[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RAIN: Holiday Update 12/17/01



There are 18 stories in this posting.

New York Times 12/17/01
A surge in demand to use biometrics
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/technology/17IRIS.html

by Barnaby J. Feder
Seept. 11 created a long-awaited moment for the biometrics industry, which centers on equipment that identifies people by using characteristics thought to be unique to each person, like fingerprints, voice patterns and spacing of facial features.
"We've always said that some event would have to happen to propel the technology to the forefront," said Robert McCashin, chief executive of Identix (news/quote), a leading biometrics company based in Los Gatos, Calif.



Law.com 12/17/01
Another World Trade Center Casualty: Evidence stored by law enforcement agencies
http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=law/View&c=Article&cid=ZZZ1Q2UR8VC&live=true&cst=1&pc=0&pa=0&s=News&ExpIgnore=true&showsummary=0

by Daniel Wise
New York Law Journal
While the nation's attention is riveted on the efforts to recover the remains of more than 3,000 persons who perished in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, federal law enforcement officials are keeping a close eye on the recovery work for a different purpose: to see if criminal evidence stored in the doomed complex can be retrieved.



Boston Globe 12/08/01
Man charged in $2m theft of rare books from Yale
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/342/metro/Man_charged_in_2m_theft_of_rare_books_from_Yale+.shtml

by David Abel
Benjamin Johnson took more from his summer job than most college students, police say.
The 21-year-old from Hamden, Conn., was in court last month on charges he stole $2 million worth of rare books and historic documents from Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where he held a summer job.



Gazette Extra 12/17/01
Counties, municipalities taking to the Web
http://www.gazetteextra.com/muniweb121701.html

AP
MADISON, Wis. -- A survey found many of Wisconsin's county and municipal governments have taken to the Internet with their own Web sites but show a great variety in the information they offer.
A report by the Legislative Audit Bureau found that Green and Vernon counties are the only counties with populations of more than 25,000 people that don't have Web sites.



Christian Science Monitor 12/17/01
Digital cameras: Don't make a snap decision
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1217/p18s1-wmcn.html

by Noel C. Paul
Like many Americans this December, the people of Macedonia, Ohio, are taking a technological leap forward in their holiday gift shopping. Their present of choice: digital cameras.
"They're definitely the hot item this year," says Bill Smoot, manager of the Cord Camera store in this Cleveland suburb, population 9,000.



Network World 12/17/01
Excel's dirty little secret
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/1217excel.html

by John Fontana
REDMOND, WASH. - Microsoft Excel, the predominant spreadsheet in use today, contains a feature that could expose sensitive corporate data once the document is distributed within a company or among trading partners.
That feature is drawing an increased level of attention from researchers and Excel users alike as its implications become more fully understood. One expert calls it "as potentially damaging" as many of the most recent viruses.



Memphis Commercial-Appeal 12/17/01
Tenn. Librarians lobby to save info equalizer
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_911281,00.html

by Wayne Risher
If you can surf the Internet or find your way to a Tennessee public library, you're only a few keystrokes away from an $11,000 information windfall known as the Tennessee Electronic Library (http://www.state.tn.us/sos/statelib/tel/).
For no charge, you can dig into virtual mountains of reference materials - magazines, almanacs, encyclopedias, academic journals, directories - organized by a Michigan-based database publisher.



GovExec.com 12/14/01
Court-ordered blackout leaves Interior employees without Internet, e-mail
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1201/121401h1.htm

by Shane Harris
Interior Department employees have been working without Internet or external e-mail access for more than a week, after a U.S. District Court ordered the agency to take its computers offline.



Federal Computer Week 12/17/01
Pentagon CIO wants NMCI proof
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/1217/web-sten-12-17-01.asp

by Christopher J. Dorobek
The Navy Marine Corps Intranet could be a way to create a more network-centric Defense Department, the DOD chief information officer said, but he stressed that the concept of creating a single technology infrastructure has yet to be proven in practice.



National Journal 12/14/01
Government is loosening its grip on the Internet
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1201/121401nj3.htm

by William New
You might view the Internet as anarchic, a Wild West-style free-for-all. Or maybe you see it as global democracy, a place where all are equal and anyone is welcome. You might also recognize that it's a communications tool controlled by the Commerce Department. But in all of these assumptions, you would be increasingly wrong.



Washington Post 12/17/01
In family's keepsakes, Civil War relics discovered
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46578-2001Dec14.html

by Eugene Scheel
Unknown Civil War documents are always a find, and Virginia Morton, of Culpeper, has uncovered two this year. They came to light after the publication last year of her historical novel, "Marching Through Culpeper," a rarity in this genre as it contains notes and a bibliography. Indeed, although much of the novel's dialogue is Morton's invention, the characters are real, and the narrative accurately describes events and battles.



Network World Fusion 12/17/01
Interwoven steps up classification tool
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/1217interwoven.html

by Jennifer Mears
Interwoven enhanced MetaTagger, its content classification and categorization software, to make it easier for enterprises to organize and reuse unstructured digital data.
MetaTagger 3.0, unveiled last week, is a step up from earlier MetaTagger versions because it can use business rules to automatically extract themes and keywords from data, says Mike Svatek, Interwoven's product manager for MetaTagger 3.0.



Federal Computer Week 12/10/01
IRS takes on old-style paperwork
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/1210/tec-irs-12-10-01.asp

by Judi Hasson
The Internal Revenue Service, which created electronic versions of its most popular tax forms several years ago, has signed a licensing deal for software to scan reams of paper documents into its computer databases in another move to comply with the Government Paperwork Elimination Act of 1998.



Newsbytes 12/17/01
National ID card gaining support
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/173006.html

by Robert O'Harrow Jr and Jonathan Krim
Washington Post
Navy Petty Officer Wellington Jimenez walked into the identification room at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn one day recently and gave his name, rank and fingerprint. In return, he got a token of the future: a plastic ID card embedded with a computer chip.



National Post 12/17/01
Firms beware drive-by hackers
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20011217/863629.html

by Fiona Harvey
Financial Times
They may be just passing your office, computer bag slung over one shoulder. Or they may be sitting in a car outside it, casually tapping away at a laptop. They look like innocent passersby. In fact, they are stealing your corporate secrets.



The Industry Standard 12/11/01
Coca-Cola ad legacy gets help from IBM
http://www.thestandard.com.au/IDG2.NSF/cw_AllHeadlines/5A158B2B17D8749ACA256B1F0002889F?OpenDocument

by Todd R. Weiss
The Coca-Cola Co. has chosen IBM Corp. to build a digital asset management system to store images of thousands of Coca-Cola advertisements from the last century in a searchable electronic archive that can be used by the company, IBM said today.



The Industry Standard 12/10/01
Engineers get a global environment
http://www.thestandard.com.au/idg2.nsf/cw_AllHeadlines/ACFC373DB4166AAECA256B1E000391B4?OpenDocument

by Siobhan Chapman
A project manager in Manchester can communicate in real time and share proposals and documents with an engineer in Kuala Lumpur and a client in Sydney, on Sinclair Knight Merz's evolving Worldwide Information Sharing Environment.
Consulting firm, Sinclair Knight Merz has created an open shared-information environment to encourage a culture of learning and innovation amongst its engineers and clients.



The Industry Standard 12/11/01
Most Interior Department Web sites still off-line
http://www.thestandard.com.au/IDG2.NSF/cw_AllHeadlines/F90609762C95B955CA256B1F0002D2AB?OpenDocument

by Jennifer Disabatino
The U.S. Department of the Interior is slowly getting back online after a federal judge last week ordered all of the department's computers to be disconnected from the Internet.




Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Va