Starian, the company founded by Eric Blossom and others, had a 3DES unit the size of an external modem that worked as described. (I have one.)

The problem is the "fax effect": who ya gonna call?

No, in the case of Starium, the problem is decidely not the fax effect. The problem is that they aren't selling them! You can't buy one, which basically guarantees that no one you call will have one. A corollary to this problem often affects high-tech companies: they have an awesome new technology, but they haven't sorted out how to market it.

It works well for "cells" consisting of trading partners, drug dealers, freedom fighters, etc. They can just buy several of them for their members.

Perhaps those groups have some use for these things, but in my case, I would create a "cell" of two: me and my lawyer. Client-attorney communications are legally protected; this just provides a technical means to implement an established, almost sacrosanct legal protection. If those guys were smart, they would read Crossing the Chasm, and pick a small target market to market to, and lawyers and their clients might be a good one.

Solving the fax effect problem happens when a _standard_ is widely deployed, or when some major deals with cellphone vendors happen. I understand Starian has been trying to get a cellphone version designed-in.

I don't think that's true at all! A company with huge resources (like Miscrosoft) can solve the fax effect by creating standards (often "closed" or proprietary standards) and getting things widely deployed by buying major partners, but that is certainly not the only way to do it. You don't need a lot of resources or a wide deployment to solve the fax effect. I imagine that the fax machine overcame the fax effect when a company with, for example, an east coast and a west coast office bought two of them and then could send documents coast to coast in seconds. They didn't care that no one else had one; it was boosted productivity immediately. Let's say that for some reason a company needs to send documents within 24 hours, and the only two options are couriers on flights, or this new-fangled fax machine. A pair of fax machines pays for itself within the first few documents that need to be sent, even if no other fax machines exist in the universe. Sooner or later, there will be a bunch of companies with two offices which use these things internally, and then one day, in a blinding flash, someone at Company A needs to send a document to Company B, and remembers that his friend there mentioned that they also have a "telphone facsimile machine", and in an instant, the world changes forever!

ObSpoliationClaim: "Those who buy such machines are obviously trying to hide evidence. Mr. Happy Fun Court is "not amused.""

That is very true. Someone trying to defeat a charge of being a boss in a drug gang would certainly not be helped if they found Starium units in his house and in houses of people who were distributing drugs. This would look bad for Starium, too. That's why they should go after a market that involves communications which are already legally protected: lawyer-client calls, law enforcement agency internal use, multinational corporations remote offices, perhaps some token human rights workers. If 95% of the users are socially acceptable, it won't matter that there are 5% who aren't. If 95% of the users are socially unacceptable, it won't matter if Mother Teresa and the Pope are the other 5%, because the thing will get banned. In my humble opinion, the c'punks would be a lot more interesting if they spent more time talking about marketing and PR and a lot less (perhaps none) time talking about silly legal points and technical hacks. Do you want to be right, or do you want to win? Put it another way: do lawyers spend a lot of time coming up with obscure legal arguments for why their client is not guilty, or do they spend a lot of time on jury psychology? Because ultimately the law is enforced by jurors who make emotional decisions, and they base them on things like their judgement of the character of the people involved, more than they base them on obscure legal theories and incomprehensible technical points. Same goes for voters and cops, in fact.

I bought one, and I know of several others who have bought them. As to whether they are _currently_ selling any models, I can't say. But this doesn't change my "fax effect" point.

I didn't realize they had ever sold them. I have been checking their page fairly regularly for the past year and I never saw a link that said "where can I buy one of these", because I would have bought some. I have called to ask when I could buy one, and they always said, "in a few months", and now they don't answer the phone. It looks like they are out of business now, or will be soon, which is unfortunate. You're lucky you got one, I guess.

Naive. Faxes were available in the 1970s, and earlier. They did not "change the world overnight." For one thing, they were not accepted as legal docs. For another, transmission speeds were too slow.

Yes, I am well aware that faxes existed in the 1970s. They existed in the 1920s, if you can imagine that. My point wasn't about "changing the world overnight". I do understand the fax effect: Every fax machine in the world becomes more useful the more fax machines there are. Starium is the same situation: it's more useful as more people have them. The first major use of faxes was by the Associated Press to get photos into print quickly. There was absolutely no fax effect involved in this. Most of the faxes in the world were used by just one company, AP. When they started using them in the 1930s, they probably never considered sending faxes to other companies, or using faxes for other purposes. There was a highly compelling reason for them to spend the ridiculous amounts of money these things costed, though: they could have photos of a recent event, on the other side of the country, in today's edition, and that's worth money. The fax effect didn't start with faxes until decades later. My point is that you don't need to get widespread deployment before they have a compelling use. Stariums (Staria?) have a compelling use right now, in fact, if they would only know to sell them and market them to the right group. Instead of even thinking about the fax effect, Starium should be thining of who their equivalent of Associated Press is going to be. The goal of a marketing plan is not "to overcome the fax effect" (or "have the coolest technology" or any similar thing) but rather "to find and present a use that is so compelling that people will buy them". The fax effect is irrelevant to Starium, because they don't have the resources to initiate that effect. So they need to find some other compelling reason for people to buy it. This is about making money.

The fax effect is the same as the phone effect. Your analysis would have had the first two phone changing the world overnight. No. What changed

The first two phones didn't overtly change the world overnight, but they did change the course of the world. That deviation in course was subtle, and took years or decades to become apparent, but the change in direction was profound and irreversible, from the moment in 1876 when Mr. Bell said, "Mr. Watson-come here. I want you!" The fax had a less profound impact. The Internet had an equally profound impact, perhaps. These inventions are profound, but not obvious at first, unlike some other inventions which changed the world profoundly in immediately obvious ways, like the atomic bomb.

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ObSpoliationClaim: "Those who buy such machines are obviously trying to hide evidence. Mr. Happy Fun Court is "not amused.""

That is very true. Someone trying to defeat a charge of being a boss in a drug gang would certainly not be helped if they found Starium units in his house and in houses of people who were distributing drugs. This would look bad for Starium, too.

Irony is wasted on some people.

I know you were being ironic, but PR is an important consideration, far more important than is generally understood on this list. You said something in irony which I think is actually a good point. We need to think of how jurors, and society in general, will react, emotionally and psychologically, to what we're doing, or we're going to get in lose. Anyway... C'punks will spend all their time arguing about obscure legal points, obscure technologies, and being right, and will never get anything done. Sometimes this list is amusing, but it gets repetitious. Maybe I should start a new list called realitypunks, which will have these rules: 1. No ad hominem attacks. 2. No anti-governemnt ranting. 3. A few select incoherent ranters would need to be kicked out for causing excessive harm to the signal-to-noise ratio. 4. Let's focus on PR, marketing and psychology instead of technology, legal debate, and confrontation. If a bunch of people are interested I'll create it. If not, that's ok too.

On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 08:19:12AM -0000, Dr. Evil wrote:

I know you were being ironic, but PR is an important consideration, far more important than is generally understood on this list. You [...] 1. No ad hominem attacks.

2. No anti-governemnt ranting.

3. A few select incoherent ranters would need to be kicked out for causing excessive harm to the signal-to-noise ratio.

4. Let's focus on PR, marketing and psychology instead of technology, legal debate, and confrontation.

If a bunch of people are interested I'll create it. If not, that's ok too.

I think everyone understands PR is important to some extent. But some reasons why your list is a bad idea: * the folks most interested in championing certain products are those who run companies; they're also the ones in the best position to do so * there's an opportunity cost involved in signing up with a new list. most of us nowadays are trying to cut down, not increase, subscriptions * the volume of messages on cpunx, with lne.com and a threaded mailreader, is perfectly manageable; these discussions can happen here * good ideas bubble up from the froth; saying no "confrontation" is a sure way to ensure the better posters don't subscript to your list for fear of getting the boot if they call someone a flaming idiot * the folks you do get on the list will probably not have a clue what they're talking about beyond "marketing cypherpunks is good". hint: you want some PR people and journalists, and you probably won't get 'em * cypherpunk technologies are destructive to the status quo and really can't be honestly spun in any other way -Declan

Tim, Dr. Evil, and others were talking about Starium and other secure voice.

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I bought one, and I know of several others who have bought them. As to whether they are _currently_ selling any models, I can't say. But this doesn't change my "fax effect" point.

The Voice Over IP market has been growing rapidly, with wiretappability built in, and the Fax Effect making it more likely that if you're on a VOIP call over the Internet or telcos it's insecure. The primary standard in use is H.323, which doesn't do crypto and which picks its TCP ports in ways that are hard to simply force through IPSEC unless you're doing that for all your traffic. Some of the followon standards may help, and there are other VOIP systems out there (mostly proprietary), but H.323 is dominant. SIP and MGCP are more wrappers around H.323 than competitors. Other than random hobbyists or software developers, most of the VOIP market is in several categories - Microsoft Netmeeting users on the Internet (it's free, and comes with almost every $50 PC camera.) - PBX replacements running on companies' private networks, behind firewalls and usually not carried on the Internet. They're pretty safe; corporate nets can be hacked, at least by insiders, but so can PBXs. - International carriers providing gateways between US and non-US telcos, generally with the Internet in the middle but sometimes with their own private IP nets in the middle. These are tappable at the US telco edge, but for internet-based services, the Internet's probably an easier place. - US companies like Net2Phone that provide cheap connectivity from PC users to telcos, and similar businesses being proposed but DSL and cable modem providers. These have the problem that CALEA wiretap requirements apply to any telco-like provider, and any non-telco ISP or VOIPgate can be tapped at the telco edge. I've been trying to set up voice communications on Linux that I can try over IPSEC in my lab, using www.openh323.org, to see how it sounds and what issues come up while using it. So far, I've confirmed Hugh Daniel's comments that sound card support on Linux is dodgy, unreliable, and a real pain. Once I've got stable operating systems again that don't complain about missing sound-chip driver modules, I'll probably just run Windows (sigh) Netmeeting across the freeswan and also across the Nortel Contivity stuff we're installing.

At 10:18 PM 8/6/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:

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the fax effect. I imagine that the fax machine overcame the fax effect when a company with, for example, an east coast and a west coast office bought two of them and then could send documents coast to coast in seconds. They didn't care that no one else had one; it was boosted productivity immediately.

You clearly don't understand the usual meaning of "fax effect." Fax machines have existed in the form you describe for close to a century. This was not what writers in the early 90s were referring to when they spoke of the "fax effect."

He's talking about how to *bootstrap into society* an artifact wit fax-effect problems ---ie, which must be present at both ends to work -phones, faxes, Navajo, protocols..

The fax effect is the same as the phone effect. Your analysis would have had the first two phone changing the world overnight. No. What changed was when a significant fraction of one's suppliers, delivery agencies, shipping companies, customers, etc. all could be reached via a compatible, interoperable standard. The "phone effect."

Theodore Hogg has done work on phase changes in topological (network) systems --like percolation in rocks, and other network effects. At some level of porosity, a body of rock becomes much more permeable, because the pores often interconnect. I can't help but think this relevent. In any case, its clear you need a perceived benefit, probably expressable in dollars (but maybe reputation), for early-adopters to 'seed' the population. But you can't seed if you don't have something to deploy, slow and expensive though it may be at first.