The Latest in Satellite Data Transmission

Although cellular technology is constantly getting better, land lines are still the most reliable and fastest way for people on the road to get online. The current evolutionary status of satellite Internet services (see page 28, Computing Japan, June 1998) is not yet up to the point where someone with a laptop can easily use the system to communicate with the rest of the online world. However, this will change over the next few years. In the not too distant future, it will be possible to have a satellite receiver built into your portable computer.

by Thomas Caldwell

There is a new method of satellite broadcasting coming out that will be utilizing the new S-band transmission system. Operating in the 2.6GHz range, S-band broadcasts can be reliably received by an antenna as small as a \500 coin, receive data while moving at speeds of up to 300kph and can easily and inconspicuously fit on any laptop or, if the electronics can be miniaturized enough, handheld organizer.

Unfortunately, this new technology will not be incorporated into computer designs right away. It will first be showing up in, not surprisingly, automobiles. Earlier this year a new company was established here in Tokyo to sell car-based broadcast receivers using S-band technology. Mobile Broadcasting Corporation, which is controlled by Toshiba and Toyota, plans on signing up its first customers sometime after the year 2000.

Industry people I have spoken to believe that after the technology has been perfected for cars, systems designed for portable computers will not be long in coming. The first systems will be receive-only, but several sources tell me the transmission capability, something technically harder to do, will be developed in parallel. I have been given predictions that put the first commercial PC-based systems on the market sometime around the year 2005.

Yet seven years is a long, L-O-N-G time in the computer industry. S-band systems could be showing up much sooner. Its safe to say though, that this new technology will be Y2K compliant.

More Y2K Info
Which reminds me. With the clock ticking away towards what will turn out to be the Millennium Catastrophe, Millennium Inconvenience or just the plain old Millennium (i.e., nothing much happens), there are many people selling products that are supposedly designed to discover, analyze, or in some cases, fix a non-2000 compliant system. Be advised that there are many con artists out there preying on fear and ignorance and it is expected to get much, MUCH worse. Some of these products and shareware utilities are good and useful, others are not. Let the buyer beware. Especially when it comes to software, products are not always guaranteed to work the way they are supposed to.

I've begun testing Y2K utilities and plan on listing the best ones in this column near the end of the year. In the meantime, there is a good freeware utility that works and is available on a Japan-based web site. Check out http://www.jtech.net/.

In addition, there is a pretty scary website run by a fellow named Gary North, and he is absolutely convinced that civilization itself will be coming to an end because of the shortsightedness of all those COBOL programmers of yesteryear. Don't laugh! He has a lot of very interesting information on his website and, unfortunately for us, has a lot of facts to support his prediction. Check out http://www.garynorth.com and hope,if not pray, the guy is dead wrong.

hope,if not pray, the guy is dead wrong.

No matter how big a problem Y2K turns out to be, many companies are not going to make it past the year 2000. It's kind of like watching a disaster movie that came out during the 1970s; it's not always easy to guess who is going to wind up dead. All that is certain is that there will be a lot of bodies strewn about at the end of the show.

Keeping that rather pleasant thought in mind, are you an EDP (Electronic Data Processing) executive biting your fingernails down to the bone over what may happen to you next year? Are you an investor wondering if your own shares in a company that won't make it into the 21st century?

If so, I recommend that you check out what has become one of the most popular newsgroups on the Internet: COMP.SOFTWARE.YEAR-2000. It is THE place where disgruntled programmers have been publicly discussing which companies (often their own) are operating on very poorly designed systems and how little the folks in the executive suite understand the problem.

If you are into corporate intrigue (or stupidity), I can't recommend it enough. It makes for far more interesting reading than any science fiction novel or X-Files script, only a lot more shocking and unbelievable.?

The Query Column has appeared in Computing Japan every month since our July 1994 issue. You can reach Tom at caldwell@gol.com.

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