The Cuckoos Egg: Cliffs Persistence Essays -- essays research papers

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... ...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.