Whether driven by curiosity or greed â or a little bit of each â they all treat their âhobbyâ as a game. Hackers match wits with systems and system operators, dumb and smart. They pit their skills and know-how â and more often, their sheer bloody-minded determination â against the people who want to keep them out of their chosen playground.
The Doctor treated his hacking mission just the same way. He reminded me of the enthusiastic kids in my high-school chess club, taking a piece with a twist of the wrist, a clack of colliding wood, and a triumphant quip. The difference was that he gave me the overwhelming impression that this
was
just a game. Nothing as sophisticated as chess: more like an adult stooping to sit in the dirt and flick marbles with a pre-schooler. More like a human being deigning to throw a tennis ball again and again for a dog.
My guess is that the Doctor spends most of his time with computers far superior to the humble Apple II â presumably the multi-million-dollar mainframes that hackers itch to have illicit access to. And yet, I canât help but feel that if the Doctor were confronted with the latest Cray supercomputer, it would just be another half-chewed tennis ball to him.
When Swan saw that her intruder was back again, she slammed her coffee down on her desk and grabbed for the log files. She must have managed to back them up before the Doctor could erase our fingerprints, because her next step was to try to break into the universityâs computer. Swan was not the sort to waste time reporting burglars to system administrators who knew less about their machines than she did. Besides, to be fair, it was unlikely anyone would be in the office at that hour.
If there
had
been anyone in the office, of course, it would have been Bob Salmon. It was Bobâs account Swan wanted â although she still had no idea he was the man whoâd delivered her a Lisp Machine just the day before. She simply wanted the abilities of his root account so that she could find out who was sniffing around her mainframe.
Swan was halfway through a series of guesses at Bobâs password when the system slowed to a crawl, and then abruptly and rudely tossed her out.
She let fly with a series of curses that would have made the Ayatollah blush, and immediately tried to log back in. The mainframe let her in for a moment â and then logged her right back out again. After trying this three times, and having the door slammed in her face each time by her own machine, Swan was ready to commit mayhem.
Robert Link also had root privileges on the system. She phoned him at home and demanded his password. Encouraged by Christmas cheer, he was happy to hand it over. She logged into his account, sagging with relief when the mainframe didnât boot her out again right away. But she was already hammering in commands, checking to see what was happening on the mainframe.
Someone was downloading her email. Swan froze, hands rigid on the keyboard, as though if she didnât keep control ofher body, she was going to explode into a screaming cloud of blood.
The system itself was almost frozen, grinding along at a fraction of its normal speed. There was a process running that Swan didnât recognise. It had to be the monster that had taken over her machine. She killed it.
The system immediately sprang back up to normal speed. Again she called for a list of processes; a single command could stop the electronic theft. But the moment she typed in the command, the system logged her out again. She logged back in, this time tried listing the files on the system. Again, the machineâs door slammed in her face. And all the time her private email messages were being sucked out of the mainframe by person or persons unknown.
What she didnât know was:
While Swan was glued to her terminal, struggling to defend her turf, Bob and Peri were quietly slipping through a back door of the TLA
The Doctor treated his hacking mission just the same way. He reminded me of the enthusiastic kids in my high-school chess club, taking a piece with a twist of the wrist, a clack of colliding wood, and a triumphant quip. The difference was that he gave me the overwhelming impression that this
was
just a game. Nothing as sophisticated as chess: more like an adult stooping to sit in the dirt and flick marbles with a pre-schooler. More like a human being deigning to throw a tennis ball again and again for a dog.
My guess is that the Doctor spends most of his time with computers far superior to the humble Apple II â presumably the multi-million-dollar mainframes that hackers itch to have illicit access to. And yet, I canât help but feel that if the Doctor were confronted with the latest Cray supercomputer, it would just be another half-chewed tennis ball to him.
When Swan saw that her intruder was back again, she slammed her coffee down on her desk and grabbed for the log files. She must have managed to back them up before the Doctor could erase our fingerprints, because her next step was to try to break into the universityâs computer. Swan was not the sort to waste time reporting burglars to system administrators who knew less about their machines than she did. Besides, to be fair, it was unlikely anyone would be in the office at that hour.
If there
had
been anyone in the office, of course, it would have been Bob Salmon. It was Bobâs account Swan wanted â although she still had no idea he was the man whoâd delivered her a Lisp Machine just the day before. She simply wanted the abilities of his root account so that she could find out who was sniffing around her mainframe.
Swan was halfway through a series of guesses at Bobâs password when the system slowed to a crawl, and then abruptly and rudely tossed her out.
She let fly with a series of curses that would have made the Ayatollah blush, and immediately tried to log back in. The mainframe let her in for a moment â and then logged her right back out again. After trying this three times, and having the door slammed in her face each time by her own machine, Swan was ready to commit mayhem.
Robert Link also had root privileges on the system. She phoned him at home and demanded his password. Encouraged by Christmas cheer, he was happy to hand it over. She logged into his account, sagging with relief when the mainframe didnât boot her out again right away. But she was already hammering in commands, checking to see what was happening on the mainframe.
Someone was downloading her email. Swan froze, hands rigid on the keyboard, as though if she didnât keep control ofher body, she was going to explode into a screaming cloud of blood.
The system itself was almost frozen, grinding along at a fraction of its normal speed. There was a process running that Swan didnât recognise. It had to be the monster that had taken over her machine. She killed it.
The system immediately sprang back up to normal speed. Again she called for a list of processes; a single command could stop the electronic theft. But the moment she typed in the command, the system logged her out again. She logged back in, this time tried listing the files on the system. Again, the machineâs door slammed in her face. And all the time her private email messages were being sucked out of the mainframe by person or persons unknown.
What she didnât know was:
While Swan was glued to her terminal, struggling to defend her turf, Bob and Peri were quietly slipping through a back door of the TLA
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