Roy Mark

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation held a hearing here Sept. 16 on “Why Broadband Is Important.” Two senators — Chairman Daniel Inouye and ranking member Ted Stevens — showed up, although several more briefly drifted in and out. Unlike most Senate Commerce Committee hearings, empty seats dotted the audience […]

WASHINGTON-With time quickly waning for the 110th Congress, Sen. Daniel Inouye again called upon lawmakers Sept. 16 to approve legislation to improve the quality of federal broadband data collection. As Inouye put it, “I believe we cannot manage problems that we do not measure.” Inouye, the Hawaiian Democrat who serves as chairman of the U.S. […]

Looking for some cool NASA Goddard Space Flight Center next gen technology? How about a new signal processing technology called the Hilbert-Huang Transform? Who couldn’t use an autonomous, real-time, fully spaceflight-qualified GPS receiver? All that and more will be auctioned for licensing Oct. 30 as part of a new partnership between NASA and the intellectual […]

Rep. Loretta Sanchez has introduced legislation to establish guidelines for border searches of electronic devices such as laptops and smart phones. Currently, federal border agents may conduct searches and seize travelers’ personal laptops and other electronic storage devices without evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing. The Border Search Accountability Act of 2008 (H.R. 6869), introduced Sept. […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants Congress to broaden its authority to protect the nation’s electrical grid from cyber-attacks. Again. In 2005, lawmakers authorized FERC to approve and enforce reliability standards-including cyber-security standards-to protect and improve the country’s bulk power system. FERC says the law is an adequate start on protecting the power supply against […]

WASHINGTON-Whether they know it or not, American Internet users’ heads are in the clouds. According to a new Pew Internet & American Life survey, almost 70 percent of Americans with Internet access use Webmail services, store data, photos and videos online, or use software programs such as word processing and spreadsheet applications with functionality located […]

WASHINGTON-As any of the thousands of air travelers who suffered through an Aug. 26 crash of the Federal Aviation Administration’s flight plan IT network already knows, the nation’s air transportation system is aging and failing. The crash grounded hundreds of flights at more than 40 airports. The federal response is a massively complex, interagency program […]

Research in Motion continued its push into the consumer market Sept. 10 with the introduction of the company’s first flip phone. The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 will be available in the United States through T-Mobile this fall although RIM did not initially disclose pricing details. Long the dominate player in the enterprise smart phone space, […]

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights wants to know why text messaging rates have jumped 100 percent since 2005. U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., on Sept. 9 wrote the four largest wireless carriers in the United States, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, requesting that they […]

WASHINGTON — Rob Atkinson, the affable founder and president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, has an interesting notion in these politically charged times: Can’t we all get along when it comes to the issue of broadband? In a white paper (PDF) earlier in September, Atkinson wrote, “The current broadband debate has degenerated into […]