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In the 1980s he was a sysadmin for a science lab in the US.

After his boss spotted a discrepancy, he understood that one person was using the computer that he managed without permission.

He was the only one who really cared.

He pushed and asked everybody for help (FBI, NSA, CIA, Air Force, etc).

That person was actually connecting from Germany.

The German police arrested the guy and released him.

It's a cool story because it puts you in the shoes of the 1980s phreaking and hacking scene but from the defense-side.

Now he is selling glass bottles that look like klein bottles (but are obviously not but it's still a cool object, and again don't want to spoil).



Perhaps also notably in there somewhere is the part where Cliff insists, at about the same point SSL solves this problem, that there's never going to be e-commerce because how could you possibly pay anybody securely over the Internet ?

This is between the point where Tim invents his crap hypermedia system with the grand name (the "World Wide Web") and the point where you can get a billion dollar valuation for your idea to sell water on the Internet (the "dot com bubble").




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