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POSSIBLE VAGUE SPOILER I don't recall it actually being a plot device though. It effectively just served to drive Waterhouse's panic that someone was watching
by kedean 6y ago
POSSIBLE VAGUE SPOILER
I don't recall it actually being a plot device though. It effectively just served to drive Waterhouse's panic that someone was watching him, but then it sort of fizzles out. Unless I missed some implied detail, nobody actually ever used it to spy on him.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kelnos 6y agoANOTHER POSSIBLE VAGUE SPOILER IIRC the protagonists actually do use Van Eck phreaking later in the novel to read out what's on their adversary's laptop screen from the next hotel room over.
- mszcz 6y agoSPOILERS IIRC it's not an adversary but their fiend with whom they have a bet about whether Van Eck Phreaking works or not ;) Also, Van Eck Phreaking's use by their adversaries is implied when Randy's in jail and working on his laptop decrypting the coordinates of the gold stash, again IIRC.
- divbzero 6y agoSPOILERS Yes, Randy avoids reading out the coordinates by monitor to keep them safe from Van Eck phreaking.
- jillesvangurp 6y agoHere's the chapter in question with some helpful links. The bit of furniture erotica showing on the screen is hilarious (scroll towards the end) https://lost-contact.mit.edu/afs/adrake.org/usr/rkh/Books/books/Neal%20Stephenson%20-%20Cryptonomicon%20v2%20(HTML,%20Fully%20Proofed)/slide43.html https://lost-contact.mit.edu/afs/adrake.org/usr/rkh/Books/bo...
- jgon 6y agoSPOILER: It actually drives the climatic finale where Waterhouse performs an "epic hack" while in jail, modifying the linux kernel on his laptop to output the results of his cracking the encryption on the location of a cave full of gold as morse code in the form of his caps lock light going on and off. He also makes sure to write the code that will make these changes via hitting his space bar, which is translated to characters based on the amount of times he hits it, so that again the code to do the calculations is never exposed on screen. The only reason he is so careful about never exposing both the changes he is making to his laptop's code as well as the results of the calculations it runs is because Enoch Root visits him while he is in jail and basically warns him that people will be using Van Eck Phreaking to spy on the contents of his display. So really, it is actually one of the most crucially import bits of technology in the whole book.