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. :)
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!
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.
Thanks for everything, Cliff. I discovered _The Cuckoo’s Egg_ as a child, and was taken in. I wrote a book report on it... and then I wrote a book report on it the next year... and the next year...
At some point, I stopped trying to drag my pre-teen schoolmates along with me, but I still have my original hardback and re-read it regularly.
Your book taught me many things - perhaps most importantly, that one can educate about complex topics in engaging and understandable ways. And now I’ve landed in a job that focused on security.
One of the things that I’ve been doing in this job is, well, trying to educate about complex topics in engaging and understandable ways. I’ve thought about your book in every blog post I’ve written lately.
Thanks for all the writing. I read Cukoo's Egg when it came out and enjoyed but it took at least 10 years before I really followed it. As I remember I got started getting more involved in IT and Unix shortly after I read it and there would be conscious or even sub conscious moments were I'd be running some command or learning some networking concept and what I was learning at the moment would be a bit clearer for having read the book. Or maybe the book would be a bit clearer because I'd seen the reality on my screen.
> 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.
> 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.
From the HN guidelines: "be kind." I do not think your comment fits that _at all_.
My converse opinion: Dr Stoll is an extraordinarily humble, kind, and enthusiastic person who I've only ever interacted with online, but found to be one of the best human beings on the planet.
There's extraordinary value in being smart, dedicated, and in the right place at the right time. He was all three. His book, I think, definitely recognises the role both luck and determination played.
As for the web being nirvana... ten years ago, I would have thought he was overly pessimistic. (And many luminaries have written things about the future that were not accurate: even Bill Gates wrote books that have IMO not aged well.) But now, in 2024? I feel he was not a "siren" but a "python": an oracle a quarter century ahead of his time. The web is not nirvana, and I don't think that Google or Facebook have made the world a better place. Wikipedia has. It's not all bad. But I'd side far more towards his article's view this decade than I would have last decade.
> 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).
The kinder and more accurate interpretation is that he was an ordinary (ordinary-ish: I mean, he was a PhD working in a national lab) guy who dealt with an extraordinary situation with persistence and curiosity, and then wrote about it.
I've observed that Cliff gets a lot of respect from a lot of security people who are normally quite combative because he never pretended to be a security genius - and he's a lovely, brilliant person in his own way.
> 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
That his adversaries were also ordinary (ordinary-ish: how ordinary are you if you're selling secrets to the KGB?) made the story that Cliff wrote more compelling, not less.
I read Silicon Snake Oil soon after it was published (1996) and I felt Cliff Stoll's views were excessively pessimistic at the time. He was definitely out of tune with the Dot Com Zeitgeist. But a quarter of a century later he might be experiencing a degree of Schadenfreude.
Computers have still not successfully replaced newspapers.
Computers have still not successfully replaced teachers.
Computers have still not changed the way government works.
Computer technology has undoubtedly had enormous effects on many aspects of society but it has failed to produce benefits that many early technology idealists and entrepreneurs predicted, and it has made some things a lot worse.
We have lost the quality journalism that was nurtured by the old broadsheet newspapers because they no longer have the necessary money nor inclination to do it.
Education systems are in decline everywhere. Teacher quality has declined. The best teachers find jobs outside the education systems. Student performance has declined despite vast investments in technology for education. Student attention spans have declined and mental health problems have greatly increased along with increased exposure to technology.
Governments at least have benefited from technology in that has enabled mass surveillance and control of their citizens. But other areas of government administration for public benefit, such as health administration and education have not improved. Yet governments have wasted vast amounts of taxpayer money in failed technology projects. Wider citizen participation in democracy? Not so much.
What Cliff Stoll seems to have underestimated is people's willingness to put up with cheaper, lower-quality technological alternatives to quality newspapers, good teachers and public administration.
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.
There's something nice about this community where heroes and leading figures are still present to some extent or another.
There's no investing forum I'm aware of where Warren Buffett occasionally drops in to post nor any NFL one that you'll occasionally see Tom Brady commenting in.
Cliff Stoll also operates kleinbottle.com selling Klein bottles.
I bought one and he included a personalized note and all sorts of fun material. I’ve never shopped from a store where I felt the owner loved his product as much.
And he blogs about how he automates the inventory process. What an interesting story and how I imagine all old programmers ending up.
I read Silicon Snakeoil when I was much younger in the internet's infancy and though it was completely out of touch. I think even he has admitted it didn't pan out has he predicted.
Now that the internet is reaching its final form I'm not so sure anymore
And even back then he wasn't completely wrong. Yes, people laugh at his assertion that "nobody would want to shop online rather than go to a mall" but the dot-com crash of 2000-2001 did kill off most online shopping venues. Of course Amazon survived, but it was the rare exception, like the ancestors of modern birds surviving the asteroid.
nobody would want to shop online rather than go to a mall
But we do have Best Buy, where you can inspect the product before you buy it. And the wife complains about Walmart grocery shopping, where the Walmart employee picked bad vegetables or made really silly substitutions.
I bought this book on Audible based on a random recommendation, not really knowing anything about it. On the page to buy it, it said it was released in 2020. I spent the first 80% of the book thinking that it was written in the 2010s, but intentionally written as if it were the 1980s. That is, with explanations that didn't presage the development of the Internet, and using analogies that would be understood by the people of that era. I was impressed with how perfectly the author was able to channel that era without anachronism, and even told a couple friends about this.
When I learned it was written in the 1980s, I wasn't exactly shocked. But then, I learned it was written by the Klein bottle guy, and that really was shocking. It's become one of my favorite books.
Cliff Stoll has been a frequent guest on youtube's Numberphile [0] - what an amazing personality. Quesera's comment that he has an "outsized curiosity" seems apt!
I remember watching these when growing up. At the time, he was just the "eccentric klein bottle guy" to me, so learning that he's had such a storied and interesting life from this thread came as a welcome surprise. Shouldn't judge a book by the cover and all that. Speaking of which, I definitely want to read the book now.
@CliffStoll is one of my childhood heroes. I ordered a Klein bottle and he drew a picture on the invoice and it melted my heart. It is now a prized possession framed on a wall next to Kevin Mitnick's business card.
Readit News
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. :)
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)
At some point, I stopped trying to drag my pre-teen schoolmates along with me, but I still have my original hardback and re-read it regularly.
Your book taught me many things - perhaps most importantly, that one can educate about complex topics in engaging and understandable ways. And now I’ve landed in a job that focused on security.
One of the things that I’ve been doing in this job is, well, trying to educate about complex topics in engaging and understandable ways. I’ve thought about your book in every blog post I’ve written lately.
Thanks, again.
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.
> 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.
My converse opinion: Dr Stoll is an extraordinarily humble, kind, and enthusiastic person who I've only ever interacted with online, but found to be one of the best human beings on the planet.
There's extraordinary value in being smart, dedicated, and in the right place at the right time. He was all three. His book, I think, definitely recognises the role both luck and determination played.
As for the web being nirvana... ten years ago, I would have thought he was overly pessimistic. (And many luminaries have written things about the future that were not accurate: even Bill Gates wrote books that have IMO not aged well.) But now, in 2024? I feel he was not a "siren" but a "python": an oracle a quarter century ahead of his time. The web is not nirvana, and I don't think that Google or Facebook have made the world a better place. Wikipedia has. It's not all bad. But I'd side far more towards his article's view this decade than I would have last decade.
The kinder and more accurate interpretation is that he was an ordinary (ordinary-ish: I mean, he was a PhD working in a national lab) guy who dealt with an extraordinary situation with persistence and curiosity, and then wrote about it.
I've observed that Cliff gets a lot of respect from a lot of security people who are normally quite combative because he never pretended to be a security genius - and he's a lovely, brilliant person in his own way.
> 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
That his adversaries were also ordinary (ordinary-ish: how ordinary are you if you're selling secrets to the KGB?) made the story that Cliff wrote more compelling, not less.
Computers have still not successfully replaced newspapers. Computers have still not successfully replaced teachers. Computers have still not changed the way government works.
Computer technology has undoubtedly had enormous effects on many aspects of society but it has failed to produce benefits that many early technology idealists and entrepreneurs predicted, and it has made some things a lot worse.
We have lost the quality journalism that was nurtured by the old broadsheet newspapers because they no longer have the necessary money nor inclination to do it.
Education systems are in decline everywhere. Teacher quality has declined. The best teachers find jobs outside the education systems. Student performance has declined despite vast investments in technology for education. Student attention spans have declined and mental health problems have greatly increased along with increased exposure to technology.
Governments at least have benefited from technology in that has enabled mass surveillance and control of their citizens. But other areas of government administration for public benefit, such as health administration and education have not improved. Yet governments have wasted vast amounts of taxpayer money in failed technology projects. Wider citizen participation in democracy? Not so much.
What Cliff Stoll seems to have underestimated is people's willingness to put up with cheaper, lower-quality technological alternatives to quality newspapers, good teachers and public administration.
For sure he underestimated the impact, but he was not /wrong/. Most things did not get replaced by computers, they were lost to computers.
Deleted Comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39249938
There's no investing forum I'm aware of where Warren Buffett occasionally drops in to post nor any NFL one that you'll occasionally see Tom Brady commenting in.
It's something I hope hacker news never loses.
I bought one and he included a personalized note and all sorts of fun material. I’ve never shopped from a store where I felt the owner loved his product as much.
And he blogs about how he automates the inventory process. What an interesting story and how I imagine all old programmers ending up.
https://www.kleinbottle.com/Amazon_Brand_Hijacking.html
Now that the internet is reaching its final form I'm not so sure anymore
But we do have Best Buy, where you can inspect the product before you buy it. And the wife complains about Walmart grocery shopping, where the Walmart employee picked bad vegetables or made really silly substitutions.
Then check out the old Nova documentary about the story: The KGB, The Computer, and Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGv5BqNL164
When I learned it was written in the 1980s, I wasn't exactly shocked. But then, I learned it was written by the Klein bottle guy, and that really was shocking. It's become one of my favorite books.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt5AfwLFPxWJeBhzCJ_JX...
He embodies so much of the genuine intellectual curiosity, creativity, and joy of the early Internet. A really good human!