In the information age, pirates are busy surfing the waves of networks and the Internet. The treasures they pilfer are not doubloons or pieces of eight, but software, and it is certainly just as valuable. These modern-day buccaneers wear neither eye patches nor Jolly Roger insignia but rather business suits and corporate logos, and the term freebooter has now taken on a whole new meaning. But industry and government software sea rovers beware; you could find a U.S. marshal at your door holding a court order in one hand and an auditing program to identify illegal copies of software in the other.

Entrepreneurs aiming to take advantage of the opportunities the Internet offers are benefiting from a proven approach to fostering successful businesses. Affordable office space, venture capital and experienced mentors are helping the first wave of computer-comfortable visionaries realize their dreams while opening up a whole new world of alternatives to traditional marketing.

Letting people know whether to expect rain, sleet or snow for tomorrow morning's commute may not seem to have much in common with providing technological expertise for the Trident submarine, Minuteman missile or the space shuttle, but Evan Hineman has a way of pulling it all together.

Tradition permeates AFCEA International. Our roots are in the military, an organization that many affectionately refer to as "family." And our heritage also stems from the government-the cornerstone of every country. Intertwining these two entities is industry that supports them, provides for them and depends on them. As we look toward the beginning of a new century, information technology has become the common language between these three organizations, and AFCEA has evolved into the conduit for communication.

The use of information technologies has increased faster than the ability of their users to recognize the technologies' key issues, according to many international commercial and government experts. Interoperability, availability and security all are growing in importance as information technologies become increasingly indispensable in more aspects of society.

Researchers at one federal agency are adding a new dimension to remote access computing via the Internet. A computer program created through research at the agency provides a web-based interface that simplifies command-driven queuing systems and applications environments. Without extensive expertise in complicated command language, users can now perform computing tasks on remote systems as if directly connected to them.

While the security industry concentrates on protecting systems from external threats, a danger to information access is brewing from within organizations. The expansion of and growing reliance on networks is jeopardizing military information technology by exposing numerous sectors and even entire commands to errors that are introduced internally by a single entity.

The U.S. Department of Defense is not fully exploiting information technology in military operations and departmental procedures. For an organization that relies on information superiority and technological capabilities to put U.S. national defense at an advantage, the department is lax in thwarting potentially devastating threats to its information systems.

Just as information system users are becoming accustomed to the concept of cyberwar, a new form of information conflict is emerging that rests on a completely different set of principles. Popularly known as netwar, it is based on a strategy of accessing a network, not to destroy it but to maintain and operate it as a tool to gather support and maintain communications.

The Naval Research Laboratory, the U.S. Navy's primary in-house facility for basic and applied research, is taking a leading role in the development of advanced applications of both solid-state semiconductor devices and vacuum electronics-two technologies widely thought to be heading in opposite directions.