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This article focuses on the use of electronic voting systems in Georgia. The history of elections and computers in Georgia is unique. DeKalb and Fulton counties in the metro-Atlanta area were the first jurisdictions in the U.S. to use computers to tally votes in a primary election in October 1964. Georgia was the first state to adopt a uniform, statewide direct-recording electronic (DRE) technology in 2002. Georgia has a model system for the deployment and management of elections technology, which combines the resources of its Secretary of State (SOS), its University system, and its county election officials. In the general election of 2000 the voters in Georgia voted on a variety of election devices. Two of the smallest counties used hand-counted paper ballots, 73 counties voted on mechanical lever machines, 17 counties voted on punch-card voting systems, and 67 counties voted on optical-scan voting systems. Deployment of the DRE technology in the summer of 2002 was characterized by the conviction of the SOS that Georgia should eliminate technological barriers to voting, such as undervotes or spoiled ballots.

It seems that the vision of the Internet grew out of the realization that users of the first, experimental time-sharing systems formed communities. The time-sharing experiments were funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, originally ARPA, now DARPA, under the leadership of J.C.R. Licklider, who had championed interactive computing in an influential paper on man-machine symbiosis. Licklider soon recognized the importance of electronic communities and the initial ARPANET development was funded. The ARPANET project refined the vision and pioneered techniques used on the Internet. It was followed by the Internet, which serves the research and education communities, and by many commercial and proprietary networks. The Internet, the major research and education network, grew from the 4-node ARPANET in 1969 to an estimated 992,000 hosts by September 1992. The growth rate is over 1,000 hosts per day, and it is accelerating. Its size can only be estimated, and continues to grow while, the estimation procedure runs.

This article presents information related to the 5th Annual Symposium of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of ACM. On October 29, 1965, the topic "Computers--Software for Online Systems," was discussed. Over 300 people attended this symposium which reflects the great interest in the topic. The papers given represented the broad interests in the time-sharing field of the diverse organizations from government, business and universities. The impact of online systems has been felt in each of these areas. The Octopus operating system for the Control Data 6600 is one of the first steps at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, California, to interconnect various types of computers and storage devices. This system provides a response within reasonable time to users located at remote teletypes. Up to 100 programs are known to the system at one time, of which ten are active and in main core. Programming the Octopus system has required two calendar-years and fifteen man-years.

The newly formed federation on Computing in the U.S. (FOCUS) has requested a grant from the National Science Foundation for partial travel support of U.S. participants at the 12th World Computer Congress of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). A review panel of the FOCUS board of Directors and other experts in the field will evaluate applications for the travel support. Applicants must provide the panel with a current resume, relevant details of planned conference activities, such as presentation of papers, chairing sessions, serving as panel members, and how participation will benefit their current activities and re- search. Award recipients must be U.S. residents and travel must be made by U.S. carriers. Grant recipients will also be required to file a brief report after the conference on their activities and experiences.

The article reports on certain developments pertaining to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The Special Interest Committee on Programming Languages of the ACM will issue an information bulletin on the string manipulation language SNOBOL. This bulletin will be distributed as an occasional supplement to SICPLAN Notices, the Committee's informal newsletter. The bulletin will also be used as a forum for the discussion of problems associated with the use and implementation of the language. At a recent meeting of the ACM Committee for Professional Activities of the Blind, it was decided that Science for the Blind, a small nonprofit organization, should act as a central depository for all literature in the computing field that is recorded for the blind. ACM will hold its 20th anniversary meeting- at the Sheraton Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. on August 29-31, 1967. Papers to be presented will stress historical perspective, present significant new developments, or explore trends and potential developments.

An internal State Department report condemned its own computer system, noting that the outdated system's slow speed "impedes the speed at which national security decisions can be made," reports the New York Times as of May 1995. Many Department employees have 16-year-old Wang machines incompatible with most existing computers, and complain they cannot use floppy disks or access the Internet. Inhouse email can take over two hours to be received after it's sent. "We're one step above electric typewriters," one senior official said.