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Because the OMA is a confederation of the losers? Because its a cartel devised to give network operators a veto on applications and platform innovation? Google isn't a member, either.

YES google are since they bought Motorola Mobility Check the Membership list

Fucking apple. Why can't they just join Open Mobile Alliance like everyone else and share the patents. In return they would get access to the whole pool of patents from the other companies.

Fucking apple. Why can't they just join Open Mobile Alliance like everyone else and share the patents. In return they would get access to the whole pool of patents from the other companies.

All A-GPS units that I know off still have a fully functional GPS chip in them. The biggest problem with GPS is the initial lock on (cold start) to the satellites. This can be made much faster by giving some information on either a rough estimate of the current location or the positioning information for the satellites. In either case you need some kind of data connection to get the information. Either to get a position based on the visible cell sites or to download the satellite positioning information. The end result is that if you have coverage you probably get a lock in under 20 seconds. If you don't have coverage (and you haven't used GPS for a while) then it might take several minutes. But it will still work eventually. Once you have a lock the A-GPS is working like any other GPS. Some stand-alone GPS units also are actually A-GPS. They may use your phone via Bluetooth to do the same thing or they may be updated via USB with the latest satellite positions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS As far as I know all Nokia phones have full GPS capability with the A-GPS function provided by a server (supl.nokia.com). You can change this in the phone settings though as other providers could supply the service as well. http://www.openmobilealliance.org/Technical/release_program/supl_v2_0.aspx

Mobile networks are actually pretty robust, and the standards and protocols are indeed open (GSM/UMTS, OMA).

Nevertheless, mobile phones are usually sold as locked black boxes because:
1. Government regulations require that equipment must not be able to use frequencies other than those they are licensed to;
2. The same regulations require that transmit power be limited to a safe level; and
3. Mobile carriers want to be able to enact anti-competitive measures (SIM locking) and/or screw consumers (disabling software features).

why is it so damn hard to follow standards

You must not be a software developer or one that's had to work with a standard as complicated as W3C's. While I've never worked directly with the W3C standards, I have tried to work with other standards in my career and I can tell you that I fully empathize with the IE team. Sometimes standards are a lower priority simply because they're a bear to work with, or they don't allow for innovation because they're too restrictive or poorly designed. It's "design by committee" at it's worst. That all being said, I think that IE is a case where things like DOM and CSS should be fully W3C compliant because it's a good standard *and* it's demanded by our customers. Firefox can do it, so should we. In general though, standards are not always a good thing for the customer. When they are they're a pain to work with. I imagine that a lot of the IE troubles are due to backwards compatibility with non-standards compliant code. So yeah, we should have been building on standards since IE2. Live and learn.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion which does not necessarily reflect that of my employers.

Best tell the OMA ( Open Mobile Alliance ) about their Open DRM - in use today on phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMA_DRM

http://www.openmobilealliance.org/release_program/ drm_v2_0.html

DRM must not always be a trade secret. DRM needs to defeat Joe Ordinary.

So-called diagnostic clients are available now for most platforms that do this today (Symbian, PalmOS, WM5, etc) and, for GSM at least, on the SIM card itself if the phone is not capable (USIM, SIM Java Applet, SIM WIBlet, etc).

These are currently proprietary solutions which only the wireless operator can access through a number of different vendors, but there are now OMA DM draft standards that work in both CDMA and GSM that will be hitting the market within months - leaving a single method for "another" agency other than the wireless operator to be able to hit any new phone with the same software themselves rather than relying on the operator to provide it. This is all IP based (WAP or data connection) after a single SM notication is sent (SMS) - you won't "see" any activity when this is turned on if the DM client honors the UI flag that comes in the first notification, then afterwards you might notice data in/out once in a long while but no indication of what it is. Many phones already have other services (e.g. Blackberry BES connection) so 99.99% of the users will never notice.

Put that in your foil "hat" and smoke it :) And check out the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) web site if you want to dig through the standards drafts and RFCs.

I was reading up on DRM for mobile phones, and one of the use cases involved the ability for users to send downloaded DRM'd content to other users, so that when user A sends a file to user B, user B's phone contacts the the rights owner and get's a key. It's called "Super Distribution"

So it could work like that - but I always thought that the only way that was in any way secure was that phones are fairly locked down compared to a PC.

Details of mobile phone drm can be found here

I'm wondering too... Any chance it's IMPS AKA Wireless Village?

Why does everyone have to keep reinventing the wheel. Or is it just another case of NIH?

SyncML has been a standard syncronisation protocol now for several years, and it is even XML based. But MS has consistantly ignored it from what I can see.

http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/affiliates/ syncml/syncmlindex.html

Like OMA DRM? There already is a common DRM standard supported by a lot of mobile product creators.

OR they could just start to use a standard DRM scheme.

No, I don't mean that I'm any way pro-DRM. I'm definitely not. But if most major music labels (read: RIAA etc.) refuse to grant licenses to stores not using DRM, the stores just got to have some, or they're instantly out of business.

Standard DRM schemes exist and can be developed, however. An example of an existing standardised DRM is the DRM scheme that is part of the standards defined by Open Mobile Alliance and supported by most major mobile phone manufacturers.

The problem with MS and Apple is, however, that both seem to want to control the market to certain extent; Apple wants to hold control of both the music store business (so it seems) and the portable player hardware market (most certainly) with the help of its currently existing vertical monopoly, and MS wants to secure its existing desktop OS monopoly by locking as many people to it's proprietary audio codecs & DRM scheme which will only work on Windows.

Thus, no standardised DRM scheme for music files is likely to appear in the foreseeable future, as Apple and MS are both currently trying to knock the other one out of the market. Even though Apple is using a standardised audio codec (AAC), their proprietary DRM wrapping for it leaves little room for competitors, the only exception being reverse-engineering based solutions à la Real -- and then again, Real also has their own DRM scheme and you're still forced to use their software to play files bought from them. The reverse engineering was just for iPod compatibility.

OR they could just start to use a standard DRM scheme.

No, I don't mean that I'm any way pro-DRM. I'm definitely not. But if most major music labels (read: RIAA etc.) refuse to grant licenses to stores not using DRM, the stores just got to have some, or they're instantly out of business.

Standard DRM schemes exist and can be developed, however. An example of an existing standardised DRM is the DRM scheme that is part of the standards defined by Open Mobile Alliance and supported by most major mobile phone manufacturers.

The problem with MS and Apple is, however, that both seem to want to control the market to certain extent; Apple wants to hold control of both the music store business (so it seems) and the portable player hardware market (most certainly) with the help of its currently existing vertical monopoly, and MS wants to secure its existing desktop OS monopoly by locking as many people to it's proprietary audio codecs & DRM scheme which will only work on Windows.

Thus, no standardised DRM scheme for music files is likely to appear in the foreseeable future, as Apple and MS are both currently trying to knock the other one out of the market. Even though Apple is using a standardised audio codec (AAC), their proprietary DRM wrapping for it leaves little room for competitors, the only exception being reverse-engineering based solutions à la Real -- and then again, Real also has their own DRM scheme and you're still forced to use their software to play files bought from them. The reverse engineering was just for iPod compatibility.

the mobile world (Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson et al.) have created their own (open!) IM standard.

Q: Which key enabling technologies are the priorities in the Open Mobile Alliance?

A: The companies involved in the alliance will decide the key enabling technologies jointly. However, it is evident that Multimedia Messaging (MMS), Java and WAP 2.0/XHTML browsing are among the most relevant ones. Some other technologies driving the mobile services market include service enablers such as Digital Rights Management (DRM), authentication, location and presence identification and device management.

• The WAP Forum: Every knows and loves WAP. Nowadays, the WAP Forum has (thankfully) moved away from the invent everything here mentality, and are trying to see how they can adopt all the existing Web/IM/Java stuff that's out there.
• The Open Mobile Architecture initiative was announced in November as an attempt to standardise what sort of standards your 2.5G/3G phone should support.

The principles of the Open Mobile Alliance are:

• Products and services are based on open, global standards, protocols and interfaces and are not locked to proprietary technologies
• The applications layer is bearer agnostic (examples: GSM, GPRS, EDGE, CDMA, UMTS)
• The architecture framework and service enablers are independent of Operating Systems (OS)
• Applications and platforms are interoperable, providing seamless geographic and inter-generational roaming