The battery battle between lithium-ion and zinc air begins
My previous column [GCN, Aug. 26, Page 55] looked at lithium-ion batteries, the most popular batteries in the notebook market. A new lithium-based technology called lithium polymer promises twice as much power per pound, but with half the expected lifetime. LiP batteries will last only about 10 percent as long as nicads before you must replace them. At the moment, that doesn't seem appropriate for most portable computing.
Humvee-mounted comm system delivers ATM to the battlefield
FORT BRAGG, N.C.--Mount an asynchronous transfer mode switch and a C-band satellite antenna on a Humvee, and what do you get? Along with fiber-optic communications to the front lines, you see a glimpse into the future of battlefield information systems. The eighth Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID), here last month, showcased mobile multimedia communications to the front lines. AT&T Corp. and Wheat International Communications Corp. of Vienna, Va., linked displays here with Fort Gordon, Ga.,
Federal Prison Industries has unfair advantage
THE BELTWAY AND BEYOND Stephen Ryan Most Americans would instinctively recoil from the notion that our citizens should compete with prison labor from China. What few people seem to know is that the U.S. government also uses prison labor to compete with private industry, a practice that has cost the jobs of thousands of law-abiding American workers.
Well-planned firewall serves up more than security for net users
I've recently talked with several network managers who are reading up on, and shopping around for, turnkey Internet firewall servers. Their sudden interest is directly related to the latest crop of World Wide Web page authoring software. Let's take a look at how one has influenced the other, then see why a firewall-server combo could be a good solution for small- to medium-sized government offices.
Agencies' technology buying reflexes are faster than ever
The government no longer waits six months or a year before buying new kinds of hardware and software, an exclusive Government Computer News survey shows. With more than a third of government respondents running Windows 95 and almost nine out of 10 accessing the World Wide Web, it's clear that the government is hip to the latest and greatest.
Consider the weight and stamina of a notebook contender
A power user isn't necessarily the one who has the fastest computer. Sometimes it's the user who makes the most of what's available. Sometimes it indicates someone who uses computers a whole lot, which brings us to the subject of portables. Despite the flood of multimedia Pentium notebooks with their ever-climbing clock speeds, the fact is that many users do exactly the same work on notebooks that they do on desktop PCs--spreadsheet calculations and lots
Employee claims GSA owes him a million bucks
A General Services Administration employee is trying to get the agency to pay him around $1 million that he claims he earned in an employee suggestion program. Salvatore D. Ales, a GSA contracting specialist, has filed a grievance against agency officials, saying they owe him a cash award for devising a price negotiation tactic that saved the government millions of dollars on its FTS 2000 contracts.
How to win friends and influence people: Create a diversion
After a mandated three-day stress management course with a local Zen master, the Rat returned to his office and found a cryptic note: "What is the sound of one LAN crashing?" The great thing about mandated stress management training is that it gives you plenty to manage when you come back. With a network dying of congestive router failure and packets being sent off never to return, the Rat rolled up his sleeves and waded
GSBCA quietly ends reign as protest venue
There was no final information technology protest rush at the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals. Laptops Inc. filed the final protest with the board six days before GSBCA closed its doors to IT bid protests. If the case proceeds along a normal course, the protest of a Census Bureau solicitation for notebook computers as overly restrictive will be the final decision issued by the board, GSBCA staff said.
200-Mhz Compaq Desktop can compete with some of the best
In its entry-level Deskpro 2000, Compaq Computer Corp. has a winner. The GCN Lab received an early unit just off the production line. It came with a 200-MHz Pentium CPU and 32M of extended-data-out RAM but lacked the eight-speed CD-ROM drive that's available on other Deskpros for about $249 extra.
Give a little
No matter how hard it tries, the Clinton administration can't get widespread support for its key escrow encryption policy. In its revision of what has become a cup full of bitter dregs, the administration offered these sweeteners: a slight loosening of export restrictions on high-end crypto products, a ceding to crypto users of the choice of who holds the disencryption keys in escrow, and no imposition of a particular crypto algorithm.
Appeals ruling puts EBT project in limbo
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Treasury Department improperly awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to Citibank to provide electronic benefits transfer services in eight southeastern states. The decision, handed down Aug. 13, reverses a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that upheld Treasury's use of a noncompetitive invitation for expressions of interest (IEI) for selecting an EBT services contractor [GCN Sept. 18, 1995, Page 72].
Be smart: Show up at a hearing if GAO asks you to attend
A recent decision by the General Accounting Office underscores the perils of hiring former government employees. And that is not the only lesson it teaches. The case is Guardian Technologies International (B-270213.2, Feb. 10, 1996, 96-1, CPD 104). The protest concerned an FBI contract awarded to Progressive Technologies of America Inc. for "armor load bearing vests," aka bulletproof vests.
Enlist newsgroups to circulate procurement information
With all its resources and management attention, why has FACNET, the Federal Acquisition Network, been so slow to get going? Perhaps the delay is the result of a major conceptual flaw. Although there has been talk about using the Internet, FACNET has adopted a traditional network, rather than internetwork, paradigm. FACNET implementers appear to see the Internet as a low-cost, limited-function, value-added network (VAN).
E-mail,e-mail, bo-bee mail, banana fanna fo fee-mail--e-mail
Does your agency's Internet e-mail system play the name game correctly? As the government's fascination with the World Wide Web builds, it's easy to forget that most real business on the Internet is still conducted via e-mail. It's probably what you miss the most when it goes down. Yet many users ignore a basic warning sign that their mail systems are improperly configured. If you sometimes get mail bounced back to you with the message
Briefing Book
The Defense Information Systems Agency has again reshuffled its deck. William Curtis, formerly deputy director for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence programs (D2), is now deputy director for procurement and logistics (D4). The new D2 is Diann McCoy, who most recently was deputy commander of the Center for Computer Systems Engineering. Joanne Arnette, previously McCoy's deputy, has taken over in an acting capacity.
Going for gold in information policy olympics
National governments compete at many levels and for many different purposes. The recently completed Olympic Games illustrates one type of competition among nations. Countries also compete more continuously over economic advantage, political influence, military power and moral leadership. Each country is better at some activities than at others. This is true in the information policy arena as well, where international comparisons become common as information travels across borders with increasing ease. If we view information
Electronic data interchange hits a home run
Veterans Affairs and Treasury have come in ahead of the other civilian departments with an electronic data interchange system that pays VA vendors $4 billion a year through electronic funds transfer. The EDI payment interface between the two departments' financial systems took more than a year and a lot of teamwork to build. "We got in each other's backyard and played ball till we found out how they hit it," VA systems accountant Rick Stauffer
Gate your network with a firewall to keep out Net threats
Today's buzzword among security-conscious government computer professionals is ""firewall.'' If your agency has an Internet connection, I hope there's a firewall between your desktop computer and the outside world. If not, some hacker probably acts as your pseudo-network administrator. A firewall really is nothing more than software or hardware to define and control network access to inside computers from outside computers. It's a one-way gateway (or router) that watches everything going in or out.
For better grade in final exam on 2000, study up
Don't let the House's recent tough grading of agency plans for dealing with year 2000 systems fixes get you down. Instead, seek help available from government sources. If the grades handed out last month by Rep. Steve Horn (R-Calif.) are any indication--only four based on a survey of 24 agencies--federal organizations need a hand identifying and planning conversion work for code upgrades to handle dates when Jan. 1, 2000 rolls around.
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