Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonah | Hacker News Reader

Fantastic writing on that site!

The author, Clifford Stoll, is quite a character. He wrote "The Cuckoo's Egg", which was (I think) one of the first hacker-thriller novels, which I hold directly responsible for getting me into UNIX as a 12-year old in the 90's. I still have a very old battered copy somewhere.

He's become something of a technology curmudgeon now, and I recall him writing a few articles in the 90's with titles like "Why the Internet is a failure". Interesting guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll

edit: Whoops - the book was "The Cuckoo's Egg", not "The Cuckoo's Nest".

He gave a TED talk a few years back.[0] He's certainly an interesting, very alert guy, and he's a great motivator: he seems to be particularly good at exciting his audience and getting them curious about the subject matter. He taught 8th grade science class -- it must've been quite an experience being one of his students.

[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything

The Cuckoo's Egg is nonfiction, based on Stoll's work as a sysadmin. It tells the other side of the story portrayed in the German cult film 23 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_%28film%29).

I have defended his curmudgeonliness here: http://axyl.us/post/479929158/clifford-stoll-was-right

I didn't know it was non-fiction! To be honest, I've not read the book for probably 15 years, but that adds a really interesting spin on it. Thanks for pointing that out!

Indeed the product descriptions are good for a laugh. The bottles look interesting too, I wouldn't mind one for my desk.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com