Computer bulletin board system

This exchange system provides a computer bulletin board system for pollution prevention information. User access is free. 

This computer bulletin board system provides a direct forum for discussion of ideas and exchange of information about small-scale wastewater systems. 

Location of and access to chemical and technical information other than journal articles is avadable through computerized information networks. Electronic bulletin board systems (BBS) provide a telecommunications tool to anyone who has a computer and a modem. Questions can be posted and read by thousands of bulletin board users worldwide, and files and software are easdy transferred from virtually anywhere to one s computer. 

This bulletin board system offers a number of services including on-line messages and bulletins, computer files, programs, and databases. 

This information exchange provides responses to inquiries pertaining to management of nonpoint sources of water pollution and EPA s programs which are in place to control these discharges. In addition, a bulletin board system (NPS BBS) provides a means to exchange text and program computer files as well as provide a forum for open discussion. 

Seeing the success of the UNAMAP BBS, EPA s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards started a BBS for information on regulatory models in June 1989. This has expanded to a BBS called TTN, Technology Transfer Network. This BBS, in Durham, NC, is reached on (919) 541-5742 and the system operator on (919) 541-5384. A part of this BBS called SCRAM, Support Center for Regulatory Air Models, contains model FORTRAN codes, model executable codes for use on personal computers, meteorological data, and in some cases model user s guides. Much of the information is downloaded in "packed" form, and software to unpack the files must also be downloaded from the bulletin board. 

Other system features include satellite waste area records, bulk chemical tracking, gas cylinder inventory, and a surplus chemical bulletin board for waste minimization. MSDS searching, viewing, and printing is available on the Laboratory s Intranet. In addition, a laptop computer program with integrated bar-code scanning was developed to facilitate initial and periodic re-inventory and material reconciliation. 

In 1988, such a scenario was played out for the first time on a worldwide scale. Since then, numerous incidents have reinforced the public s sense of vulnerability to attacks by insidious code fragments on software and data stored in all kinds of computers. While earlier virus attacks spread via diskettes and later via electronic bulletin boards (in ways that required some user participation through loading infected programs), in recent years, the World Wide Web and more sophisticated e-mail systems have provided transmission channels that facilitated the worldwide spread of the attackers at a unprecedented speed. Moreover, infection which earlier required some explicit action by the victim has become much more stealthy, with the advent of viruses that become activated through the opening (or even previewing) of an apparently innocent attachment to an e-mail document. 

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