CliffStoll

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.

Sure - if you can buy a few hundred Klein bottles, you'll help my kids with their tuition and whatnot...

Naw, I answer all my emails (and HN postings) by hand, using this trusty Mac. Well, usually trusty.

And yep, the dozen or so people who ordered Klein bottles this morning received photos showing that either I'm alive or someone's doing a good job of imitating a 75 year old hacker...

Thank you Two-Bee. I'm happy to report that aside from insomnia, I'm doing well.

Needless to say, this silly incident has a serious subtext for me.

Thanks, oh unclothed robot.

What brought it all home was when I sent a copy of the almost-finished manuscript to my mom. She called long-distance (an absolute luxury for her) and said, "I really like it -- I couldn't put it down"

I've received accolades and awards, but there's nothing like hearing praise from your folks. Forty years later, that phone call still echoes.

I'm grateful to be OK as well. Close call there...

Thank you -- one of the joys of running this zero-volume business is meeting visitors to the Bay Area. Every few days, someone stops by. Much fun! Cheers, -Cliff

And yep, there was a huge bump in sales today. Almost a dozen orders. I'll have to buckle down and stop reading Hacker News.

Not me, Jeff! Smiles, -Cliff

Not ripped. Torn.

Oh Jeez, Don! That nuttiness still haunts me five years later. I still cannot sell Klein bottles on the Canadian Amazon site -- the Amazon hijacker somehow held onto the listing for my klein bottle listing for Amazon/Canada.

Thank you Andrew - I will pass along your condolences to my family, especially to my wife, Pat, who passed away a year ago.

You betcha, Brudgers: I'm a member of the tribe.

Legitimate answer: Maybe someone has stolen my account on hacker news. Maybe someone has researched who I am, even looking at sources unavailable online. Perhaps they stopped my my home (while I was alive) and noticed that I like Apricot decaf tea. Perhaps they attended a talk where I quoted chess master, Arthur Bisguier. In that case, maybe it's a real person simulating me. But counting my fingers (five on each hand), I'm fairly convinced that I'm not an AI simulation.

Having said that, it was just three weeks ago that I spoke at OpenAI in SF. Maybe they did a whole-body substitution. (counting my fingers again...) Cheers, -Cliff

Makes me feel even older, Benji. I wrote it when I was 38.

Now, at 75, I'm astonished at how much has changed online. When I first started fooling with the Arpanet in the early 1980's, I calculated that I probably knew around 0.01 percent of everyone on the net. (where "knew" meant something like "have heard of" or "saw at a meeting") ... that number impressed me with how big the network was.

Today, what percent of the network users does a person know? 1 / 10^-7 or so?

My bio is empty. Hmmm.

I'm giving a talk this Thursday (May 14th at a San Francisco Computer Security group, SFISCA. They asked for a bio. Here's what I wrote:

  Cliff Stoll graduated from Buffalo Public School #61 with a blue star for good attendance.  In his spare time, Cliff pieces quilts and squeezes lumps of bituminous coal into diamonds.

   I wonder if they'll use it...

Open dispute about my death? (pinch myself - yep, it hurts)

So how could I convince people that I'm alive and not some AI construct?

(do pass along my warm cheers to your nonorientable friend) -Cliff

Who am I? Given that I've been reported as dead, that's a good question...

Hmmm ... maybe I'm impostering you, My HydroFloric. I either died before, after, or simultaneously with you. (of course, special relativity has something to say about "simultaneous')

Smiles & one-sided cheers to you, Serph. Sure hope your Kleinbot is still working properly.

Thanks Egonic Axe - Oh, I'm a long time Hacker News lurker ... often reading, seldom posting. Something has to be pretty curious to tempt me out of my cave.

Funny you should mention it, Nail of the Earth. My friend Guy Consolmagno (oh, the stories I could tell - we were in grad school together, and he became the director of the Vatican Observatory) is taking one of my Klein bottles to Pope Leo next week. Yikes! -Cliff

Hat tip accepted, AA! smiles, -Cliff

Oh my, but you know more than you can guess. About a year ago, my wife passed on. While deep in grief, I began receiving letters from financial institutions and banks that began, "Dear Mr/Ms Stoll, we offer our sincere condolences ..." How can a corporation have "sincere condolences"? They're the last place I'd go for comfort or sincerity.

Back from the dead, eh? Turns out it wasn't that bad of a passage...

Writing from this side of death seems to be fairly easy, Dave.

Smiles, -Cliff (who just started designing a new quilt) PS - I quite remember your visit with your daughter a year or so ago)

Thanks Nova Hana! I'm tickled that my writing helped with your English ... I sure didn't intend to help anyone figure out the weirdness of this language. As I remember, I was trying to use the language of computer jocks & hackers simply because that's the easy way to get my ideas across. Best wishes, -Cliff

I've gone out of my way to not read my wikipedia page. Beyond this, there's a rule (suggestion??) that you not edit your own biographical page.

As a result, I have no idea whether things are right, wrong, misguided, or kflooey on that page. Anyone who wants to know details can simply stop over here for coffee and a chat.

Cheers, -Cliff

You betcha, Aurornis. Simple economics tells us that cheap work drives out quality. (Is that Gresham's law?).

Slowly, people will adapt to AI in online forums. But for me, it's one more reason to share coffee with friends, rather than investing hours in social media.

Strongly agree: scribbling requirements, process maps, and block diagrams goes a long way to understanding what needs to be done, as well as getting us to think through what'll be the easy parts and pinch-points.

Goes back to Fred Brooks' Mythical Man-Month: Start with understanding the requirements; then design the architecture. Only after that, begin programming.