On 24 Jun, 20:59, Vladimir Vassilevsky <antispam_bo...@hotmail.com> wrote:> Rune Allnor wrote: > > Hi folks. > > > Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that > > > 1) Reduces processing time by >99% > > 2) Reduces manual interactions ( =3D personnel salaries, > > =A0 =A0 training and accomodations costs) by >99% > > 3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% > > :))))) =A0I'm serious. The guys who run the show are the same you see on Discovery Channel or National Geographic, or those sorts of things: People who will climb a 400 meter tall mast and fix a brace wire with a toothpick and a hairpin. Those guys do stuff on a daily basis you wouldn't believe, even if you saw it first hand. Interestingly, that works both ways: They don't believe what the people who frequent comp.dsp do on a daily basis. Since the offshore business recruit managers internally, managment know a lot about how things always have been done, but not quite so much about the alternatives. The offshore survey industry today have the same demands and constraints that the seismic industry saw 20 years ago. Which means they are well into the volumes where specialists are needed to ensure streamlined production flows, and identify and remove processing bottlenecks. They just don't know it. There aren't many practitioners in the business that *both* have seen how the Big Boys do things, *and* are able to implement similar systems for the survey business. Let's just say I've found potentially fertile grounds for my own specialities, which are to design high-volume high-throughput data processing services. Rune
Protect commercial SW-based service?
Started by ●June 24, 2009
Reply by ●June 24, 20092009-06-24
Reply by ●June 24, 20092009-06-24
Rune Allnor wrote:> Hi folks. > > Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that > > 1) Reduces processing time by >99% > 2) Reduces manual interactions ( = personnel salaries, > training and accomodations costs) by >99% > 3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% > > compared to present standard procedures. The commercial > idea is to > > a) Lease a dedicated computer+SW to customers. > b) Have the computer + SW do its thing as a LAN-based > 'black box'. Clients send data in and recieve end results > by LAN protocol.Can you make budget with a *WAN* protocol?> c) Have the clients subscribe to the service, paying annual > fees, or the computer disables its LAN-based service. > > How would you go about protecting the integrity of the > computer + SW? If the computer is compromised and > the SW hacked, the commercial basis for the service > is gone. > > RuneWith packaging. That might mean there are no business rules extant on the dedicated computer, and that opening the case ( whatever the case may be ) requires replacing the computer. Also encrypted harddisks, blah blah blah. -- Les Cargill
Reply by ●June 24, 20092009-06-24
Rune Allnor wrote:> On 24 Jun, 20:59, Vladimir Vassilevsky <antispam_bo...@hotmail.com> > wrote: > >>Rune Allnor wrote: >> >>>Hi folks. >> >>>Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that >> >>>1) Reduces processing time by >99% >>>2) Reduces manual interactions ( = personnel salaries, >>> training and accomodations costs) by >99% >>>3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% >> >>:))))) > > > I'm serious.If a black box can operate without you, it will be replicated and operated without you no matter what. Also think what would it take for a competitor to create the black box just like yours from scratch; after all, it shouldn't be very complicated. The only solution is if you position yourself as some kind of authority, so the customers would use your services rather then anybody else's. Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant http://www.abvolt.com
Reply by ●June 24, 20092009-06-24
Rune Allnor wrote:> Hi folks. > > Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that > > 1) Reduces processing time by >99% > 2) Reduces manual interactions ( = personnel salaries, > training and accomodations costs) by >99% > 3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% > > compared to present standard procedures. The commercial > idea is to > > a) Lease a dedicated computer+SW to customers. > b) Have the computer + SW do its thing as a LAN-based > 'black box'. Clients send data in and recieve end results > by LAN protocol. > c) Have the clients subscribe to the service, paying annual > fees, or the computer disables its LAN-based service. > > How would you go about protecting the integrity of the > computer + SW? If the computer is compromised and > the SW hacked, the commercial basis for the service > is gone.Rune, I once proposed helping out a friend with marketing a new product. He was so worried about getting ripped off (i.e. copied) that I backed away from it all. There are only so many things worth doing. His paranoia would have made it all but impossible to pursue. (It never did go anywhere although I believe at least one "competitor" still has product on the market). Too bad. They had some neat things.... So, I caution you about the technology protection becoming the focus of your efforts. Sometimes it helps to assume that people are basically honest. That's not an excuse for not protecting your ideas but a statement about where your energy really goes. The other thing is that potential competitors will have different ideas, approaches and business models. How your technical ideas fit into one or more business models could be key. Are you selling a processor? Are you selling a processing service? etc. etc. A good approach would be to develop a value proposition that's hard or inconvenient to replicate. That can be done even with transparent technology. If the data can't be linked elsewhere, can the results in some form? Could the link contents be obscured and the results come back from afar? Obfuscation, akin to cryptography, might be an approach. It's not the black box, it's the red one! Vlad suggested an approach but I've not wrapped my head around how that might be done. It has a certain appeal. There's nothing like market position to protect you. This might suggest selling the idea to a powerful force in the marketplace. Or, become a powerful force in the marketplace yourself - by virtue of this technology. Each approach takes different kinds of expertise. You should certainly consider patents as one protection mechanism. Engineers often discount patents because, in their smartness, *they* think that their approaches are "obvious". Often that's not the case in the patent world. At some stage you should assume that the technology will become known and should have a plan for how to deal with it. Any good new start company has an "exit strategy". When will you cash out? I hope this helps get the wheels spinning. Fred
Reply by ●June 24, 20092009-06-24
On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:14:23 -0700, Rune Allnor wrote:> On 24 Jun, 18:58, Jason <cincy...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Jun 24, 8:33 am, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> > Hi folks. >> >> > Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that >> >> > 1) Reduces processing time by >99% >> > 2) Reduces manual interactions ( = personnel salaries, >> > training and accomodations costs) by >99% >> > 3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% >> >> > compared to present standard procedures. The commercial idea is to >> >> > a) Lease a dedicated computer+SW to customers. b) Have the computer + >> > SW do its thing as a LAN-based >> > 'black box'. Clients send data in and recieve end results by >> > LAN protocol. >> > c) Have the clients subscribe to the service, paying annual >> > fees, or the computer disables its LAN-based service. >> >> > How would you go about protecting the integrity of the computer + SW? >> > If the computer is compromised and the SW hacked, the commercial >> > basis for the service is gone. >> >> > Rune >> >> Option (c) would probably be most robust to reverse-engineering of your >> software. Would this software be used in a context where users would >> have Internet or other network access to a server under your control? >> You could perform the actual processing (which I'm assuming is the >> sensitive part of the system) on hardware that is entirely under your >> control, then use a subscription-based usage model. > > The problem is that I need to have the HW at the user's site. What I > have in mind will be used offshore, on survey vessels, and there is just > not enough bandwidth off the vessels to communicate data back and forth. > Typical transfer rates are 12 - 24 hours per GByte. > > So the question is if it is possible to come up with some sort of > tamper-resistant HW, where the SW is well protected from network access, > and any attempt to physically break the thing open will leave visible > traces. > > RuneYou should be able to configure a PC to do this -- my knee-jerk reaction is to think of a Linux box running a web server or similar, with access locked down to just what is necessary to get the job done. (Or SSH with access to an account with _very_ restricted permissions, if you can configure SSH thus). Put the whole thing in a strong box with a good high quality key lock, perhaps with an obvious way of opening that puts a spike through the hard disk and some other way of opening that doesn't. Expect customer bitching whenever your hardware breaks. -- www.wescottdesign.com
Reply by ●June 24, 20092009-06-24
mblume wrote:> Am Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:33:58 -0700 schrieb Rune Allnor: > >> Hi folks. >> >> Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that >> >> 1) Reduces processing time by >99% >> 2) Reduces manual interactions ( = personnel salaries, >> training and accomodations costs) by >99% >> 3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% >> >> compared to present standard procedures. The commercial idea is to >> >> a) Lease a dedicated computer+SW to customers. b) Have the computer + SW >> do its thing as a LAN-based >> 'black box'. Clients send data in and recieve end results by LAN >> protocol. >> c) Have the clients subscribe to the service, paying annual >> fees, or the computer disables its LAN-based service. >> >> How would you go about protecting the integrity of the computer + SW? >> If the computer is compromised and the SW hacked, the commercial basis >> for the service is gone. >> >> Rune > > You could protect it with an USB dongle that must be present for > the SW to run like e.g. http://wibu.de/start.php?lang=enThey are easily cracked with a disassembler. Just look for references to the parallel port and modify the dongle-check to always return TRUE.> Personally, I have to say that I don't like dongles. They tend to > break, get lost and are nuisance to legitimate users, whereas > illegitimate users will crack your SW and do without. > Then there are also the cases where HW becomes obsolete (like parallel > port dongles) and legitmate users are out in the rain, because newer > HW precludes the use of SW. > > But I see the point that a small company wants to protect its business > by protecting its SW.Jerry -- Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get. ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Reply by ●June 25, 20092009-06-25
Fred Marshall <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote: < Rune Allnor wrote: (snip)><> How would you go about protecting the integrity of the <> computer + SW? If the computer is compromised and <> the SW hacked, the commercial basis for the service <> is gone. < I once proposed helping out a friend with marketing a new product. He was < so worried about getting ripped off (i.e. copied) that I backed away from it < all. There are only so many things worth doing. His paranoia would have < made it all but impossible to pursue. (It never did go anywhere although I < believe at least one "competitor" still has product on the market). Too < bad. They had some neat things.... So worried about having it stolen that it never got used at all. < So, I caution you about the technology protection becoming the focus of your < efforts. Sometimes it helps to assume that people are basically honest. < That's not an excuse for not protecting your ideas but a statement about < where your energy really goes. As I said before, make the lock appropriate for what is being locked. Many have now given up on copy protection. Many use licenses and software keys. Others hardware dongles. Each has a cost to the supplier and user, appropriate and inappropriate use. < The other thing is that potential competitors will have different ideas, < approaches and business models. How your technical ideas fit into one or < more business models could be key. Are you selling a processor? Are you < selling a processing service? etc. etc. < A good approach would be to develop a value proposition that's hard or < inconvenient to replicate. That can be done even with transparent < technology. < You should certainly consider patents as one protection mechanism. < Engineers often discount patents because, in their smartness, *they* think < that their approaches are "obvious". Often that's not the case in the < patent world. If the technology has economic (as opposed to entertainment) value, then yes. Patents and licensing often work well. On the other hand, for something like Pay-TV you need some type of physical protection. -- glen
Reply by ●June 25, 20092009-06-25
On 24 Jun, 23:09, Vladimir Vassilevsky <antispam_bo...@hotmail.com> wrote:> Rune Allnor wrote: > > On 24 Jun, 20:59, Vladimir Vassilevsky <antispam_bo...@hotmail.com> > > wrote: > > >>Rune Allnor wrote: > > >>>Hi folks. > > >>>Suppose you have developed an SW-based service that > > >>>1) Reduces processing time by >99% > >>>2) Reduces manual interactions ( =3D personnel salaries, > >>> =A0 =A0training and accomodations costs) by >99% > >>>3) Reduces error rates and product flaws by >99% > > >>:))))) =A0 > > > I'm serious. > > If a black box can operate without you, it will be replicated and > operated without you no matter what.I know. No need to make it easy, though.> Also think what would it take for a > competitor to create the black box just like yours from scratch; after > all, it shouldn't be very complicated.Right... Disregarding the insinuation about what my SW is supposed to do, there are ridiculous amounts of $$$ in the offshore survey business, and everyboy operate under very strict deadlines. At one point we had ~750 km to survey. We surveyed at a rate of 1 km/hr or 20 km/day, but processed at a rate of 20 km/week. Even so, no one have software that address these bottlenecks. Absolutely ever company or organization I have worked with, or seen how they do things, use manual labour in substantial parts of the processing chain. The fact of the matter is that my programs do stuff in seconds that take humans hours and days to do. No one else I know of can do that. I get similar results as the human operators, and operate on an industrial scale.> The only solution is if you position yourself as some kind of authority, > so the customers would use your services rather then anybody else's.Of course. The only way to do that where Norwegians are involved, is to actually deliver a result they want, that is at least as good as what they get today. Formal status and academic degrees are all out counterproductive in that repsect. Knowing somebody how knows somebody who makes decisions helps. But if you don't deliver to spec - just forget about it. Rune
Reply by ●June 25, 20092009-06-25
On 25 Jun, 05:08, glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:> Fred Marshall <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote:> < The other thing is that potential competitors will have different ideas, > < approaches and business models. �How your technical ideas fit into one or > < more business models could be key. �Are you selling a processor? �Are you > < selling a processing service? �etc. etc.The idea is to sell a *service*. I don't know how involved you used to in hands-on operational work, but this is about the cleaning of sonar data. There are certain types of noise that are problematic on certain types of sonars, and human operators spend vast amounts of time visually inspecting and manually removing the noise from the data. I have found a way to do this automatically, that competes with the humans in result, but works in seconds where humans would use hours and days. I suspect you might have an idea about what kinds of financial savings we are talking about, if we express this terms of saved vessel (or at least crew) time. Presently, processing crews are located onboard the vessles, but are still seldom part of the current operations onboard; they have a constant backlog of data to process. Very stressful onboard. One can capitalize on the savings in two ways: Remove the processing crew from the vessel, saving all the personnel and accomodations costs, and instead spend some of those savings on a comm-link to send the data to be processed on-shore. Which means one can get the same survey jobs done with far smaller vessels. Or more realistically, one can keep the processing crew onboard, and benefit from that all the crew is focused on the present job, at any given time.> < You should certainly consider patents as one protection mechanism. > < Engineers often discount patents because, in their smartness, *they* think > < that their approaches are "obvious". �Often that's not the case in the > < patent world. > > If the technology has economic (as opposed to entertainment) > value, then yes. �Patents and licensing often work well.I've worked with the potential customer base. For all the virtues they otherwise might have: You do *not* want to let loose any kind of commercial software (partularly if useful), with that crowd, unless it is heavily protected. Rune
Reply by ●June 25, 20092009-06-25
>I've worked with the potential customer base. For all the >virtues they otherwise might have: You do *not* want to let >loose any kind of commercial software (partularly if useful), >with that crowd, unless it is heavily protected. > >RuneI understand your concerns, but make sure you look at the big picture, and try to ensure you don't annoy the legitimate customers more than the pirates. Remember in the 1980s when a whole industry of companies like Central Point Software sprang up to work around the annoyances of software copy protection in things like Lotus 123? Those products sold mostly to legitimate customers. I know people today in various situations you own legitimate copies of something, but run a cracked pirate version day to day, as it doesn't create some annoyance the legitimate copies do. I assume a lot of people are running cracked versions of old but important software that requires a parallel port dongle, because the machine they currently run it on has no parallel port. Notebook users face this kind of thing most problematically, as they have no slots in which to plug add on cards. Steve Steve
