HN Books @HNBooksMonth

one of my favorite examples of fruitful redundancy is Cliff Stoll noticing a 75 cent discrepancy between two different accounting logs that let to the discovery of an intruder in the Lawrence Berkeley Lab network.

https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

Indeed, and excellent book that should be required reading for any computer professional, even outside of security.

No relationship other than being impressed with the work.

https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

Seconded! It gives very good flavor of life working at Berkeley and living there, and also the Internet of the day: https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

⬐ ananonymoususer

I read this book shortly after he wrote it. I was a junior engineer at a big company, and the final chapter (on humans being the weakest link in computer security) inspired me to run "crack" on the password (shadow) file of one of our networked Sun workstations. (I actually wrote some code to re-create the shadow file from the output of ypcat because we were running NIS.) Crack managed to obtain about 20% of the users passwords, including root. I wasn't an admin on that network, so I informed the admin and his reaction was that he did not care if I had admin on his network. (I ran a few others already.) One of the cracked user passwords struck me as funny so one day in the hallway I casually asked what that word meant (to the owner of the password). The terror-stricken user froze and asked me why I wanted to know. Instead of recognizing the issues associated with using a dictionary word for a password, he went and complained to my manager. I got called on the carpet for "hacking his windows account." (Apparently he used the same password everywhere.) Fortunately my boss had a good sense of humor and nothing came of it. This was before the company even had a computer security policy. A year or two later, doing what I did would become a fire-able offense.

⬐ bigiain

Hey everybody, I found Randal Schwartz's HN account!

;-)

(For people who weren't Perl hackers in the mid-late '90s, Randal pretty much did exactly that while contracting at Intel, and got 3 felony convictions and 5 years probation, and it took him 12 years of fighting to get the felonies expunged. Be very very careful "trying out" security related things at your employer, without very clear written instruction showing it was authorised - you do not want to be the guy in front of a judge saying "it's part of my job description as a sysadmin!" when your employer is claiming otherwise....)

⬐ sumtechguy

I was defacto 'network admin' at one company. One guy I warned off the porn (dont care you look just do it at home on your own line). He got mad and yelled at the owner and got my privs revoked on the network by bullying one of my other co-workers. My boss took them back and then added even more just to make the guy look bad. Lesson learned. Just block it and do not say anything if you are not in authority to say so. If they complain 'you will look into it'.

⬐ ananonymoususer

Just to be clear, I obtained the passwords (including root) with "crack", but I NEVER used them. I did not ever attempt to log into any account that I was not authorized to use. All I did was to notify the actual administrator of the system about the security issues. The issues being both that even through "shadow passwords" was working properly, one could still obtain encrypted passwords by using "ypcat passwd", and that some users (including him) were using insecure passwords. The user who panicked and called my boss had just assumed that I accessed his Windows account. Oh, and there were never any hard feelings between us after that. We are still friends today.

⬐ bigiain

I'd still be super careful doing that without explicit written authorisation. You "got away with it", not everybody does. (Although I'll note he admits to having made some "stupid" decisions which perhaps you avoided. And I'm guessing he knowingly or unknowingly pissed off someone powerful enough to push through 3 felony convictions, even if they were borderline enough to be completely expunged 12 years later. You never want to piss those guys off without appropriate in-writing justification):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1997/09/15/t...

"He installed a program called "Crack" that automatically guesses passwords. Like most tools, it's used by both good guys and bad guys, by those who abuse computer systems and by system administrators who want to find out whether users are avoiding such easy targets as plain English words. It's even distributed by the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University.

He installed the program without telling his boss, something that he today admits was "stupid." But the program proved his point: Crack quickly guessed nearly 50 passwords of the 600 users of that system -- one belonging to a company vice president. Instead of reporting the company's security problem right away, Schwartz has said, he decided to continue testing. Again, he admits in hindsight, "stupid."

Other system administrators discovered the program and traced it back to Schwartz.

Schwartz insisted he never used the passwords for any nefarious purpose, and said he only acted because the company's lax security bugged him."

⬐ ananonymoususer

All very true! My story is from about 10 years before Randal's, but it was after the CFAA was passed so I guess I dodged a bullet.

⬐ ananonymoususer

Oh, and another good story from when I still had the same boss. A few years later I thought I would prank my office-mate (and show how easy it was to spoof email headers). This was back in the days with SMTP didn't have any security. From a hallway computer (not directly traceable to me), I composed a "You're Fired!" email from my boss to my office-mate. My office-mate had an east-European surname that was easy to misspell and I did. So the email bounced back to my boss and my office-mate never saw it. My boss knew right away who was responsible. He laughed.

I can give you the names of a handful of books that might be useful. Some are more technical, some less so. Some are more about personalities, some about the business aspects of things, some more about the actual technology. I don't really have time to try and categorize them all, so here's a big dump of the ones I have and/or am familiar with that seem at least somewhat related.

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineeri...

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Le...

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet - https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

Open: How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing - https://www.amazon.com/Open-Compaq-Domination-Helped-Computi...

Decline and Fall of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Yourdon-1...

Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/dp/013121831X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&key...

Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date - https://www.amazon.com/Robert-X-Cringely/dp/0887308554/ref=s...

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle - https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-Ora...

Winners, Losers & Microsoft - https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Competition-...

Microsoft Secrets - https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Secrets-audiobook/dp/B019G2...

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture - https://www.amazon.com/The-Friendly-Orange-Glow-audiobook/dp...

Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age - https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-Coming-...

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire - https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp...

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...

The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and The Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer - https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Su...

Bitwise: A Life in Code - https://www.amazon.com/Bitwise-Life-Code-David-Auerbach/dp/1...

Gates - https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Microsofts-Reinvented-Industry-...

We Are The Nerds - https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Nerds-audiobook/dp/B07H5Q5JGS/...

A People's History of Computing In The United States - https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-Stat...

Fire In The Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer - https://www.amazon.com/Fire-in-Valley-audiobook/dp/B071YYZJG...

How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone - https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone...

Steve Jobs - https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648...

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovatio...

Coders - https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-World/dp...

Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software - https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-Scott-Rosenberg-audi...

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency - https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-T...

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World - https://www.amazon.com/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-Change...

The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-Eng...

Also...

"The Mother of All Demos" by Doug Englebart - https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY

"Jobs vs Gates" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Vs-Gates-Hippie-Nerd/dp/B077KB96...

"Welcome to Macintosh" - https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Macintosh-Guy-Kawasaki/dp/B00...

"Pirates of Silicon Valley" - https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-Noah-Wyle/dp/B...

"Jobs" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Ashton-Kutcher/dp/B00GME2NCG/ref...

And while not a documentary, or meant to be totally historically accurate, the TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" captures a lot of the feel of the early days of the PC era, through to the advent of the Internet era.

https://www.amazon.com/I-O/dp/B00KCXJCEK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=U6Z...

And there's a ton of Macintosh history stuff captured at:

https://www.folklore.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

⬐ djaque

Excellent book and I later realized that the author is the Klein bottle guy from numberphile.

⬐ hprotagonist

funny, when i saw that i thought “hey the cuckoo’s egg guy is making klein bottles!”

I’m so happy that he’s got himself a weird and cool life and hasn’t lost that exuberance at figuring esoteric stuff out.

⬐ marmot777

Thats an absolute classic that reads like a spy novel detective story, and, at times, Unix manual. Perfect.

⬐ hprotagonist

you'll never see a pack of benson and hedges and think of anything else again.

https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

Honeypots are good fun. This book introduced me to them many years ago at university.

There’s a ton of great suggestions here. Here are a couple I haven’t seen mentioned.

Documentaries:

- Silicon Cowboys - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/ It covers the creation of Compaq

- American Experience: Silicon Velley - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/ About how Silicon Valley came to be.

- Naughty Dog 30th Anniversary - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cdr7THH0zo8 Kind of a PR video, but interesting and free. Covers the history of Naughty Dog games.

Books:

- Cukoo’s Egg - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona... Has some interesting technical detail, and gives perspective on a very different time on the internet.

- Revolution in the Valley - https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Valley-Insanely-Great-Stor... You can read these stories on folklore.org, but I enjoyed the collected book. Covers the creation of the Macintosh.

I'm a huge fan of the biography Jean Renoir (the acclaimed film director) wrote about his father, Auguste Renoir (the acclaimed Impressionist painter), Renoir, My Father - https://www.amazon.com/Renoir-My-Father-Jean/dp/B001MPDDME

For a gripping tale of technology and hacking, The Cuckoo's Egg never fails: https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

And, as someone reminded me in the thread about Xerox and Fujifilm, Dealers of Lightning tells the story of Xerox PARC, the Alto, Steve Jobs' visit, etc: https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...

⬐ Famicoman

I have read Masters of Doom and both The Cuckoo's Egg and Dealers of Lightning and these recommendations are spot on. I'd love to reread all of these soon, especially Dealers of Lightning.

Something similar but perhaps a bit drier may be Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely about the personal computer wars. And yes, that's the same Cringely from the Triumph of the Nerds documentaries.

I also do not recommend David Kushner's Prepare to Meet Thy Doom and The World's Most Dangerous Geek audiobooks which I believe are anthologies of loosely related articles he has written over the years. The prose was a little too purple for me.

That was a scary time, the first ever large scale network attack. I found myself a couple days later flying down to DC with some other folks from MIT and Harvard to brief a bunch of senior DoD and agency types on what happened, but the thing I remember most vividly was getting home late at night after spending the day repeatedly trying to disinfect and protect our machines, only to log in via a 4800 baud modem and see our machines were somehow infected yet again, with the realization we’d changed root passwords so many times I had no idea how to get in and fix it, nor any way to reach our sysadmin who was even more exhausted than I was.

So I called a friend, who is now a physics professor at MIT, and said “Our machines are infected, could you please break in, go root, clean the infection, and send an email to our sysadmin explaining to him you did this at my request?” All he said was “Ok, get some sleep” and yes even though we’d just spent almost 24 hours locking down every possible attack vector into our machines and network we woke up to clean machines with a polite email in the sysadmin’s inbox. I never have figured out whether that was more a measure of the state of network security in the late 1980’s or of the kind of mad skills it takes to become tenure track at a place like MIT.

There is a good telling of the worm story in the final chapters of Cliff Stoll’s amazing book on discovering a case of internet-hacking meets East-German-spies meets 2400-baud-modems and three-letter-agencies back in the mid 1980’s (which spent 42 weeks on the NYTimes bestseller list and is a ton of fun to read)[0]

[0]https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

⬐ rasz

Speaking of Cliff Stoll and that story(its in the video told by Cliff himself), computer history museum recently posted Computer Crime panel from March 25th, 2000:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfuRvB9EpCo

⬐ alexott

It's sad that such great books are only available in paper form

⬐ socalnate1

Err. There is a kindle version available on the amazon link he posted.

⬐ SimonPStevens

I'm not seeing a kindle edition on either the .co.uk or .com version of the site. Could it be a regional thing?

.com: https://imgur.com/a/R6tcW .co.uk: https://imgur.com/a/iNuKR

The US site does actually offers an audio cassette for $100, but I'm going to assume that's not really what he wanted when he lamented the lack of a non-paper edition :-)

⬐ tedunangst

There is definitely a $9.99 kindle edition on my version of the US site. Dependent on billing/delivery address? Anyway, I can confirm it's there if you can find a way to get to it.

⬐ danesparza

I thought this article sounded familiar! :-) The Cuckoo's egg is an amazing read.

⬐ razakel

The hacker Stoll was tracking, Markus Hess, was affiliated with other hackers that went on to found Chaos Computer Club.

One of the people he was working alongside, Karl Koch, was selling military information to the KGB in exchange for cocaine. He developed some form of paranoid psychosis and seemed to believe he was fighting the Illuminati.

There was a German film made about this called "23" (Koch was obsessed with the cult classic conspiracy fiction novel Illuminatus, and used the pseudonym "hagbard" after a character in the book).

He was found burned to death in woodland; it was ruled suicide.

⬐ endgame

I can't believe that I found a copy for 50c in a second-hand store. I call it my "most precious item" because it has the highest price:enjoyment ratio of anything I own.

⬐ marak830

Just purchased, thanks for the heads up everyone, I'm looking forward to this.

For a really great book about an Active Intrusion this is a classic. https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

⬐ ebcase

I re-read Cuckoo's Egg recently, and it was still a riveting read! Especially when considering that it all happened over telnet.

⬐ jk563

Is this the one that started to realise what was happening due to unpaid time on a machine amounting to 25c or similar?

⬐ throwanem

I think so. It's also the one in which the protagonist stalled the attacker by means of a keyring, which is not so much a thing you can do any more.

⬐ packetized

That's the one. I remember reading it in 1991 or 1992, and just having my mind blinded by the whole story.

⬐ bungie4

Yup. Cliff Stoll. His first book is a great read. The second as well, but he caught a lot of flack for his 'Luddite' views. Personally, and with the aid of hindsight, I think he just undershot on his predictions.

While I too enjoyed this film in my formative days, the book "The Cuckoo's Egg" really blew my mind when I read it back in 2005. If you are a fan of Wargames you would love this book.

Admittedly it's a bit dated now but it holds the same nostalgia that Wargames does.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416507787/ref=x_gr_w_glid...

⬐ EvanAnderson

I really enjoyed The Cuckoo's Egg book, and later the video adaption for NOVA.

Cliff Stoll is a really interesting guy. If you haven't seen it, check out his Acme Klein Bottle site. It's delightful. http://www.kleinbottle.com/

⬐ yodon

+1 for the Cuckoo's Egg. It takes place a bit after the war-dialing era of Wargames and is factual rather than fiction but it's a great read and the real deal of network intrusions, hacking, and spies in the 80's (I met Cliff Stoll shortly after the main events of the book and we spent much of the next five years hanging out together after meeting in a phone networking distribution closet at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, but that's a different story)

Time to show my age here!

Others have listed some great, entertaining reads already:

Hackers,

Soul Of A New Machine (which won a Pulitzer),

Cringley's PBS series Triumph Of The Nerds (available on YouTube),

Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Some not mentioned so far (as I write):

The ancient, online Jargon File is a large glossary that captures a lot of early computer subculture through its lexicon. Eric S. Raymond maintains it today, but it originated way back in the 1970s: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/

"American Experience," on PBS, did a stellar documentary on the origins of Silicon Valley and the pervasive startup mentality there. It's all about the rise of the semiconductor industry, starting with transistors. Watch online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

Dropping LSD was, it turns out, crucial to the origins of personal computing! This I learned from Jaron Lanier and Kevin Kelly, who recommended John Markoff's What The Dormouse Said: http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Personal-Computer-e...

The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer is a short book but also a fun read. Doron Swade, technology historian and assistant director of London's Science Museum, races to build a copy of Charles Babbage's "difference engine" before the anniversary of said machine; he tells his travails in building it while giving Charles Babbage's story at the same time: http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Charles-Babbage-Comp...

No one has mentioned books covering the dark side of hacking. There are some great reads out there, and infosec is a crucial part of computer history.

CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier covers Kevin Mitnick, the Chaos Computer Club, and Robert Tappin Morris (who, somewhat inadvertently, wrote the first Internet worm). Mitnick disputes his section of the book, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Worth it for the Morris part alone: http://www.amazon.com/CYBERPUNK-Outlaws-Hackers-Computer-Fro...

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll is a fun read. Stoll is an astronomer by trade, and his analytical thinking can be an inspiration: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Espionage/dp/...

The Watchman is a true crime thriller you won't be able to put down. The author set out to write a book on Mitnick but wound up detouring to do a story on Kevin Poulsen, who is now an excellent infosec writer at Wired. You will not believe what Poulsen does in this book. http://www.amazon.com/Watchman-Twisted-Crimes-Serial-Poulsen...

The Hacker Crackdown by acclaimed sci fi author Bruce Sterling is a great work on an infamous cross-country bust of many hackers. You'll get a look into the BBS subculture, Phrack Magazine, and the phreaker scene. http://www.amazon.com/Hacker-Crackdown-Disorder-Electronic-F...?

And let's not forget gaming:

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture gives a great history of ID Software and the origins of the FPS: http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...

Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Espionage/dp/...

Really a better list is by tom his own self: http://www.amazon.com/lm/R2EN4JTQOCHNBA/ref=cm_lm_pthnk_view...

My recommendations would add:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Codebreakers-Comprehensive-Communi... by David Kahn. Many stories of the whole history of secret communications, with lessons in op-sec, not changing the codes frequently enough, they can't possibly break this.

The John LaCarre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9 books. Do you remember the point where someone says to Smiley "There is no reason to think that they tapped the phone" to which Smiley replies "There is Every reason".

A must read, I tell my students in my Security Awareness training classes is The Cuckoo's Egg http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Espionage/dp/.... Examples like default service accounts on Dec Vax with username Field and password Service. Note when this is written and are our habits really any better with junk hung on the internet? Concepts pioneered in his book, as effective as they are, are not practiced. Note the alarms going off, ignored, at a large retailer last thanksgiving. Or another retailer recently, "Wait, what, we are being attacked? I didn't feel anything".

Most vulnerable is the thinking "Well, they can't get our X because <thing we did>". I have a matrix of attacker motives and what they are after. There motives and targetsyou haven't thought of.

⬐ marcocampos

The first book on that list "Grey Hat Python" isn't very good. It contains some good parts but it skips things like Scapy which a consider a superb tool if you are in the pentesting business. I recommend reading "Violent Python" instead. It's everything that Grey Hat should have been...

⬐ danielweber

I got Codebreakers over 15 years ago, and I still haven't finished it. That thing is incredibly dense.

I don't know if this is a recommendation, an anti-recommendation, or an excuse.

⬐ TerryL22

I totally agree with you, this actually has happened to me, not once, but twice. It took me 7 years to get it off! I think there are a few recommendations for it.

⬐ ics

At the very least, it's a challenge to all the habitual readers on HN.

⬐ mpyne

I can second the recommendation for The Cuckoo's Egg. I picked it up somehow in 1994 or so and was immediately impressed.

I hear there's an alternate title it's being published under now though, so look for the author, Cliff Stoll.

How the hell has no-one mentioned Clifford Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" yet? http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416507787

+1 for Cryptonomicon. It isn't the easiest book to get through, but it's very worthwhile.

Another couple of possibilities might be:

The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder

http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164...

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage - Clifford Stoll

http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionag...

Hackers & Painters - Paul Graham (yes, that Paul Graham)

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp...

In case anyone doesn't know him, Clifford Stoll wrote "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage", a book about his real experiences tracking down a group of computer hackers.

By the way, there's a bonus at the end of the book: he mentions Paul Graham (in the context of Robert Morris' worm). Was a pleasant surprise when I read the book.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionag...

Wiki about the book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_%28book%29

⬐ RyanMcGreal

He also wrote Silicon Snake Oil in 1996, which seems to have been an expansion of the argument he made in this Newsweek article.

⬐ daten

I knew that author's name sounded familiar. I also read and enjoyed that book.

Your Wikipedia link is broken, try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_%28book%29

edit: OP fixed his link

⬐ edanm

Woops, forgot to say thinks for pointing out the link.

So thanks! :)

⬐ w1ntermute

A hint: search the title along with the filetype: feature to find the whole book ;)

⬐ erik

He also has a Klein Bottle company, with an entertaining website:

http://www.kleinbottle.com/

And he gave a TED talk in 2006:

http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html

⬐ thaumaturgy

His is one of my all-time-favorite TED talks. I also happen to agree with him on most of his points.

I currently make a reasonable living by untangling technology for people. Not only that, but I make another person's living doing it, and soon I'll be making yet another's, in spite of my many competitors all doing the same thing. I think this indicates some serious shortcomings in current technology, and a severe gap between technologists and non-technologists -- one which is incredibly difficult to communicate to technologists.

There are two different ways to read what he wrote. One is to take it in the way that most technologists would: when Clifford Stoll opens with, "The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper", you take the word "replace" in the most literal way possible, and say, "A-ha! But now we do have online databases replacing daily newspapers, so he was wrong!"

The other way -- and the one that I think is closer to his intended meaning -- is less favorable to technologists; in this case, no online database will "replace" our daily newspapers because online databases won't offer the same value. (Not more value, nor less value, but just not the same value.)

I think this is supported by his very next statement: "...no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher..." And, again, I think he's exactly right. A competent teacher interacts with students in ways which technology has yet to offer.

And, some of his other statements are eerily prescient: "The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen." ...This happens now, all the time, and yet I don't think it can be said that the average internet user is actually more informed about the topics on their favorite community site.

It's a cheap form of education, at best, the nutritrional equivalent of subsisting on a snack food and dessert diet.

"At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book." Again, readability on electronic devices is still a work in progress. ePaper and Amazon have made incredible strides, but many avid readers -- those that value the experience as well as the content -- still prefer a dead-tree book. For me, this has been something of an eye-opener recently: I started taking dance classes with my girlfriend a little while back, and the classes take place in a used book store. With my busy schedule and the internet at my fingertips, I haven't been visiting the book stores like I once did. But look! There's a great book on statistics! Oh, and Fluid Mechanics! Oh, and a sci-fi novel! And a history book!

Browsing Amazon just doesn't get quite the same reaction as wandering through the shelves of a good used book store. Amazon has other strengths; a local store can't possibly have a copy of everything, so if I'm looking for a specific title, Amazon might be a better bet. But, it doesn't completely take the place of a local store.

While he might have failed to predict the extent to which technology would evolve and invade so many people's daily lives, I don't think he was wrong to criticize technology's impact on those lives.

⬐ caf

For the truly hardcore avid readers I know, their initial scepticism about e-Ink readers is overcome once they try it out and realise that the decrease in the romanticism of the experience is outweighed by the fact that they can take their entire bookshelf away on holiday with them.

For real readers, who get through a novel every day or two, the sheer mass of paper books is an annoying encumbrance.

⬐ mstevens

"I think this indicates some serious shortcomings in current technology, and a severe gap between technologists and non-technologists -- one which is incredibly difficult to communicate to technologists."

Personally I'm very aware of this gap, but I've never yet been convinced by the "serious shortcomings in current technology" part, except in a strictly commercial sense. Can you expand or provide references that might convince me?

⬐ thaumaturgy

Probably not, but I don't mind trying. Most of this is based off of my experiences with my various clients; I haven't kept anything better than mental notes, so this is also all off the top of my head.

First, let's have a unification of user interfaces. As it stands right now, novices find it incredibly challenging to tell when to left click, when to right click, when to click once, and when to double-click. They can't tell the difference between their "desktop" and their "web browser", and if you step back and think about it for a moment, it doesn't make any sense that they should have to.

I would also like to see the notion of everything in a computer being a metaphor for something in real life come to a blessed end. There's no reason that computers need to have a "desktop", and "files" and "folders" don't make much sense to novice users. Most of them are totally incapable of organizing their information in a useful way, and inconsistencies with file save and open dialogs don't help this. I often hear from people who just need help finding the file that they know they saved, but can't find on their computer. I've also had to reconcile vast hierarchies of folders for users that had been saving different versions of the same file to different locations.

I would like to see a new internet-distributed file system, where data is separated into regular chunks, and then those chunks are saved in multiple locations around the internet in a fast rootless node structure. Public chunks are unencrypted; private chunks are encrypted. To access all of your information from anywhere in the world, you simply sign in to a portal from any computer; your login decrypts a small chunk file which contains encrypted references to all the rest of your data. This would make the very idea of a "backup" completely obsolete and would solve data portability and storage issues for anyone with a broadband internet connection. It would also -- at least for a while -- completely halt viruses and malware.

I want to see consumer devices become more upgradeable and more modular. At least once a week I have to explain to a customer that their entire motherboard (or, often, laptop) needs to be expensively replaced, because the DC circuit failed, or a graphics chip overheated (thankyouverymuch HP).

I think there needs to be a serious effort to upgrade the communications infrastructure in the U.S.; I'm aware of the challenges presented by the geography in this country and current and past building practices. However, much of this build-out has already been paid for [1]. Instead, customers find themselves having to call tech support every time they think their email has stopped working, only to be told that their computer is currently in the process of downloading a 10MB attachment from someone.

I believe that there needs to be a much greater importance placed on performance in software. I think that the current commonly-accepted principles in software development -- ship early, ship often, and hardware is cheap so don't spend too much time making it fast or small -- is wrong-headed, and I think that's obvious to anyone who actually interacts with their customers on a regular basis. The fact that products like McAfee and Norton can have such massive impacts on system performance that the customer is left wondering what died and went to hell in their computer is a problem that needs to be addressed.

This is just for starters. I could go on like this for a long time. I think that all new construction should be wired up for gigabit, right alongside phone & power; I'd like to see cars with upgradeable powerplants; etc.

It's not that I think that current technology isn't improving, or that it's bad necessarily, but I do think there are many problems that it presents that its developers really aren't even aware of, or that they care to address. We keep getting more and more time sinks in the form of shiny new "social" networks where less and less of substance is shared in each iteration, while basic principles of design and infrastructure continue to languish in the shadows.

[1]: http://www.newnetworks.com/BroadbandScandalIntro.htm -- not the very best reference, but it's getting harder to dig this story up anymore.