competition is good? [LWN.net]

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 13:55 UTC (Thu) by JamesErik (subscriber, #17417)
In reply to: competition is good? by dion
Parent article: Linux and flash

Your reference to GSM in regard to competition is interesting.

I have more than once read analyses that GSM is a technically inferior protocol to CDMA. The technology licensing for CDMA is expensive (Qualcomm) and hindered its uptake, from what I understand, so GSM won out in Europe. GSM may also have benefited from some European NIH syndrome, too. If these assertions are correct, then GSM users will never have as good a cellular experience as they could have had with a (well-deployed) CDMA system. Of course, they flat-out don't have an option in Europe, AFAIK.

I've not worked in the cellular industry, so doubtless other subscribers will have better information than I do, but I thought this observation would be interesting fodder for discussion.

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competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 16:05 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]

Let me take a guess: you are writing this from the U.S., aren't you? Let me share with you my perspective -- that of a European currently living in the U.S.

There is no such thing as a "European NIH syndrome", at least not as far as modern technologies are concerned. Most people are realists and they recognize American dominance in these areas, even if in some cases they don't like it. On the other hand, "NIH syndrome" is very much visible in the U.S. In fact, I strongly suspect that that phenomenon, and not just the licensing issues, was behind the creation of Gnome in opposition to KDE, which was viewed as "German". Could that also be the reason why SuSE was always doing rather poorly in the U.S.?

With respect to GSM, I'll take your word that CDMA is a superior technology. However, the fact is that in Europe, the public sees GSM as good enough. It "just works" -- pretty much everywhere. I remember an ad of one of the Dutch GSM networks from a few years ago, that they had a coverage of 99.7% of the country. Contrast that with the pathetic coverage of GSM networks in the U.S. -- my T-Mobile phone loses signal if I put it too far from a window in my apartment -- in downtown Chicago!

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 16:24 UTC (Thu) by Uraeus (guest, #33755) [Link]

Considering that the founders of GNOME where Mexican (Miguel and Federico) and the majority of developers in the early years where European (and still is) I think your theory about an US NIH applying to GNOME is rather far fetched.

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:54 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]

Well, you know, Mexico is on the same continent as the U.S. :-). Plus, Gnome, being a GNU project, could be seen as U.S.-controlled.

But you are right, I didn't have enough information about Gnome to make that statement. I still do believe though that the NIH syndrome applies more to Americans than Europeans. I'm a computer scientist and I see a lot of it when it comes to, e.g., referencing other people's work.

Anyway, we are awfully off-topic here :-).

competition is good?

Posted Mar 29, 2007 18:07 UTC (Thu) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]

The whole Airbus effort smells like "Look, we too" to me. What about Galileo?

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 18:11 UTC (Thu) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]

There is no such thing as a "European NIH syndrome"

Right. That's why they're putting up their own GPS-compatible system.

"Galileo is made in Europe by Europeans," Bonacina said.

I'm not saying it doesn't go both ways, but your claim that NIH doesn't exist in Europe is absurd.

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 19:26 UTC (Thu) by gravious (subscriber, #7662) [Link]

Not valid.

China is a partner in Galileo too you know. I would say that it would be brain-damaged _not_ to construct a commercial, public non-military GPS that was not beholden to the .mil of the US of A. Of course if you like having your live run by people with an agenda antithetical to your existence then by all means do not use Galileo when it launches.

Every time I think of life post-Galileo I get the warm fuzzies. From Wikipedia "Galileo is tasked with multiple objectives including; to provide a higher precision to all users than is currently available through GPS or GLONASS, to improve availability of positioning services at higher latitudes, and to provide an independent positioning system upon which European nations can rely even in times of war or political disagreement."

Granted, original claim about NIH is prolly off-mark, humans being humans. I don't see why Europeans would be resistant to this affliction.

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 20:04 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link]

You are right, my statement regarding a lack of NIH in Europe was rather silly, and your counterexample spot-on. Galileo always seemed like a waste of money to me, as it is extremely unlikely that GPS would ever become unavailable or go back to lower resolution (too many U.S. companies depend on it, and in the U.S. "it's the economy, stupid"). Then again, I don't know the full story; maybe there are better reasons for Galileo than "because we can" or "because we don't trust Yankees".

Going back to where it all started ("competition is good?"), how to define competition? Is a market more competitive if there are multiple technologies competing (cellular phone market in the U.S.) or multiple providers using the same technology (mobile phone market in Europe)? I think any European visiting the U.S. who had to experience its pathetic cellular networks knows the answer already.

So the way I see it, it is probably OK that, e.g., there is "digikam", "kphotoalbum", and all the other photo archiving programs, but not that there is Gnome and KDE, as users tend to limit themselves to apps developed specifically for their preferred desktop, so with multiple desktop environments, the competition where it really matters (apps) actually becomes smaller.

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 20:32 UTC (Thu) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]

Well, I disagree (surprise!). I'm glad there is both GNOME and KDE; or rather, I suspect my preference[1] of the two would not meet your desires, given your example applications: I find KDE, and KDE apps in general, aesthetically unappealing. None the less, I use digikam, because it simply provides more of the features I want/need. (But if the f-spot people ever figures out how to write an import dialog, I'm may change...). And while there is certainly an memory incentive to stick with apps that use the same library as your desktop system, I know a lot of people who use at least a few apps from "the other system" whichever that might be.

[1] Actually, I'm using XFCE now, which is a lot snappier than GNOME on my hardware.

competition is good?

Posted Apr 1, 2007 21:25 UTC (Sun) by emj (guest, #14307) [Link]

The big issue with KDE vs. GNome was GTK/C vs. KDE/C++. There was alot of tention when KDE came about, mostly because of KDE but also because many thought C was a better choice.

I was very relieved when they released GNOME, since KDE at its first versions looked like a Win 3.11 port.

GSM vs CDMA

Posted Mar 22, 2007 16:44 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

I've worked in the telecom industry and the really big difference between GSM and CDMA is the signal encoding. CDMA has a significantly more advanced signal encoding that allows the tower to transmit many signals to many phones without anything getting confused. It removed many of the frequency and distance limitations of GSM.

On the other hand, the protocol stack for GSM is significantly better than CDMA. The way I heard it they took the protocol stack from GSM and the signal encoding from CDMA and created 3G.

However, that wasn't what made GSM great. What made GSM great is that the handsets are not tied to a provider, just the SIM cards are. So you could buy a phone and it would work on any provider, no worries. A GSM phone in Australia would work in Europe without any hassles whatsoever. Even now, you can buy a CDMA phone is Australia and guess what, you can never switch provider. Which is why people don't do it...

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:51 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

According to Wikipedia, the CDMA standard dates back to 1995. The GSM network in my country was operational in 1991. I can't find the standard, but the licenses were handed out in 1988, so the standard must be older than that. So what was that about NIH?

At first, CDMA actually had lower data performance per cell than GSM had, but since then the standards have both been updated and I believe they are pretty much equals today from a technical perspective. Of course, today the US uses WCDMA and we use UMTS.

But some American protectionism borders to being funny. A couple of years ago (ten, perhaps) all my American friends explained to me how unbelievably stupid it was to communicate with short text messages on your mobile phone. It was hard to type and hard to read and in general very useless. But now they are happily texting just like the rest of us, so I guess it wasn't very stupid as soon as it had caught on over there.

texting

Posted Mar 22, 2007 21:47 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

Ummm, no. Texting is still stupid.

texting

Posted Mar 22, 2007 23:33 UTC (Thu) by BackSeat (subscriber, #1886) [Link]

Ummm, no. Texting is still stupid.

Tell that to my wife. As a deaf person, SMS has given her the ability to communicate in a way not previously possible. Indeed, the Internet and related technologies have changed her life completely - but not in a way that justifies you calling her 'stupid'.

texting

Posted Mar 26, 2007 1:33 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

What's stupid about texting in the US is it's priced as a "premium" feature instead of an economy feature, as it should be, since it costs the network far less in overhead, facilities, etc, as compared to a phonecall.

Oh well.