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Handhelds Hardware

Peer-to-Peer Cell Phones 142

Posted by timothy from the can-you-hear-anything-now dept.
AlfaNatic writes "Seems like a new company has developed the technology to turn a cellular network into a peer-to-peer network. Soon you'll be able to share music and files off of your cell. Gotta love it!"
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Peer-to-Peer Cell Phones More

Peer-to-Peer Cell Phones

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  • no thanks... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by edrugtrader ( 442064 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:03PM (#4246007) Homepage
    all i need is someone exploiting a bug and getting all my personal information as well as EVERYONE I KNOW.

    cell phones are full of sensitive data, and enabling file sharing is simply a bad idea.

    • cell phones are full of sensitive data, and enabling file sharing is simply a bad idea.
      ...you mean... like computers?

    • Re:no thanks... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm still waiting for peer-to-peer toasters... I guess the only thing they could do then is modify the way my bread comes out!

      Dammit another hacker burned my toast!
    • It's already possible...

      The bug is simple... you dont hold onto your cellphone with armed guards, so while you are talking it I can walk up and punch you in the kidneys and take your cellphone. I now have all your personal information and can make some nice really long distance calls on you before you have a chance to disable the phone.

      Dont try and create worry about something that can already be done easily and with ZERO technology.
      • That's bogus.

        Exploiting a cell phone remotely bears a MUCH lower chance of getting caught than does physical assault and robbery. The chances of getting hurt are much less (what if the victim or a bystander fights back, or has a knife?) as are the likely punishments. I think you'll find a lot of people who'd do one but wouldn't risk the other.

        By your argument, you shouldn't worry about your credit card number being stolen online. Someone could shoot you and take your card anyway.

        That said, if properly designed, the shared files could be isolated from other data in the phone. I still don't see how the power requirements aren't a killer, though.
        • and you STILL haven't RTFA'd. users upload the files you want to share to a shareable file locker. just another bogus article title.
        • By your argument, you shouldn't worry about your credit card number being stolen online. Someone could shoot you and take your card anyway.
          No actually all I have to do is go dumpster diving at any resturant or simply pay the underpaid and mad clerk $5.00 for every credit card slip or number he can collect for me.

          It's quite easy, and much more rampant than online credit card fraud... Over 3/4 of all credit card fraud doesn't use a computer and a skilled hacker to intercept a data stream.. they just brute force it in meat space.

        • Re:no thanks... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Ctrl-Z ( 28806 )

          By your argument, you shouldn't worry about your credit card number being stolen online. Someone could shoot you and take your card anyway.

          Of course, people really shouldn't worry so much about online credit card theft. Many people give away their numbers without giving a second thought when they go out to eat. Do you ever wonder what your server does with your card when you give it to them?

          Similarly, people do leave their cellphones unattended and unlocked a surprising amount of the time.

          If you're really going to get concerned about computer crime, you should be equally concerned about real world crime.
          • Of course, people really shouldn't worry so much about online credit card theft

            Oh... I wouldn't say that. I've been to plenty sites where I log in and go to change my password and it shows the old one in plain text, proving they don't have the slightest idea what a crypto hash is and how to use it.

            Other sites show the first or last four digits of your card number, or email it to you after ordering. That's 1/2 of the way to someone stealing my card. It may even be possible to narrow the possible card numbers down drastically after knowing those two parts, due to the checksum that all cards conform to.

            Some sites still use mailto: forms to place credit card orders online, or ask you to email them your CC number, and most normal users wouldn't be able to tell a mailto form from an SSL one.

            I've even seen some sites that have "protected" areas that rely on client side javascript obfuscating a common password to a value that is passed in through GET. These sites are usually smaller manufacturer sites that have one common login that all non-retail users use to get to see wholesale prices. Needless to say, this is no security at all.

            As long as there are people out there designing web sites that are total morons, I worry about my credit card, and I am savvy enough to tell the difference between at least trivially broken security and possibly good security, can you imagine if you were a person who didn't know the difference?

            Also, you have to wonder how many sites that appear secure are really trivially broken into by anyone who has more than a passing interest in doing so. (Sequential session IDs in a shopping card app that displays back the CC number come to mind)
      • good luck. i carry this [knifezone.ca] and this [glock.com] everywhere i go.
        • that's my knife, too! I love the finger guard. nice and large, don't have to worry about my hand slipping up onto the blade.

          Alas, I prefer this [gunnerynetwork.com] for carrying. The glock is too big (imho.)
        • Lol, too funny,

          1) A guy named "edrugtrader"
          2) who's sig is
          WANT TO BUY ILLEGAL DRUGS ONLINE? - EDRUGTRADER.COM!
          3) is posting a story [slashdot.org] about how he doesn't want his personal information available over a P2P network cause his "cell" caries "sensitive" information.
          4) ...then he responds by telling us about how he carrys a knife and gun every where he goes.

          All we need to do is rally some support from the gangbangers/dealers and we can stick it to those curmugeonly congress guys once and for all! Maybe we could install "slashdot kieosks" in the hood/slums of america, and start a march of information rights?

          hmmm, *steeples fingers in thought*
  • How is massive P2P going to change the way wireless networks are loaded? Will the networks keep up and still have space for voice calls?
    • I wouldn't worry about the network load, but think of the load on the batteries. And the heat generated from your phone being turned on only to be a relay station. Worried about microwave radiation from phones now? This is it!
    • I very much doubt it. In fact, I don't see where they're going to find the radio spectrum to support most of the applications that are supposed to roll out when 3G gets implemented. Hey, we're fighting over spectrum now, and half the things people want to do with it haven't even been implemented.
  • Or does it literally hop from phone to phone, and leave the base stations out of this?

  • oh my Bandwidth! (Score:4, Funny)

    by kipple ( 244681 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:06PM (#4246033) Journal
    [since Bandwidth it's a sort of new God..]

    It would be cool to hog bandwidth with cellphones :) ... not to mention the RIAA coming to meet you in person while you're sharing.
  • I suppose this means telecoms will now be held accountable for the traffic passing across their networks. That should be fun for them......... will they be pushing legislation that will allow them to h4x0r j00r cellphone now, as well?
  • So will these things route through one another until they reach an internet connected node? Sure that has inherit flaws, but it seems like a cheap and easy way to get the wireless internet going.

  • The major problem... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ethnocidal ( 606830 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:08PM (#4246049) Homepage
    Is that your average cell phone rarely transmits or receives information. As an example, my T68 gets me about 300h battery life on 'standby' with just keepalive equivalents to the network. When I'm talking, this decreases massively, to about 5 or 6 hours. With a P2P network, as described recently on both /. and El Reg, you have continual data transmission and receipt, as you act as a data path for those around you. The battery life of the phones acting as nodes would be massively reduced. In addition, the phones would get warm, as they disappate the whole battery over a much shorter time interval than they are meant to. People won't use a system where they can get a battery life of about 6 hours, and where their pockets are always curiously warm. Add this to the uproar already about cellphone radiation, and you lose all possibility of such a aystem being accepted. (What's that? This cellphone is ALWAYS TRANSMITTING? SHUT THEM DOWN!).

    • Possible Solution (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DonkeyJimmy ( 599788 )
      A possible solution to the problem of battery life and heat is to enable the cellphone P2P only when it is in it's caddy. This might limit the system quite a bit, but with a smart system maybe not. Also, a lot of people leave their phones in chargers at work, in the car, and at home, and they would do it even moreso if it was the only time their downloading worked.

      You could still browse, search, and use normal cellphone operations while your phone was in hand, but it wouldn't begin downloads or uploads until returned to a charger.

      I'm not sure how the noding would work, but with leaf node shielding and stuff, you might be able to limit searches enough to allow phones to receive upload and search requests while portable, but queue uploads and downloads until caddied.

      Of course, they could always make new batteries and better phones that use less power while transmitting data too. Now they'll have a better reason to (instead of just making them smaller).

    • Re:The major problem... (Score:4, Funny)

      by airship ( 242862 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:56PM (#4246449) Homepage
      Let me get this straight...
      My cell phone will be ALWAYS WARM, I can set it to VIBRATE, it will be IN MY POCKET, and it will LAST 5 OR 6 HOURS?
      Looks like my geek 'love life' is about to get quite a bit LIVELIER!
      WHOO_HOO!

  • I'd rather... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:08PM (#4246051) Homepage Journal
    Be able to make peer to peer calls. If amongst friends you can setup trusted relay access through a network of phones, I'd be one happy camper.

    That's the cellular peer 2 peer I'm waiting for. I don't give a rats ass about p2p sharing of files over my cell phone. I have GSM with full internet access and bluetooth on my phone. I'll use that, thanks.

    • Re:I'd rather... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by perlyking ( 198166 )
      Peer to peer calls wouldnt be liked by the mobile operators would it would be free.
      Imagine you want to call someone and it hops from (idle)phone to phone until it reaches its target.
      This is what (I think) cybikos do with text messages.

      • I have a Cybiko... the current generation can only hop one person, i.e. if you can talk to a person who can talk to your recipient, you can chat. But not infinite hopping. I once started working on a mapping system that would form a P2P network, and all Cybiko's would know who can talk to who--it would be able to draw basically a network map, and send messages to anyone. Well I never finished it, oh well.

        <RANT>Cybiko could've been big, but the company announced many "vaporware" attachments (GPS, cellphone, camera, wired modem, wireless modem, cellphone connector kit, etc...) that never came out, they started producing crappy games, and now none, and now they're ignoring their U.S. market--you can't even BUY one now!</RANT>

  • I'm only going to say this once, (Score:5, Funny)

    by I Want GNU! ( 556631 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:09PM (#4246064) Homepage
    but if you ask me, this will be the death of the music and movie industries.

    --Jack V.
  • I seem to remember France having even more restrictive pirating/distribution laws than the US. I could very well be wrong about, though. If true, it seems odd that this technology would come from a French company.

  • if it's truly peer-to-peer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anonymous loser ( 58627 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:09PM (#4246070)
    I'd rather use it to call other folks on the network for free than exchange files. I just don't have enough storage on my cell phone to be sharing files, but a nice, cheap VoIP or similar would be great.
  • Cell phones are still expensive to use if you want to use it during normal "business" hours. And even if you don't care about the cost, they're still not particularly secure (though their security IS improving). Add to that the number of completely tech-clueless cell users and the lack of antivirus/security software for cellphones and you've got a nightmare waiting in the wings.

    Definitely a BAD idea...
  • Criminilty, folks!,

    Peer to peer is an application layer network "topology," that is, a description of connectedness.

    It is NOT A SYNONYM FOR NAPSTER.

    • Re:PEER TO PEER != MUSIC SWAPPING (Score:5, Informative)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:29PM (#4246224) Journal
      of course, if you had RTFA:

      "The technology gives users a digital store cupboard for their own media files and lets them pass them on to anyone who wants to use, listen or look at them on their own handset. "

      Of course, the word P2P is used incorrectly because I dont think this describes the topology, merely the end result.

      This sounds like a centralized client/server topology.

      But then people speak of XBOX, PS2 and CD Audio "isos", so using terms correctly isn't something that goes hand in hand with technology.

  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by TheVidiot ( 549995 )
    Yeehaw! 56k file sharing, until I get a static burst or lose my cell connection.

    Oh, and I guess my 200 minutes a month just ain't gonna cut it anymore...

    blek..
    • I've seen 3g cell phones that will transfer at something like 256 kb / sec. Streaming 2 way video, et cetera. A tad faster than 56k.
  • Seems like the cell phone industry would have a lot of technological catching up to do to make this at all useful. Your average cell phone doesn't have enough memory to store much.

  • Wow.... (Score:2, Troll)

    by McFly69 ( 603543 )
    Imagine a beuwolf cluster of these!!
  • I recently used a cell phone to browse (dont remember the name) and found the buttons to be too small to do any useful browsing. Moving back and forth between pages was tiring - and this is for someone who used to be crazy about game watches in those days.

    When they talk about PTP - the phones would have to be way more sophisticated than the one I tried. Wonder how they dealt with usability issues there.

    I see Video enabled cell phones to be the limit in squeezing features into the cell phone real estate. Anything beyond that like the PTP belongs to the handhelds.
  • Gotta love it!
    man, just make a connection to this post [slashdot.org] from 2 days ago, and understand why "Dude, you getting a phone BILL!" will be new popular motto.
  • This kind of reminds of this article: SMS Relay -- An Idea for Fault-Tolerant Communications [oreillynet.com] on O'Reilly. The guy suggested that text messaging should have a fallback peer to peer mode, in case of disasters like 911 that wipe out all the transmitters.
    • Wouldn't SMS be the best choice for an overloaded network anyways? It seems that you would only need a few chunks of time to send the message, not the huge allotment required by vocal communications. What's the ratio of sms messages to a voice call? I imagine it would be something like 10 sms messages = 1 second of voice. Would it be a good idea to SMS family in case of a disaster, a la 9/11?
  • Sounds similar to http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/14/194121 4&mode=thread&tid=100 [slashdot.org] 'cept it's a different company.

    Wonder who gets the right to sue the other for patent infringement...
  • I'd rather see a mobile with private wireless domain-like abilities... enter your friends cell phone numbers and anytime they're in range (ding! think MSN messenger), you can use the phone like a walkie talkie or a NIC card. Put me at the top of the royalties list for that one when it comes out.

    I suspect that would follow as hacks to the ptp networking in these new phones...

    Security? Bah! Who needs it?
    • (* you can use the phone like a walkie talkie *)

      Interesting how old ideas get repackaged as "cutting edge". First we had mainframes (large, central computers) falling out of style, and then coming back in style as "big web servers".

      Now they call walkie talkies "Peer-to-Peer cell phones".

      At this pace, punched cards will come back as, "magnet-proof external storage" or something.

      Gotta love marketers.
    • Isn't that what Nextel Direct Connect [nextel.com] is ?
  • Some phones use software known as Java that lets them do much more sophisticated things.

    Has anyone heard of this "Java" thing? Sounds like it might catch on.

    -g.

  • "Phones are getting more sophisticated" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:50PM (#4246407)
    What kind of caption is that? That phone may show pictures, but it's the ugliest phone I've ever seen. Moreover, I don't want my phone to do all this crap. Here are the list of features I want in a phone, with a divider before those that would take my PDA out of the picture:

    1. Ability to make calls, with clear reception all over the globe at all times of day (this is partly a service problem, but better phones could help)
    2. Cancer-free
    3. Ability to digitally download voice mail to the phone (with error correction) so I don't have to listen to it on a scratchy connection
    4. Ability to act as a modem with just a cheap serial cord, no $500 kits
    5. LONG battery life - I mean 1 week standby and 5 hours talk-time, worst-case
    --
    6. Ability to store phone numbers along with other contact info
    7. Alarm clock, todo list, and datebook calendar

    That's it. No mp3s, no videos, no file sharing. Just the things that would rock to have in a mobile, self-contained unit. It shouldn't have unnecessary buttons and gizmos. It shouldn't have musical ring tones (customizable ringing, yes; music, hell no). I simply don't understand the impetus for putting crap into a cell phone that would be better taken care of by other devices, separate from the phone.

    Now, a Rio or some such that can wirelessly bounce around mp3s (even at a reduced bitrate) might be nice, but a Rio is made for playing music. A cell phone is made for communicating with people.
    • The exorbitant prices for the connection kits are driving me nuts as well. However, a friend of mine just got a T68i, and it can act as a modem via IR. No cables, no problems. Not to mention being able to sync all your contact info with your notebook. It has 6 and 7 also.
    • You do reallize, that apart from possibly nr. 2 if you're the paranoid sort, oh, and nr. 1 with regards to North America you've described what is standard in many GSM models all over the world.
    • Don't buy connection kits from the phone company. Get the cable from a 3rd party-- www.thesupplynet.com had cables for everything. I have a cable for my ancient motorola timeport to connect via the serial port as a modem, and one to connect it to my PDA. No software or ISP needed with Sprint, just use their QNC system (which is free as long as you have wireless web.)

      Not sure how other cell providers are, as I don't really have any reason or means to tinker around with them.
  • Some phones use software known as Java that lets them do much more sophisticated things.

    Java, you say? Facinating. Tell me more. What is this ... Java?
  • If you didn't go broke on the costs of your cellphone calls yet, here's your chance !!
  • I always thought cell phones were for making phone calls

  • This is NOT P2P! (Score:5, Informative)

    by uradu ( 10768 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:54PM (#4246437)
    It's simply centralized data storage, a sort of global clipboard that allows users to share data. It seems they're simply buzzword huckstering. A real P2P phone system wouldn't be cell-based at all, but would transmit data directly phone to phone. There are projects like that out there, but there are serious issues of bandwidth and battery power, particularly with mobile phones.
    • That's right. This is more like Napster's unsuccessful "locker" concept.
    • Mod that up. We need a new acronym for the process of copying a file from one directory on your server to another directory on your server.

      Henceforth, the operation formerly known as:

      cp foo ~otheruser

      will be known as STTSFS, or server-to-the-same-fucking-server
    • Yeah. Actually, something more like a bucket-brigade system [mobileinfo.com] would be a lot more cool. Many people are working on this type of thing, which indeed needs a certain cellular phone user (actually not cellular if p2p) density, as well as users voluntarily alloing their phones to route for others. Could do it with Wi-Fi, too.
    • Thank you for pointing that out!!! I was wondering why so many folks missed that obvious point.

      I used to work for a wireless engineering firm [comsearch.com] from 1990 to 1997. I was around when PCS was being planned. At the time, there was alot of debate about exactly what PCS would be. One of the big ideas was the ability for the phones to communicate directly to each other if the 2 cell phones were close enough. Since the PCS providers could not make money off such phone calls, that idea seemed to fade away. I can pretty much guarantee that you will never see true peer-to-peer services on a wireless phone. The PCS and cellular companies will do everything they can to keep phones with that functionality off their networks.
      • What I would like to see is the FCC to set aside a "limited license" band for establishing an open P2P digital wireless network. Problem with 802.11 WI-FI is that every other device/standard operating at 2.4Ghz can interfere with it. I'm not a wireless expert, but it is interesting that PCS and 802.11b use similar chunks of bandwidth but PCS can act as a long distance "network" while WIFI does not lend itself well to that since other devices/comm standards can interfere with it. PCS CDMA 1850..1910 Mhz w/ (40) 1.5Mhz channels @~200mW WIFI ~2.4Ghz w/(14) 25Mhz channels @ ~100mW (PCS delivers more power over much smaller channels to reduce noise for longer-distance communication) The standards for such a net could be developed by an industry consortium and/or govt. contracts. Power levels and channels could be dynamically adjusted to allow short and long distance P2P networking. (As the number of users go up, power levels/bandwidths would be brought down appropriately. Long distance routing would of be handled via hardwire "docking" to the internet. As the need for bandwidth increases, gradual "multi-mode" units could take advantage of higher frequency bands as they are allocated. The problem today is that we have two extremes: Big-Money'ed Corporate control of the licensed bands and anarchy on the unlicensed ones. It would seem to be in the public interest for the FCC to promote the implementation of such an "open" network. What do you think?

  • This is a great line:

    "Some phones use software known as Java that lets them do much more sophisticated things."

    love that software known as Java!

  • I did a bunch of work on this idea for a school project in an adhoc networking class. We tried to implement it using bluetooth technology (already found in many pda/cell phones). It's pretty cool stuff, but the security implecations are scary, it is virtually impossible to be 100% sure your data is secure in this type of enviorment :P

    proxy
  • Honestly is there any real use for this type of technology, besides for maybe the medical profession. So, from now on, instead of having to deal with asshole drivers talking on cell phones, we will have to deal with asshole drivers getting pr0n, dvd rips and mp3s.
  • From the article: "Peer-to-peer is the cornerstone of making a service successful," said Adrian Bisaz, Apeera spokesman.

    Peer-to-peer also seems to be the cornerstone of getting your ass sued back into the Stone Age.


  • With VibraCall alert! [motorola.com]

    (it's a walkie-talkie)
  • ...as if P2P on the Internet were not enough of a bandwidth blackhole.

    http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/servlet/Articl eN ews/tech/RTGAM/20020906/gtcybsept6/Technology/tech BN/
  • $.02/KB [sprintpcs.com] (or more) over 2MB, file sharing sounds like a steal! Seriously, until the rates for data tranfers goes down (save for maybe the Hiptop device [danger.com]) file sharing over a cell network is not going to be popular.
  • This isn't even true peer to peer. Sounds more like XDrive or other online backup services, but with the ability to use it with your cell phone and send stuff to other people's storage areas. The data isn't stored on the phone, and you can't directly share things between phones without network coverage. Why are they bothering with this? Work on getting phones, wireless pdas etc to use cellular or a longer range variant of 802.11 (With better security of course) to create a strongly meshed network that links up to cell nodes. The end result, direct connection if someone is within a few hops of your device, network service with fewer dead spots, since your signal can hop phone to phone until it can reach a network node, and better control over the energy use on the phone. If you are within range of X other phones, lower the power output of the phone to conserve battery life. As long as you have a few possible paths to the main network, you don't need your phone to be able to transmit over a range of X miles between cell towers. Verizon, Cingular, Voicestream and AT&T, hope you are listening.
  • oh fucking christ please say it ain't so! just what we need, soccer moms downloading the lastest celine dion while driving their stupid suv's all over the road.
  • P2Pish phones.
    Upload from my home PC to my phone. Upload (from the phone? how much memory space you have there?) to your friends space on the central server. And he does what with it? D/L to his phone? Why? To listen to music? ewwww...watch a video clip? again...ewwww.

    So he waits until he gets home, d/l's it to the house PC, and then listens to the MP3. OK, so tell me why did we need to go through the cellphone to do this?
    Why not just use the current way of stealing music. My PC through gnutella or whatever, to his PC. Of what value is the cellphone and their network in all this?
  • Instead of file sharing, why not voice sharing?

    That would be one way to get around having some many cell towers. Share your excess bandwidth with others.
  • This is not that great, IMHO... From the article:

    Its peer-to-peer system gives users their own storage area into which they can upload images, music files and games for use on their handset or to pass on to anyone else.

    First of all, if the storage is central as this suggests (and it is, _average_ phones can't store this much yet) then it is not true P2P. Also, if it is central then it is legally defeatable, so forget sharing CD tracks.

    Third, at the current data speeds (even the best networks) heavy media transfer will be slow.

    Don't get me wrong, this does have a place -- about 1.5-2 years from now, and for sharing personal media, like photos, voice clips, sound clips (like your cat meowing or your kid saying something funny), maybe screenshots from future mobile games, etc.
  • Article says users get storage on server where they can put their file and then "share" them. So all it boils down to is a big server, where you can upload something and then pass the bookmark to it to another user. Given that more and more of independent hosting providers support mobile platform, such p2p "invention" is not important, though it can be branded as "3G killer app".
    Given that users will have to upload files to the storage place, it probably will be done through home computer. And at that point it's easier to send email to a friend, with link to user's homepage with file, rather than try to do it through the telephone (with less speed and more surcharges).

  • Ohhhh (Score:4, Funny)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @04:18PM (#4247038) Homepage Journal

    [Quoting from the article...]

    "Some phones use software known as Java that lets them do much more sophisticated things."

    Sigh, I hate it when I see evidence that I'm learning about a new technology this way.

    Shoot, I may as well just start learning about foreign policy and macroeconomics from my political leaders on TV.

  • Connecting phone to a phone directly, bypassing the cell-cell routing?
  • If the calls on the same cell was free, it would be a big lost fot mobile companies. They will warn about technical problems and never let it happens. At work the mobile it is a lot of time used between people on the same building, and of course "Come on Mam, I am waiting on the car", etc....
  • i've been thinking hard about this kind of thing.

    to get true p2p wireless for hand-helds (which will soon include all cellphones), there are a number of things that need to happen, all of which will.

    step one:
    free throttled (but otherwise unlimited) internet service on an open-standard wireless bandwidth. bear with me here... this actually makes sense.
    - a cellphone provider gives out free bandwidth to a popular park and nearby coffee shops or something.
    - people use it to such a degree that there's never any bandwidth not being used and people have to wait in line.
    - two devices come into the market: a client-only pda/modem which connects to the network and a router pda/modem which connects to and extends the network in the same kind of way as freenet (from what i understand of freenet which is very little)
    - routing pdas get more bandwidth and priority over client-only pdas because they serve other routers and clients (thus an incentive to get a router)

    step two:
    this wireless network's range is extended by routing pdas and is later helped by a connection to another connection to the internet via somebody else's routing pda or via a similar network. now we see a true wireless internet form in much the same way the public internet did.

    step three:
    large wireless networks like the originals are no longer needed; pdas are almost all routers and are common enough to always be near one that is chained into the internet.

    the basics behind this are simple. here is my vision of the future:

    there are no central servers. let's say little john is on the bus going home from college. it's a long ride, so he takes out his pda, sticks the earbuds in his head, and starts playing music. that's all he needs to know. this music is not stored on his 64mb pda; it wouldn't fit. the pda instead sniffs out another pda, which gives him a peer-to-peer connection to his home computer (or maybe somebody elses, which has the music he wants). no satellite or cell-tower, and no isp, wireless or not.

    this assumes that everybody's pda is always on (oops), so these suckers need really big batteries (not impossible; i've seen an ipod play continuously for 16 hours).

  • QoS (Score:1)

    by Sverige ( 599455 )
    Can't wait QoS will go down, spectrum will run out, and we will get "system busy" more often than we are able to place or recieve a call
  • ... peer to peer software on my cellphone. How the fuck do you uninstall Gator from a cell phone?

    *ring* *ring* Popup ad for a fucking x10 camera *ring *ring
  • the quote at the end of the article saying something like "key groups of users are currently left out because operators haven't figured out how to charge for it" is extreemly telling for how absolutely useless this stuff is.

    phone companies want to bill you for every little thing you do with your phone regardless of wether or not to costs them a thing to provide. ultimately the -only- additional cost to the telco for these services will be the maintainance of a complicated billing network.

    get a clue telcos. woo customers too your network with features. don't drive them away by trying to nickel and dime them to death.
  • P2P networking with mobilephones.. blah.. They speak about Java and Wap, but don't mention that on most phones Java midlets can't store anything on the phone, sometimes the midlet cannot even connect to internet. And when they mentioned Wap I figured out the whole thing.

    Simply make a PHP (or JSP whatever) wap site that works as a fileserver that you can browse. Then let other people browse your files too. Now we have "P2P" sharing with mobilephones. But there are several problems. Ringtones etc aren't compatible, or if combatible format is used they sound really crappy. Also logos and picturemessages differ from phone to phone. And it's often impossible to send stuff out from your phone. (except with never models that use "real" OS like Symbian OS).


  • The Nokia 3650 [aftonbladet.se] (warning in swedish) is a pretty slick peice of equpment for a cellphone. This phone is nothing all that new; merely a repackaged nokia 9290 without a qwerty keyboard and a built in camera capable of 15 seconds of grainy colour video and mono audio.


    Some key highlights:

    MMS - multimedia messaging service - though this one is capable of MMS'ing video/audio taken off of the device to another MMS capable device.

    Java runtime env - kewl

    XML - yeah.

    bluetooh - werd i wont have to toss my hbh-15

    4096 colors on a 176 x 208 pixel display - suckier than the palm yet in a cooler form factor.

    4MB RAM card + open slot - rumour has it it is expandible to 64megs -- thats more mp3 than my original RIO held.

    Best yet is the 4 hours talk time, 8 day standby, not bad for a nokia :P


    Yet, i dont know where ya'all are getting this polymorfic ringtones, what this says is that you create advanced ring signal system where you can receive songs. The translation here is sketchy, but untill somone writes an mp3, or better yet an ogg parser for it i dont see this doing p2p.


    The old nokia 9110 does .wav ringtones and although it uses the earpeice headset for those rings and not the internal ringer that was quite a neat solution.


    The Tech is getting there, yet the developer base for these things are tiny, despite the fact that GSM/GPRS/2.5-3.0G phones are out selling pc's 2:1. Hey all you l33t-hax0rs go out there and write us some warez for these hot toys! ...untill i can get some shareware apps for these I'm going to continue to roll with my T39m and HBH-15.

  • I saw the intro, and I thought "Woo hoo, someone has come up with a truely distributed mobile phone technology."

    I read the article, and it's just some stupid file sharing system.

    Bill, *yawn*

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