Clifford Stoll
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Clifford Stoll (or Cliff Stoll) is a U.S. astronomer and author. He received his Ph.D. from University of Arizona in 1980. During the 1960s and '70s, Stoll was assistant chief engineer[1] at WBFO, a public radio station in Buffalo, New York.
Stoll has written three books as well as technology articles in the non-specialist press (e.g., in Scientific American on the Curta mechanical calculator).
Stoll played a decisive role in catching hacker Markus Hess in the 1980s, while Stoll was employed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He described those events in his book The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage[2] and the paper "Stalking the Wily Hacker", published in the professional journal Communications of the ACM.[3] Stoll's book was later chronicled in an episode of WGBH's NOVA entitled "The KGB, the Computer, and Me" which aired on PBS stations in 1990.
In his 1995 book, Silicon Snake Oil,[4] and an accompanying article in Newsweek[5] Stoll famously called the prospect of e-commerce "baloney", and raised questions about the influence of the Internet on future society and whether it would be beneficial. Along the way, he made various predictions, e.g. about e-commerce (calling it unviable due to a lack of personal contact) and the future of printed news publications ("no online database will replace your daily newspaper").
Stoll sells blown glass Klein bottles on the Web.[6][7] As of 2009, he is a "mostly" stay-at-home dad.[6] He teaches eighth graders about physics at Tehiyah Day School, in El Cerrito, California.[8] Stoll was a regular contributor to MSNBC's The Site. Stoll is an FCC licensed amateur radio operator, callsign K7TA.[9]
[edit] Notes and References
- ^ WBFO Alumni: N-S
- ^ Cliff Stoll (1989). The cuckoo's egg. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-370-31433-6.
- ^ Clifford Stoll (May 1988). Stalking the wily Hacker. 31. Association for Computing Machinery.
- ^ Clifford Stoll (1995). Silicon Snake Oil. McMillan. ISBN 0-330-34442-0.
- ^ Clifford Stoll: The Internet? Bah! Newsweek February 27, 1995
- ^ a b Stoll's Home page at Berkeley's Open Computing Facility
- ^ Klein bottles by Cliff Stoll
- ^ Clifford Stoll: Clifford Stoll on Everything - 18 minutes with an Agile mind. TED conference February 2006
- ^ Stoll's callsign at QRZ.com
- High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian, Clifford Stoll, 2000, ISBN 0-385-48976-5.
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Clifford Stoll |
- Stoll's Home page at Berkeley's Open Computing Facility
- Stalking the Wily Hacker copy at Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Picture of Stoll from an interview with by Pro-Linux Magazine
- 2004 audio interview with Clifford Stoll by Karen Saupe
- 2006 article in Scientific American, "When the Slide Rules Ruled"
- Talk by Cliff Stoll April 4, 1996
- Talk at TED Feb 2006
- Transcript of talk at TED Feb 2006
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