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Cliff Stoll was an unwelcome demonstration that not all adults are as clueless as they appear to disaffected, smarter-than-thou teenagers. Cliff showed that a

Cliff Stoll was an unwelcome demonstration that not all adults are as clueless as they appear to disaffected, smarter-than-thou teenagers. Cliff showed that a smart adult with an outsized curiosity and more than a bit of persistence, could keep up -- and even marshal resources to reassert the dominance of order and adulthood. This was a good lesson, at the right time, for many people! Also, Cuckoo's Egg is an entertaining story. I read it again a few years ago, and I enjoyed it more this time than I did when it was published. :)

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> Cliff Stoll was an unwelcome demonstration that not all adults are as clueless as they appear to disaffected, smarter-than-thou teenagers. One of the most important things people underestimate is just how powerful a group of “average” people working 9-5 for years if they get you in their cross hairs. You just have to mess up once, get lazy once, make a wrong assumption once. Meanwhile, they only have to be right once.
- Solvency 3y ago
  What people underestimate this? Who are you even talking about?
  - efnx 3y ago
    I think they are referring to hackers. So - as a hacker you only need to slip up once to possibly be found by a group of average folks working 9-5 to catch you.
zeke 3y ago
I read it last year after it was mentioned here. Thought it was nice that pg had a cameo at the end of the book.
_zagj 3y ago
https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... > Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. > Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. Topkek. Stoll always struck me as nothing more than an opportunist with little actual technical acumen who happened to be in the right place (a university computer lab) at the right time (dark ages of computer security, and the last decade of the cold war). At best he was a siren, being one of the first to sound the alarm about the importance of security, but he could hardly do anything to actually prevent the unauthorized accesses he dramatized, and I wonder if he even would have discovered them had his adversaries cared more.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mendelab 3y ago
  Are you laughing because we lost most newspapers to garbage online news, because schools are digitalized with no benefits, because social media made us less democratic, or because fake products are sold on the most successful online stores? For sure he underestimated the impact, but he was not /wrong/. Most things did not get replaced by computers, they were lost to computers.
  - _zagj 3y ago
    Read the whole thing. Maybe there are undigested kernels of truth and foresight amongst the excrement, but on the whole, it's easily one of the worst, most unimaginative, and most dogmatically narrow-minded futurist thinkpieces to have ever been written: > Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. He wrote those words in 1995, a year after Amazon was founded, and just two years before its IPO.
CliffStoll 3y ago
My warm greetings and smiles to my Hacker News friends — I’m honored by both your kindness and attention. Like many of you, I began computing as a teenager (in 1965: assembler on an IBM 1620); like many HN contributors, I’ve had fun with science, math, technology, and crafts. HN has connected me with insightful and over-the-top competent people; I’m happy to be considered one of the gang. To the many who’ve helped me understand things from time crystals to homotopy theory, my deep thanks! While I’ve tiptoed away from many turbulent scenes, I remain curious (just discovered that a biocide used as a paint additive to kill mildew is an ingredient in my shampoo). Still hacking & coding (handful of rasp pi’s), still sewing (finished an appliqué quilt last week), and still making these odd onesided shapes. From a across the ether and across the decades, my warm wishes to those who’ve made this forum an inviting and occasionally inspiring place! -Cliff (on a cloudy Thursday morning in Oakland)
- srndsnd 3y ago
  Thank you for your incredible book Cliff. I found a copy when I was in high school about ten years ago and it changed my trajectory. It got me into hacking and tinkering with computers and led me to a career I love today. I always make a point of loaning my copy to anyone I see who was my age then with an interest in computers.
  - theshackleford 3y ago
    Same. I don’t know where I’d be without it honestly. But certainly not where I am. It was the first and only thing that ever really clicked for me. Only I found it back in the early 2000s. Quite how I found it, I’ll never remember, but I found it at a dark time in my life and it had a profound impact then, through now.
    - CliffStoll 3y ago
      Thanks, oh Shackleford. Dark times (in life, at night, or during an eclipse) can lead to remarkable observations and insights. I'm honored that m'book played a part in your own story.
  - 3y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> Cliff Stoll was an unwelcome demonstration that not all adults are as clueless as they appear to disaffected, smarter-than-thou teenagers. One of the most important things people underestimate is just how powerful a group of “average” people working 9-5 for years if they get you in their cross hairs. You just have to mess up once, get lazy once, make a wrong assumption once. Meanwhile, they only have to be right once.

Solvency 3y ago
What people underestimate this? Who are you even talking about?
- efnx 3y ago
  I think they are referring to hackers. So - as a hacker you only need to slip up once to possibly be found by a group of average folks working 9-5 to catch you.

zeke 3y ago

I read it last year after it was mentioned here. Thought it was nice that pg had a cameo at the end of the book.

_zagj 3y ago

https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... > Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. > Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. Topkek. Stoll always struck me as nothing more than an opportunist with little actual technical acumen who happened to be in the right place (a university computer lab) at the right time (dark ages of computer security, and the last decade of the cold war). At best he was a siren, being one of the first to sound the alarm about the importance of security, but he could hardly do anything to actually prevent the unauthorized accesses he dramatized, and I wonder if he even would have discovered them had his adversaries cared more.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mendelab 3y ago
Are you laughing because we lost most newspapers to garbage online news, because schools are digitalized with no benefits, because social media made us less democratic, or because fake products are sold on the most successful online stores? For sure he underestimated the impact, but he was not /wrong/. Most things did not get replaced by computers, they were lost to computers.
- _zagj 3y ago
  Read the whole thing. Maybe there are undigested kernels of truth and foresight amongst the excrement, but on the whole, it's easily one of the worst, most unimaginative, and most dogmatically narrow-minded futurist thinkpieces to have ever been written: > Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. He wrote those words in 1995, a year after Amazon was founded, and just two years before its IPO.

CliffStoll 3y ago

My warm greetings and smiles to my Hacker News friends — I’m honored by both your kindness and attention. Like many of you, I began computing as a teenager (in 1965: assembler on an IBM 1620); like many HN contributors, I’ve had fun with science, math, technology, and crafts. HN has connected me with insightful and over-the-top competent people; I’m happy to be considered one of the gang. To the many who’ve helped me understand things from time crystals to homotopy theory, my deep thanks! While I’ve tiptoed away from many turbulent scenes, I remain curious (just discovered that a biocide used as a paint additive to kill mildew is an ingredient in my shampoo). Still hacking & coding (handful of rasp pi’s), still sewing (finished an appliqué quilt last week), and still making these odd onesided shapes. From a across the ether and across the decades, my warm wishes to those who’ve made this forum an inviting and occasionally inspiring place! -Cliff (on a cloudy Thursday morning in Oakland)

srndsnd 3y ago
Thank you for your incredible book Cliff. I found a copy when I was in high school about ten years ago and it changed my trajectory. It got me into hacking and tinkering with computers and led me to a career I love today. I always make a point of loaning my copy to anyone I see who was my age then with an interest in computers.
- theshackleford 3y ago
  Same. I don’t know where I’d be without it honestly. But certainly not where I am. It was the first and only thing that ever really clicked for me. Only I found it back in the early 2000s. Quite how I found it, I’ll never remember, but I found it at a dark time in my life and it had a profound impact then, through now.
  - CliffStoll 3y ago
    Thanks, oh Shackleford. Dark times (in life, at night, or during an eclipse) can lead to remarkable observations and insights. I'm honored that m'book played a part in your own story.
- 3y ago