AF expeditionary forces will reach back to U.S. via wireless networks
Air Force networks will be weapons systems, Skoch said. The Air Force will someday depend on wireless networks to help it strike anywhere in the world within 24 hours, a top Air Force communications officials said. Because the United States does not know where the next military threat will come from, the service must be prepared to respond quickly anywhere around the world, said Col. Bernie Skoch, director of systems at the Air
New Communication Products
3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., has released its first fiber network interface cards for 10- and 100-Mbps Ethernet networks. The EtherLink and Fast EtherLink XL PCI fiber NICs provide desktop connectivity to networks over distances of up to two kilometers. The cards have parallel tasking to reduce CPU utilization by bursting full packets across the PCI bus.
Navy eyes all-electronic maps
Working toward the goal of using maps that are exclusively electronic, the Navy is preparing to install CD-ROM jukeboxes and storage management software on 115 ships. The jukeboxes will run Fire Series management software from Luminex Software Inc. of Riverside, Calif., and will store more than 200 CDs of maps aboard each ship.
Panasonic hatches versatile PC video camera
Pros and cons: + Excellent color balance + Accurate video e-mail and videoconferencing + Almost no motion blur – Built-in mike a bit weak Real-life requirements: Windows 95, one open PCI slot for video-capture card, sound card, CD-ROM drive, 2M video memory Panasonic's EggCam doesn't crack under pressure. Combined with the included PCI video-capture card, the charge-coupled-device digital video camera makes it easy and cheap to videoconference from a PC over an office LAN or
PROFESSIONAL CALENDAR
30 ComNetExposition and conference. San Francisco. Contact IDG, 1400 Providence Highway, Norwood, Mass. 02062; tel. 800-545-3976. 4-6 Executive Leadership Conference. Richmond, Va. Contact the Industry Advisory Council, 3601 E. Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax, Va. 22030; tel. 703-218-1965. 5-9 21st National Information Systems Security Conference Conference. Arlington, Va. Contact the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Building 820, Room 426, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899; tel. 301-975-4242.
Marines go to battle stations that are workstations
When the Defense Department sent seemingly contradictory directives to increase training and trim budgets simultaneously, top-level officers were dubious. Flying computer-navigated jet fighters with guided missiles is no cheap matter. But when Marine Corps officers met with some of the best and brightest from the information technology community, an innovative solution began taking shape.
Air Force takes aim at safety with satellite systems
Deep inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, Air Force personnel in gray flight suits gaze at computer screens 24 hours a day, looking for signs of unidentified aircraft and missile launches. They're eyeballing data from 220 North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) radar and satellite warning systems, sent by two or more means to ensure delivery.
DFAS accounting goes online
Before long, desks at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service no longer will have stacks of greenbar "six-footer" reports indexed by yellow sticky notes. Paperless host printing is about to clean off the desktops at DFAS and, if all goes as expected, save the large accounting organization millions of dollars in printing and distribution costs.
FAA awards $1.25b in contracts to small businesses
The Federal Aviation Administration recently awarded 14 contracts worth $1.25 billion jointly for services ranging from help desk to investment analysis support. The Broad Information Technology Services contracts are the largest ever awarded to small and disadvantaged businesses, an FAA official said. "There was some criticism that FAA was not doing anything for small and disadvantaged businesses, many of which are high-tech,'' said Jack Handrahan, an FAA contracting officer. "We wanted to do something to give
Memorial Web sites pay tribute to people, places and projects
Just as tombstones mark graves, Web pages can serve as electronic memorials to things and people of the past. The idea works well because interested visitors need not travel to see the memorials and the creators need not erect costly physical structures. On the downside, such online remembrances are sometimes slanted toward a particular political view.
Commander surveys action from skies via high-speed antenna system
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va.—A high-speed antenna system aboard a modified Boeing C-135 aircraft gave a joint forces air component commander immediate command and control data as he flew from Langley to Duke Field in Florida. The commander, taking part in Expeditionary Force Experiment '98 last week, got data from both the rear operations support center at Langley and the forward air operations center at Duke Field while still in flight.
Answer the e-mail call
Aah, e-mail. Not so long ago, managers had trouble keeping up with all their phone calls. Then came ubiquitous faxes and overnight packages. Today, of course, we're bombarded with e-mail. Smart companies encourage e-mail communications from customers and have the means to handle e-mail. For example, many software vendors respond to technical support questions via e-mail. But federal agencies appear ill-equipped to provide answers to citizens' e-mailed questions.
DOD bites back at hackers preying on its Web servers
The Pentagon launched an attack applet of its own this month to thwart a denial-of-service attack against its DefenseLink Web site at http://www.defenselink.mil. DefenseLink was one of three sites targeted on Sept. 7 by a group that calls itself the Electronic Disturbance Theater. The group claimed to be acting in solidarity with Zapatista rebels in the Mexican state of Chiapas to protest Defense Department funding of the School of the Americas.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
My research shows a dramatic increase in these kinds of contracts and in contract bundling overall. With fewer feet on the street, small companies have a heck of a time competing with the large companies for tasks, particularly as the large companies dive deeper and deeper into the lake to feed. And the small companies are so busy pursuing business they have few resources available to plow new ground to test the legality of the
Technology in 1860 meant wires in trees
One hundred and thirty-five years ago, when the Defense Department was the War Department, the telegraph was the cutting edge of military networking, delivering timely information to soldiers. As a Civil War re-enactor, I took part in a recreation of an 1860s-era military telegraph system in operation in July at the 135th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. Two-and-a-half miles of wire were strung over the hills south of Gettysburg, linking eight operator's stations to
LapLink Tech utilities keep traveling support teams connected
Pros and cons: + Great collection of remote-access and remote-control tools + Flexible and easy to use – Needs better virus protection and network monitoring Real-life requirements: Win9x or NT, 16M of RAM and 9M free storage; sound card, speakers and microphone required for Voice Chat For years, technical support personnel have relied on Traveling Software's LapLink to copy files from PC to PC. It seems only fitting that tech support people should get
ReadIris stumbles with Spanish, technical translations
Pro and cons: + Scans many languages – Error rate varies with language – Can't handle multiple languages in a document; graphics and chart text handled poorly Real-life requirements: Win95, NT or Mac OS; scanner; CD-ROM drive for installation Que hablas espa'ol? Tildes and other non-English punctuation marks can confuse English-oriented optical character recognition packages.
GCN SPOTLIGHT
The price was astronomical. The months-long downtime could have cost some their jobs. In the end there was no way to fix the computerized medical equipment at the remote location in an Army field hospital in the Horn of Africa. Instead, thousands of dollars were spent on airfare, accommodations and life insurance to bring a civilian technician to war-ravaged Somalia during the United Nations intervention in 1993.
Postal Service expands tests of software for its electronic postage sales program
The Postal Service has approved market tests for a second company to provide electronic stamps under the service's PC postage project. The Postal Service last month said it will start testing StampMaster Internet Postage, a Web postage product from StampMaster Inc. of Westlake, Calif. E-Stamp Corp. of Palo Alto, Calif., in April was the first vendor to receive Postal Service approval to test its online E-Stamp software. The company is beta-testing its product in the Washington area.
Video makes the voyage to desktop PCs
If you think video won't become a mainstream office application in the next couple of years, remember how quickly charts and graphs have popped up in almost every document. Most of the factors that catapulted desktop graphics applications into the mainstream—faster computers, cheaper memory, bigger hard drives, larger monitors and low-cost scanners—also are driving PC video.
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