From: sdw@meaddata.com (Stephen Williams)
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 94 09:42:23 PST
To: pmetzger@lehman.com
Subject: Re: Crypto Regulation Reform
In-Reply-To: <199402090257.VAA09865@snark>
Message-ID: <9402091713.AA09816@jungle.meaddata.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> 
> Robert Cain says:
> > Please embarass me.  Do you always approch things with the hostility
> > I am sensing, Perry?
> 
> No, but I've got a shock proof shit detector and you are triggering
> it. One of the things that sets it off is odd claims being made before
> implementation. You are making a very odd claim, which is that you can
> beat the price on a Rockwell integrated modem module by building

That's not what he said.  He said 'modem', and as a consumer item that's
far from a 'Rockwell integrated modem module'...  That part is a small
part of the whole price of the modem, which you'd know if you looked
at price sheets.  For a 99 modem (which I see all the time with 14400
fax/data), the modem chip is probably $15-20.  The accepted minimum
markup on a manufactured item is 50% of selling price.

Of course, you can cut the margin if you sell enough of them, and it's
hard to say what the manuf. margin on a $99 modem is.

In anycase, he's talking about a slower modem, effectively, using a
DSP (Zyxels, which beat most modems on features and performance have
always used DSP's: they do data, fax, voice, callerid, touch tone
recognition, etc.  They include a 68K and >512K ram (I think)).


> something yourself -- given the economies of scale, a weird statement.
> You are also claiming that given that you need to have a DSP doing
> your modem work, and processing power to do your cryptography and DSP
> horsepower to do your vocoder, you are still going to be able to beat
> the price of mass-market modems that are falling to the $100 range
> with your non-mass market product. Frankly, it sounds like a load of
> crap. I might be wrong, of course -- I've been wrong before. However,
> when people make strange claims to me about things they haven't
> finished implementing yet that they don't sell, especially after
> they've made lots of mistakes in their postings the previous week, it
> sets off alarm bells in my head. I'm not saying its impossible, but
> I'm saying that until you give me more evidence I'm not going to think
> that your claim is credible, and I don't think any other reasoning
> person should, either.

Well, he certainly might not succeed, but it sounds plausible to me.

sdw
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