FBI INVESTIGATING MELISSA VIRUS - The cybercrime unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the "Melissa" computer virus that has spread more quickly than any previous virus in computer history (Edupage, 28 Mar 99). The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Centers said it received reports of "significant network degradation and e-mail outages" at major Internet service providers and corporations, including Intel and Microsoft. However, Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates said that the response to the virus has generally shown that the industry's anti-virus capability works well. (Reuters/San Jose Mercury News 29 Mar 99)

MOBILE EMAIL IS READY FOR TAKEOFF - A new class of devices that combine the features of mobile phones and laptops is set to launch, enabling users to dial into corporate networks and the Internet regardless of where they are. By 2002, nearly 12.6 million U.S. consumers will be spending more than $5 billion to connect to wireless networks. According to market research firm Telecompetition there will be a four-fold increase over the number of wireless data network users last year. Industry experts predict that combination devices that do everything - fax, email, scheduling - will not fare as well in the market as lighter-weight application-specific devices. (Los Angeles Times 15 Mar 99)

MOST Y2K FIXES WILL ONLY LAST A GENERATION - The fix used to patch 80% of the worlds' computers to avert a Y2K crisis is actually only a short-term remedy called "windowing." Rather than using a permanent fix called "expansion," which requires transforming all two-digit year-dates found in software into four-digit year-dates, the "windowing" patch is a trick that forces software to "guess" whether dates fall in the 1900s or the 2000s; typically, lower numbers (perhaps up to 30) will belong to the new century, whereas higher numbers (such as 87) will belong to the old century. Although many experts say this is the only practical way to solve the problem, others are warning that the "windowing" approach is just pushing the problem under the rug for awhile. Keith Rhodes of the General Accounting Office says, "It's like the oil filter guy: You can pay me now or you can pay me later. It's not solving your problem. It's delaying the inevitable." (San Jose Mercury News 15 Mar 99)

U.S. NOW HAS AN INFORMATION-AGE ECONOMY - Replacing an industry classification that has existed for 60 years, the U.S. Commerce Department has introduced a new system that recognizes this leap into the information age. Using the new system, the government reports in 1997, 1.7 million microcomputer and electronic positions at 17,000 locations. The Commerce Department also says that more e-mail than snail mail was sent in 1997, and that U.S. Consumers bought more computers than automobiles. (The report is silent on the question of whether there were more computer crashes than automobile crashes, but if there weren't the highways would be impassable.) The government developed the new classification system because "in an information-based economy, the quality of information determines the quality of policy." (USA Today 17 Mar 99)