Ray:
Re: Your argument about towers limiting cellular access. Yes, you are quite right. This is one of the
reasons why "Europe is ahead of the US". They tolerate government planning, we say "Hell, no."
and hire lawyers.
This was first pointed out by Toquueville in the 1830's: he compared a city on both sides of the
boarder between the US and Canada. The Canadian city had neat orderly streets and houses
which cost the same as houses in Europe- it was a European city. The American side was a
constantly changing sprawl, with houses costing a lot less. Thirty five years ago, the US and
Canada jointly decided to convert to the metric system. Canada proceeded along the plan; we
ignored it, despite our government's plans.
Another part of the reason we don't want towers is we don't see a major advantage to cellular since
our phone system is quite good compared to what is in place over there.
I do remember one major debate on towers, where the leading tower opponent left the meeting at
the end, and stood out side the door, using his cell phone to tell his wife he would be late. Do you
suppose he didn't understand you needed a tower for his phone?
I'm not sure more 'modes' causes more towers. I think usage causes more towers. But if the
spectrum were reallocated to maximize cell range, there would be fewer towers, so you have a
point there. But as usage increased, you need more coverage, and more cells, so who knows.
My favorite solution is to use balloons!
Re: Claude Shannon and information theory. One of the charming aspects of Shannon's life is
that in his later years he grew
distant from the Bell Labs scene, having accomplished his goals and grown bored with his
theorizing, prefering to spend his
dotage on speculations on Wall Street. :)
He's not the only one. Mothers, tell you children not to be engineers.
As regards Information Theory, if anyone has URLs to share on the basic subject, I'd be
much obliged. Particularly URLs that
offer a concise yet thorough summarization of the aspects of the Theory. TIA
The IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter is basically Sannonistic (you have to be a
member
to get it).. The lead article this month was "Soft-Decision Recursive Decoding for Binary Linear
Block Codes", the 2000 ISTI'00 Shannon Lecture. However, there was a neat article titled
Quantum Shannon Theory, developing the idea of a 'quantum channel'. Charming.
Re: Your list of however - One of the big problems with WAP is that it is a text only
kluged.
If you look at what Handspring has
been able to do within the confines of the PalmOS with graphical features like the Tiger Woods
Show, you realize that the future
of handheld devices cannot be limited to text. The consumer won't stand for it. What I find to be
a whole lot more suitable for
future development is cHTML, a compact subset of HTML, which won't require the massive
redeployment of developer talent
that a completely incompatible WAP/XML world will suffer from. Given the choice, developers
will follow the money and
provide XML products creating a backwater of inferior services in the WAP environment.
I believe you are right. Also, the real battle is not over volume of web bits, but control of the web
bits. So a content site should manage the protocol, not the WAP server in the wireless service
provider. However, I suspect that graphics will be somehow formalized or limited- there isn't much
cashing space in a handset.
justone opinion. |
