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Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

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Re: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

#191

Post by tialaramex »

rvnx wrote: post #171
moralestapia wrote: post #81

Pardon the interruption but ... who are you? Your bio is empty.

In the 1980s he was a sysadmin for a science lab in the US. After his boss spotted a discrepancy, he understood that one person was using the computer that he managed without permission. He was the only one who really cared. He pushed and asked everybody for help (FBI, NSA, CIA, Air Force, etc). That person was actually connecting from Germany. The German police arrested the guy and released him. It's a cool story be…

Perhaps also notably in there somewhere is the part where Cliff insists, at about the same point SSL solves this problem, that there's never going to be e-commerce because how could you possibly pay anybody securely over the Internet ?

This is between the point where Tim invents his crap hypermedia system with the grand name (the "World Wide Web") and the point where you can get a billion dollar valuation for your idea to sell water on the Internet (the "dot com bubble").

Re: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

#192

Post by CliffStoll »

djeastm wrote: post #45

So cool that you're on HN (and alive, of course). My interest in hacking began when I read The Cuckoo's Egg as a kid.

Thanks DJ of the East. It's strange to have written a book aimed at grownups and find that astute kids picked up on it.

  Now, of course, the book's antique: Arpanet?  1200 baud modems?  Phone booths?  If you know what those are, then you're probably worrying about 401(K)'s and Medicare.

Re: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

#194

Post by CliffStoll »

h0p3 wrote: post #166

XD. Always a pleasure to you see on these here innanets, sir. `/salute`. Family and I were talkin' about you the other night during Family Gathering. What's your plans for what you got left on this rock?

Thanks! I've submitted a paper to Black Hat / DefCon; I don't know if it'll be accepted. If so, I'll have fun doing a talk there.

I'm volunteering around the Bay Area (up at the Steam Trains at Tilden Park on Sunday afternoons), show up to the intro-classes at Berkeley Folk Dancing, and speak to schools and professional groups.

And, of course, I'm still operating this Klein bottle business. I have only one employee (who is a lazy, good for nothing sloth). Management is very thin and incompetent: there's only one boss (who is an oppressive taskmaster always trying to get me to do more work than I want to).

Re: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

#197

Post by CliffStoll »

f_kai wrote: post #164

Cliff! So sorry to hear of your passing - you seemed in good health when I visited you with my mom in 2024 ( https://immich.netrun.club/share/Qdl6SzRjW9zoQyxEV0Jct7ZkgpJ... )! Still need to send you my 3d harmonograph maker I've been working on that you were interested in - hope the quilt making is still going well!!

  Yikes - Yep, I remember your visit -- what a hoot to see that photo.  

  And yep, I'm working on a new quilt: it'll be a recursive design.

Re: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

#199

Post by zellyn »

Thanks, this just reminded me to order some Klein Bottles. I realized right after I hit "Finish" that I should have included in the note a big thank you for both the Cuckoo's Egg (reading it and learning about unix systems and teletypes and worms made me feel like I was part of some secret nerdy club in the early 90s… although tbh getting my parents to drop me off every month at the Chattanooga BBS get-together brunch was probably enough nerd cred for the rest of my life!) but also for making Klein bottles and using robots to fetch them and everything: it makes me happy just knowing that the kind-hearted, perhaps slightly off-kilter, counter-cultural nerdery that is part of what drew me into computing is still alive in the world!

Re: Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

#200

Post by djeastm »

CliffStoll wrote: post #192
djeastm wrote: post #45

So cool that you're on HN (and alive, of course). My interest in hacking began when I read The Cuckoo's Egg as a kid.

Thanks DJ of the East. It's strange to have written a book aimed at grownups and find that astute kids picked up on it. Now, of course, the book's antique: Arpanet? 1200 baud modems? Phone booths? If you know what those are, then you're probably worrying about 401(K)'s and Medicare.

>astute kids

"Astute" would be quite a surprise for my parents to hear, given they received a not-so-friendly letter from our ISP telling us to quit probing their network's security...

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