Clifford Stoll Quotes

Im a scientist, once I do something, I want to do something else.

Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?

The astronomer's rule of thumb: if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen

Of course. NSA is rumored to tape record every transatlantic telephone conversation. Maybe they’d recorded this session.

I claim that this bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of on-line addicts; network neophytes, and library-automation insiders...Instead, I suspect computers will deviously chew away at libraries from the inside. They'll eat up book budgets and require librarians that are more comfortable with computers than with children and scholars. Libraries will become adept at supplying the public with fast, low-quality information. The result won't be a library without books--it'll be a library without value.

Cliff, I’d like to take over, but our charter prevents it. NSA can’t engage in domestic monitoring, even if we’re asked. That’s prison term stuff.

So what? Somebody’s always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions.” Martha

Si realmente quieren saber sobre el futuro, no le pregunten a un técnico, a un científico o a un físico. ¡No! No le pregunten a quien escriba en código. No, si quieren saber cómo va a ser la sociedad en 20 años, pregúntenle a la maestra de un jardín de niños.

Life was full: no hacker is worth missing a Dead concert for.

Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.

The hacker didn't succeed through sophistication. Rather he poked at obvious places, trying to enter through unlock doors. Persistence, not wizardry, let him through.

As computers replace textbooks, students will become more computer literate and more book illiterate. They'll be exploring virtual worlds, watching dancing triangles, downloading the latest web sites. But they won't be reading books.

VI was predecessor to hundreds of word processing systems. By now, Unix folks see it as a bit stodgy—it hasn’t the versatility of Gnu-Emacs, nor the friendliness of more modern editors. Despite that, VI shows up on every Unix system.

Η γνώση δεν είναι δύναμη. Ποιοι από τους ισχυρούς έχουν γνώση; Κανένας ισχυρός δεν ξοδεύει το χρόνο του στο Ίντερνετ και στις βιβλιοθήκες. Ποιοι έχουν τη γνώση; Οι βιβλιοθηκάριοι. Δεν υπάρχουν λιγότερο ισχυροί άνθρωποι από τους βιβλιοθηκάριους.

Richard Stallman, a free-lance computer programmer, loudly proclaimed that information should be free.

it’s a part of the Internet, a computer network that cross-links a hundred other networks.

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom. —Clifford Stoll

The answer to information asymmetry is not always the provision of more information, especially when most of this ‘information’ is simply noise, or boilerplate (standardised documentation bolted on to every report). Companies justifiably complain about the ever-increasing volume of data they are required to produce, while users of accounting find less and less of relevance in them. The notion that all investors have, or could have, identical access to corporate data is a fantasy, but the attempt to make it a reality generates a raft of regulation which inhibits engagement between companies and their investors and impedes the collection of substantive information that is helpful in assessing the fundamental value of securities. In the terms popularised by the American computer scientist Clifford Stoll, ‘data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom’.9 In

Our software is fragile as well—if people built houses the way we write programs, the first woodpecker would wipe out civilization.

Astronomers saw me that way. “Cliff, he’s not much of an astronomer, but what a computer hacker!” (The computer folks, of course, had a different view: “Cliff’s not much of a programmer, but what an astronomer!” At best, graduate school had taught me to keep both sides fooled.)

As much as I love computers, I can't imagine getting an excellent education from any multimedia system. Rather than augmenting the teacher, these machines steal limited class time and direct attention away from scholarship and toward pretty graphics.

Weaned on educational games and multimedia encyclopedias, kids naturally seek out the trivial when forced to read books. While visiting a school librarian, I listened to a high school senior seek help with an assignment: "I'm writing a report about Napoleon," he said. "Can you find me a thin book with lots of pictures?

Don't forget that computer programming teaches students to think," says a friend of mine who's a computer jock in Silicon valley. He's deeply invested in technology and has no kids. "Programming is a logical system that rewards clear reasoning." Uh, sure. Nineteenth-century schoolmasters used the same reasoning to justify teaching ancient languages. According to computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, "There is, so far as I know, no more evidence that programming is good for the mind than Latin is.

I've just about stopped using the computer in class, because the kids are so distracted by the computers themselves," Ms. Valentine concludes. "I think it's the corporate world manipulating the public school system. It's a big show.

Computers deliver an abundance of symbols yet offer an impoverishment of experience. Do our children need to see more icons, corporate logos, and glitzy fonts... or do they need more time climbing, running, and figuring out how to get along with each other?

It's easy to mistake familiarity with computers for intelligence, but computer literate certainly doesn't equal smart. And computer illiterate sure doesn't mean stupid. Which do we need more: computer literacy or literacy?

By analyzing public data with the help of computers, people can uncover secrets without ever seeing a classified database.

Its programs aren’t labeled, “Danger—medical computer. Do not tamper

[Martha said] “So what? Somebody's always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions.

We tend to underplay the significance of something when it is not significant to our immediate frame of reference. In the mid-1990s, Clifford Stoll said that the internet couldn’t survive in part because of a “wasteland of unfiltered data” where there was no way to search for information easily. Because Stoll was an early super-user, his vision was naturally limited to the Internet v1.0’s significant shortcomings. Robert Metcalfe was similarly biased by his own expertise. He was questioning capacity—How could the internet continue to grow without suffering outages? A lack of coordination and cooperation between the first Internet Service Providers had already led to big network problems. Without any changes in sight, Metcalfe saw outages rather than advancements

The astronomer's rule of thumb: If you don't write it down, it didn't happen.

Not often—with six-letter passwords a hacker had a better chance of winning the lottery than randomly guessing a particular password. Since the computer hangs up after a few log-in failures, the attacker would need all night to try even a few hundred possible passwords. No, a hacker couldn’t magically enter my system. He’d need to know at least one password.

Over the past decade Stallman created a powerful editing program called Gnu-Emacs. But Gnu’s much more than just a text editor. It’s easy to customize to your personal preferences. It’s a foundation upon which other programs can be built. It even has its own mail facility built in. Naturally, our physicists demanded Gnu; with an eye to selling more computing cycles, we installed it happily.

Ich langte in meine Tasche nach einem Milky Way - was sonst für einen Astronomen - und machte es mir bequem, um den Hacker auf meinem grünen Monitor zu beobachten.

And there’s no way to reconstruct the avocado from that guacamole.

At the end of that year, Bezos appeared on The News Hour, the PBS television news program, to discuss the impact of the Internet, along with Esther Dyson, editor of the computer newsletter Release 1.0, and Clifford Stoll, the astronomer and author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Superhighway.