Tony Furnivall wrote:
>
> At 05:28 PM 12/2/98 -0500, Nick Demos wrote:
> >East Germany?  Chris, you must have read the book "The Cuckoo's
> >Nest".  For hose of you who haven't it is about a person
> >(not really very techie, but with a lot of persistence, who
> >initiated, the tracking down f a spy hacker from East Germany
> >(the cold war was still on).  This was in the early days of the
> >Internet.
>
> I gotta disagree with Nick's categorization as "not really very techie" -
> the guy is a self-professed nerd, with all the exotic behavior patterns to
> boot. He exemplifies techiedom (of the Un*x variety!), and is proud of the fact.
>
> No disrespect intended, he portrayed himself in a documentary and described
> himself thus on camera! (Nova, I think)
>
Tony, OK a "techie" maybe, but not originally a computer techie.
He was
an astronomer who took the computer job because he liked to eat
(he lost
his astronomer slot).  He was so new at data processing that his
assignment
was to find a program bug in a computer usage accounting
program.  This led
to his finding that the program was not wrong, but that the CPU
time WAS
actually used by someone who erased his tracks.  Thus begins his
pursuit
and the story.

Is persistence (stubbornness?) only a techie trait? I will leave
to our
gentle listers to define "techie".

Regards,

Nick D.