(back in office)
As I see it, the idea that Java is handicapped because it can't access local
information is flawed for two reasons.
First, it isn't quite true: the MExE spec allows tiered levels of
permissions to be granted to different applets: an applet can be given any
permissions you want, if you trust it. "This applet is trying to access your
phone book: do you want to let it?" is fine for a new messaging applet from
Iobox, not so fine for that karma sutra app you grabbed from a site in
Bulgaria.
Secondly, there's no *information* on your handset that you need to give an
applet access to, except maybe your phone book. Everything is stored
remotely, from where it can be accessed by SSL. .Net's use of Passport is
one implementation of this: one log-in to cover all your data, all stored
remotely on multiple sites. So 'security for the applet' isn't about Data,
but about stopping the applet (for example) changing the handset interface
(which the operators will all be doing, incidentally).
I simply don't understand why certification offers any real-world advantages
over MExE permissions combined with a sandbox, other than speed.
As regards the speed question, I find this unconvincing. All things being
equal BREW should be faster than Java, as I understand it. But, the 503
phones run java at an acceptable speed today: by the time we get second
generation 3G phones in Europe (um... you know what I mean), which will be
the ones that get mass-takeup, the processors in the phones ought to be fast
enough to eliminate any remaining advantage, surely?
Besides, I'm not sure how much speed you need to run Pacman. The only
application where CPU usage seems really critical is software MPEG4
decoding, which for the first few generations seem certain to be rejected in
favour of hardware decoding (if it's present at all). That said, the 200Mhz
StrongARM chip in my iPAQ does a perfectly decent job of playing MPEG4 (and
Doom, for that matter).
****
All this is quite apart from the fact that you could run a JVM on top of
BREW, and then run your content in that - and indeed then run a Flash player
in the JVM!
-----------------
Benedict Evans
WestLB Panmure
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Received on Tue Apr 24 10:01:42 2001