>but not just in Japan. I wouldn't mind not having to carry around a
>tri-band GSM phone that weighs half a tonne if I want to roam between
>Europe and the US, for example.
Fair enough. But then there is SIM cards and TAP, which if adopted you
could roam by simply bringing your SIM card.
>On the other hand, there's no question in my mind, as someone who's had
>to work on development of a site that runs over standard HTML, i-mode
>and WAP, that avoiding WAP and using cHTML instead was a big, big win.
>Blink's i-mode site was available long before the WAP site, and cost
>a heck of a lot less to build and maintain. And as a plain old user,
>I really like being able to get at least limited functionality from web
>sites not designed for i-mode, not to mention being able to create my
>own personal i-mode pages without having to order a pile of expensive,
>proprietary "standards" documents.
cHTML vs WAP is not a good analogy, as this time the Japanese chose a
standard. And as your comment shows, they rated
compatibilty/interoperability high or even highest in their choice. In the
area of cellular operating systems, OTOH they chose to stay out of any
standards at a time when all the other countries safe Korea had gone past
the experimental stage and went for cross border standards.
I am not arguing for one or the other standard. Nor do I criticise anyone
for not knowing in advance which standard will become most widely adopted
etc. The point is that adopting a standard is far better than staying out
entirely.
>I can't say whether the huge advances in cellphone size, weight and
>functionality were helped or not by not going with international
>standards,
Please. Name one Japanese product category within the last 50 years where
the Japanese did not have a smaller and lighter product than comparable
foreign offers. There will be very very few if any at all.
>It makes it appear as if there is was no advantage whatosever to
>the course that was chosen when often demonstrably there was
Appearance, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.
The point is that the disadvantages have greatly outweighed any advantages
there might have been. The Japanese government concluded that way. But of
course if a non-Japanese criticises Japan, then that is inappropriate. ;-)
It would seem there are some poeple who'd like to protect their personal
holy cows and don't like to hear if anybody comes along to tell them that
there ain't such a thing as a holy cow, which is an understandable emotion
but it makes a bad substitute for reason.
>Well, I wonder about that. Japanese washing machines are rather different
>from North American and British ones. Putting a domestic Japanese machine
>in a U.S. home would be ridiculous, and putting a domestic U.S. machine
>in a Japanese home would be impossible.
This wasn't academic. Export markets for Japanese washing machines are in
Asia. Exports into those Japanese strongholds have been severly hurt. And
contrary to your implicated assumptions, the ISO/IEC (?) standard does not
require a particular size nor does it require the washing machine to be
front loaded, but it does for instance require that it must not be possible
to open the door before the drum has come to a complete stop, one of the
points in the feature where the Japanese industry was shown to be reluctant
beyond reason.
>This would be another situation
>which requires a bit more looking-into before announcing the decision as
>"s-t-u-p-i-d", I think.
NHK had done their research for that feature quite well and I think NHK had
good reason to ridicule the Japanese industry association.
regards
benjamin
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Received on Wed Aug 1 07:26:05 2001