Voice crypto: the last crypto taboo

[Dr. Evil]

> 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.

> >> 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.