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I'm listening to the recently released book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks[^].
This is a fantastic, well-written, entertaining and instructive book.
It starts out with the story of the first Internet virus or worm created by Robert Morris[^] which really was a science experiment gone wrong. He was subsequently awarded tenure at MIT.
Anyways, the book is written by Scott Shapiro[^] who is a professor at Yale law school.
The author learned assembly language and other technology so he could write the book and it absolutely shows that he is knolwedgable.
If you love this kind of technology history and how these things came into being it is definitely an entertaining read that does a great job of explaining how the technology came about also.
Also, does a great job of explaining the history without glorifying those who created malware.
As a matter of fact, you will discover how that originally white-hat hackers in Bulgaria were writing novel code that could attach to .COM (old DOS executable type) and how they were writing code to find them and remove them. Really interesting.
Have any of you read this book?
tl;dr
Also, this reminds me of a book that came out when I was just entering IT and development world.
It was by John McAfee (the antivirus guy) in 1989, Computer viruses, worms, data diddlers, killer programs, and other threats to your system: What they are, how they work, and how to defend your PC, Mac, or mainframe [^]
I'd love to know if anyone has read that book. I'm considering getting it to get a perspective on this stuff from the beginning. It's just a hobby of mine to read this stuff. Very interesting.
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Is that title of your title thread properly formulated? I feel something is missing but I’m not a native English speaker, I might be wrong. (It could be a marginal but legit way of expressing yourself)
modified 12-Oct-23 5:42am.
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[The] title [of the book] made me think [it: the book] might be [hype: an exaggeration], but [the book is] actually fantastic!
I filled in the implied words.
I write emails like this all of the time and then have to go back and fill in the implied words on review.
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raddevus wrote: by John McAfee (the antivirus guy) in 1989,
Just noting he got famous for other things after that.
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That was the "infamous" part, longer time after he sold McAfee (the AV company) to Intel in 1994.
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raddevus wrote: It's just a hobby of mine to read this stuff. Very interesting.
If you like this stuff you might like The Cuckoo's Egg[^]. I found it very interesting at the time. Cliff Stoll's other book, Silicon Snake Oil[^] is also interesting if you want to see how wrong even very intelligent people can be when looking into the future.
Also, for me, a good listen was the BBC podcast The Lazarus Heist[^]. It's not so ancient history but I found it entertaining over a 10 hours drive.
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: If you like this stuff you might like The Cuckoo's Egg[^].
Yes, I recently (a couple of years ago) read The Cuckoo's Egg.
Very interesting because Cliff Stoll ends that book mentioning the Morris Worm and how he ended up being involved with it also.
That's why this new book is so good, because it kind of starts off where Stoll's great book ends.
I just listened to more of it during lunch and this book continues to be really great.
The research is fantastic!!
Thanks for the additional resources. 
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I've read it too. Very good. One memorable part was his physics exam and the question "Why is the sky blue?", repeatedly followed by "Could you be more specific?"
Must read it again.
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The cuckoo's egg is definitely a great read.
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Huh, Kindle, but paperback coming out in 2024? Bizarre.
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I think it may be only hardback right now. I saw a few copies of hardback at the library.
You're right though, most tech books release directly in paperback.
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Your link leads to a tee shirt
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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That's odd, both links work from here. Maybe because they are us links on amazon or something.
Interesting.
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Both links work fine for me.
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Zero Day.... is definately worth a read too.
Zero Day: Amazon.co.uk: Russinovich, Mark: 9781250007308: Books
Written by Mark Russinovich (Yes that mark, the one of sys-internals fame) it had to be one of the most scary works of fiction I as a technically minded person have read!
I know a few non-techs that have read it, they enjoyed it for the fiction it is, I read it and I remember vividly thinking the processes in my head as to just how many of the plot lines in the book could come true and actually be achieved.
It still has a very healthy dose of fiction & fantasy in it however, excellent read all round.
PS: Sorry for the link but you know what amazon are like /me rolls eyes.
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Built a new computer after my work laptop scared me a couple weeks ago. Ended up with Win11. After getting StartAllBack, not terribly bad. (Still, a step back from what I had before.) And then I went to change what the power button does. Shook my head when my searches didn't find it in the 'Settings' app. Good God, Microsoft! Finish the changeover already, or just stay with the Control Panel for everything. (Yes, it was in that.)  (But a frown in place of the smile on this :>rolleyes<: )
I did find under 'Personalization -> Device Usage' that I could tell the computer all the ways in which I plan to use it. And it would give me 'personalized ads' for doing so - as if that is a good thing. 
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David O'Neil wrote: And it would give me 'personalized ads' for doing so - as if that is a good thing.
It's only going to get worse as we go further and further into the recession the TV lies about.
Jeremy Falcon
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Yup, debian is your friend. Do Windows programming stuff in a VM. 
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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But you're still dealing with Windows, with the extra headache of dealing with Debian and VMs. 
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Headaches? Not here. Hosting VM's on Linux is very smooth for me. I use both VMware Workstation and ESXi.
I have very few problems, and don't see much in the way of problems by mostly using Windows VM's for what little programming I do these days. It is also very handy for administering the surveillance software via VPN. Rarely use W11, although I have a VM.
I understand the vitriol towards Mac and Linux here, but use them very happily. Also use Windows when I consider it appropriate.
YMMV
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Over the years I've occasionally tried using various flavors of Linux since version 0.99 (that came on something like 30 1.44MB floppies). In every try I waste more time trying to get it to work and/or configured than actually using it. Life's too short.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Just to be clear, I've no hatred of either Linux or Mac. I own and use a MacBook Pro and iPad for my music production and like them fine, as well as my iPhone. As for Linux I just don't have the time or interest to overcome the issues I've had with it or the learning curve of using it, and even if I did it cannot do everything I need it to do with the tools I already own.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Whatever "headaches" are created by using VMs are offset (and then some) by the fact that backing up the whole OS becomes as simple as backing up the one file representing the disk. I wish it were that easy to manage backups with a "real" OS.
Not to mention portability. Since the hardware is virtualized, you're using the same drivers everywhere (eg, you don't even have to think about it), so there's no worry about moving a VM to potentially incompatible hardware.
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A elephanting men! Today's PCs have so much capability, running on the base iron is insane. We are not talking about gaming.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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