| Security certification rules could shake up IT management |
| 06/25/2008 OMB requirements for professional security certification for IT workers in civilian agencies could have a major impact on how government recruits, trains and manages IT staffs.
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| NIST revises IT security guides |
| 06/30/2008 The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released final revisions to three of its 800 series of special publications on information technology security.
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| Patch fixes antivirus glitch in XP |
| 07/02/2008 Hot fix for Windows XP Service Pack 3 "could resolve" a Windows registry corruption problem associated with third-party security software. |
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| William Jackson | The FISMA paradigm |
| 06/30/2008 Cybereye—commentary: Security policies remain a burden to federal IT managers, but they are producing results.
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| Spreadsheeting to the max |
| The spreadsheet is more versatile than you might think. Here are tips on how to get more out of your programs.
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| Vista SP1 'update' issued |
| 06/26/2008 Three months after the initial release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft has issued what it calls a "reliability update" to sweep out any glitches that may pop up in a complex stack of applications on the new OS version. |
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| Indian Affairs Web site reconnected |
| 06/27/2008 After years of litigation requiring its links to be disconnected, the Bureau of Indian Affairs Web page is available online.
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| Data breaches up, but not in government sector |
| 07/01/2008 Reported data breaches increased sharply in 2008, but the percentage of breaches in the government sector has dropped steadily in the past three years.
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| Copyright Office opens Web portal for online registrations |
| 06/26/2008 The U.S. Copyright Office is opening up a new online portal intended to help the office move from a paper-based to electronic processing environment. |
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| Right to the edge |
| 08/13/2007 GCN Lab Review | As Windows Vista and some new applications create opportunities for split-screen work, you might want to think again about large LCD monitors. |
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| Speed 'n' distance |
| GCN Lab Reviews:The 802.11n standard isn’t yet final, but 4 devices show what it can do. |
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| SSA's upgrade paves way for IPv6 |
| Agencies have until June 30 to meet the Office of Management and Budget’s mandate to get their network backbones ready to handle IPv6 traffic. The Social Security Administration achieved that goal six months ago. |
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| User supervision |
| 11/16/2007 GCN Lab Review: Web-content-filtering appliances can keep your employees away from unwanted sites. |
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| Va. DMV excavates backlog |
| 11/03/2006 New document imaging system improves efficiency, access. |
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| FAA on TARGETS to speed aircraft departures |
| 06/26/2008 Federal Aviation Administration uses Terminal Area Route Generation Evaluation and Traffic Simulation tool to decrease the time needed to publish Area Navigation procedures. |
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| Get smart with your data |
| State, Coast Guard, FDA put business intelligence to work.
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| Trust Digital mobile security meets DISA specs |
| 06/27/2008 Trust Digital 's smartphone security software client meets the latest updates to the Defense Information Systems Agency’s wireless Security Technical Implementation Guide for Windows Mobile Messaging Wireless E-mail Systems. |
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| Is it Live or WebEx? |
| 07/31/2005 Being a lab reviewer entails a lot of meetings, sometimes three or four a week, with companies that have new products they want to demonstrate. |
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| VMware pioneers decoupled dynamic analysis |
| 06/26/2008 Researchers at VMware have pioneered a novel technique in dynamic analysis, one that separates the running program from the analysis tool, by use of virtual containers.
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| DHS taps Battelle for $500M biodefense job |
| 12/20/2006 DHS has announced that it has awarded a contract to Battelle National Biodefense Institute to manage and operate a new biodefense analysis center at Fort Detrick. |
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| You are naked without it |
| 08/13/2007 GCN Lab review | Antivirus programs seek and destroy malicious code waiting to pounce on remote systems. |
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| Getting data silos under control |
| 08/06/2007 Master data management is an emerging technique for organizing silos of information. But it’s only part of the solution — agencies still need efficient guiding principles for handling their data. |
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| Report: IE is least-patched browser |
| More than 40 percent of Internet surfers don't use browsers with up-to-date security
patches—and Internet Explorer users are the biggest culprits. |
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| A tablet (PC) that's easy to swallow |
| GCN Lab Review: The Motion Computing F5’s semi-rugged design, good performance and security features suit it for the field.
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| Medium-range backup |
| GCN Lab reviews: When you need a terabyte or less of extra storage, external hard drives answer the call.
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| Internet2 opens HOV lanes |
| Cover story: Energy’s ESnet supports collaborative research with on-demand, optical paths Internet2 opens HOV lanes.
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| Symantec compliance suite offers end-to-end automation |
| 06/27/2008 Control Compliance Suite 9.0 software is designed to help automate key IT governance, risk and compliance initiatives.
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| Lauri Almann | Lessons from the cyberattacks on Estonia |
| GCN Interview: Estonia’s permanent undersecretary of Defence talks about the lessons learned from last year’s cyberattacks on the country’s networks and what every country can do to protect against similar attacks.
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| High-speed Internet access for all |
| 06/24/2008 InternetforEveryone.org formed to unite Internet users, content creators and innovators to foster universal high-speed Internet access.
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| NIST math text gets digital makeover |
| 07/01/2008 NIST rewrites one of its best-sellers, the “Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs and Mathematical Tables,” and puts it into an interactive digital format. |
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| Judgment day for Windows XP |
| 06/24/2008 The bells are tolling for the venerable operating system, with a few exceptions.
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| Zoho issues iPhone 2.0 version of mobile suite |
| 06/26/2008 Zoho has announced a new version of iZoho, a mobile version of the company’s browser-based office productivity suite, to coordinate with the launch of iPhone 2.0. |
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| Most network data sits untouched |
| 07/01/2008 We are too busy writing new data to go back over old data; organizations might consider moving old data to slower, less expensive storage units. |
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| FBI shake-up puts IT as a principal priority |
| 05/29/2002 As part of a massive shake-up of the FBI, director Robert Mueller announced today that a technology upgrade program is one of the agency’s Top 10 priorities. |
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| Wi-Fi Detective uncovers hidden world |
| 06/20/2008 The Wi-Fi Detective from StarTech.com puts an end to the laptop-balancing act. You just turn it on, stick it in your pocket, go for a walk and detect accessible Wi-Fi signals.
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| North Carolina puts out a net for tracking diseases |
| 03/31/2006 The North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiological Collection Tool is an example of the kind of biosurveillance system that the federal Health and Human Services Department is looking for as part of its early use of health IT.
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| Editor's Desk | Rep. Wolf's warning on cybersecurity |
| Rep. Frank Wolf disclosed that computers in his office and several others on Capitol Hill had been targeted in 2006 and 2007 by hackers using computers that investigators traced to China. |
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| Who’s got the time? |
| As computer systems become increasingly precise, a conflict emerges between human and machine measurements.
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| Air Force tests new broadband IT |
| 06/23/2008 The Air Force's Cyber Command sponsored tests of the Tactical Targeting Network Technology for air-to-ground broadband communications. |
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| Tom Simmons | Virtualization and the greening of IT |
| GCN Interview: Tom Simmons, area vice president of federal systems at Citrix Systems, which offers virtualization technology, spoke recently with GCN about the challenges and opportunities of green IT. |
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| Turning spreadsheets into business intelligence tools |
| Still can't quite get your spreadsheet to do what you want it to do? Here are some add-ons that can help.
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| Hacking Bluetooth |
| 10/05/2005 Fact: Having your name and number in Paris Hilton’s cell phone directory is like openly publishing them on the Web. |
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| The return of Ada |
| Thought to be obsolete, DOD’s programming language could be just the thing to address software validation and verification.
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| Forecast for July: Mostly sunny, 100% chance of spam |
| 07/02/2008 Spam volumes have been on the decline, but they are still double what they were at this time last year. |
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| Ghost with the most |
| 08/27/2007 GCN Lab Review | The latest version of Norton Ghost gets a lot friendlier, while still performing first-rate backup and image restoration.
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| Spreadsheeting: More resources |
| Links to resource pages for WordPerfect Office, OpenOffice, Google Docs and Microsoft Excel, as well as speadsheet design guidance. |
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| A movable feast of computing |
| GCN Lab review: The laptop-like Raptor 4 is actually a portable server with impressive power and features.
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| Liberty Alliance issues guidelines for standardized identity assurance, privacy controls |
| 06/23/2008 Identity Assurance Framework and Identity Governance Framework are aimed at driving identity system policy to better manage identity relationships and define how privacy is being protected in information technology enterprises. |
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| Voltaire plans 40-Gbps switch |
| 06/26/2008 Voltaire is planning to develop a 40-gigabits per second/quad data rate switching platform based on the InfiniBand InfiniScale IV switch silicon announced by Mellanox.
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| Mercury Computer pitches game processor for military use |
| 03/17/2006 Although now chiefly known as the next-generation chip that will power the Sony PlayStation, the Cell processor may pick up additional duties in the U.S. military. Defense embedded systems vendor Mercury Computer Systems Inc. has incorporated the processor in a number of new blade servers and embedded units. |
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| Microsoft advisory targets SQL injection attacks |
| 06/25/2008 Security advisory issued after discovery of an escalation in a class of attacks that target Web sites. |
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| Panasonic Toughbook boasts Atom chip |
| 06/25/2008 Panasonic today unveiled the Toughbook CF-U1, the first ultramobile PC to integrate the new Intel Atom processor in a rugged handheld computer.
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| MassHousing adds new MapInfo tool |
| 06/27/2008 Massachusetts’ Housing Finance Agency is using the software to incorporate location analysis into its existing apps to monitor and analyze enterprise data. |
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| Survey: Microsoft patches ignored |
| 06/24/2008 The results of an online test conducted by one antivirus firm indicate that more often than not, PC users don't install Microsoft's monthly patches. |
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| San Francisco tests intelligent transportation IT |
| 07/01/2008 Partnership between federal, state transportation departments will test various technology apps designed to reduce gridlock and improve safety and service. |
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| OpenOffice offers macro alternative |
| The developers behind the open-source OpenOffice, and its commercial offshoot Sun Microsystems StarOffice, have been working on a spreadsheet alternative, called Extensions. OpenOffice Extensions are programs written to run within OpenOffice that customize the office suite.
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| Cybereye | 911 system in need of help |
| Commentary: New digital IP communications are replacing traditional public-switched telephone networks, which are not equipped to use the communications tools many of us take for granted.
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| Databases of operation |
| GCN Lab review: Personal databases have never been particularly easy to use, but they are powerful tools that can help you make better use of your data. The Lab tests four products to see which are worth the steep learning curve. |
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| Cybercrooks going after the euros |
| A supposed hacker is attempting to extort 10,000 euros from EU banks in exchange for stolen credit card information on 48,000 accounts.
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| ExpressBox offers four PCI slots |
| 06/27/2008 ExpressBox4 provides a simple, cost-effective way for users to expand the available PCI Express slots of PCs, servers and laptops.
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| Spreadsheet tips for Corel Quattro |
| Users of Corel Quattro, included in the company's Word Perfect office suite, can enjoy some capabilities not even found in Microsoft Excel. |
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| Michael Bechetti | Technical Difficulties |
| This week's editorial cartoon. |
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| New mini drive from Ridata |
| 07/02/2008 Advanced Media Inc. announces availability of the Ridata Single Layer Cell 2.5-inch IDE Ultra-S. |
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| On Internet2, the future is fast-forward |
| The Energy Department’s Energy Sciences Network is growing with increased bandwidth demands. The latest generation of the network, ESnet4, is a 100 gigabits/sec optical network; DOE has projected that it would require 200 gigabits/sec by 2014. |
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| NIST mulls algorithm for disk encryption |
| New algorithm has been submitted to the National Institute of Standards and Technology as a new mode of operation for the Advanced Encryption Standard. |
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| GCN Best of Fose winners named |
| 04/02/2008 The results are in from the annual competition designating the best new products showcased at the annual FOSE Conference and Exposition.
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| The numerator |
| Here is a list of the cell phones that leaked the most—and the least—radio frequency energy based on their specific (body) absorption rate. |
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| R. Fink | Into the wild blog yonder |
| The Packet Rat—commentary: The cyberrodent is going totally electronic and will deliver his raw, unfiltered snark directly through his blog at thepacketrat.com. |
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| Acrobat 9 with Flash |
| 07/01/2008 New version of Acrobat PDF editor enables Flash animations, audio and business logic to be inserted in PDF documents.
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| Special Report | Computer forensics: The new DNA |
| 08/01/2006 Within a week of discovering computer equipment in the bombed-out safehouse of slain terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out more than 450 raids targeting followers of al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq. The vital information that led to the military action came from the Defense Department’s growing ability to uncover and comprehend information stored on everything from disk drives and cell phones to personal digital assistants and Global Positioning System equipment. |
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| Vulnerability found in new Firefox browser |
| 06/19/2008 Vulnerability is a critical one that an attacker could exploit to execute arbitrary code on the compromised computer.
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| A tale of 3 cities |
| 09/11/2006 COOP, COG and the alphabet of 9/11: How Arlington, Va., New York City and St. Louis changed their application of technology. |
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| Dell M209X ultraportable projector |
| GCN Lab review: This is a a tiny projector that can hang tough with the big boys. |
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| Mobile applications gain ground |
| Developer-friendly platforms help produce programs that take advantage of what smart phones can do.
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| InfiniBand integrated into HP BladeSystem |
| 07/01/2008 Mellanox Technologies' 20-Gbps InfiniBand adapters and switch product technology now provides unified input/output (I/O) fabric in the Hewlett-Packard BladeSystem for Oracle Optimized Warehouse. |
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| NAS puts data within easy reach |
| 10/18/2001 How do you give thousands of users immediate access to large files without bogging down network servers? That’s one of an IT manager’s greatest challenges. |
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| The year of virtualization |
| 01/09/2008 Sure, it lets you do more with less, but it’s not easy. Here’s what you need to know
if you’re going to take the plunge. |
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| Symantec Endpoint Management Suite |
| 06/25/2008 Symantec releases new Endpoint Management Suite, which provides integrated systems management, endpoint security and backup and recovery. |
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| Microsoft issues protocol documentation |
| 07/01/2008 The update is part of Microsoft's effort to make it easier for developers to write applications that can work with Microsoft's products. |
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| Army awards Defense Knowledge Online contract |
| 03/14/2007 The Army has awarded a task order worth up to $267 million to Northrop Grumman Corp. to develop Defense Knowledge Online, the project to consolidate all military-service portals. |
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| Ticket masters |
| Technicalities: Anyone worried about the Real ID Act might take note of China’s idea for Olympic security.
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| DHS plans major data fusion project |
| 09/08/2006 The Intelligence and Information Fusion system will provide the Homeland Security Department with an integrated intelligence and information capability.
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| Avoiding Outlook’s twilight zone |
| 06/20/2008 Outlook is utterly dependent on the operating system for knowing what time it is. Microsoft Windows gets the Universal Coordinated Time from the Internet and offsets that time to the time zone the user sets, while also adjusting for any daylight saving time if necessary. |
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| OSD delves into HR archiving |
| The Office of Personnel and Readiness Information Management at the Defense Department has learned to save time and money by digitizing frequently consulted documents. |
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| PDF now ISO standard |
| 07/03/2008 And Adobe Systems releases Version 9 of Adobe Reader. |
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| USPTO does its homework |
| 2008 GCN Technology Leadership Award winner Deborah Diaz helps give agency’s teleworkers the tools to collaborate.
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| Widgets to the rescue |
| USASearch.gov aims to make agency info easier to find with new spotlight tool.
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| The new weakest links |
| Web apps are rife with small vulnerabilities that can open the door to big trouble. Thinking like a hacker can help you find them.
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| The advantage of online spreadsheets |
| At the Fose trade show in April, David Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google Enterprise, wowed attendees by demonstrating a few of the advanced features of the spreadsheet in Google Docs, Google’s online office suite.
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| Computer stolen from VA subcontractor, Unisys |
| 08/07/2006 (UPDATED) The Veterans Affairs Department today confirmed that a subcontractor, Unisys Corp., had informed the department that a desktop computer containing sensitive personal information of veterans is missing from the company’s offices.
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| Winged migration |
| 06/02/2007 Software for standard configurations can speed the switch to Vista — and make OMB happy, too. |
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| Drive time |
| 08/06/2007 SPECIAL REPORT | DARPA’s Grand Challenge moves downtown, where teams will test their vehicles against city traffic.
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| Virginia’s data centers pass a test |
| Newly consolidated centers return quickly in simulated disaster.
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| Voting machine makers blast EAC certification program |
| 06/19/2008 An election industry trade group has called for a revamping of the voting system certification process now administered by the federal Election Assistance Commission.
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| USPS picks Verizon for Networx tasks |
| The largest order is for long distance and calling card voice services for the 166,000 telephone lines serving 34,000 USPS locations; company also will upgrade about 100 data circuits to an IP multiprotocol label switching network. |
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| Linux developers condemn binary drivers |
| 06/23/2008 A group of developers has signed a statement condemning binary-only Linux modules, which they argue can wreak havoc on Linux deployments. |
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| DFAS’ MyPay catches on—retirees excepted |
03/24/2004 The Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s online MyPay system has grown to 2.6 million users in just four years but is still encountering resistance from military retirees.
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| Iowa City gets broadband boost |
| 06/16/2008 Verizon Wireless pushed up the introduction of its broadband wireless service to provide high-speed Internet access for public safety agencies battling floods. |
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| Virtual Directory Server 5.0 |
| 06/30/2008 Latest release of RadiantOne Virtual Directory 5.0 Server simplifies deployment of ID integration. |
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| A home connection |
| 07/03/2008 Troops in Iraq receive free Internet access for Independence Day. |
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| How to stop a service denial attack before it stops you |
| 06/29/2001 It’s not easy to defend a federal Web server against distributed service denial attacks, but it’s not impossible either. |
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