competition is good? [LWN.net]

competition is good?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:51 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670)
In reply to: competition is good? by JamesErik
Parent article: Linux and flash

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.

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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.