Subject: NATs and peer-to-peer (was Re: [midcom]...)

From: "James P. Salsman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 04:30:27 -0800 (PST)

> It was ... peer-to-peer things that made the Internet popular.

Yes.  Before there was the web (back in the days of HOSTS.TXT and 
ftp clients on so few platforms that one's best efforts to convert 
carriage returns were often foiled), email-based file servers were
popular, and they still are.  Asyncronous messaging of files is why
Internet messages, which support sevral methods of in-line file 
transfer, are dominant and will continue to be.

> Based upon some data on "web ready cell phones" being used primarily
> to send text messages ....

The advantage of such messaging is not that it is text, but that it 
is asyncronous.

Anyone who is interested in obtaining asyncronous audio file messaging 
on cellular telephones might ask Laurence Lundblade at Qualcomm --
mailto:[email-masked] -- about which models of the QCP phone line 
will be capable of supporting it, etc.  The last I heard there was 
some question as to whether the manufactuer would include a routine 
for data transfer from the voice memo buffer to the seperate CPU 
address space used for the PalmOS Eudora program.

Qualcomm's highest-level management have advocated this for years, it 
turns out (and I have it on good authority that is why there is a 
vocodec built in to Eudora); I wonder if they realize that those goals 
are again being thwarted by some overseas programmer goofing off 
instead of writing code for an already-existing API. 

Cheers,
James