CDMA Pushed On Postwar Iraq
from the oh,-come-on... dept
In a move that is clearly politically motivated, a Congressman from the San Diego area (home of Qualcomm) is introducing a bill saying that any new mobile phone system in Iraq needs to be CDMA based (which, of course, is mostly Qualcomm's technology). There are, of course, technology reasons why this both makes sense and doesn't make sense. Considering the fact that most of the Middle East is currently GSM technology, from a compatibility for travellers standpoint, GSM probably does make a lot more sense than CDMA. In the long-term, it probably doesn't matter, though, as all of these technologies are in for upgrades. However, in the short-term (besides jumping the gun a bit, considering the fact there's a war still on...) its so overtly a political move that I'm surprised anyone even bothered. I'm not sure what the legislative reason behind putting together such a bill would be. It would make sense to lobby the government contractors to use such a system, but why have an entire law requiring such technology be used?
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Freedom Phones
http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=30387
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The French Connection
(note that at least 3 of the words above were French)
The idea of persecuting the French over their wish to not perticipate in the invasion portion of the Iraq conflict, opting instead to die of DU-induced cancer in the post-crush attempt to delay the massive kurd/sunni/shiite civil war, really gives the US a bad image. Please tell me that Americans can see this .. do they care, or do they really think it doesn't matter?
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"Iraq will be independent"
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