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Japanese I-Mode Phones Under Attack 148

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that-pretty-much-sucks dept.
radsoft.net is reporting that DoCoMo phones arre under attack by new wormish i-mode attachments. According to the announcement, i-mode phone users shouldn't open emails from unknown senders. I used a docomo phone while I was in Japan a few weeks ago. They are so far ahead of us in phones: lighter, cooler, longer battery life, more features, and i-mode is cool. Anyway, the funny part is that these attachments, if opened, will do nifty things like call arbitrary phone numbers (your worst enemy? Emergency?) or simply freeze your phone. Docomo has market penetration that makes local cel phone mega corps look like mom and pop shops. Anyway, there's no doubt that consumer electronics will be targets of more attacks in the future.
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Japanese I-Mode Phones Under Attack More

Japanese I-Mode Phones Under Attack

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  • iMode is HTML! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The really cool thing about iMode that you didn't mention is that it's just HTML. When I was in Japan last year I had a look at my home page and it worked fine. Sites that looked good in lynx looked fine on the phones. iMode is what WAP should have been: text-mode HTML!

  • Re:it's not like this wasn't expected... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Let's make a worm for web-TVs that will order pr0n from pay-per-view channels. Let's make one making funny noises with your iPaq during meetings.
    With computers are everywhere now, and everything getting connected to a net or another soon, the possibilities are quite large.
    More technology is more fun!

  • Actually not a strange idea at all. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Too bad most current phones don't support onboard third-party apps, otherwise it's a viable idea. There was actually a VirusScan for the Nokia 91xx series on the drawing board until it became clear that the current GEOS-based system was a dead end -- note that the new Nokia 92xx series, as well as the Ericsson R380, use the EPOC operating system, and there *is* a VirusScan for that OS. Oh, and in case you're wondering, there *are* trojans in the wild for the EPOC OS.

  • wrong way round (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They pronounce the r sound as l... as in 'lice' instead of 'rice', not the other way around.
  • I remember when kids would make prank calls to random numbers in the telephone book.

    Yeah, we did that. Let's see. "Is your refridgerator running?" "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

  • Re:Docomo/Microsoft parallax? (Score:5)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @07:41AM (#148594)
    Domoco should have expected this, given that they have such a similar situation to microsoft. Yes, the market is different (cells vs. software) but the context is similar.

    That's a bad analogy. The reason that NTT are in the position of market dominance that they now enjoy is because they were a government-sanctioned monopoly. You literally could not compete with NTT, if you did, you would eventually be arrested. The law stated that NTT were the only people permitted to run a telco, and that was that.

    Say what you like about Microsoft, but they achieved market dominance by competing in a free market. Linux is a viable alternative for many applications, you are free to distribute and use it as you please. Neither Microsoft nor the government are in any way able to enforce that you do otherwise - in fact there's this little thing called the Constitution that protects you.

    So, really, the situation isn't similar at all.

  • You don't read mail from people you don't know?

    Huh?

    I get e-mail every day from folks I don't know. Mostly folks asking for support for my FTP server, but also from people looking for people with my name, asking for advice on things that they may have seen me post in mailing lists on, and so on.

    Oh well, I guess you listened your mommy told you not to talk to strangers.
  • Good god almighty, y'all better beleive we got cell towers all over the friggin' place. Worse, because it's so flat in the Texas Panhandle, you can't go from one place to the other without actually being in visual range of a cell tower.

    But that's actually just another example of how the cell size in Texas is so large.

    In Japan, you never see the cell towers becuase they don't really tower very much. They're just little transcievers that sit on the tops of buildings, almost completely out of sight. You don't need to build massive towers because you're only transmitting very short distances.

    Because a Texas tower is designed to serve an area many miles across, you need a big tower to do it.

  • why japanese phones are better (Score:5)

    by Eric Sharkey ( 1717 ) <sharkey@lisaneric.org> on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:57AM (#148597)
    The reason Japanese phones are smaller, lighter, and have longer battery life than American equivalents is because the cell size is much smaller.

    Optimal cell size is a function of population density. In the Tokyo area, you've got about a billion people per square foot, so you can afford to keep the cell size small, which means you don't need a lot of power to transmit.

    If you were to try to use the same cell size in a place like Texas, you'd be putting up more cell towers than there are people. It's just not economically feasable to do that.

    Americans want phones they can take anywhere in the country and have them work. They need a big battery and a high power transmitter to make that work.

    Here in the building where I work in Ibaraki-prefecture there's almost no cell coverage because we're a government lab (KEK [www.kek.jp]) and you can't place a cell tower on government property according to Japanese law. People have to run to the roof whenever their cell phone rings. The lab isn't that big, either. It' can't me much more than a couple of square kilometers. Once you get off the lab, your phone works pretty much everywhere.

    Don't expect to see Japan-sized phones in the U.S. any time soon. We need a ten-fold increase in population density before it will become practical.
  • I'd like to be the first to congratulate you on your remarkable ability to miss a dead-obvious point completely.

    It's not that they were clever enough to "bypass" stuff that we weren't... Around, oh, the end of World War II, we had such a head start on everyone that in many areas other nations didn't catch up until recently (and some still haven't). And, well, damn. If the going tech when they caught up was fiber optics, and not copper, of course they're gonna start with fiber and leapfrog us a bit, because we're kinda stuck using the network we started building a long time ago and rely upon.

    The other point the thread originator made was equally valid... You'll note that damn near everyone has a phone (and it's extraordinarily reliable), and we've managed to do some ridiculously cool things on a network that was originally designed to simply connect telephone A to telephone B.

  • Don't read too much into that "almost always". ;) In the U.S., losing phone service is also very rare... I've lost it only in severe storms (the kind that flood town and knock trees-- and telephone poles-- over) and natural disasters (hurricanes, which I suppose are storms).

    I've been unable to get a call through (despite having a functional line) exactly once, and it was just after a hurricane. When nearly every person in a city tries to place or answer a phone call at the same time, yeah, the grid gets overloaded...

    Blackouts are a non-issue, because the phone circuit carries its own power.

    In short, next time an earthquake or hurricane hits your part of Sweden, try calling a few friends. :)

  • I gotta tell ya, 99% of Americans really don't care if their phone can run java apps. They want it to (A) place telephone calls, (B) receive telephone calls, and maybe (C) store phone numbers and (D) handle text messaging.

    Roughly nobody wants to browse the web on their phone... maybe they would if the displays didn't suck, but I suspect most people would be more interested in a smaller phone than in a better display.

    This kind of sucks, because I wouldn't mind being able to write java apps for my phone. ;)

  • Yeah, the telcos are a bitch if you actually need some variety of customer service from them... but you have to differentiate, here. There's a difference between "I need a DSL line, and I'd like to talk to a human (who preferably does not SUCK as a human) about it" and "I need telephone service".

    The latter, they're very good at. ;)

    In terms of access and availability, I don't think I've ever been anywhere in the U.S. (aside from well within the confines of one or national parks) where I was more than a short walk from a functional land line and handset. If I'm in anything resembling a populated area, I can promise you I'll have no trouble whatsoever finding a phone that is both accessible and available for my use. The last two times I've moved, I've had telephone service connected and functional within an hour.

    If all this sounds familiar to you, then consider that the phrase "one of the best" may just include your Nation of Choice in "the best". Nobody claimed vast superiority over the entire world, here.

  • There's a difference between being able to execute applications and being able to execute a message someone sends you. The latter is just unnecessary. It's a message... messages are data. If you want to send me your message in video form, fine. You can even send me the player. But why the hell would I want my message-handling software to execute that player? All it needs to do is deliver the damn thing to me, and I'll take it from there.
  • The phone company does not have the kind of soda-can budget Jeff Goldblum commands.

    Maybe in Japan, where the soda density is so much higher...

  • Jeez, when are manufacturers going to learn?

    I'll just bet that the next generation of GPRS and UMTS phones will be hacked to death because the manufacturers forgot about security.
  • Well, it's not working, now, is it?

    Having different mobile telephone standards is like having different networking standards. On the Internet we all use TCP/IP. Feel free to go back to ipx/spx/banyan/netbeui/whatever archaic networking protocol you want.

    In Europe, we all use GSM for our mobiles and soon, GPRS. Then once the telcos have paid off the loans for those rediculously large 3G licenses we might have a world wide standard in 50 years.

  • No joke. A shell on a vt100 gives a person far more power than mystery preprogrammed checkboxes and attatchments.
  • "Hello, do you have a John in the house?"

    "No!"

    "Then what do you do, go in your pants?"
  • i-mode mailers don't support attachments; nor are they supposed to support HTML, but some of them do. Anyway, it's possible to put a link to tel:110 in a page, or sometimes in email, and to disguise it. Recent i-mode phones will always show the number and ask for confirmation before dialling, but older ones did not.
  • Telephone links are a great idea. The problem is the fact that they can be disguised. Newer i-mode phones always show the number and give a prompt before dialling. The WAP standard that defines similar features requires prompting as well; hopefully manufacturers will learn from this and always prompt.
  • I still don't understand what GSM is supposed to give us over the exsisting systems in the US. I travel quite a bit, and have an AT&T phone with national roaming. I can make calls from San Diego, Boston or anywhere in between without thinking about it. I've never been in a situation where my phone couldn't make a call despite having signal.

    I also have a Cingular GSM phone (for work), and though the little Nokia is nice, I don't see GSM giving me more features or better sound quality than any of the other systems out there.

    From a user perspective, I really don't care if it's GSM or TDMA or XYZPDQ or whatever, I just care if I can make a call. Why all the worship of GSM? I still have yet to see a sound argument for it.

  • Re:Not an issue in the USA for a long time (Score:3)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:51AM (#148611)
    soon they are going to start making worms that actually crawl into your ear...

    Talk about market penetration!

  • Why do some techies never learn? (Score:5)

    by 36-bitter ( 7427 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:52AM (#148612)
    The answer is as obvious as the answer to email worms: my (telephone|MUA) should not even *try* to be a public compute server, which is exactly what the ability to send "active" attachments means. Just Say No to active messaging. The cool factor simply doesn't outweigh the potential cost.
  • Say what you like about Microsoft, but they achieved market dominance by competing in a free market.

    Purely superficial mktng 'innovative' BS.

    Funny how all the skulduggery and backstabbing done by a ruthless, obsessively deranged boy genie-ass without a shread of ethic or conscious gets slowly forgotten - nevermind that Pertec purchased MITS with the understanding that they were buying MITS-BASIC (that's what the label says!), only to have the rights to BASIC returned to Micro-Soft due to a legal techinacality (hmm, no 'competitive market' choice there) - nevermind that IBM handed Msft a cash cow when Msft bought QDOS and flipped it to IBM for royalties ("Isn't that the kid who's mom is on our Red Cross committee" - nope, still no 'competition' going on). It also helps immensly to have a family of bankers and lawyers for lots of free dinner time advice that real innovators seldom enjoy.

    No, only a Msft brainwashed, press release deluded revisionist-history adled mind can buy into the "won by competition in the marketplace" BS - instead of by quasi legal back room antics that would make embarrass a Rockefeller.

    See the Bill Gates/Alfred E. Neuman comparison HERE [widomaker.com] or http://www.widomaker.com/~cswiger/bgisaen.html
  • F-Secure already have this type of technology. For the Palm OS as well.
    òò òó óò óó ôô õõ öö øø
    BIG Brother is watching
    \\ \/ /\ //
  • No its not, its viruses

    --
    I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations ...
  • Hmm. odd.. if you have web browsing from nextel, go to ftd.com or 1800flowers.com. i forget which. if you choose "order now", it dials their sales line.

  • This soon will be less of an issue. There are companies building triangualation software that allows the telcos to id your position.

    Cell-loc [cell-loc.com] and TimesThree [timesthree.com] are building cell-phone positioning technology. This sort of thing will soon be availible to your ordinary cell phone carrier. The FCC is trying to make the cell carriers provide locations of cell phones for 911 purposes...

    chilling, no?


  • So, the whole point of this post is that a company who offers cell phone service is telling people not to read messages from people they don't know.

    Brilliant.

    Call me crazy, but, who the hell bothers to read mail from people they don't know? Especially if the subject line is screaming about MAKE MONEY FAST? This "warning" is like saying "Don't spray yourself in the face with pepper spray -- It may impair your ability to watch Carson Daly on TRL."

  • Chekov (Score:3)

    by Pope ( 17780 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @09:56AM (#148619)
    "they put creatures... in our bodies..."

    Wrath of Khan.
  • >>Does this sound like microsoft to anyone else?

    Worse - DoCoMo charges for every email - Can you even *imagine* MS trying that?

    MMDC.NET [mmdc.net]

  • Funny - (Score:5)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:41AM (#148621) Homepage
    I was reading iMode's html-ish spec tonight and I saw the URL designation tel:// (as in tel://911)
    What a bad iDea *that* is... (Yes, it's already been exploited, though over here, I think it's 119, rather than 911...)
    Someone made an innocent goof in a HTML-based game a few weeks ago that highlighted this vulnerability.
    On top of that, it costs the *initiator* of the call for calls placed from cell phones here, not the recipient - what was that exchange in the Carribean that was supposed to be so bad - 809?
    iMode is just untroducing Java on its phones, but from what i've read on the keitai-l listserve, auto-dialing like this is not on an option.

    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo



    MMDC.NET [mmdc.net]
  • The Japanese seem to only export 1 to 2 year old tech to the US. It always takes a year for new gaming systems to get here, and sometimes up to 2 years for other consumer electronics. Why? Is thiss ome sort of patriotism on the part of hte Japanese companies, ensuring that their country has the best before anyone else?
  • "If a tree falls in a forest.... it isn't a tree making the noise but a log"

    So, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, the sound is logged?

    +1 Funny
    -1 Offtopic
    +1 Funny
    -1 Redundant
    +1 Underrated
    -1 Flamebait

    Kevin Fox
    --
  • actually, it's more likely that they just didn't want to bother, or that the phone was turned off. They almost certainly had the capabilty. think about it, for them to tell which towers it is near is fairly trivial, and there it just takes a direction and signal strength to calculate an approximate location. but if you thought that the police were going to go bust someone's door down over a cell phone, well, you might have seen COPS too many time
  • How is this a worm? It didn't require me to do the same? How is it supposed to spread. Oh yea, I forgot this is slashdot noone does anything original, so someone HAS to copy you sooner or later.
  • Yes, but it only binds me, by my honor to post stupid messages, not nessesary his stupid message, meaning his worm won't spread :)
  • Probably from the movie "Dogma" the one made by the guys who made "Clerks." Watch it, its hallarious.
  • Lets see, telco takes off atleast 75% of that for their own cost leaving you 18000000
    Court orders you to pay each person their 1 dollar back. Leaving you 54000000 in the hole.
  • Oh I thought you meant, the facts about their Stinger phone system was going to be brought up in court. You mean the other kinda trial, "Yawn."
  • chilling, no?
    Actually, not really.

    My father had his cell phone stolen a couple of years ago, and I was shocked that the company couldn't triangulate to track the thief.

    I'm all for greater privacy (like not having video cameras up in every public place), but being able to find a mobile phone seems like a pretty useful function. Of course, with any technology, there is the potential for abuse (video cameras are good; surveilence of the general population is bad).

    The technology itself isn't bad -- it's the people who abuse it.
  • Upgrading to systems that are on par with the rest of the world can't be that hard.

    For corporations that can't even get their shit together and let you know whether you can get DSL, it's not surprising. One will tell you that you're able to, another will tell you that you're not.

    Now, I don't completely understand what's involved in the infrastructure of building a new system nationwide, but it can't be that easy.

    In Europe, there are countries in close proximity with eachother. Most of those countries have quite a few mobile service providers. It's easier for them to cover a short space with new technology than it is for a "national" provider here to cover a country that is _very_ large. By the time they've completed, a country the size of Switzerland could have gone through a dozen iterations of new technology, no?

  • Hurm. (Score:5)

    by Pahroza ( 24427 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:39AM (#148632)
    I think the worst part of this could be that the virus may cause the phones to automatically dial an emergency number.

    Extra calls to emergency call centers that flood the lines is going beyond just filling inboxes. Although I'm not familiar with the "110" emergency number stated in the article, if it's anything like 911, it could obviously affect lives. This seems to me to be far worse than a worm that calls numbers at random or freezes up the screen of a phone (also mentioned in the article).
  • They were only protecting their shipping interests by attacking the U.S. It was all our fault. Hollywood would _never_ alter a historical story.

    Rick

  • You've hit the nail on the head. There are already many instances (not all recent) of popular media influencing the public perception of historical events (Paul Revere's ride for instance), but it has and will become much stronger given the dumbing down of society and especially popular culture, but more importantly, the incredible immersiveness of movies like "Pearl Harbor" and the blantant lack of any attempts to remain true to history only inasmuch as it affects the bottom line by the people who make these movies.
  • Do any of these worms call your mother every 5 minutes to let her know you're ok?
  • At least not from the Nextel phone I was recently programming. I'm pretty sure it's not part of the MIDP device profile (defines a "profile" of capabilities for a small Java device like a phone) or even of CLDC (which defines a set of capabilities of the same device to provide network connectivity), though someone at a recent contest I was at was wishing there would be some way to initiate a call from Java... I think if you put in the API but made sure the phone asked before actually dialing anything a Java MIDlet requested it would be a safe enough feature to have.

    Java on these things is not a minus. It still has the same sandbox security model and runs in a protected environment so a rogue app can't really do a lot to you - it can't dial out and about all it can try is a DOS by consuming resources on your phone. Then you turn the phone off and on, and delete the noxious app (as it will not run until you tell it to).

    I would never open some random binary attachemnt on a phone, but I'd feel safe enough downloading useful Java apps for a phone.

  • A lot of that surprizes me - I didn't realize the JAR limit was so small.

    The HTTP connection only being able to make connections back to the server seems more like an Applet than a MIDlet - I'm pretty sure in the Nokia contest I entered at JavaOne that HTTPConnection could get a connection to any service through the phone.

    The second place entry was a MIDlet that used AltaVista to translate words (among other features). I suppose it could have been proxying through a local servlet but I did not think that was the case.

    Also, all of the example applications of the CLDC configuration make no mention of the HTTPConnection being limited in such a fashion.

    Thanks for the info!
  • I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you really don't know the difference between a Java app running on a cell phone and a browser built into the phone.

    As the browser built into the phone is just a binary application, it can do whatever it likes with the phone - send secret messages to aliens, wipe any flash ram you might have, randomize digits in stored phone numbers, or simply dial out when a WAP page you browse to asks it to. You can imagine that it was the first feature a marketing person thought would be handy to add to the built in browser.

    Java apps on the other hand, have a limited API that defines what they can do - if there is no API to destroy the faceplate of the phone for example, a Java program (called "MIDlet" on phones using the MIDP Java API) will be unable to do so, no matter how hard they try. Similarily, at the moment I'm pretty sure (though I do not have exhaustive knowledge of the API) that there simply is no way for a Java app to ask the phone to dial a number. Already though developers are asking for such a capability - thus my original point about them probably adding in such a feature later on, but since the Java VM controls the actual action of dialing the number it can at least ask the user if they really want to dial a particular number and throw away repeated requests until the user responds.

    That's why downloading a Java app might not be nearly as bad as browsing to some back-corner porn site on your phone that then made your phone call some of those great country codes that cost you hundreds of dollars per minute!

  • Small enough that they need to hang a ton of Hello-Kitty, Pokemon or other cute danglies off them which end up taking more space than the phone.
  • He's back! He's mad! and he's looking for a little pussy!
  • hey, with innovation comes inherent difficulties. New communcations devices, new software, new virus.

    Umm, not it's not "inherent". Why should an attachment be able to automatically initiate a call without user intervention? What possible real-world advantage could this bring?

    The answer, of course, is that allowing scripts to do anything is easy and putting sensible limits on them is (a little) harder. It's just laziness on the part of the developers.

    There's a saying, I can't remember the source. "Unix doesn't prevent you from doing stupid things, because that would prevent you from doing clever things." But even in Unix a tiny amount of initial setup of permissions will greatly limit the number of stupid things you can do by accident.

  • Let's say someone sends you a quick message with the name and address of a funky new Chinese restaurant. Wouldn't it be great if you could just tap the phone number and it would dial the restaurant to make a reservation?

    Just because something can have loads of security flaws doesn't mean it's not useful...

    --

  • Re:And Now a Word About Infrastructure (Score:3)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @08:31AM (#148643) Homepage
    one of the best in the world for access and availability?

    In the U.S.? Yeah, right, and I've got a moon plot to sell you.

    Don't get me wrong, the U.S. isn't like a 3rd world country when it comes to its phone system. But I've heard enough complaints about US phone service to think it has to be at the bottom of a list of First world countries.

    No offence. But your Telephone companies don't sell telephone service, they sell utter frustration.

  • their phones are without a doubt superior to ours.. they are a good year or so ahead of us.. one reason why their batteries last 10 times as long is because their Cells are so close together that one can be reached with a lot less power.. etc.. i used imode on the trains, in cabs, in the clubs and it rox!
  • This had to happen sooner or later, The more powerfull you make the phone, the bigger the chance you have opened a security hole and missed it. The best solution will probably be for the phones to automatically check with your service provider if there is an upgrade for their firmware when you power them on, and query if you want to install it. If some-one finds a security-hole, nokia (or another major vendor), can patch it, distribute the patch to the mobile phone companies, and 2-3 days later all of the phones are immune. If this became common place, phone manufacturers would probably wind up competing on response times (dont buy nokia, motorla get their patches out twice as fast... etc , etc ). When you release a firmware upgrade. it will only be a matter of hours before the phone population is immune, and with the one open standard platform (as the major mobile manufacturers announced recently) it should become a relatively easy task.
  • How hard could it possibly be? Jeff Goldblum did it in ID4 with only an Apple Netwon and some cut up soda cans...

    --
  • Speaking of which - what's with the recent resurgence in the Hello Kitty arena? I remember seeing that stuff back in 1985/6 then it all seemed to cease existing for about 15 years - now a huge explosion. It can probably be correlated with the greater emergence of the Powerpuff Girls (think of it - just add a couple whiskers, and you could never tell them apart).

    --
  • It mentions that the company is considering legal action against the senders of the virus/worm. However later on it mentions that if your phone is sending any unwanted e-mails to hit the clear button - if the worm spreads like a tradiotnal worm does it seems that original senders might be hard to find.
  • "...the company is considering legal action against the senders due to inconveniences caused to its customers and harm to the popularity of mobile Internet."

    Or they could admit their failure and fix the damn hole. These exploits are made as a wake-up to show the importance of security to the company as well as the consumer! Why can't they get over it and audit their system to prevent further exploits in the future and protect their customers!
  • Years ago people were programming funny things in usenet posts to repogram the funciton keys on a vt100. The result is if you looked at the post, and then hit PF1 or whatever, it run some command.
    Some terminals would let you reporgram enter and backspace.
  • From what i've seen on some of the docomo phones, it looks like that is exactly what they are after. Right now they seem to have some bandwidth issues but since G3 is now dead, I suspect NTT and its friends will solve the bandwidth issue and you'll be able to order live prorn online and watch on a 1inch diagonal screen.
  • I know someone that used to get $50 for every virus he turned in. Some weeks he cleared $300 which was quite good for a grad student.
  • There used to be more NTSC tvs made per year than the entire count of color PAL tvs. Thats why tv's cost much less in the US (and Japan) than in Europe or anywhere else that has PAL tv.

    Europe needed GSM because of sill RF rules that prevent a German company from providing service in France. GSM was designed so that the cell sites are real tiny and their serivce borders are easy to control. Analog phones work much better once you get out of high density citites and into the rural areas. The US has some of the lowest density cities in the world. Heck even Australia has more dense cities than the US.
  • A provider isn't going to break a different countries laws by providing coverage that leaks over the state line.
  • My Mitubishi i-mode phone runs more than 400 hours on a charge (full charge in two hours).

  • Docomo has market penetration that makes local cel phone mega corps look like mom and pop shops.

    DoCoMo has ~60% market share. While that may be higher than US's telcos, it's nothing like Microsft's.
    --

  • Neither Microsoft nor the government are in any way able to enforce that you do otherwise - in fact there's this little thing called the Constitution that protects you.

    Not yet.. but they will soon enough with things like the DMCA.
  • That's an interesting way to define the "worlds." Unfortunately, it's wrong, as is the previous poster. The first world is the western world (Europe and the US basically). The second world is the Soviet bloc. The third world is the non-aligned countries or the countries too poor to be involved much in the cold war.
  • It's not 1 to 2 year old tech. The technology is as modern in the US as in Japan (or often even newer in the US). It's 1 to 2 year old products. That explanation about translating stuff is BS. 1) It doesn't take very long to badly translate game subtitles. 2) It's not like the programmers are surprised and suddenly have to export the game to the US. They could plan for that in advance. The real reason it takes longer is simply that the companies have worked out these elaborate product cycles. They use the Japanese market to test things for the US market and to create free "advertising." If they suddenly jumped ahead 1 yr here, they would miss out on selling all the stuff that came in between. Companies everywhere withhold things from the market. Why do movies come out on different dates in different countries? Even when the speak the same language?
  • Yeah, and how much did your friend pay for that phone?
    Those things are fully available here -- just at $900 a pop, they aren't exactly in heavy demand.

  • Since the phone obviously dials numbers predefined, I say its a scam Miss Cleo concocted for her psych[o]ic network... "I see joor fuchah and eet says dat joo weel call me nouuw!"

  • The Dungeon (Score:4)

    by Akatosh ( 80189 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @07:48AM (#148662) Homepage
    Image the suprise as during the middle of an important business meeting, your cell phone switches to speakerphone and calls THE DUNGEON.

    1-800-800-8900

    FOR MEN WHO ARE SERIOUS ABOUT LEATHER AND THE FETISH LIFE STYLE
  • must have made their browser.
  • Sense of humour guys? This is funny.. mod up!! :)
    --
    Azrael - The Angel of Death
    posted with: Mozilla (0.9+)

  • Interesting comments, although way off base :-)

    The UK has one of the largest mobile usage rates in the world, and I would not call it sparsely populated! (~65m ppl in a country about 700x300 miles in size - including plenty of water). In fact it's (I believe) one of the highest population densities in the West.

    There are 4 physical networks here, all national and all GSM, which means if you're on any of them you can call from pretty much anywhere in the world (yes I know there are issues with frequencies in some cases but with a modern phone you really don't notice it these days). The fact is that when GSM was emerging as a standard, the european telcos saw that standards were good, and interoperability was important, but the US nets decided on their own standards. Sound familiar? ;)

  • First off American consumers don't want to pay for 2.5G or 3G celluar. That's the biggest reason the US is behind. The technology is there, but consumers are used to getting free phones or cheap phones with their service and aren't willing to pay more.

    Here people get mobiles for free when they change their tires. You can pick up a mobile phone at the supermarket for about US 50 and then you have a Nokia 3210. The phone is equipped with a pre-paid card, so no subscription nescessary. Everytime your card is empty, you buy a new one, call a number and you go. Ease of use and cheapness. Here at the University we got phones for free from the University, with a subscription plan that is the cheapest I know. Sorry, you're argument is faulty.

    Another point to be made is that in Europe, lane phone lines are hideously expensive. It makes more sense to use a cell phone there since it is cheaper (or close to it), but in the US this isn't true.

    Sorry not true. We pay for local calls contrary to the US, but it is not too expensive and certainly cheaper then a mobile. On a side note, nobody gives up the land line they have, they just get the mobile as an extra. So they pay for two phones. Yet again you're arguing is flawed.

    Sorry to say, but it seems that even though you're working in the industry, you don't know about the way it works here in Europe.

    On a related note, somebody else mentioned that 4Europe was less densily populated and therefore there were more mobiles. Not true either, mobiles are used mostly in city areas and the London City or the business Center of Paris are great places to spot the latest Nokia. Fact of the matter is that the most densily populated countries like the Netherlands, but also the least densily populated countries, like the Scandinavian countries all have national coverage and a high usage rate. There is basically no excuse for American mobile phone companies other then that they made major errors in the pricing, the technology, the marketing, the regulations etc. They still haven't entered an incredibly large market.

  • ... and sooner or later: McAfee for Nokia.

    I've always had the suspicion that virus creators are secretly supported by the anti-virus industry. There's this multi-billion dollar industry that depends on hackers in Eastern Europe and lame security in Microsoft products to create a problem that can never really be solved. That's suspicious.

  • Re:Funny - (Score:3)

    by Jason Cwik ( 124849 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @07:00AM (#148675)
    Yeah, that is one nice thing about Java. You get the "sandbox". All OS calls can be wrapped with a call to the SecurityManager. If you haven't given the applet permission (through a dialog, or certificate, etc), they can't do things like dial a number, or write to flash, etc.

    But there still is some risk if there is a hole in the VM (A call that doesn't check the SecurityManager for instance) or if people just start clicking "Yes" on every security dialog that comes up :)

  • here's a image of it (Score:3)

    by small_dick ( 127697 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @09:58AM (#148676)
    imode here [kagacanada.com]

    It looks kinda geegawish to me. but then, i still use vi in xterms, so go figure.


    Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
  • While I don't claim to be an expert, I would venture to guess that population density has a great deal to do with the US' slow adoption of cellular technology and standards. After all, if a new service won't make money, it can't be offered.

    I live in a small (pop 75,000) midwestern community which only has analog cell service provided by Cellular One or Verizon. That's it. Since the market is so small, it just doesn't pay to put up a new digital tower (Sprint PCS and the like) because they won't make any money. In many European countries and Japan, the population density is much greater (2-3x) and therefore it is more economical to provide the latest and greatest service.

    On the other hand, I get my local and long distance phone service, 250 digital cable TV channels, and 1.5 MB/256k cable modem for just $100/month through a local provider. [blackhillsfiber.com] Guess I can't complain too loudly.
    ----

  • Please remember, my American compatriots, that the reason why we are 'so far behind' in many telco issues is not because we are some bleating band of nincompoops, but rather that many other countries simply didn't have much in the way of infrastructure to begin with and when they installed, they installed modern digital because it was the prevailing technology.

    Our telco infrastructure is much older, widely based on the old copper and analog systems, and we have to spend a lot of money to upgrade it to the modern stadards, unsurprisingly enough, because we still have one of the best telephone systems in the world in terms of access and availability for users. It's a shame that deregulation will probably destroy that.

  • All your cellphones are...oh, nevermind.
    ---

  • Re:why japanese phones are better (Score:3)

    by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @07:24AM (#148691)

    I can practically get a cell phone in the US the size of a stick of gum already. How much smaller do they need to be?
  • This is serious. 110 is the equivalent of 911 in Japan.

    On that note, there was a "911 Virus" [grc.com] that spread via open Windows shares and randomly called 911 last year. This didn't spread far because it was so malicious (it erased users' hard drives) but it is an example of this sort of thing happening. The Houston, TX police department got a large number of false calls.

  • Just to clarify (however belatedly), since I've been developing for DoCoMo's Java phones for the last few months...

    You can do nothing to the phone itself from Java. You can't dial, you can't send E-mail (well, you can connect back to your server and have it send E-mail, but if you're going to spam from a server you don't need a phone), you can't connect to any remote site other than the one the program was downloaded from, you can't access the phone's memory / dial history / etc., you can't even run another Java app from inside yours (which is a major PITA since the maximum size of a JAR file is 10k). Moreover, the Docomo spec calls for the chip that implements the JVM to be physically separate from the chip(s) controlling the rest of the phone--obviously they're connected and all, but it certainly reduces the chance of a rogue Java program "accidentally" messing with main memory or such.

    --
    BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL

  • So wait.... (Score:4)

    by waterlogged ( 210759 ) <crussey@[ ]mail.com ['hot' in gap]> on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:54AM (#148699)
    Are you telling me that I can blame the messages that I leave on my ex-girlfriend's answering machine in a drunken stupor on a virus. Woo hoo. Gotta go make a phone call....
  • Toy Company X recalls toy Z due to the presence of a worm which may infect other toys in the house to talk in a Tom Hanks voice and say, "eat your vegetables - not meat", "Globalization is evil", "Microsoft bad - Linux good", "Question reality", "George W. Bush bad - Dick Cheney bad, too", and of course most damaging to the programming of young children everywhere, "Play nice with non-violent toys and never watch television again, it rots your brain"

    Replacements will again have the appropriate messages coded in to say, "Stay in school so you can make more money to spend at shopping malls", "You need Barbie/GI Joe", "Be a consumer whore", "Watch TV until you have no concept of reality", "Get a gun, get several in fact, play with them" and of course "The government and Microsoft are your friends"

    Gosh, I shudder at the consequences! Excuse me, now, the fridge told me I'm an idiot for not stocking up on Bud Light for the weekend, must go to store, must fill out card membership form divulging personal information, must stop reading slashdot, bad influence there...

    --
    All your .sig are belong to us!

  • Upgrading to systems that are on par with the rest of the world can't be that hard.

    Consider most of the world's TV's were PAL and the US stuck with NTSC for decades, and will still have to support it for decades to come. It has much to do with the horserace of selling some new product and not worrying about better technology to come and how best to work with it. There's so much vested in the current standards and use of airwaves to easily change. I was greatly disappointed when I learned this back in 1992, that my US cell phone wouldn't work in Europe. I wanted to say, "Just who the heck is responsible for this fsck up!", but it was I, as I had endorsed the US standard by buying into it ignorantly. Be glad the IP protocol is the same the world over, the internet would still be a backwater if it had been done the same way.

    --
    All your .sig are belong to us!

  • These standards are proposed by industry, with competing factions and ideas. It would be great if industry would get together and thrash out some decent standards in a body which is forward looking, rather than just trying to get some piece of sh!t out on shelves with slick advertising.

    Mobile phones have been around since the 50's (yeah, big radio phones, but the cellular idea is older than you think) and they had decades to come up with something intelligent and work with other companies in the world to establish a global standard, because, GASP!, it's about communication.

    Never trust anyone who

    --
    All your .sig are belong to us!

  • I hear they're 'r33t'
  • Which is why I only use an amber 80x24 VT100 terminal at home ... I'm terrified of what might happen if I could run applications on these so-called "personal computers."

    The whole idea of carrying around a fast ARM processor that I can't use for running applications is goofy.

  • ... and sooner or later: McAfee for Nokia.

    --

  • Nightmare Time (Score:4)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:50AM (#148709)
    "911, what's your emergency?"

    "Please, you have to help us. My husband was just driving the car, when he passed out. I got the car stopped, but he's not breathing!"

    "Ma'am, can you perform CPR on your husband?"

    "I think so..."

    "Okay, my computer can't tell where your cellphone is located, so I need you to tell me where you are so I can dispatch an ambulance."

    "I'm on InterstaHAHAHA. Y04 F0n 4@s b33n H4XX0red! I AM L33t!!!"

  • "Anyway, the funny part is that these attachments, if opened, will do nifty things like call arbitrary phone numbers (your worst enemy? Emergency?) or simply freeze your phone. Docomo has market penetration that makes local cel phone mega corps look like mom and pop shops."

    So, lets see, Docomo has incredible market penetration (to the nearly monopolistic level). And their products are under attack by viruses that target only their products and no one elses. (*cough*Outlook*cough*)

    Does this sound like microsoft to anyone else?

    Domoco should have expected this, given that they have such a similar situation to microsoft. Yes, the market is different (cells vs. software) but the context is similar.

  • Light years ahead of us in cell phones? (Score:4)

    by JudasBlue ( 409332 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @08:12AM (#148719)
    Yeah, iMode does some cool stuff. Most importantly it is WAY up there as the number one tool of privacy invasion in the world.

    Lately I have had reason to be working with some DoCoMo information and it is scary. These phones track what you look at on-line, everything you buy and, with their nifty new multiple cell base triangulation automation, they keep track of where you are when you use your phone to surf or buy something.

    And, unlike most annoying tracking and information compilation efforts we are subjected to constantly, this one is directly linked to you personally, not just to a demographic segment. DoCoMo keeps all of your personal information combined with your demographics in the sections of their server system called D-MAX and U-MAX.

    DoCoMo touts all this as the birth of true one to one marketing and says that part of the beauty of this is that a great deal of information can be collected without the users knowledge.

    They might be light years ahead of us in cell phone technology, but they are also light years ahead of us in marketing driven privacy invasion. And it is only going to get worse with the next generation of IMT-2000 phones, some of which will have GPS to nail down your location even further.

    And for those who aren't aware, which I imagine is damned few in this venue, the underlying technology in the i502 series on is Java. This allows lots of cool stuff to be downloaded into your phone, but I guess they haven't worked out all the security kinks yet. Too bad to hear about that, since warts and all I like Java.

  • Cell phone viruses (Score:4)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Friday June 15, 2001 @06:43AM (#148724)
    I remember when kids would make prank calls to random numbers in the telephone book. But that's old fashioned now. Now, you make a virus that makes prank calls to random numbers in the telephone book.

    This is called progress. =P
  • hey, with innovation comes inherent difficulties. New communcations devices, new software, new virus. And when this bug finally gets squashed, there will be ten more to replace it. It's an inescapable fact of technological advancement.

  • Yes, it's true that adding convenience features will ALWAYS introduce the possibility for exploitation.

    However, my relatively simple Samsung PCS phone with WAP support has the SAME ability to dial phone numbers from e-mails. Yet, it is not exploitable because it simply does this:

    Dial 911?
    [OK] [Cancel]

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