Gov. John Rowland, R-CT, appointed Maj. Gen. David Gay of the Connecticut Army National Guard to lead his Y2K Readiness Committee, which will develop a contingency plan to be implemented should Y2K computer problems lead to public emergencies in the state. Rowland Co-Chief of Staff Peter Ellef and Deputy Chief of Staff Larry Alibozek also will sit on the Readiness Committee.

    Former NSA Deputy Director William Crowell has been tapped to chair a Commerce Department group that provides the Clinton Administration with encryption export policy advice. While at the NSA, Crowell testified before congressional committees against legislation that would loosen export controls on encryption. He served as the agency's top civilian official and helped develop NSA strategy and policy.

    Rear Admiral Thomas R. Wilson has been tapped by President Clinton to head the Defense Intelligence Agency. Wilson, the intelligence director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, succeeds retiring Army Gen. Patrick Hughes, and wins a promotion to vice admiral.

    So just who are the cyber bad guys the intelligence agencies are chasing? University of Manitoba psychologist Marc Rogers says hackers are antisocial geeks after all. The average cyberpunk is white, middle-class, male, and between the ages of 12 and 28, says Rogers, who is studying hackers for his graduate thesis. Hackers also lack social skills and come from dysfunctional families, he asserts. "They tend to be the loners. They feel a lot more comfortable behind a computer system than in face-to-face interaction," he says.

    Highway 1 chair Kimberly Jenkins says the Internet Policy Institute think tank will open later this year, though at present it has neither a headquarters nor a staff. A site — and a full-time president and at least 12 staffers — have yet to be picked.

    Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr., R-OK, who chairs the House Republican Conference, said that his "online birthday card" campaign for Kosovo War POW Spc. Steven M. Gonzales was a success, generating more than 9,000 e-mail birthday greetings. Watts launched a Web site to provide news updates — and GOP views — on the NATO offensive last week.

    John Thompson has been named chairman and CEO of Symantec, making him the only African-American executive running a top Silicon Valley company. The appointment follows on the heels of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's stepped-up campaign to get more minorities appointed to Silicon Valley boards. Symantec says race wasn't a factor. Thompson has vowed to speak out on racial issues in his new post.

    How sturdy the foundations upon which rests American prosperity? Here's a short sampling of opinion. SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt: "I worry that investors are being influenced too much by analysts whose evaluations read like they graduated from the Lake Wobegon School of Securities Analysis — that's the one that boasts that all securities are above average." Robert Dickey, Managing Director at Dain Rauscher Wessels, on Internet stocks: "These stocks really defy analysis anyway, although we can all fake it for a while." New York Post columnist Gersh Kuntzman: "The entire economy of the United States is basically being propped up by people buying other's people's garage-sale trash on eBay."

    Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said last week that Linux poses no real threat to Gates' dominant Windows operating system. Gates said Microsoft took Linux seriously but felt that most customers would continue to favor Windows because it was a more homogenous product than Linux, which is developed by a wide variety of programmers. "The fact that you don't have a central testing point to control ultimately how to build these things probably means that the impact will be fairly limited," Gates said. That means Microsoft continues apace with plans to release its nice, centrally-developed new version of Windows 98, prompting an observation from Be Chairman Jean-Louis Gassee: "At a risk of being called sexist, ageist and French, if you put multimedia, a leather skirt, and lipstick on a grandmother and take her to a nightclub, she's still not going to get lucky."

    Dawn Hartley will become the new chief technology officer for the Defense Information Systems Agency. She was previously the chief engineering executive for information processing.

    Intel Chairman Andy Grove told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that news content is a commodity, but the way stories are delivered is going to change radically during the next few years. "Three years from now, traditional newspapers are going to face an obvious profit squeeze. You will know it when it's almost too late," said Grove. San Jose Mercury News Executive Editor Jerome Ceppos added that newspaper leaders are trying to keep up with "the collision of newspapers and technology."

    Send comments and contributions to Peter J.M. Orvetti.