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Path: utzoo!utcs!mnetor!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted
From: ted@imsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Easy money
Message-ID: <578@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Jul-86 23:12:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: imsvax.578
Posted: Wed Jul 16 23:12:01 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Jul-86 05:45:16 EDT
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 47






This one isn't for the private individual out to make a few extra bucks;
it's for the owner of a small/mid-sized firm which either imports or produces
PC compatibles and is looking for some little known niche in the market
to investigate.  Have you ever heard the term "TEMPEST"?  A
"tempestized" computer (or device of any sort) is one which has been
sealed off, either electronically or by actually being encased in steel
or cast aluminum, from any possibility of it "leaking" radio-frequency
noise which could be picked up by some Russki or Haitian or Polish spy
out in the parking lot with a device made with $20 worth of radio
shack parts (don't laugh TOO hard... it has actually been done) which
lets him see what is going on on the computer in question, even though
it's inside a building.

There are only about five or six manufacturers of such equipment in the
USA, Zenith being the only one which charges anything remotely close to
reason for such stuff (about three times the going rate for PC class
stuff).  Everyone else charges 5 to 10 times the going rate for
tempestized equipment (as opposed to normal PC components), typically
$7000 to $11000 for an XT class microcomputer (ever wonder where your
tax-payer dollars go?).  It pisses me off completely to have to deal
with these people, which I do frequently, since I feel bad about being
involved in spending ANYBODY's money that way and I end up walking away
feeling like I've just been talking with Al Capone or Frank Nitty, and
it pisses the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) off so badly that they
have taken the extraordinary step of tempestizing THEIR ENTIRE BUILDING,
which now looks like an aluminum-foil building, so as not to have to buy
such equipment.

Nonetheless, the government and some private firms buy this stuff like
crazy.  As near as I can tell, it cost somewhere between $35K and $100K
to get into this game, mostly money spent on setting up testing and
certification procedures, after which the individual components simply
CAN'T be expensive to manufacture (especially if you go with the method
of tempestizing by enclosure), and the game itself seems to me to almost
be a license to print money.  Amazingly enough, users pay MORE for the
varietys which have been tempestized by enclosure, which seems to me by
far the cheaper approach to manufacture;  there's no rhyme or reason to
it.

Anyone who got into this game with Taiwanese generic stuff and only
charged double the going rates for this kind of equipment would be loved
by God, his banker, AND the federal government.