Re: Re: Halcro - The Worlds Only Super Fidelity Amplification Products
and ahh.... why would it be??
that was exactly what I was thinking... I couldn't imagine if I copied down the IC numbers that I'd be breaking any laws.... lol or would I??
I don't know why they even bother... maybe its more to hide how crap the amplifiers really are
$AU50,000 one of these amps will apparently set you back... and you need 2 for stereo... lol
Bill Fitzpatrick said:
and ahh.... why would it be??
Zero Cool said:
that was exactly what I was thinking... I couldn't imagine if I copied down the IC numbers that I'd be breaking any laws.... lol or would I??
I don't know why they even bother... maybe its more to hide how crap the amplifiers really are
$AU50,000 one of these amps will apparently set you back... and you need 2 for stereo... lol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Halcro - The Worlds Only Super Fidelity Amplification Products
meh... I haven't even looked at the ic's enough to remember the numbers... I have no intention of copying the numbers down either... even if my employer does read this thread, he has nothing to worry about, I have better things to do than copy IC numbers from pcbs, that would be next to useless anyway because no one has the schematic lol I personally think grinding them off is a tad useless....
serengetiplains said:
meh... I haven't even looked at the ic's enough to remember the numbers...
I have no intention of copying the numbers down either... even if my employer does read this thread, he has nothing to worry about, I have better things to do than copy IC numbers from pcbs, that would be next to useless anyway because no one has the schematic lol I personally think grinding them off is a tad useless....
I have read their amps sport the lowest distortion levels. They use switching power supplies and uses an error correction circuit they have a patent on. Complementary FETs are used in the output stage that are usually reserved for microwave systems...maybe to switch fast enough and render crossover distortion ineffective in the circuit....and more or so I read. I wonder if Nelson Pass has looked at their patent closely?
anyway, the point of this thread was more about whats printed on the boards....
"Halcro - The Worlds Only Super Fidelity Amplification Products"
why not:
"Halcro - The Worlds Only Manufacturer of Super Fidelity Amplification Products"
or:
"Halcro - The Worlds Only Super Fidelity Amplification Product Manufacturer"
because what they are saying is that there are no other "super fidelity" amplifiers in the world other than what they make....
and how do you distinguish between hi fidelity, and super fidelity anyway??
I want the designer of these amps to provide a pair of speakers an audio source, and a pair of the best halcro amps, and we can sit him down and get him pick the difference between the halcro, and some other DIY amp provided by us...
"Halcro - The Worlds Only Super Fidelity Amplification Products"
why not:
"Halcro - The Worlds Only Manufacturer of Super Fidelity Amplification Products"
or:
"Halcro - The Worlds Only Super Fidelity Amplification Product Manufacturer"
because what they are saying is that there are no other "super fidelity" amplifiers in the world other than what they make....
and how do you distinguish between hi fidelity, and super fidelity anyway??
I want the designer of these amps to provide a pair of speakers an audio source, and a pair of the best halcro amps, and we can sit him down and get him pick the difference between the halcro, and some other DIY amp provided by us...
Your legal rights when it comes to the ownership of a circuit design are pathetic.
Despite designs taking thousands of hours to complete, you're very unlikely to ever get a solid patent or enforceable right of ownership to them.
My brother is an IP lawyer in London by profession and tells me that patent law has only just started waking up to the fact that there is still a black box attitude towards electronics.
The entire idea behind patent law is to remove the need for black boxing ideas.
However, there is still a problem because, unless they build electronics themselves, not a lot of people realise how much of a person can go into the design or can see where true innovation is being displayed.
And patents are also designed to protect only the innovative. Not the logical.
In a way, the definition of patents is almost religious. That they are to protect the phenomenal innovations that have no fixed origin.
So the none builders look at circuits, see the building blocks and assume it's all following a logical rule set. Something I'm sure will get worse over the next few decades as digital propagates.
Personally, I would be quite ready to grind numbers off IC's and encapsulating PCB's I'd spent time on and thought were personally novel.
If you're making something that's just another solution to a problem that isn't there, then it's quite pointless yes. If it's something you think is interesting and inventive, and you want to make money selling it, I don't think grinding the numbers and encapsulating the board would be a waste of time.
The only thing that bothers me about this is I usually spend a lot of time not only trying to make my work functional, but neat. Disguising the board would mean making it look messy and cheap.
There is also a lot of stigma about doing this. That you have an ego problem or that the parts underneath the compound need to be hidden because they're low quality. A lot of people see it as a marketing trick to increase the after sale spares market, even with garantees and waranties available.
I read an interesting thread on this elsewhere. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, at some point you have to explain why your circuit is novel to sell it. At this point, even if a competitor can't see how you've executed the design, they'll probably be able to work out roughly how you've done it. And there will usually be a few different methods for producing a similar result.
Big companies employ guys who can reverse engineer boards in no time. I've heard one guy explaining his zero effort approach to doing this and how he'd just dunk the entire board into alcohol to wash the potting compounds off the surface. He said it'd take him a day or two to work out most boards.
If you have someone smart up against you, you can garantee they'll work it soon enough. And if they're ready to put so much effort in, perhaps they deserve at least some respect in some way.
I think disguising the board is mainly to try and discourage the ones who don't want to put any work in at all. The guys who'll just copy the board part for part. And who probably aren't smart enough to negotiate the problems of reversing a disguised board.
If the design they're using is already out there and common knowledge, why would they bother to disguise the board?
A rhetorical question to some extent, to hide the low quality parts underneath.
That is a very big risk they'd have to run if it was the case. Especially when the low quality parts fail or some genuinely cleaver guy reverses the design.
I have a very steady opinion on this. I spend every minute of my life thinking of ideas and ways I can fix or improve anything I'm looking at. I've also seen a lot of guys just like me earning nothing and living a **** life compared to what they could have had, all due to some smart *** raping them on their misplaced trust.
These are the smart ***** who as kids at school were already onto the idea of letting someone else do the hard work and then getting their name on the finished result when it gets handed in.
At school it was a smiley face drawn in your book. In the adult world, the smart ***** are sailing past you on million pound yachts looking down and laughing at you, while you work away as hard as you can thinking what you're getting in return is worth your time.
I'm not going to let myself become one of the guys who does the hard work to have my name towered over.
The primary ownership of the product of my mind is mine alone. It doesn't belong to a patent office. A patent is there simply to allow my ideas to flow in society whilst still allowing me to benefit from them financially. If I am unable to capture the security of a patent, I will go off my way a long distance to ensure that security myself.
You automatically obtain a copyright on your design as soon as you produce it. A copyright is for the artwork that is the schematic, not the idea.
You'll also need some way of proving you produced that schematic first, like posting it to yourself by recorded delivery.
To the point, a conclusion I have reached alongside others is that the best way to ensure the security of an electrical design is simply to do it first, do it best and to keep it the best.
If you have a new electronic design, by far the biggest deciding factor in how sucessful you are is how quickly you can get it into your buyer's hands.
The later update by another manufacturer could be twice as good. If everyone already own's your original, they're much less likely to want to buy a second unless the first is owned by the minority.
Despite designs taking thousands of hours to complete, you're very unlikely to ever get a solid patent or enforceable right of ownership to them.
My brother is an IP lawyer in London by profession and tells me that patent law has only just started waking up to the fact that there is still a black box attitude towards electronics.
The entire idea behind patent law is to remove the need for black boxing ideas.
However, there is still a problem because, unless they build electronics themselves, not a lot of people realise how much of a person can go into the design or can see where true innovation is being displayed.
And patents are also designed to protect only the innovative. Not the logical.
In a way, the definition of patents is almost religious. That they are to protect the phenomenal innovations that have no fixed origin.
So the none builders look at circuits, see the building blocks and assume it's all following a logical rule set. Something I'm sure will get worse over the next few decades as digital propagates.
Personally, I would be quite ready to grind numbers off IC's and encapsulating PCB's I'd spent time on and thought were personally novel.
If you're making something that's just another solution to a problem that isn't there, then it's quite pointless yes. If it's something you think is interesting and inventive, and you want to make money selling it, I don't think grinding the numbers and encapsulating the board would be a waste of time.
The only thing that bothers me about this is I usually spend a lot of time not only trying to make my work functional, but neat. Disguising the board would mean making it look messy and cheap.
There is also a lot of stigma about doing this. That you have an ego problem or that the parts underneath the compound need to be hidden because they're low quality. A lot of people see it as a marketing trick to increase the after sale spares market, even with garantees and waranties available.
I read an interesting thread on this elsewhere. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, at some point you have to explain why your circuit is novel to sell it. At this point, even if a competitor can't see how you've executed the design, they'll probably be able to work out roughly how you've done it. And there will usually be a few different methods for producing a similar result.
Big companies employ guys who can reverse engineer boards in no time. I've heard one guy explaining his zero effort approach to doing this and how he'd just dunk the entire board into alcohol to wash the potting compounds off the surface. He said it'd take him a day or two to work out most boards.
If you have someone smart up against you, you can garantee they'll work it soon enough. And if they're ready to put so much effort in, perhaps they deserve at least some respect in some way.
I think disguising the board is mainly to try and discourage the ones who don't want to put any work in at all. The guys who'll just copy the board part for part. And who probably aren't smart enough to negotiate the problems of reversing a disguised board.
If the design they're using is already out there and common knowledge, why would they bother to disguise the board?
A rhetorical question to some extent, to hide the low quality parts underneath.
That is a very big risk they'd have to run if it was the case. Especially when the low quality parts fail or some genuinely cleaver guy reverses the design.
I have a very steady opinion on this. I spend every minute of my life thinking of ideas and ways I can fix or improve anything I'm looking at. I've also seen a lot of guys just like me earning nothing and living a **** life compared to what they could have had, all due to some smart *** raping them on their misplaced trust.
These are the smart ***** who as kids at school were already onto the idea of letting someone else do the hard work and then getting their name on the finished result when it gets handed in.
At school it was a smiley face drawn in your book. In the adult world, the smart ***** are sailing past you on million pound yachts looking down and laughing at you, while you work away as hard as you can thinking what you're getting in return is worth your time.
I'm not going to let myself become one of the guys who does the hard work to have my name towered over.
The primary ownership of the product of my mind is mine alone. It doesn't belong to a patent office. A patent is there simply to allow my ideas to flow in society whilst still allowing me to benefit from them financially. If I am unable to capture the security of a patent, I will go off my way a long distance to ensure that security myself.
You automatically obtain a copyright on your design as soon as you produce it. A copyright is for the artwork that is the schematic, not the idea.
You'll also need some way of proving you produced that schematic first, like posting it to yourself by recorded delivery.
To the point, a conclusion I have reached alongside others is that the best way to ensure the security of an electrical design is simply to do it first, do it best and to keep it the best.
If you have a new electronic design, by far the biggest deciding factor in how sucessful you are is how quickly you can get it into your buyer's hands.
The later update by another manufacturer could be twice as good. If everyone already own's your original, they're much less likely to want to buy a second unless the first is owned by the minority.
John, you have an interesting input, but I think that you are perhaps a little too cynical. I agree that many people will steal your ideas if you let them. Patenting is of little help, unless you can DEFEND your patent in court, and most of us can't. For years, I used to complain about people taking my designs without any renumeration to me, or even giving me credit for them.
I, finally, personally realized that it was my need to prove that I knew best, when it came to design, is the reason why I gave them my inside design secrets. Then they just took off with whatever I gave them, and I, usually also, lost a professional friendship. Taking numbers off of devices is certainly one way to slow people down, without too much trouble.
Of course, companies can always still reverse engineer your design, but they have to be more serious, and they must invest more effort. It might, also, be more difficult for someone to claim that they invented it independently, as well.
I, finally, personally realized that it was my need to prove that I knew best, when it came to design, is the reason why I gave them my inside design secrets. Then they just took off with whatever I gave them, and I, usually also, lost a professional friendship. Taking numbers off of devices is certainly one way to slow people down, without too much trouble.
Of course, companies can always still reverse engineer your design, but they have to be more serious, and they must invest more effort. It might, also, be more difficult for someone to claim that they invented it independently, as well.
"Of course, companies can always still reverse engineer your design"
Or sometimes even DIYers as they have in the KSA50 and KSA 160 threads....... LIterally anyone that wants to can reverse engineer just about anything if they have access to one unit. We'll see how long it'll take till we see the later Krells(and others) reversed engineered on this site. Should this be allowed here?????
Another good example of this sort if thing is the rolling loop Imax projector of which clones are now available for purchase. Imax only leases their equipment at astronomical prices! The clones are every bit as good as the real Imax equipment.
These clones didn't happen until the orignal Imax rolling loop patents expired..... Imax fought these guys on what they thought were other areas of patent infringement and found out that the other projectors do have updated/upgraded aspects that were not designed by Imax but by those that cloned them. Imax lost the case... this was a big deal in the large format film industry when it happened....
Mark
Or sometimes even DIYers as they have in the KSA50 and KSA 160 threads....... LIterally anyone that wants to can reverse engineer just about anything if they have access to one unit. We'll see how long it'll take till we see the later Krells(and others) reversed engineered on this site. Should this be allowed here?????
Another good example of this sort if thing is the rolling loop Imax projector of which clones are now available for purchase. Imax only leases their equipment at astronomical prices! The clones are every bit as good as the real Imax equipment.
These clones didn't happen until the orignal Imax rolling loop patents expired..... Imax fought these guys on what they thought were other areas of patent infringement and found out that the other projectors do have updated/upgraded aspects that were not designed by Imax but by those that cloned them. Imax lost the case... this was a big deal in the large format film industry when it happened....
Mark
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