Yes, Xyz, you got it right. I started out as an apolitical Berkeley techie (not exactly a hippie) and came to realize that the government and, yes, the military were necessary and important to preserve the community that I was living in. It's easy to scribble "Stop the CIA" on Berkeley stop-signs; but who's going to inform our government about what's happening in the world? I did a lot of growing-up during that chase.
As Bob Segar said, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.
I think the actual curve of "rebellious hacker sort" eventually comes into contact with "orderly military type" and how a person chooses to deal with that interaction more or less determines the next 50+ years of their lives. I've seen your bottles around, and maybe someday when my bank account has fewer pressing purchases on it, I'll get one! (Unless your bottles also come with three wishes?)
It wasn't quite a time of innocence, more like a time of trust-through-ignorance. The entire network was built on people who relied on each other for connectivity, software, and support. I once got slapped down for suggesting that we put passwords on an astronomy computer: "What have we got to hide?". (Turned out that someone had set up a bulletin board server on that system, without anyone's knowledge.) Cheers, -Cliff
I'm European so when I read your book I read the first time about the NSA and I totally got the wrong impression of them, might also be, that they changed a lot since then
I watched the talk and you had quite a lot of run-ins with feds.
It seems they kind of had some idea about this stuff especially after what you uncovered. There was a movie from 1983 called "WarGames" !?!?
Why oh why cyberspace was only recognised as 5th operational domain only in 2016? Why do we have all kinds of cyber regulations kicking in past 3-4 years (well GDPR was already 10 years ago).
I guess you don't have the answers (asking Cliff Stoll but whoever else feels like responding I will be happy as well) for that but I think it still a fun question to ask. I obviously don't want to call out anyone stupid but somehow I cannot believe it took all that time to grow and become what it is today with all the regulations and "important" people recognising the issue.
I haven't quite given up on this, but I am running out of leads. I'm dropping this here mostly to benefit others by leaving some information all in one place.
It seems that it was first episode of the first season [S01E01] of a Yorkshire Television series named Science Fiction (oh, how I wished they'd picked a less-ambiguous name). This episode was named Spycatcher.
It's listed on IMDB[0] with an air date of Feb 15, 1990, but that date may be wrong. It was discussed twice[1] in TV-section articles in the Hull Daily Mail (Feb 10th and 13th, 1990), and some freely-visible blurbs from those suggest that it aired on a Tuesday at 7:30PM. That more-strongly ties the date down at February 13, 1990 than the IMDB's entry of Feb 15th.
Except: The verdict in Germany didn't come until Feb 15th[2]. I wonder of the Yorkshire Television Science Fiction episode had the same conclusion as the PBS Nova episode did, or if it left things more open-ended. That would help to pin down the date. :)
Some of the clues along the way include an old copy[3] of your own web pages at Berkeley, and one comment[4] on HN from a couple of years ago (they gave up on finding it).
I don't know enough about British television norms (much less the history) to really understand how any of this stuff flows, but I'm gaining the impression that the remains of Yorkshire Television might be owned by ITV, and that archives are likely to still exist.
I've seen reports that people have had success purchasing personal-use copies of old programs by sending an email to viewers.requests@itv.com if anyone wants to go that route.
As I "acted" & consulted on the programme I have a copy of the final edit before transmission unfortunately it's on a 30+ year poorly stored PAL VHS Tape and being now based in the USA I have no way of personally converting it to digital and afaik it's the only copy floating around I'm loathed to let it out of my sight but if anyone based in Brooklyn has the ability to "bake" and transfer PAL VHS I'd be up to let them try.
I've asked Derek Jones (The Director) years ago if he had a copy but he said YTV never gave him one and unfortuneately Sally Hamilton (Production) died a few years later before I had chance to ask her
And my warm thanks to you, Giov. As you realize, in that talk I probably covered 5 percent of what actually happened. But that's storytelling.
Like you, as I've grown older, I cherish those times when my old-school skills are still useful - whether in computing, physics, or electronics. And there's so many new goodies that I'm never bored.
Anyways - how often do you get a chance to show a slide rule to a thousand people?
Cheers, -Cliff
My kids don't take the advice of anyone who has Kleinbottles in their crawlspace, fdsa. And I doubt if removing those glass manifolds would have much effect. -C
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