your browser for information--what operating system runs on your PC, which browser you're using, recent sites you've visited and even your e-mail address.
Crime and reform? It's simply a matter of time and place
A recent front-page article in the Washington Post told of an investigation into the procurement of printing services by a county government. It seems that 75 percent of the county's printing business was going to a single vendor. The investigators suspected that this company was not merely skillful or lucky but had a well-placed friend. The county's printing manager was accused of giving the favored contractor "advance information on its competitors' bids and [allowing] the
Versatile help desk gives gardening and legal advice
My Sept. 9 column about help desks and their customers struck a lot of funny bones. All of us have been on one side or the other of the help desk conversation. From the e-mail I've received, a lot of you have been through some hilarious situations. Bob Christian of Sierra Vista, Ariz., now retired from the customer satisfaction business, wrote, "Having been a supervisor on both the technical and the administrative sides of the
I predict E-FOIA will slow down agency responses
The amendments to the Freedom of Information Act passed this fall are a decidedly mixed bag. The political spin is that the changes bring the FOIA into the computer age by making electronic records available to requesters. This sounds nice, but the rhetoric is overblown. Electronic records have been available under the FOIA for years. Current disputes over electronic records are no worse than over paper records. Still, these changes will help a bit and
From Interstate 675 to the I-way
The Aeronautical Systems Center's Major Shared Resource Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, Ohio, last month installed three new supercomputers that will support a scientific research network of users throughout the Defense Department. The Cray C90, Cray J90 and the IBM SP will boost computer power of the center, one of four MSRCs being overhauled to handle the bulk of DOD's future supercomputing needs. Nichols Research Corp. of Huntsville, Ala., won the contract this spring
Latest Web worry: fake fed sites
As they step up their use of the World Wide Web to disseminate government information, agencies are finding a new nemesis in cyberspace: the copycat Web site. The problem is serious enough that the Federal Webmasters group has planned to discuss it at an upcoming meeting. "It's a tremendous problem, both for me as a user of the Internet and as a business person," said Pat O'Hern, senior Internet consultant for Utopia Inc. of Waltham,
Postal Service can time-stamp certified mail as e-mail, safely
If your office sends a lot of certified letters, chances are you'd like to e-mail them instead. That concept is under development at the U.S. Postal Service and could be a boon to agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, which requires many documents to be filed by specific dates.
Beat the clock
The Defense Department is chock-full of systems software engineering expertise, and DOD's systems chief and comptroller intend to play hardball to make the military services apply that expertise to the year 2000 conversion. A memo signed by DOD systems chief Emmett Paige Jr. and chief financial officer John J. Hamre will carry the message to the troops that they either upload an inventory of their information systems and interfaces to DOD's repository or risk being
IRS and union come to terms on buyout plan
Aiming to head off wholesale layoffs, IRS and its employee union have negotiated an agreement to provide buyouts and voluntary job reassignments. IRS will eliminate 2,371 jobs, IRS spokeswoman Jodi Patterson said, including 819 in information systems. The agreement will provide employees who volunteer to quit or retire with one-time payments of up to $25,000, depending years of service, according to National Treasury Employees Union officials.
Unix, Windows NT inch toward common platform ground
The gap between Unix and Windows NT continues to shrink, thanks to new products aimed at that divide. The growing acceptance of Windows NT in the marketplace is pushing from the other side, as well. We all know that since April 3, 1996, federal agencies have not been allowed to buy operating systems that do not meet Posix.2 requirements. Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT meets only Posix.1 requirements. Into this gap has stepped Softway Systems Inc.
Fed intranetworks
One thing you can count on in the next several years is fast growth in the on-line exchange of data among federal, state and local government agencies. We recently reported on a Social Security Administration project to swap data on line with state agencies [GCN, Oct. 21, Page 12]. SSA has been trading data for years with states. But it has done so in batch mode. Now it's updating the technical approach, starting with Tennessee.
Why Internet domain registry has so much outdated information
The main database that tracks registration information for Internet domain names is loaded with seriously outdated information. InterNIC, the Internet Network Information Center that coordinates domain name registration, requires domain name holders to provide an administrative and a technical contact for every assigned domain, plus telephone numbers and e-mail addresses for the contacts. The information is supposed to be confirmed or updated whenever a domain name is renewed. That renewal comes once every two years
A single DMS mail network is still 10 years off
Don't look for all Defense Department and CIA users to use the Defense Message System on a single network until around 2007. Although DOD managers once expected an integrated DMS to be fully operational by 2000, they now say security concerns will force them to operate three message networks for at least the next five years and probably longer.
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