On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Ken Chang wrote:
> there are too many reason's one lose coverage, in a subway, tunel,
> or the shadow of buildings or on a moving train, ... it's pain in
> the ass to have to remember to check the mails.
Well, yeah, it's a mild pain. Still, two years ago they were by
far the best; with the others you had to check for e-mail *all*
the time because they didn't even make one delivery attempt.
Docomo's not perfect, and they're definitely falling behind in some
areas now.(Personally, I think that KDDI may kick Docomo's ushiro
in the 3G area.) But at the time they came out and for a few years
after that, they were pretty much the best out there.
> the problem is those standards for the fixed Internet performs very
> badly over wireless links...
Not as badly as you seem to be making out. The performance may not
be completely optimal, but it's not bad. Keep in mind that the IP
protocols were originally designed for links with some of the exact same
characteristics of the very wireless links we're talking about. (E.g.,
9600 bps speed.)
I'd rather have a slightly worse standard that's actually running than
a better standard that's not, and the former is what Docomo gave us.
> ...and many functions we need haven't been defined in
> the RFCs, etc., yet.
Many functions that we "need" for fixed line service have also not
been defined at various times. People still somehow manage to get by.
> btw, I'm no fan of dirty politics within WAP, but it's the best
> technology. have a look at au/KDDI and SKT services.
Parts of WAP are good, yes. Whether they are all that much better than
what Docomo uses is debatable. Parts of WAP, such as WML, are complete
crap. There's no reason to have another standard like that when HTML or
something pretty darn close to it will do just as good a job.
(Well, let me rephrase that. WML is better on really, really bad
phones. I.e., 3 lines by 20 chars of text in black and white. And guess
what: nobody was interested in that. Surprise!)
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Wed Jun 26 14:30:33 2002