The Cuckoo's Egg: Cliff's Persistence By Clifford Stoll "The Cuckoo's Egg" is a story of persistence, love for one's work and is just plain funny! The story starts out with Clifford Stoll being "recycled" to a computer analyst/webmaster. Cliff, as he is affectionately called, is a long-haired ex-hippie that works at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. He originally was an astronomer, but since his grant wore out, he became a mainframe master. He was glad that instead of throwing him out into the unemployment office, the Lab recycled their people and downstairs he went, to the computer lab. A few days after he becomes the master of the mainframe, his colleague, Wayne Graves, asks him to figure out a 75cent glitch that is in the accounting system. It turns out that a computer guru, "Seventek" seems to be in town. None of his closest friends know that. The Lab becomes suspicious that it might be a hacker. To fill you in who Seventek is, he is a computer guru that created a number of programs for the Berkeley UNIX system. At the time, he was in England far from computers and civilization. The crew does not what to believe that it would be Seventek, so they start to look what the impostor is doing. Cliff hooks up a few computers to the line that comes from the Tymnet. Tymnet is a series of fiber-optic cables that run from a major city to another major city. So if you were in LA and wanted to hook up to a computer in the Big Apple you could call long distance, have a lot of interference from other callers and have a slow connection, or you could sign-up to Tymnet and dial locally, hop onthe optic cable and cruise at a T-3 line. The lab had only five Tymnet lines so Cliff could easily monitor every one with five computers, teletypes, and five printers. That was the difficult part, where to get all that equipment. At graduate school they taught Cliff to improvise. It was a Friday, and not many people come to work on Saturday. Since it was easier to make up an excuse than to beg for anything, he "borrowed" everything he needed. Then programmed his computer to beep twice when someone logged on from the Tymnet lines. The thing is, since he was sleeping under his desk, he would gouge his head on the desk drawer. Also, many people like to check their E-mail very late at night, so not to get interference. Because of that his terminal bee... ... middle of paper ... ...the FBI knew the number, they wouldn't tell him who the predator was. For the next few days, Clifford expected to get a call from the Germans saying, "You can close up your system, we have him at the police station now." That didn't happen. He got word, though, that there was a search of his home, and they recovered printouts, computer back-up tapes, and disks, and diskettes. That was enough evidence to lock him up for a few years. Then one day, they caught him in the act. That was enough, he was in the slammer awaiting trail. Clifford's adventure was over, he caught his hacker, and was engaged to Martha. They decided to get married after all. He returned to being an astronomer, and not a computer wizard. Though many people though of him as a wizard, he himself though that what he did was a discovery that he stumbled on. From a 75cent accounting mishap to Tymnet to Virginia, to Germany. What a trace! At the end of the story, poor Cliff was sobbing because he grew up!! L To him that was a disaster, but the wedding coming up, and his life officially beginning, he forgot it soon. Now he lives in Cambridge with his wife, Martha, and three cats that he pretends to dislike.
sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely
telling them he was injured. He was caught and they found many tools in his car. He
"The Cuckoo's Calling" is a fiction novel that was written by J.K. Rolling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. The Cuckoo's Calling is a fictitious mystery novel that follows detective, Cormoran Strike, on his search to find out the truth behind the alleged suicide of Lula Landry, a famous super model. Strike is hired by Lula’s step brother John Bristow who insist that Lula was in fact murdered and that the killer is still out there. While working on the case Strike acquires a recently engaged assistant, Robin. Throughout the book Robin and Strike introduce readers to countless suspects as well as introducing readers to the glitz and glam of the city of London. However, the novel climaxes when Strike does finally find out who Lula’s murder
Joseph Licklider worked on a Cold War project called SAGE designed to create computer-based air defense systems against Soviet Union bombers. Lick became increasingly interested in computing thereafter. Coming to the world of computing from a psychology background gave Lick a unique perspective. Computing at the time consisted mainly of batch-processing operations. Large problems would be outlined in advance and operations coded onto paper punch cards that were then fed into computers in large batches.
Margaret Atwood's “Bluebeard's Egg” is a story centred upon a woman called Sally, describing her relationship with her husband, Ed, and her best friend, Marylynn. The story is told in a third person perspective, a “God-like” figure that takes us through the whole narration, but only revealing the thoughts of one character, Sally. In the story “Bluebeard's Egg”, the main conflict is within the protagonist, Sally; that is, her external self versus her internal self. Sally's external self does not act according to her internal self. In other words, Sally does not express her emotions and thoughts due to the many concerns that she has, both psychological and environmental.
“My officers said that he immediately confessed as soon as they sat down to talk, and he was physically going crazy and covering his
He committed the crime. He smeared the person’s good name. He gave false testimony. He knew he had confess to that crime.
Despite being faced with many hardships, Poe was able to harness his woes and transform them into works of art. Although quite sinister at times, the works of Poe have the power to leave readers breathless. It is with this power that “The Raven” was created. Poe created a way in which repetition would provoke meaning instead of boredom. He shaped symbols that would encourage the exact thoughts to occur to the reader that he had been thinking upon writing “The Raven.” His characters were crafted in a way that would be relatable to everyone and be easily understood. These characters not only make “The Raven” more universal, but they make the message of the poem more intense to the reader. In order to produce work that makes people feel and suffer, a stroke of genius is necessary. This stroke of genius was distinguished in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. It is works like this that encourage the literary world to expand. This inspires writers to fabricate their own claim to fame. “The Raven,” of course, has influenced many works (Bloom 49). To create a masterpiece as extraordinary as “The Raven” again is quite literally impossible. The use of characters, symbolism, and repetition sets this poem on its own little shelf, to be outshined,
Mr. Turing had a remarkable career from the 1930’s into the early 1950’s. He studied
Then came Linus Benedict Torvalds. At the time he was a sophomore majoring in Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, his hobby also included computer programming. At 21 he found himself spending most of his time toying with computer systems, trying to see what he could do in order to push their limits and increase their functionality. The key missing in his tests was an operating system that had the flexibility craved for by professionals. MINIX was available, though it was still just a stu...
Watson, J. (2008). A history of computer operating systems (pp. 14-17). Ann Arbor, MI: Nimble Books.
Edgar Allan Poe was an all-around Dark Romantic. All of his writings showed the dark minds and the twisted psychology of the people in his time period. “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe projects the darkness of the people’s minds that peers into this period. “…Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” (Poe 286). The poem had the essence of a desolate man with no hope for happiness. In such loneliness and despair, the narrator’s own mind drives him mad. He is believed to be talking to a raven that repeats “nevermore” to every question. The more questions the narrator asks, the more twisted the raven’s answer becomes. This sh...
Humans must go through many struggles as they attempt to attain their dreams. John Steinbeck exemplifies a certain man’s struggle for his dreams in his novella The Pearl. A Native American family must save their child from a scorpion sting. This leads them to find a great pearl which does not help them; in fact, it plagues their peaceful world with greed, death, and evil. Throughout the novel Kino’s importances in life change as he copes with his inner demons.
his apartment with his gang and then raped her. Then when the police arrived he
Making a telephone call no longer should conjure up visions of operators connecting cables by hand or even of electrical signals causing relays to click into place and effect connections during dialing. The telephone system now is just a multilevel computer network with software switches in the network nodes to route calls get through much more quickly and reliably than they did in the past. A disadvantage is the potential for dramatic and widespread failures; for as has happened.