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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:18:26
Adam Shostack (adam@homeport.org)
Sun, 7 Feb 1999 11:29:46 -0500
In my experience, those apps that require lots of high quality
random numbers have also required acceleration, secure key strorage
and other things, and have sufficient budget to buy from NCipher or
Rainbow. So these units are unlikely to sell in quantity to business.
If you want to sell to individuals, the $50 price point is
high for an RNG box. I'll agree that perhaps it is worthwhile, but
only if all my apps (Netscape, PGP, ssh, IPSec) can take advantage of
it. I'd be unlikely to buy one because at that price, you won't get
it to fit in a pccard slot so I can forget its attached to my laptop.
You arely likely to pass many people's utility test.
So if you want to sell a pile of these, get a designer, and
make it cool. I'd pay 75 or $100 for a des cracker chip in a box,
because that would be cool. I can explain that to the non-techie
people in my office. Think iMac. Think Connection Machine. Think
blinky lights and translucent plastics.
Of course, if you just want to make them for hardcore techies,
thats cool too, but expect to spend a lot of time at the post office
because distributors are unlikely to pick it up.
Adam
On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 03:27:17PM +0000, Ben Laurie wrote:
| David R. Conrad wrote:
| > > Someone mentioned that he would only really trust a peripheral as a good
| > > RNG. I invite anyone with the technical know-how to market such things. If
| > > they were offered for $10 or less I would unhesitatingly buy one for all
| > > my personal machines.
| >
| > I've been listening, both here and formerly on cypherpunks, for quite some
| > time (without saying much, since unlike our friend Mr. Shen I prefer to do
| > my learning without revealing too often how much I need it), and I've seen
| > that proposal quite a few times. Hasn't gone anywhere yet.
|
| I've been talking to a friend of mine, and between us we have the
| technical know-how to design, build and manufacture this thing (though
| marketing is definitely _not_ our strong point). However, there is _no
| way_ we can do it for $10 or less unless we could shift very large
| volumes, which seems unlikely. A more realistic price point would seem
| to be more in the $50-$75 region (we can get it lower if we forego
| distributors and can be bothered to spend our lives putting gadgets in
| cardboard boxes and waiting in queues in the post office, an idea that
| does not fill either of us with glee).
|
| If that price doesn't put people off, we may even be persuaded to do it.
|
| Cheers,
|
| Ben.
|
| --
| http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
|
| "My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
| who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
| first group; there was less competition there."
| - Indira Gandhi
-- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:18:26