Bluetooth Bombs 106
Carey sent in this story that shows Bluetooth still has a few kinks to work out. Bluetooth's universal standard instead seems to be about 10 different standards, and if these companies think they are going get people to buy devices that only work with other devices from the same manufacturer, I think they're in for a rude awakening.
Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:2)
AYB! (Score:1)
we get signal!
...
I said, WE GET SIGNAL!
...
god damn bluetooth! we're going back to USB!
Optimism? (Score:2)
Branding isn't the issue (Score:1)
The fact that "Average Joe Consumer" doesn't know what Bluetooth is doesn't mean that it's "done for". People will be excited about it if it's useful to them, regardless of the name. IEEE-1394 is a perfect example. i-Link (Sony's name for it) and Firewire (Apple, duh) are successful in their niches.
The name doesn't mean anything. The technology will evolve and become useful and people will use it. Even if it's not called "Bluetooth" when that happens...
clever! (Score:3)
This speaks for itself!!
Lets make a network that won't work, then show everyone how it doesn't work......
Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:3)
I think the delays involved in launching Bluetooth (we've been hearing about it for a few years now) have caused it to become a great technology looking for a problem to solve. It is a nice technology - low power, inexpensive chipsets, etc. But, I don't believe it is a long term viable technology.
Having said that, I still predict that lots of first adopters will buy Bluetooth enabled pens, phones, laptops, etc.
Beat That Dead Horse! (Score:1)
This is a non-story (Score:4)
Does anybody remember the bad old days of CR-R's? Some drives could read CDR's, other's couldn't. Some machines could read stuff burnt at 4x, other's couldn't. Nowadays, there isn't a drive out there that can't handle CDR's.
For that matter, does anybody remember the bad old days of BIOS'es? Certain OS's like OS/2 required you to have a particular revision, or higher (the AMI BIOSs were particularly bad with OS/2).
How about bi-directional printers. Do any of you remember the heartache when your first inkjet didn't work correctly because you only had a uni-directional printer port?
How about DVD's? There was a time (and there may still be) when certain players couldn't handle certain discs.
How about BIOS support for large IDE devices? Do any of you remember the disappointment when your onboard controller couldn't handle a drive larger than 8 gigs?
How about 5 1/4 floppy drives? Remember not being able to read 360kb formated floppies in certain high density drives?
The list goes on and on...
Bluetooth is at least as complex, and probably more so, than any of these technologies. The manufacturers will get this sorted out in time.
The bleeding edge is exactly that - bloody. And as they say, you can tell who the pioneers are by the arrows in their backs. Don't slag a technology when it's in its infancy, just because things aren't working perfectly yet.
pointless pondering? (Score:2)
Must be a Windows thing first Windows bluescreens now this
</sarcasm>
Ponder this idea, maybe some of the vendors, in an effort to seem like team players, are not neccessarily tweaking their devices (hardware, software) to work properly with Bluetooth based devices (hw/sw). By attempting to seem as if they're trying to break into the Bluetooth scene, or be "team players", they're using that status to build around Bluetooth, in an attempt to capture on "the next big thing" (could happen).
Major people are banking mega bucks into this technology which in my opinion will be something like firewire, useless to the typical person. The add on (provided your pc isn't bluetoothed already) is a slight bit pricey, provided I could get a used 400mhz for about $200, so why would should I spend on this when technology as I know it changes so fast, by the time I did get it, I'd be looking at something else.
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Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:3)
Bluetooth has a market (wire replacement), it's cheap, it's low power, it can become ubiquitous. The problem has been there for years, get rid of wires. 802.11 does not fix this problem. Bluetooth can for just about everything but your video and landline network connection.
The incompatibilities are because of the usual crap between countries and companies. Part of the same reason that we have competing incompatible regional cellular networks. Hopefully it'll get fixed to the point where it's "good enough".
Does anybody remember the early days of Linux? (Score:2)
Now the same people point to a problem with a very complex new technology and start jumping up and down about how it will never work because it has problems?
-Keslin [keslin.com], the naked nerd girl
Re:This is a non-story (Score:2)
--
hopefully this will help them work out problems (Score:1)
either way, it shows there are definately a few problems in the current stages of development, but for a first trial of a large scale network, failure isn't a bad thing
Re:pointless pondering? (Score:2)
Kind of like 1 Gigahertz processors? And USB?
Bluetooth, as a goal, is a noble idea. The implementation, thus far, sucks. Microsoft has proven time and time again that pouring millions of dollars into bad technology can eventually produce usable technology.
Stranger things have happened.
Something Lost in Translation, or ?? (Score:1)
Um yeah, maybe I missed something but the logic in this statement doesn't seem to be there for me...
Even the developers of Bluetooth devices are having trouble communicating with others!
Re:This is a non-story (Score:5)
"Right now, the standard is defined, but companies are using different specifications"
Translation: Right now, the standard is defined, but companies are so busy madly rushing products out the door that they don't bother following the specs or doing any compatibility testing.
I'm sick and tired of buying a shiny new upgrade and then finding out it doesn't work with my computer because:
- the person who made the component didn't follow the spec
- the person who made the thing it plugs into didn't follow the spec
- the spec is not complete
I was really excited when I bought my TNT2 until I plugged it into my LX mobo and found out the AGP slot didn't provide enough voltage to drive the card. If this were any other kind of product, it would be considered defective.Interoperability problems? Really?? (Score:2)
I've also ready *many* user reviews of various WAPs and a lot of people make it a point that they are using different brands of pcmcia cards with no problems. (And yes, I've seen at least a half dozen brands mentioned.) This would seem to indicate that if there are problems they are not widespread and may be limited to a few (possibly smaller) manufacturers.
Meanwhile I love being untethered and would never go back. It was a great investment and my wife agrees.
Cable replacement (Score:3)
-russ
Well, yes... (Score:1)
I figured that I would be diplomatic by referring to problems from few years ago, which only the most deluded zealots will deny.
-Keslin [keslin.com], the naked nerd girl
Re:This is a non-story (Score:1)
Re:This is a non-story (Score:1)
<cheap anti-MS shot>
Just create a small partition, small enough to fit on the recognized portion of the drive. Put your root filesystem there. 128 megs is plenty for a root fs. Put /usr, /var, /tmp etc. on the rest of the disk (one /usr partition with /var and /tmp on it is fine for a home box; servers should have more separation). The BIOS can access the small root partition well enough for the boot blocks to load the kernel from it, then the kernel can take over and mount the rest of the disk.
I've never had a problem with BIOS limitations since switching to a decent operating system.
</cheap anti-MS shot>
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
If this thing can give my palm fast internet access, of course it's a viable technology (once the kinks have been sorted out that is). On the other hand, depending on what you mean by it you could say that GSM wasn't viable technology. The encryption was insufficient and it didn't have packet switching, in other words it was merely second-generation technology. Now we get UMTS. Will it be replaced someday? Certainly, but it might take time. Remember the tv-standards we use: NTSC and PAL. Anachronisms both! But it is certainly viable technology, if you're talking economically viable.
There are plenty of bad standards out there, that are still perfectly "viable".
Teething problems. (Score:1)
It developed into a fantastic technology that barely got a second look past the teething problems.
So I hope bluetooth quickly gets beyond the teething problems before people form an opinion on something that is apparently not be complete yet.
Re:hopefully this will help them work out problems (Score:1)
toast@ruka.org [mailto]
Re:Something Lost in Translation, or ?? (Score:1)
tcp@mac.com [mailto] Ohh, Mac.com huh, this should be a juicy one for countless direct marketers. Enjoy the spam.
Re:Does anybody remember the early days of Linux? (Score:1)
Re:Teething problems. (Score:1)
shanep@penguinpowered.com [mailto]
Re:Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:3)
Today, WAP is a complete flop. Nobody cares to do any content for it because the technology screams "proprietary". Nobody cares about using WAP because there's no content and the little content that there is will most likely not work properly with your handset.
I'm very excited about Bluetooth but at the same time I'm already worried when I hear reports like this. I've seen marketdroids talk about how "Bluetooth uses a frequency that is available in every country in the world!". The truth is that in several countries, the frequency is already used by something else. In France, for instance, it's a military frequency and it remains to be seen if Bluetooth will work reliably there at all. Microwaves and energy saving light bulbs will also cause problems for Bluetooth... From what I understand, the bandwidth is also not too great. It's enough to connect to the net to check your email and surf and it's enough to remove cables between your mouse, keyboard and computer. It's not, however, enough for wireless LAN's, printers, scanners and a shitload of other stuff. It seems like, before Bluetooth even has arrived, it's already facing a wall of problems. Not very encouraging...
Re:Interoperability problems? Really?? (Score:1)
They're for different things (Score:5)
One of IBM's Bluetooth guys spoke at VanLUG [vanlug.bc.ca] last week, and according to him IBM is aiming at 50 cents/chip for bluetooth. This will never happen with 802.11.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
It isn't viable because it does not work!
Even worse there is another proper standards based technoligy 802.1 which does work.
The only real effect Bluetooth has had is to delay the uptake of the 802.1 wireless standards, as, "industry commentators" (people who take press realeases from large companys and reprint them as articles in magazines) have been saying how the marketing muscle of Itel et al. will make Bluetooth the defacto standard.
This could have possably happended, but, just think about it. An organsisation as secretive and paranoid as Intel trying to lead an "open" standards consortium.
Honestly... (Score:1)
Kurdt
My favorite Bluetooth vapor... (Score:1)
Re:mmmmmmmmmmmm....... (Score:2)
Because it's to the various companies' advantage to be able to interoperate with each others' equipment, I'm expecting that we'll ultimately see these things working together.
From the sounds of the article, the problem seems to be mostly in the software, not the hardware. For units with upgradable software (eeproms, etc), this can be handled with a simpls software upgrade. For items like the pen, it's going to mean you're throwing the thing out unless the manufacturer is able to make their software dual mode (old protocol + new protocol).
Although I'm not going to buy a bluetooth system tomorrow, I'm definitely not going to write it off, yet.
--
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
I drag my PC around town a fair bit to LANs and whatnot and I would love it if i could just plug the box into power and switch on without having to connect cables for monitor, sound, mouse, keyboard, network, etc., worry about someone kicking them out then go to the same trouble packing it all up.
There's gotta be open standards though - it's no good if my new Bluetooth-enabled Viewsonic monitor won't talk to my 3com Bluetooth station.
Re:Branding isn't the issue (Score:1)
At the moment, competing standards make it pretty close to useless. Want to buy ten different devices that all do the same thing just so you can be guaranteed connectivity at any given place? (And then hope that your message actually gets SENT somewhere, and not eaten by a server that doesn't like to play with the other children)
-Mad Dreamer
Incompatible with Boeings? (Score:2)
And how do I make sure that my permanently wireless-enabled Bluetooth laptop/pen/Palm doesn't indeed become a Pilot? When the crew tell us to switch off our cellphones, will we be able to do the same with these devices yet still use them normally during the flight?
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
IEEE 802.1 [ieee.org] describes standards for maintence and internetworking of IEEE 802 networks, i.e. spanning tree, VLAN tagging, access control, etc.
IEEE 802.11 [ieee802.org] describes Wireless LAN standards.
IEEE 802.15 [ieee802.org] defines Wireless Personal Area Networks based on Bluetooth v1.1. There is a coexistence task group (TG2) that is defining Collaborative and Non-collaborative mechanisms for information interchange between the WPANs and WLANs.
So now the questions is "why do we need both?" The answer is that WPANs and WLANs solve different problems. WPANs need to be cheap, easy to configure, and very short range. WLANs, on the other hand, should be comparable in range and complexity to a traditional wired LAN.
There is room for both approachs, just as there is room for both ethernet (802.3) and token-ring (802.5) LAN technologies.
What's wrong with 802.11? (Score:1)
So what's wrong with 802.11? My academic institution has had it running for several years (!) now. It's not scary fast, but 3Mbps (and now 11Mbps) seems quite adequate for most tasks even when shared among many users. The interoperability is great, and the increased range means fewer base stations and more redundancy.
Is there something I'm missing, or is Bluetooth just a poor substitute for what I have already?
Bluetooth over tcp/ip? (Score:4)
For those companies that are desperately seeking to make this all-american dream a reality, I have some advice;
4 layered transmissions
Layers:
1) Identify yourself uniquely, negotiate unique identities with devices conflicting with your identify. (IPv6 using your SN as a mac address, problem solved).
2) Negotiate Public Key Encryption if required -- using IEEE standard encryption algorithm located on chip mentioned at end of this rant.
3) Identify the number of variables people will be working with, ie: "I am a light. I go on or off. My variable is Boolean"; "I am a fridge, I have 3 variables. On/oFF ; Fridge Temperature (range 0 to -20) ; Freezer Temperature (range 0 to -20).
4) Identify how your interface will be displayed to the user. ie; send a pixilated ICON of your device, with the text to go underneath such as "Fridge #56". Identify Whether your variables are straight-listed, or listed in relation to each other such as a linked-tree.
If the device communicating with you has only text ability, then only text will be displayed. It is up to the individual device to decide exactly how the layout goes, so end-users can say, "I don't like the palm pilot Bluetooth interface". This is probably where the problem occurs, everyone wants their product to have scrolling advertisements and look better than someone elses. Yo, you're designing remote controls; get over yourselves.
Last requirement for Bluetooth to work: IEEE implements a Bluetooth RFC database and refuses to IEEE-BT certify non-compliant devices.
In addition to this, all devices wishing to become BlueTooth certified must have a flashable chip in the event of backwards incompatability. If you need to update your bluetooth protocol, you just broadcast the new protocol from any device to all surrounding devices.
I realize this sounds like security risk, since people could flash their own protocols with backdoors or cause major problems amongst the utilities in your house. However when you think about it logically you'll realize this really isn't such a big problem in light of the fact that your Stove, Cell Phone and Maybe even your furnace will all one day be connected to a worldwide WAN known as the internet.
I hope this dream becomes a reality soon, and I wish all you over-funded capitalist pigs luck when Z3ro-c00li0 shuts off your pilot-light and turns on your stove.
Re:Beat That Dead Horse! (Score:2)
Re:Does anybody remember the early days of Linux? (Score:1)
Nobody ever bought Linux, only distribution media (and maybe some service). So Linix had (and still has) the right to _not_ "work" right away.
In the process of creating Linux there never were "specs". It was simply created brick by brick. Some of those bricks (or modules or whatever you like to call them) were created by volunteers to _implement_ some (specified) standards. But still it never was sold saying "Linux applies to these and those standards" (even when it actually did (and does) most of the time).
For bluetooth there _is_ a standard. And if you want to make a bluetooth device it shoold apply to this standard. If not you can't call it bluetooth. The "effects" noticed at CeBit clearly show that not all of the devices are according to the specs. (Unless those specs really allow that some devices can not interoperate
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
Fight censors!
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
802.11 is not illegal in France - the army has agreed to let individual use these frequencies.
Re:What's wrong with 802.11? (Score:2)
/Janne
Setting it in perspective. (Score:1)
This next friday will also be the next scheduled unplug fest, so there is work actively being done on interoperability, failing a test means back to the drawing board.
Another fact remains that most of the 'new' gizmos will be sold in pairs anyway, you need two chips to connect the sprocket to the widget, and that will give you full functionality for the 'new' gizmo you bought.
Didn't the first IEEE 802.11 cards that came on the market have the same problem ? I sure had problems connecting my set to cards of different vendors. A new eeprom flash that came out 1 year after I bought it solved that. Most Bluetooth gizmos also have flash capabilities (heck, some of them even run the stack using a Linux kernel).
The question remaining to be answered is: is WLAN a superior technology ? My personal experience is that everytime my fridge starts my WLAN is down, I have no such problem using Bluetooth.
Re:Beat That Dead Horse! (Score:1)
Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.
HP JetSend (Score:1)
I just wish HP JetSend had seen some wider adoption. It was a staggeringly clever protocol that solved many of these "surface based computing" problems you mention. Despite the limited scope of the few use cases we did see, it wasn't just a protocol for printing over IR from handhelds.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
Resource discovery (Score:2)
I don't understand BlueTooth. I see how it works as a protocol for un-wiring the various devices I own personally. If I want my fridge to talk to my phone, so that it can order more milk on demand, then I can see how to do it. If I want a cellphone that makes me look like Lt. Uhura, and can play MP3's from my PDA over the same earpiece, then I can see how to do that.
What I don't understand is how I use it to do the things I currently do with a Palm and IR. How do I walk into a First Tuesday (sic) meet and beam my business card to one person, in such a way that they trust to receive it, and I don't simultaneously broadcast it to the entire room ? Despite some searching, I can't find a way to do this securely and reliably with BlueTooth, in a manner that allows ad hoc communication between devices who interact only once and fleetingly.
Is BlueTooth really so limited that it can only be useful for "my stuff" that I have previously spent time giving personal introductions to each other ? This seems like they've missed the big picture on usability in a big, big way.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
If you are in france 802.11 is illigal because of the freq. it uses.
Fine. We'll use it for all the eBay nazi regalia listings.
Re:Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:1)
*sigh*Another dimbulb web luser. Listen up son, WAP != WWW. WAP may use HTTP for part of its process, but that is as close as it gets. You've been mis-sold WAP as being related to the Internet, it is not.
WAP is a mechansim for adding services to your mobile phone after the phone has been sold, without re-flashing the firmware.
It is contaminated in peoples minds now becase it got sold by clueless marketeers as "internet on phone".
That is an excessively negative outlook. I can name one WAP site which get in excess of 1M hits a day and several others which get 1M hits a week. Thats hardly a flop.
The stupid thing about WAP is that people time and time again assume they are getting "internet on phone" and when they don't get it they blame the protocol. Get over it, FFS. Its here, it's evolving and it really is a one-horse race.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
here we go again. a typical ignorant hardware-oriented question from a slashdot software geek. why don't you try reading about the differences between these two protocols before you go spouting off that one shouldn't exist? you're probably the same kind of guy who loves to put x86 in absolutely every device too.
Bluetooth and 802.11 solve two totally different problems. engineering is always about trade-offs, and bluetooth has had to make a variety of trade-offs to be cheap, extremely low-power and extremely small to fit in devices like cell phones. the delays in rolling out Bluetooth are because of the inherent difficulties in wireless hardware, and collaboration between companies, not because it's an inviable technology. try taking a few antenna design and wireless hardware courses sometime.
- j
Re: (Score:2)
misleading? (Score:1)
Re:They're for different things (Score:1)
Re:Teething problems. (Score:1)
Re:Interoperability problems? Really?? (Score:1)
Rats! (Score:1)
The laptop is pretty sweet anyway so I don't mind as much.
Re:This is a non-story (Score:2)
You don't read Kernel Traffic [zork.net] much, do you? :)
Just off hand, I remember that there are bad WD IDEs, IDE controllers (various companies), let alone odd BIOS and software interactions between the different parts. It can definately be the hardware sometimes! (Remembers problems with an old laptop.)
Re:Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:2)
That was a clear flaimbait but I'll bait.. I've been giving WAP training to Nokia personell and I've been involved in coding demos used by Nokia to display what WAP is. I did these things a year before you had ever even HEARD the abbreviation "WAP". Nokia's idea of WAP was EXACTLY to get the Internet to the phone. I can't speak about other cell phone manufacturers. In fact, I'm not speaking for Nokia either, but this is the view I got from talking and working with them. And btw, WAP 2.0 will be XHTML.. Oh.. and btw.. WAP was even marketed as WWW/MMM (World Wide Web, Mobile Media Mode) right after the initial launch. This was supported by several cell phone manufacturers.
Also, in addition to Nokia, I've worked closely with Siemens and their WAP stuff and they too sure seem to think that WAP is the web on your cell phone, though they have a much more "it's applications"-view of it.
Calling me a "dimbulb" when it comes to WAP is not exactly accurate.
That is an excessively negative outlook. I can name one WAP site which get in excess of 1M hits a day.
Well, whoopee. I rest my case. You can name ONE site. And even so, you didn't even name it.
The Sony Effect (Score:1)
For a perfect example of why this "rude awakening" won't happen, I refer you to practically anything made by Sony in the past few years. In addition to using crap components and producing generally poor-quality equipment, they are hell-bent on pimping proprietary hardware and data protocols. Yet somehow (marketing, anyone?) they enjoy a reputation roughly on par with manufacturers of significantly higher quality equipment. In fact, the first time I heard about these kinds of Bluetooth problems (roughly this time last year), the name "Sony" automatically popped into my head.
Maybe we should generically refer to this as "The Sony Effect".
My personal nags about Sony aside, basically I think the wide array of proprietary stuff already in the marketplace should tell us that if Bluetooth fragments into incompatible Blueteeth, the last person on Earth to "send a message" will be Joe Public, who learns all he knows from 30-second TV ads.
Re:Bluetooth over tcp/ip? (Score:1)
http://www.sun.com/jini/ [sun.com]
as for the 'pixelated icon' suggestion, really, if you're going to criticize a standard, at least try to push the boundaries a smidge. vector graphics at least. even better, a token identifying both type and data of a visual.
Remember when USB was Useless Serial Bus ?? (Score:3)
Bluetooth Killer App (Score:2)
Come up with an exhaustive list of living room gadget functions. Make a universal remote that (a) doesn't require configuration, (b) actually works across vendors.
There is a pile of money under that idea.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
What frequency is bluetoooth? 2.4GHz
hmm... enough said...
JOhn
Re:This is a non-story (Score:3)
Every new technology has its teething problems.
In the proprietary world, they are much much worse. The more profit the players anticipate, the worse the problem gets.
The various internet protocols haven't be plagued with nearly that much trouble. At a time when it was so cutting edge that it wasn't even on the corperate radar, it managed to reconcile entirely different character sets and notions of how numbers were stored so that machines that were never intended to interoperate routinely did so. If in doubt, the RFC was the final authority. If the RFC was unclear, this was discussed, and a clarifying RFC was issued to settle the matter.
In the world of proprietary specs, a bunch of companies all haggle and fight over the spec from day 1. Most of the arguements center on "We think it should be this way, and since we're the bestest and the most deserving, you will bow down to our greatness and like it". The result tends to be an ill defined 'standard' with miles of wiggle room and dozens of companies that convince themselves that their ideas were adopted as the cannonical standard.
Rather than holding a quiet bake off where early prototypes are brought out and tested for compatability with a 'lets make this work' attitude, prototypes are jealously guarded secrets.
When the prototypes are finally brought together, it happens at a show with a bunch of crowing marketing people with one or two under-appreciated engineers behind the curtain just in case. The engineers rarely have any authority to make changes, and management's "worst nightmare" is the thought of the lot of them getting drunk together and letting the secrets out of the bag. (That is to say, actually coming to a better understanding of what it will take to be fully interoperable).
WARNING: tasteless but accurate metaphore follows:
Inevitably, brand A won't talk to brand B. Does this convince the corperations that their engineers should get together and talk? No, it signals that the pissing contest is about to begin. Whoever covers the most floor space and pisses on the most people wins.
Once it's all over, everyone drags themselves back to their feet (still dripping), and wonders why all the potential customers went away.
End of tasteless but accurate metaphore.
You'll notice that all of the incompatabilities you mention went away at about the same time that the product became a comodity off the shelf part.
Bluetooth is at least as complex, and probably more so, than any of these technologies. The manufacturers will get this sorted out in time.
The bleeding edge is exactly that - bloody. And as they say, you can tell who the pioneers are by the arrows in their backs. Don't slag a technology when it's in its infancy, just because things aren't working perfectly yet.
I'm not slagging the technology itself, just many of the companies 'bringing us' this technology. If they were truly interested in inter-operability, they would have done something about it before embarassing themselves at a public technology show. I imagine they did extensive testing to make sure that THEIR product A talked to THEIR product B, and none to see if either product would talk to someone else's product C.
Re:This is a non-story (Score:4)
The problem isn't so much that people are just ignoring the spec and rushing out products that aren't fully compatable, the problem is that the spec can't be followed. The protocol spec for Bluetooth is over 1500 pages and in some places is incompatable with itself. What we have here is a perfect example of design by committee and the problems that it causes everytime it comes up. It's simply impossible to be fully compliant with the entire spec so when designing a device so you have to choose which features you're going to support and which vendors you're going to be compatable with. Right now the leading vendor seems to be Ericsson, so if you're making a Bluetooth you want to have a chance, it'd better be compatable with Ericsson radios and your other products. Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.
_____________
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
Publications doing reviews of the IBM and Toshiba Bluetooth adapters have run them in close proximity to 802.11 equipment. Much to the reviewer's surprise the two sets of equipment ignored each other with no noticeable interference.
Neither product is always transmitting, so if both happen to transmit at the exact same time then each will look like RF noise to the other. In theory, if both systems were VERY busy this could be a problem. For the most part, this does not appear so.
I've bee trying to research these products as they pertain to Linux for the last week. Most the the fruits of this search are available in a web page [matlock.com] of links and comments.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:4)
Ericsson's only application so far is advertisng. That's right, you're walking down the street, you pass a Coke machine, your cell phone goes 'blip blip!' and a text message asks you if you're thirsty. You're walking through the mall, you pass Victoria's Secret, your cell phone goes 'blip blip!' and informs you that thong underwear is half off. You're crusing down the freeway, you pass a billboard and . . . you get the idea. And they literally want it to go "blip blip" - go look at http://www.ericsson.com/blip [ericsson.com].
Do YOU want your cell phone going "blip blip" and offering you advertisments two thousand times a day?
And they SAY it only costs $5 per unit in quantity, but since nobody is manufacturing anything in quantity, the cost is right on par with 802.11b at the moment.
Re:Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:1)
All my experience of Nokia Mobile Phones, Nokia Networks and Nokia Multimedia tells me that Nokia as a group know that WAP has nothing to do with the WWW. Perhaps back (1yr/2yrs ago?) when you were there they didn't know that. They do now. Yes? And? XHTML as it will be used in WAP is closer to XML (the basis of WML) than it is to the HTML used in web sites. Was that supposed to imply that WML was wrong? Or that HTML is a good thing? Good. As I said WAP is a mechansim for adding services to your mobile phone after the phone has been sold, without re-flashing the firmware. Well then I apologise. How about "Out of touch" ? Kizoom's local rail information system for London.
Bluetooth will not be cheaper (Score:1)
If 802.11 is good enough then pray tell why is it not being embedded in everything from cell phones to laptops to network appliances.
In the first place it is, 802.11b is being integrated into new laptops as standard. Secondly Bluetooth does not meet that test either, in fact bluetooth does not meet any test because it does not yet exist.
The cost of implementing any electronic gadget is mainly a function of the number of units the development costs are spread over. At the last IETF I went to CISCO were selling 802.11B NICs for $50. I have no doubt that in time the cost will fall the same way the cost of an ethernet nic has plumeted.
Since most of the Bluetooth devices will be AC powered I don't buy the power saving argument. I don't think the extra watts will matter. My pocket PC/ MP3 player / camera / cell phone will definitely have 802.11B so the only portable device I intend to carry had better solve the power problem.
If Bluetooth were ready for prime time today it might just have a chance. As it is it looks like it will be another 2 years at least before it is ready for prime time by which time it will be far too late to have any effect.
Beyond that nobody has yet explained to me why I want to have a conversation with my fridge. I can see why I want my VCR to have a conversation with my Internet connection, but every other incompatibility problem I have could be solved much cheaper by manufacturers agreeing to support a common set of Infra Red remote control commands.
Adding Bluetooth to my VCR does nothing for me. I still need to bluetooth enable my computer to be able to program the VCR when I am out. Bluetooth does not have the bandwidth to send the content upstairs to my office PC so I can watch the program there.
Re:Teething problems. (Score:2)
Agreed.
He 'liked' the palm. And the Newton group had a palm-sized Newton with no expandability (just like a palm) at a under-$300 possible price point.
Rather than say 'we have this technology, we can't get palm, lets work with what we have' (this assumes you believe Apple should have been in the handheld space), Jobs worked to drive away almost all the Newton staff.
Statements like this at WWDC 1997:
Jobs - "What does Apple make?"
Jobs bootlickers - 'computers'
Jobs - "What do computers have?"
Jobs bootlickers - 'keyboards'
Jobs - "Than what is this?" and holds up a Newton.
Helped create this:
From the back of the room, MP 130's are turned on, dates is selected and a to-do task of 'find new job' is noted by Newton staff.
First Jobs fired Sandy over a rather bogus charge of 'releasing company secrets' (Sandy told the Newton staff that the spin-in was going to happen). And when the spin-in happened, 32 of the Newton engineers left in mass for palm. Jobs was then able to say to sockholders etc all that "We had to kill the product. We had no staff to build it". The people who remained were the ones who were the ones who did NCU. The NCU was 1.5 years late, would not work if you have over 2 gigs of free disk space, and only syncs with long-dead PIMs. (AKA Palm got the cream...)
Had jobs GOTTEN the palm product from 3com, the palm staff would have quit on Jobs again. Thus palm would be dead by now, and the handheld of choice would be Windows for Pen.
Re:Rats! (Score:1)
Re:Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:1)
*************
* WWW *
* *
*Web Browser*
*************
On screen when using WAP.
That means some manufaturers *are* sellig WAP as Internet over a cellphone.
Interoperability _is_ the standard (Score:1)
This is easy today when there are few if any devices to test against, but apart from some 1st generation mishaps which could call for an upgrade, a bluetooth device should work with any other device.
In reality I share your fears that interoperability is an exponentially growing problem still to be solved. The simple protocols in bluetooth won't reach all the way, and even that will be a tough to get working. In the end Bluetooth will only be a carrier of the compete anarchy of XML content... Lets hope for a better standard than "what M$ do"
Screw Bluetooth... (Score:1)
And you-- yes, YOU! Don't give me any of your criticisms about range, size, price, availability, and other practicalities and trivialities. Let me get away with being wrong. I'm happy here.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
JOhn
Re:This is a non-story (Score:2)
I know what you mean. I've got this busted ass DVD player that will only play discs that say something about 'Region 1' on them.
What's up with that?
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
I apologize for not having a link for backup, but part of my online wanderings last week ran across mention that issues around Bluetooth in France and Japan had been settled. This is just conjecture, but it might have something to do with the power of the signal as much as the frequency it is operating on.
A quick online search ran across a number of articles with headlines such as "France legalizes Bluetooth". Here is one link [ebiquity.org] talking about it. Hopefully, that settles the issue. I'm not sure what the current status of 802.11 in France is.
Just for the hell of it, here is another shameless plug for my Bluetooth on Linux [matlock.com] information page. Our favorite free operating system will be on the front line of new wireless technology.
Re:This is a non-story (Score:1)
Counterexamples:
- telephones, answering machines, etc.
- stereo components
- television and cable, VCR, DVD player, video game consoles, WebTV
- MIDI devices
If my Sony Playstation were incompatible with my Magnavox television, I'd consider that a defect.Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
America has competing incompatible regional cellular networks. Japan has iMode (arguably the best). The rest of the world has GSM. I can take my phone to anywhere from Albania to Zimbabwe [gsmcoverage.co.uk], and it will work.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
Oh, goodie, a standards compliant Web site. On this machine I have:
None of them can render the site properly or allow you to browse it. Only Netscape and Mozilla can see anything at all, and Mozilla can't get past the first page. These are the people we're trusting to develop interoperable technology?
Re:Bluetooth over tcp/ip? (Score:2)
I believe "pushing the boundaries" is the reason this project isn't working. If I personally felt like having my palm pilot connect to all devices in my house; I wouldn't want to be looking at shiny corporate graphics describing each appliance as being a Maytag, GE and colourful SONY stereo with scrolling graphics. I would want a little box called, "light" that actually controls my light when I click on it.
Pushing the boundaries in the way you're suggesting is about as exciting and useful as "pushing the boundaries" in the artistic appeal of the buttons on your microwave; in the end - nobody cares.
And in the end, working on math routines and vector-plotting standards accross all devices would increase the weight of your Bluetooth powered watch to 6 pounds. Anything more than an absolutely simple matrix of on and off pixels isn't going to work with anything.
Companies themselves, and devlepers; looking to improve the interface to Bluetooth devices can add their own colorful icons to their display, but in the end, if the PROTOCOL isn't simple, nothing will work together.
One use for STRONG trademarks... (Score:1)
IEEE shouldnt even allow anyone to use the name bluetooth unless it complies 100% with the spec, not 99% and not 101%. No mention of the term in marketing or product materials, nothing.
And anyone who does do so without being compliant should be sued into the ground and hunted down like rabid dogs. And have their IEEE memberships stripped of course.
Oh forget it... the very idea of ethics in people who design devices for people that are supposed to work... ha!
Re:Something Lost in Translation, or ?? (Score:1)
WTF? "Ditto for your too cockeye"?? Man oh man. Do I really need to say more? Anonymous Idiot. If you've got some point to make, make it, but how about you: a) actually log in b) write something that the rest of us can actually make some sense of. until then, enjoy being pathetic.
Oh Lord (Score:2)
Example: When I first heard of Bluetooth, I thought to myself, "I don't really care about checking the status of my fridge while watching tv". After time however, I came to realize, "I don't really care about checking the status of my fridge while watching tv".
Re:Avg Joe doesn't know (Score:2)
Wireless lans, well duh, you'd also need a bit more range for bluetooth to be useful there (and 802.11b is already going to be king).
But printers/scanners... hmmm, are you sure there's not enough bandwidth for that?
HP just announced their first bluetooth printer at CeBIT:
"The HP Deskjet 995C inkjet printer, the company's first integrated Bluetooth printer, allows users to print without cables from up to 10 meters (approximately 30 feet) away from other devices enabled for Bluetooth printing."
They've also got several other bluetooth projects going on.
Re:Remember when USB was Useless Serial Bus ?? (Score:1)
USB went exactly nowhere (a number of years) until Apple Computer [apple.com] put it in the iMac [apple.com] with no alternatives (no serial ports, no Apple Desktop Bus for keyboards and mice). Suddenly, Fry's Electronics had USB cables, hubs, mice, keyboards...
They validated the technology, and made the market big enough for the small equipment players to come in and compete.
Re:Oh the irony! (Score:1)
Honestly, in my opinion, it doesn't make me look bad, it makes the moderation process look..well..idiotic. You're right, it is ironic, and I don't really know what to say to all that.
Regardless of what all you AC's (with heavy emphasis on the coward part) are posting about, I still stand by what I said originally. The statement made by the bluetooth developer doesn't make any sense. That was all I was trying to point out. If you want irony, there's irony in this case of a post about someone not making sense being replied to in such an incomprehensible and nonsensical manner. That's where the first bit of irony is.
Re:Rats! (Score:1)
You listen to a Buisness Reporter? (Score:1)
Re:Teething problems. (Score:1)
If you are my worst nightmare, then email me.
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:1)
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
Except that there apparently isn't room for both ethernet & token-ring, because token-ring is dying.
4 years after the High Speed Token Ring Alliance (HSTRA [hstra.com]) was set up, even IBM, the champion of TR, barely support 100Mb TR. Other members, for example 3 Com, don't seem to support it at all, and some, eg Olicom, have got out of the TR business totally.
Re:Oh Lord (Score:2)
Is it true our devices will all speak to each other oh corporona,
Is it true we will gain true freedom through connected devices,
the freedom to order groceries automatically?
the freedom to buy stock from a toaster?
the freedom to type up a report on our computers, while sitting in front of a tv we have to shut off to focus on typing?
Oh corporona!
how you elucidate me
When, when when
I suffer
in agony....
when will your marketing dreams become my reality?
Re:Oh Lord (Score:2)
Re:Bluetooth - necessary in 802.11 world? (Score:2)
Ethernet killed the properiatary technologies, and moved into the TR shops, and as soon as it did that, people started standardizing on one standard, which was Ethernet.
Re:This is a non-story (Score:2)
Huh? Why would the inkjet need to send data back to the computer? AFAIK, bidirectionality (in the case of printers) is only used for sending back the name of the printer. Cute, but not vital for operation.
Now, for other parallell port devices, such as scanners or Zip drives, you would have a point.
> How about 5 1/4 floppy drives? Remember not being able to read 360kb formated floppies in certain high density drives?
This actually had more to do with the order in which the disk was written to in the various drives, rather than with the drives themselves. Alternatively writing to a disk in a HD drive and a DD drive was a definite no-no, and would make the disk unreadable in the DD drive. The reason for this was that the R/W heads for the DD drives where twice as large. When writing using the DD drive, you would get rather wide tracks. When then writing using the HD drive, the new data would be superimposed as a narrower track, whereas the sides still had the old data. No problem reading such a disk in a HD drive: indeed, due to its narrower head, it would only pick up the new data. The DD drive, however, picked up a mix of both signals and hence could not make any sense of the data.
The easy solution: when transporting data between two computers where one had a HD drive and the other a DD drive, keep two disks: one for transfers from the HD drive to DD, and one for the tranfering in the other direction. Both had to be formatted to DD of course.