Government Computer News
Government Computer News
is a trade publication for U.S. government information technology (IT) workers.
For GCN, I
cover the technical aspects of pretty much all forms of IT,
both software and hardware. Stories are published in a bi-monthly magazine
and posted online. GCN is currently owned by
1105 Media.
Databases:
A new patching strategy for Oracle:
Unfeasible to patch everything right away
(Online),
2009-05-20.
Why go relational?
Alternatives to relational databases
(Feature),
2008-09-30.
Fast times in database research:
In-memory databases
(News Story),
2007-05-30.
XQuery hits its stride:
The XML database
(Tech Brief),
2007-01-05.
Tom Kyte | The database comes alive!
Answers about the Oracle database
(Q&A),
2005-08-10.
Beyond the database giants:
Open source databases
(Feature),
2005-04-14.
Database misconceptions:
Interview with Fabian Pascal, database gadfly
(Q&A),
2004-09-22.
Researchers switch databases, just short of a petabyte :
DOE goes with an object database
(Case Study),
2004-06-30.
Electronic Forms:
Paper Cut:
XML e-forms empty the in-box
(Feature),
2006-09-16.
Hardware:
Recrunching the numbers of Mac procurement:
Comparing Mac and PC costs, again
(Blog Entry),
2009-03-18.
Macs go to work:
Apples in the Federal space
(Feature),
2009-02-19.
With hardware, buyer beware:
Counterfeit Cisco gear
(Sidebar),
2008-10-03.
When it pays to buy used:
Used equipment
(Feature),
2008-10-03.
Taking the desert by storm:
Putting a military-hardened laptop through the paces at Burning Man
(Feature),
2008-01-18.
Express bus:
The coming of PCIe 2
(Tech Brief),
2007-02-05.
FPGAs face the music:
Filed programmable gate arrays
(Blog Entry),
2006-11-21.
Eng Lim Goh | SGI's memory of the future:
Interview with SGI CTO
(Q&A),
2006-09-05.
Pimp my Dell:
(Tech Brief),
2006-08-22.
Ram On:
The new DDR2 memory
(Tech Brief),
2006-04-13.
DARPA develops portable atomic clock:
Never differs more than 0.0000001 seconds from the Coordinated Universal Time
(Online News Story),
2004-03-17.
Army commissions flexible displays:
(Online News Story),
2003-11-17.
Miscellaneous:
Beyond the merely functional:
Considerations of design in IT
(Blog Entry),
2009-01-22.
Who's got the time?
The difficulty of managing time on computers
(Feature),
2008-06-20.
That's ISO not I-S-O:
ISO is not an acronym
(Blog Entry),
2007-12-13.
The new power skills of sysadmins:
What needs to be on your resume
(Blog Entry),
2007-07-11.
Will your best work be remembered?
The forgotten history of technology
(Blog Entry),
2007-06-15.
Parsing the computer show:
How a computer flea market reveals IT pricing at work
(Blog Entry),
2007-04-21.
IP address exposed anonymous mudslinger:
You can't hide behind a Yahoo mail account
(Blog Entry),
2006-11-01.
User group etiquette 101 :
Planning the perfect user-group meeting
(Blog Entry),
2006-05-01.
USDA Grad School: Unix out, Windows in:
Studying the IT curriculum.
(Blog Entry),
2006-04-16.
Deconstructing the Oracle-SAP ads:
Technical catfight between software titans
(Blog Entry),
2006-03-31.
Whither research:
DOE's Advanced Technology Program
(News Story),
2005-03-30.
The great PeopleSoft migration:
What should agencies be thinking as they consider life after PeopleSoft? Move to Oracle, or jump ship?
(Feature),
2005-03-02.
Making software that's immortal:
Interview with Dan Bricklin, Co-inventor of the spreadsheet
(Q&A),
2004-12-04.
DARPA takes aim at IT sacred cows:
Rethinking the von Neumann architecture
(Online News Story),
2004-03-11.
Putting play to work:
Agencies find creative new uses for online games
(Case Study),
2004-02-20.
Multimedia:
Tape is dead... at least for audio:
Presevation techniques of the Library of Congress
(Tech Brief),
2006-04-17.
Is This Thing On?
Agencies are embracing podcasting as a low-cost way to deliver audio content to citizens
(Feature),
2005-09-05.
Lights, camera, capture:
With agencies' use of digital video on the rise, new standards make for better data management
(Feature),
2005-01-16.
Networks:
IPv4 addresses almost gone:
No more IPv4 addresses available after 2011, ARIN predicts
(Online news story),
2009-11-06.
Navy field-tests network common operational picture service:
What router failure can affect mission-readiness
(Online),
2009-05-12.
FutureFlex tubes for fiber optics:
The underground world of fiber conduits
(Chart),
2009-04-06.
Ethernet gets twisted:
Mellanox's twisted-pair 10GBase-T controller could fuse application and storage networks.
(Tech Brief),
2008-12-20.
InfiniBand goes the distance:
InfiniBand beats TCP/IP over a dedicated WAN, government researchers find.
(Online News Story),
2008-12-23.
Getting more from your IPv6:
Not just about address space
(Tech Brief),
2008-11-14.
Static routing at the office:
Virtual LANs
(Tech Brief),
2008-05-02.
IETF douses IPv4:
Test run of IPv6
(Blog Entry),
2008-03-19.
Karen Evans, OMB:
The straight story on OMB's Internet connection policy
(Q&A),
2008-01-03.
Spread the wealth:
Montgomery County Maryland invests in fiber
(Case Study),
2007-10-07.
Expanding Ethernet:
iWarp Ethernet cuts latency
(Tech Brief),
2007-01-08.
The competitive world of HPC interconnects:
Is Infiniband really faster than Ethernet?
(Feature),
2006-03-03.
VPN pays off for the Army:
Maintaining slot machines
(Case Study),
2004-02-20.
FEMA says power line broadband threatens its radio system:
Possible disruptions from the broadband over power line technology
(Online News Story),
2003-12-17.
Open Source:
Why Linux Administrators Should Consider OpenSolaris:
Interview with Harry Foxwell, OpenSolaris advocate
(Q&A),
2009-07-27.
GSA makes the case for open source:
How the General Services Administration uses open source software
(Blog Entry),
2008-04-16.
Can open source survive Congress?
New legislation
(Blog Entry),
2008-09-29.
Font libre!
Red Hat backs open source fonts
(Tech Brief),
2007-09-21.
Mass retreat:
Commonwealth steps back from non-proprietary requirement
(Blog Entry),
2007-08-02.
Does FAR include open source?
Government procurement rules clash with open source
(Blog Entry),
2007-07-06.
How many device drivers equals a file system?
Linux community gets ZFS envy
(Blog Entry),
2007-06-15.
That word "open":
Could DoD be spooked about the word "open" in "open source"?
(Blog Entry),
2006-09-15.
Suite stacks:
Open-source software combos challenge conventional views of enterprise software
(Feature),
2006-05-10.
What's in an open-source name?:
Autodesk's opne-source gambit
(Tech Brief),
2006-04-28.
Mono: Good for the Novell desktop:
Introduction to the open source version of .NET
(Blog Entry),
2006-04-04.
The real cost of open source software:
Interview with Jon "Maddog" Hall,
(Q&A),
2005-06-25.
Open for business:
Having grown comfortable buying open-source programs, agencies begin openly publishing their own software code
(Feature),
2005-06-01.
DHS bug hunt returns mixed reaction:
Agency offers vulnerability scan for widely used open-source software, though some project leaders are skeptical of benefits
(News Story),
2006-04-13.
Users of SELinux now have a choice on security :
AppArmor or SELinux
(News Story),
2006-03-16.
Sun targets Red Hat, not Microsoft:
Interview with Jonathan Schwartz, Sun president and CEO
(Q&A),
2005-02-15.
Operating Systems:
The struggle to conform:
The challenge of the Federal Desktop Core Configuration
(Feature),
2008-02-14.
Planning for Longhorn's harvest:
Evaluating Microsoft's new server operating system
(Feature),
2007-07-12.
Is Solaris truly open source?
Corporate versus grass roots open source
(Blog Entry),
2007-06-12.
The OS: Fat or thin?:
The future of the operating system
(Feature),
2007-12-07.
Ready for Y2K7:
The hidden glitch with changing daylight-saving time
(Blog Entry),
2007-01-08.
Vista stack not so new:
OS uses a seasoned TCP stack
(Blog Entry),
2006-12-13.
Vista: Don't overindulge:
Despite vital new features, experts caution agencies to go slowly when rolling out Microsoft's new OS
(Feature),
2006-10-16.
Eclipse: Write Once, use a lot:
Eclipse as a runtime platforms
(Sidebar),
2006-08-22.
Why we don't defrag Unix:
Unix stores files differently than Windows
(Blog Entry),
2006-08-06.
Brian Stevens | Performance boost virtually assured:
Interview with Brian Stevens, Red Hat Inc. chief technology officer
(Q&A),
2005-12-07.
Processors:
Multicore does not mean equal core:
Not all cores perform equally on a multicore chip, researchers find.
(Online News Story),
2008-12-22.
Battle of the low-power chips:
What is powwering the emerging netbook market
(Tech Brief),
2008-06-15.
Locking into Intel's vPro:
How Intel's computer management technology locks in customers
(Blog Entry),
2008-06-06.
DOD tackles multicore computing:
New high performance computing initiative focuses on software
(Sidebar),
2008-01-03.
Multicore challenges:
(Tech Brief),
2006-04-28.
Reconfigurable chips could accelerate HPC:
New systems from Cray, SGI offer performance boost but require expertise
(Feature),
2005-10-19.
Needed: self-configuring networks :
Interview with DARPA's Timothy Gibson
(Q&A),
2004-11-17.
SGI tinkers with hybrid computer architecture:
Scalar and vector on one dye
(Online News Story),
2004-04-05.
Coprocessors could be a supercomputer alternative:
Supercomputer on a PCI card
(Online News Story),
2003-12-26.
Programming Languages:
Does parallel processing require new languages?
Or could existing languages be modified
(Blog Entry),
2009-06-10.
Double duty for video cards:
How GPUs are being reused for hardcore number-crunching
(Blog Entry),
2009-06-10.
Abandon all hope, Oracle Forms developer shops:
Oracle urges a move to Fusion
(Online),
2009-05-13.
Batch processing:
When batch processing still makes sense
(Blog Entry),
2008-05-13.
Fortress does the math:
The modern-day replacement for Fortran
(Blog Entry),
2008-05-06.
Why so many bugs?
The complexity of software programs
(Blog Entry),
2008-10-30.
Java seeking closure on closures:
Is this feature too powerful for most Java programmers?
(Online News Story),
2008-05-08.
The return of ADA:
An old programming language answers today's security woes
(Feature),
2008-04-11.
The prescient Amdahl:
The trick of programming multicore processors
(Blog Entry),
2008-01-09.
Annotating Java in Spring:
Annotations for Java
(Tech Brief),
2007-07-18.
Ruby's easy but Java's quicker:
The appeal of scripting langauges does not include speed
(Blog Entry),
2007-06-20.
Eclipse vs. NetBeans:
Which IDE is best for Java?
(Blog Entry),
2007-04-17.
Ruby won't trump Java:
Experts say...
(Tech Brief ),
2006-10-04.
Raising kids and building Perl:
Larry Wall's 2006 State-of-the-Onion speech
(Blog Entry),
2006-09-29.
Software's total Eclipse:
NASA, others find the open-source Eclipse development program is a working foundation for apps
(Feature),
2006-08-22.
Don't say J2EE:
Java Enterprise Edition renamed
(Tech Brief),
2006-07-20.
Not only the new glitters:
The beauty of the Bash shell
(Blog Entry),
2006-07-10.
Net-centric approach creates a software challenge:
New way of thinking about programming
(News Story),
2004-08-27.
Sun's McNealy: Java won't be open source:
The battle over open sourcing Java
(Online News Story),
2004-03-24.
Search engines:
Programming the search engine:
Google's first venture into semantic search
(Blog Entry),
2007-05-30.
Search and enjoy:
Search companies try new techniques for understanding subtle distinctions within gigantic piles of data
(Feature),
2007-04-27.
Smart search:
Advanced search engines link many data sources
(Feature),
2004-08-20.
Deep Web:
The making of Science.gov
(Case Study),
2004-06-18.
Security:
NIST sets rules for PIV cards:
Computer card for building access
(Tech Brief),
2009-02-09.
SSL certs busted:
European security researchers have demonstrated a weakness
in a hash algorithm widely used for creating digital certificates to
secure Web sites and sign e-mails.
(Online News Story),
2008-12-31.
Security is no secret:
SE Linux and NSA's Flask architecture
(Feature),
2008-07-15.
The new weakest links:
The vulnerabilities of Web applications
(Feature),
2008-06-10.
Sniffing out Passwords on the Web:
Without SSL, it's easier than you'd think
(Sidebar),
2008-06-10.
SNMP not bedeviled after all:
Tech Brief on a security vulnerability
(Blog Entry),
2008-06-20.
The reverse Turing Test:
Using AI to fight spam
(Blog Entry),
2008-05-18.
Is SELinux leveling multi-level security:
Open source takes on trusted computing
(Blog Entry),
2007-11-08.
Is anti-spyware always on your side?
Who owns your computer?
(Blog Entry),
2007-07-20.
Assessing firmware vulnerability:
Devices are the new security threat
(Blog Entry),
2007-03-01.
Snag in secure Solaris:
Migration from Trusted Solaris could be problematic
(Blog Entry),
2007-01-19.
A cheap trick from the security vendors?
Does Microsoft PatchGuard cross the line?
(Blog Entry),
2006-10-09.
PGP challenges disk wiping study:
What PGP software erases--and what it doesn't
(Blog Entry),
2006-09-22.
Disk cleansing 102:
Disk cleaners that don't do what they should
(Tech Brief),
2006-08-23.
Controlled Chaos:
Homeland Security's R&D branch has been attacking its own test networks to help prevent future cyberattacks.
(Feature),
2005-08-25.
Sun to discontinue Trusted Solaris:
In favor of Trusted Extensions
(Online News Story),
2005-10-06.
Social Networking:
Twitter takes wing:
among govies
(Feature),
2009-04-20.
Tweeting 101:
The basics of Twitter
(Blog Entry),
2009-04-14.
Twitter tools:
Tweeting made even easier
(Sidebar),
2009-04-16.
Intellipedia suffers midlife crisis:
Service wants formal commitment from intell agencies
(Online News Story),
2009-02-18.
Working knowledge:
The origins of Intellipedia
(Feature),
2008-10-20.
Social networks hold the keys to your network:
The security dangers of Facebook et al
(Blog Entry),
2008-01-24.
Microformats get real:
The value of tightly-defined datasets
(Blog Entry),
2007-01-15.
Wikipedia comes clean quick:
Self-correcting behavior
(Blog Entry),
2006-10-28.
Wiki: The Etymology:
A talk with Wiki pioneer Ward Cunnigham
(Q&A),
2006-08-22.
The amazing Wikis:
Introduction to the wonders of Wiki
(Feature),
2006-08-16.
Running a Wiki:
Evaluating a Wiki for wicked purposes
(Sidebar),
2006-08-16.
Storage:
Towns host each other's recovery data:
The combo of fiber optics, virtualization and SANs make for a flexible backup plan, two Tennessee towns learn
(Online news story),
2009-11-10.
The bottom line of solid-state storage:
Going all-digital for data storage
(Feature),
2009-06-29.
Mirroring is not backup; backup is not archiving:
Get your backup plan in place.
(Blog Entry),
2009-01-06.
Prefetching saves time, energy:
USENIX study on hard drive prefetching
(Online News Story),
2008-07-08.
Most network data sits untouched:
Study shows how data is accessed over time
(Online News Story),
2008-07-01.
NSA aims for secure access to storage:
Flask applied to NFS.
(Tech Brief),
2008-03-14.
Linux stratification:
Not keeping the OSI levels separated
(Blog Entry),
2007-05-08.
DVDs, we hardly knew ya....:
Blu-ray or HD-DVD
(Sidebar),
2006-03-17.
The little cable that could:
Serial ATA disks
(Feature),
2005-07-12.
NASA, we have cheap storage:
The appeal of iSCSI storage
(Feature),
2005-05-18.
NIST expert: Don't max out DVD disks:
Leave 10 percent empty for safety
(Online News Story),
2005-03-18.
Start-up debuts holographic storage device:
Two terabytes on a disc
(Online News Story),
2005-03-10.
Brookhaven deploys virtual tape backup system:
Sepaton tape arrays
(Online News Story),
2004-08-26.
Data to go:
ATF gives field agents "mobile workplace" with DVDs
(Case Study),
2004-06-18.
Supercomputing:
Sandia supercomputer boots a million virtual machines:
Work to provide foundation for studying botnets
(Online News Story),
2009-08-04.
The fastest computers are going hybrid:
The shift in supercomputer architecture
(Tech Brief),
2008-12-15.
What coders can learn from supercomputing:
The Message Passing Interface
(Sidebar),
2008-01-03.
A benchmark of its own:
Defense Department's own metrics for high-performance computing
(Feature),
2007-08-07.
Super models:
Energy puts its power to use on high-resolution modeling programs
(Feature),
2007-02-04.
Top500.org: Clock rate is dead:
A different kind of processing
(Blog Entry),
2006-11-16.
High speed interconnects:
Interconnect speed is key to high-performance computing
(Feature),
2006-03-03.
What good are DoD's supercomputers?
Study finds high-performance software is lacking
(Feature),
2005-08-05.
The inside story of the Beowulf saga:
Interview with Donald Becker
(Q&A),
2005-04-13.
Which test is best:
The limitations of Linpack
(Feature),
2004-11-17.
How the Navy times its weather forecast computing workload:
Behind every Navy weather forecast is the complex task of coordinating a sea of applications at government weather centers.
(Case Study),
2004-07-29.
System X designers beat the odds:
Interview with Srinidhi Varadarajan, an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute
(Q&A),
2004-07-14.
Web:
GSA to debut link shortener by year's end:
New service built on the Drupal open-source content management system
(Online News Story),
2009-11-05.
The long road to HTML 5:
New version will bring the Web into the modern era—eventually
(Feature),
2009-08-31
10 great government Web sites Round II :
Richer, deeper, more interactive!
(Feature),
2009-07-27.
Google's Chrome browser :
A work-in-progress
(Feature),
2008-09-10.
The Web page as database:
The possibilities provided by XHTML
(Tech Brief),
2008-02-28.
Is the Web losing its edge:
Rich Internet Application platforms proliferate
(Blog Entry),
2007-12-03.
ColdFusion cooling off?
Yesterday's Web authoring software
(Tech Brief),
2007-04-17.
Web analytics go 2.0:
(Tech Brief),
2007-07-23.
e-Gobierno, en Espanol:
As the Hispanic population grows, agencies create separate Web sites to help reach out
(Feature),
2006-10-03.
Is a targeted Web site a good thing?
Web analytics tools give agencies a more precise picture of who is visiting their sites
(Sidebar),
2006-10-03.
Love at first site:
Building an effective Web site
(Feature),
2006-01-18.
Copyright Office catches heat for IE-only Web site:
Non-standards compliant
(Online News Story),
2005-08-25.
Treat that Web content like laundrey:
Separate static pages from dynamic ones
(Online News Story),
2004-04-19.
Park Service turns to animation in the flash:
Flas-based business apps
(Case Study),
2004-02-18.
Web 2.0:
Remixing government data:
Non-profits, citizens resung government data
(Feature),
2009-04-30.
Could government keep pace with Kundra?
New federal CIO ushers in cloud computer, Web 2.0
(Blog Entry),
2009-03-05.
Mashup city:
Washington D.C.'s experiment with technology and the public
(Blog Entry),
2009-02-04.
Molly O'Neill, EPA CIO:
The EPA goes Web 2.0.
(Q&A ),
2008-02-05.
The story behind Ajax:
How this popular Web technology came about
(Blog Entry),
2006-08-03.
Web developer's toolkit:
Agencies adopt latest Web apps
(Feature),
2006-07-12.
E-Rulemaking.com:
Web tools could help populace better form new laws
(Blog Entry),
2006-05-23.
Data scraping, Web 2.0 style:
A talk with ChicagoCrime.org with Adrian Holovaty.
(Blog Entry),
2006-04-16.
Feed the Network:
Agencies catch on to RSS
(Feature),
2004-11-17.
XML:
W3C pulls plug on XHTML 2:
Long live HTML 5
(Online News Story),
2009-07-10.
Slimmer XML is faster XML:
(Blog Entry),
2009-05-05.
Nevada tags financial data:
Using the XBRL extension
(Online),
2009-05-19.
Protesting the angle bracket tax:
XML verbosity
(Blog Entry),
2008-06-11.
Streamlining XML:
Moving XML faster with the EXI framework
(Tech Brief),
2008-02-05.
DITA to that:
A modular approach for training materials
(Tech Brief),
2007-07-05.
Adobe plunges PDF into XML:
Tomorrow's PDFs will be made of XML
(Blog Entry),
2006-12-06.
XML office debate moves to look-and-feel:
Appearance also a factor in data preservation
(Blog Entry),
2006-07-17.
Tim Bray | No easy road to interoperability:
Interview with Tim Bray, director of Web technologies for Sun Microsystems Inc.
(Q&A),
2005-11-01.
SQL vs. XML in a database world:
Interview with Jonathan Robie, XML evangelist
(Q&A),
2005-03-25.
An XML registry is key to sharing data:
Q&A with Owen Ambur
(Q&A),
2005-02-04.
The promise of XML:
Agencies make headway on tagging data but still need description tools
(Feature),
2005-02-04.
OASIS tackles modular documentation:
Work from the Darwin Information Typing Architecture group
(Online News Story),
2004-04-23.
Taxonomy's not just design, it's an art:
Interview with Michael Daconta
(Q&A),
2004-02-03.
Agency taxonomies are a tall order, experts say:
An agency building an enterprisewide taxonomy should expect to see more than a million categories within their design,
(Online News Story),
2004-01-21.
Shopping without dropping:
Defense Department uses ebXML for online store
(Case Study),
2004-01-04.
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