2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Doc Elliott]

Based on recent postings here in cla, there is a lot of uncertainty in 
the area of Military, DoD, etc standards and their application.  I 
suspect that there are also a lot of unanaswered questions on both sides 
of the fence regarding various applicable commercial standards.  Is there 
a newsgroup which addresses this?  Should there be?  Is there a need out 
there for an information source where you could ask questions like "What 
standards are there which apply to RF message formats?" as well as 
questions like "In paragraph X.Y.Z of MIL-STD-498, what is the general 
interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
the greybeards involved in their development?

Any comments?  Telling me to shut up and crawl back under my rock is a 
perfectly acceptable comment...

-- 
Doc Elliott
KE4KUZ
Internet: helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil
packet: ke4kuz@k4ry.#cenal.al.usa.noam
The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not
reflect those of my employer or anyone else unless
specifically stated as such.

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Mike Meier]

Doc Elliott (helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil) wrote:
: Based on recent postings here in cla, there is a lot of uncertainty in 
: the area of Military, DoD, etc standards and their application.  I 
: suspect that there are also a lot of unanaswered questions on both sides 
: of the fence regarding various applicable commercial standards.  Is there 
: a newsgroup which addresses this?  Should there be?  Is there a need out 
: there for an information source where you could ask questions like "What 
: standards are there which apply to RF message formats?" as well as 
: questions like "In paragraph X.Y.Z of MIL-STD-498, what is the general 
: interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
: readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
: otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
: the greybeards involved in their development?

: Any comments?  Telling me to shut up and crawl back under my rock is a 
: perfectly acceptable comment...

I don't think we'll have to involve crawling or rocks (didn't you have those
in basic training?).  I think it's a great idea.  In fact, I was so certain
that someone -must- have done it already that I spent an hour last week with
web worms trying to find things like "military standard" or "mil-std".  And,
to go beyond that to include a newgroup to address such questions might be
helpful even in these supposedly twilight hours of mil standards.

Of course, getting MIL-STD-498 available on the web would be a starting point
for any web host since everyone's looking for it and no one can find it
unless they happened to catch the message last week identifying the Navy ftp
site.  And, if you want to be even more helpful, you could provide it in a
more portable form than WordPerfect (personally, I'd like Word 5.0 for the
Mac).

Is this something that redstone will allow you to do at your site?  If not,
are there some other takers?

  Mike Meier
  AFATDS Software Engineering
  Magnavox Electronic Systems Company
  e-mail: mjmeie@ss3.magec.com

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Brad Balfour]

In article <3gaudl$89q@michp1.redstone.army.mil>,
helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil (Doc Elliott) wrote:

> Based on recent postings here in cla, there is a lot of uncertainty in 
> the area of Military, DoD, etc standards and their application.  I 
> suspect that there are also a lot of unanaswered questions on both sides 
> of the fence regarding various applicable commercial standards.  Is there 
> a newsgroup which addresses this?

No there is not.

>Should there be?  Is there a need out 
> there for an information source where you could ask questions like "What 
> standards are there which apply to RF message formats?" as well as 
> questions like "In paragraph X.Y.Z of MIL-STD-498, what is the general 
> interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
> readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
> otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
> the greybeards involved in their development?

There is a WWW host and an ACM SIGAda working group which are devoted to
this issue and who have been working on it for many years. The following
is from the ACM SIGAda SDSAWG home page
<http://info.acm.org/sigada/wg/sdsawg.html/> which can be found on the ACM
SIGAda WWW Server <http://info.acm.org/sigada/>

          Software Development Standards and Ada (SDSAWG)

This WG's objectives are to discover where software-development standards
block good Ada software-development practices and to identify and
recommend corrections and work-arounds for hose blocks. Many reports
document SDSAWG's results, and it provides a clearinghouse service to make
these and draft standards available. 

For additional information contact:

Lewis Gray
Ada PROS, Inc.
12224 Grassy Hill Ct.
Fairfax, VA 22033-2819
703/591-5247 Voice
SDSAWG@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us


> -- 
> Doc Elliott
> KE4KUZ
> Internet: helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil
> packet: ke4kuz@k4ry.#cenal.al.usa.noam
> The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not
> reflect those of my employer or anyone else unless
> specifically stated as such.

-- 
Brad Balfour
ACM SIGAda Secretary
bbalfour@acm.org
(703) 824-4505

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Howard Verne]

Doc Elliott <helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil> writes:
 
>interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
>readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
>otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
>the greybeards involved in their development?
>
>Any comments?  Telling me to shut up and crawl back under my rock is a 
>perfectly acceptable comment...
>
 
Great Idea, Love it!
 

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Garlington KE]

Doc Elliott (helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil) wrote:
: Based on recent postings here in cla, there is a lot of uncertainty in 
: the area of Military, DoD, etc standards and their application.  I 
: suspect that there are also a lot of unanaswered questions on both sides 
: of the fence regarding various applicable commercial standards.  Is there 
: a newsgroup which addresses this?  Should there be?  Is there a need out 
: there for an information source where you could ask questions like "What 
: standards are there which apply to RF message formats?" as well as 
: questions like "In paragraph X.Y.Z of MIL-STD-498, what is the general 
: interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
: readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
: otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
: the greybeards involved in their development?

I find that the CompuServe software development forum is a pretty good place
to ask questions like this. People like Derek Hatley, Capers Jones, etc. 
are often able to provide information like this. Just recently, I saw a 
discussion on the level of detail in a -2167A SSS vs. an SRS which was pretty
good.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Garlington                  GarlingtonKE@lfwc.lockheed.com
F-22 Computer Resources         Lockheed Fort Worth Co.

If LFWC or the F-22 program has any opinions, they aren't telling me.

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[DEAN RUNZEL]

: Doc Elliott (helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil) wrote:
: : Based on recent postings here in cla, there is a lot of uncertainty in 
: : the area of Military, DoD, etc standards and their application.  I 
: : suspect that there are also a lot of unanaswered questions on both sides 
: : of the fence regarding various applicable commercial standards.  Is there 
: : a newsgroup which addresses this?  Should there be?  Is there a need out 
: : there for an information source where you could ask questions like "What 
: : standards are there which apply to RF message formats?" as well as 
: : questions like "In paragraph X.Y.Z of MIL-STD-498, what is the general 
: : interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
: : readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
: : otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
: : the greybeards involved in their development?

Dear all,
  What it boils down to is FUNDING, FUNDING, FUNDING. Most gov't. agencies 
just can't afford to do this. I posted the spawar info and included a point
of contact. If you need other formats, call and ask about them. WordPerfect 
has been used by the gov't. for several years for docs and they probably
won't change soon. Most modern word processors can import from WordPerfect
format. Maybe we can get something into wuarchive. How about this -- 

  1. Establish a directory at wuarchive called mil_stds and created a 
     separate subdirectory for each standard. For example, 
     /mil_stds/498 or /mil_stds/2167A.

  2. Gov't. would post an original in either ASCII or WordPerfect format.

  3. Users could download the original, convert to another format, and
     be kind enough to upload the converted doc. The filename would be the
     format of this particular copy. For example,
          /mil_stds/498/original.ASC
          /mil_stds/498/original.WP51
          /mil_stds/498/postscript
          /mil_stds/498/Word50MAC

Note that the filename original is reserved for the intial upload. Also, users
would be asked to do the conversions and upload them. How do we start this?


Also, the AJPO has been involved in MIL-STD-498 development. They may have
other formats available.

I guess the meat of this post is : stop whining and waiting for the gov't.
to spoon feed us. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your gov't. can
do for you, but what you can do to help your gov't. and others.

Thanks,
  Dean R. Runzel

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Doc Elliott]

In article <3h5ake$6o0@monmouth.edu>, s0222353@moncol.monmouth.edu 
says...
>

some real good ideas

I can't speak for other organizations, but I can say for certain that 
what resources I have available here in this government office could be 
brought to bear in the manner proposed by Dean.  I can work on converting 
documents in my (limited) spare time and at home.  We have an FTP server, 
and a WWW server available for our use.

The one aspect of this that really bothers me is in the great 
governmental knee-jerk to drop mil-specs and go with commercial and 
industry specs, we may have caused ourselves some real licensing 
problems.  The MIL_STD-498 is intended for public distribution, but I 
believe that ANSI, ISO, IEE etc standards are all copyrighted.  In 
another thread, Michael Feldman reported that the ANSI standard for 
Fortran 90 cost over $200 to obtain!!!!  This needs to be addressed.

Doc Elliott
KE4KUZ
Internet: helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil
packet: ke4kuz@k4ry.#cenal.al.usa.noam
The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not
reflect those of my employer or anyone else unless
specifically stated as such.

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Curtis]

Check the following WWW pages

http://www.itsi.disa.mil/cfs/itsi_lib.html

http://www-atp.llnl.gov/standards.html

http://www.ncsl.nist.gov/fips/

http://www.osilab.ch/

Curtis

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[CONDIC]

From: Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93
Subject: Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...
Original_To:  PROFS%"SMTP@PWAGPDB"
Original_cc:  CONDIC



Howard Verne <verneh@DELPHI.COM> Writes:
>
>Doc Elliott <helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil> writes:
>
>>interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a
>>readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and
>>otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of
>>the greybeards involved in their development?
>>
>>Any comments?  Telling me to shut up and crawl back under my rock is a
>>perfectly acceptable comment...
>>
>
>Great Idea, Love it!
>
Let's go one step further - what if the Government Printing
Office or whatever technical publication offices handle this
stuff were to put all the Mil-Std's etc. into ASCII and
Postscript format and make them available at a single FTP site?

It'd make *my* life considerably easier.

Pax,
Marin


Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-93                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600
===============================================================================
    "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

        --  Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
===============================================================================

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[David Weller]

In article <3h3277$6r3@felix.seas.gwu.edu>,
Michael Feldman <mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu> wrote:
>OK - let's bring it closer to home and talk about ANSI, IEEE, and ISO,
>which make lots of money to support their standards programs by 
>copyrighting and selling these. A copy of Fortran 90 (the standard, not
>a compiler) is around $200. The Ada 95 standard is still available
>electronically and (unless I mis-read the traffic on this subject)
>it took some negotiation to keep it there. Thinking of the Ada 95 
>standard as a microcosmic view of the whole free-electronic
>vs. expensive-paper situation will help to crystallize it in your minds.
>

There's a rather interesting article about it in this month's
Communications of the ACM.  I wish the authors had taken a bigger
hammer at these organizations.  IMHO, published standards should be
available at printing cost (or free if you print it yourself).  Of
course, both ANSI and the ISO disagree with me (then again, I'm
American, so I don't care about either :-)


-- 
      Frustrated with C, C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
	

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[CONDIC]

From: Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93
Subject: Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...
Original_To:  PROFS%"SMTP@PWAGPDB"
Original_cc:  CONDIC



Michael Feldman <mfeldman@SEAS.GWU.EDU> Writes:
>
>OK - let's bring it closer to home and talk about ANSI, IEEE, and ISO,
>which make lots of money to support their standards programs by
>copyrighting and selling these. A copy of Fortran 90 (the standard, not
>a compiler) is around $200. The Ada 95 standard is still available
>electronically and (unless I mis-read the traffic on this subject)
>it took some negotiation to keep it there. Thinking of the Ada 95
>standard as a microcosmic view of the whole free-electronic
>vs. expensive-paper situation will help to crystallize it in your minds.
>
Well how's about this for a potential answer to the problem:
Things like MIL-STD-2167a, MIL-STD-1750b, MIL-STD-498, etc., ad
nauseum, were all developed at public expense and in general are
available from some government agency at a nominal charge which
basically covers printing & shipping costs. (Reasonable enough.)
They also (so far as I know) do not have any copyright
restrictions associated with them.

Since this stuff is essentially "public domain" it ought to be
available from an FTP site where those of us who have a need to
glom onto this sort of thing can easily get it. (Sort of like
'Project Gutenberg')

In general, I have no problem with someone making an honest buck
by publishing something useful or adding value and charging for
it. (Could you imagine having an "Illuminated Manuscript" of
MIL-STD-1815a as a sort of 'collectors edition'?) I will take
exception to someone trying to lock up and charge for something
that was developed at public expense.

I agree with you on the side-bar issue of West and Mead. Laws are
written at the expense (great expense?) of the public and should,
in the general interest, be distributed as widely and
inexpensively as possible. If someone goes to the trouble of
publishing the law in a fancy, leather bound edition, they've
added value and have a right to charge for the service. But to
get a monopoly on the market by virtue of the page numbers is
really rather anti-free-market, don't you think? Monopolies
aren't generally good for the American Free Enterprise system and
hence is bad for business.

Pax,
Marin

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-93                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600
===============================================================================
    "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
    with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is
    a fad that won't last out the year."

        --  The editor in charge of business books for Prentice
            Hall, 1957.
===============================================================================

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[CONDIC]

From: Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93
Subject: Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...
Original_To:  PROFS%"SMTP@PWAGPDB"
Original_cc:  CONDIC



DEAN RUNZEL <s0222353@MONCOL.MONMOUTH.EDU> writes:
>
>I guess the meat of this post is : stop whining and waiting for the gov't.
>to spoon feed us. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your gov't. can
>do for you, but what you can do to help your gov't. and others.
>
I don't exactly know as we were "whining" but given that you are
probably in the same situation as many of us (doing more with
less) I can see how you might get to feel this way.

I think my original point about this was that getting the
documents via FTP would be a heck of a lot easier/cheaper/faster
than the traditional routes of requesting them from our Tech Pubs
department or librarian. (not to mention that you get a clean
copy instead of an Nth generation xerox!)

I can't imagine that even the government could be so far behind the
times that most standards wouldn't be in some kind of machine
readable form. Once you've got it in a word processor format, it
seems to me to be a near trivial task to do an FTP and put it on
a public site. (Oops! I forgot about needing to form up a
committee, do a feasability study, write up a report, get
official sanction, etc., etc. Things aren't any different here!
;-)

I like the idea of putting them out on wuarchive.

Pax,
Marin

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-93                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600
===============================================================================
    "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
    with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is
    a fad that won't last out the year."

        --  The editor in charge of business books for Prentice
            Hall, 1957.
===============================================================================

Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[Scott . Smart CDR]

In article <EACHUS.95Feb3175743@spectre.mitre.org:,
Robert I. Eachus <eachus@spectre.mitre.org: wrote:
:In article <INFO-ADA%95013010360570@VM1.NODAK.EDU: CONDIC@PSAVAX.PWFL.COM writes:
:
   :Grat Idea, Love it!
:  : Let's go one step further - what if the Government Printing
:  : Office or whatever technical publication offices handle this
:  : stuff were to put all the Mil-Std's etc. into ASCII and
:  : Postscript format and make them available at a single FTP site?
:
:  : It'd make *my* life considerably easier.
:
:   Tell that to Newt.
:
:   Seriously, both Newt Gingrich and Al Gore would probably be willing
:to get strongly behind any reasonable proposal in this area.  Getting
:Congress on line is a nice first step, but getting the Executive
:Orders and other administration side documents to really be publicly
:available would be a real revolution.
:
:--
:
:					Robert I. Eachus
:
:with Standard_Disclaimer;
:use  Standard_Disclaimer;
:function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

Unfortunately, it seems that many of the attempts so far to do
this sort of thing have met with resistance from the cottage 
industry of firms that sell you this data via on-line data bases
or CD-ROMs.  (That's how we get our data -- you don't think we
pay GPO's rates do you?).  But if we can get over the hurdle of
"bankrupting small business", the next battle will be whether to
provide this data "free" (i.e., as agency overhead) or at "cost"
via a fee - reimbursable set up.

Scott Smart
 
--
|Naval Surface Warface Center|  sws@suned1.nswses.navy.mil
| Port Hueneme Division      |  Any statements / opinions are mine and not
| Cruise Weapons Dept        |  DoD or DoN