Talk:Clifford Stoll

Contradiction

Isn't it contradictory to state that "In his 1995 book, Silicon Snake Oil, Stoll called the possibility of e-commerce 'baloney.' He currently sells Klein bottles on the Web"? If the possibility of e-commerce is baloney, why does he participate in e-commerce, as though it is actual?Lestrade (talk) 01:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Clearly he was wrong in his book. The book was written before the rise of e-commerce, and his idea that it was baloney proved to be incorrect. Now he sells items on the web. That is what we call irony. No contradiction in context. Ethan a dawe (talk) 03:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of laughs, I'd also like to mention he said there isn't (implying there never will be) an easy way to look up factual information online about, say, the date of the Battle of Trafalgar since the net's all just a mess of jumbled unprocessed data and has no critics, editors, or reviewers (!). He's also explained one reason e-commerce is impossible is cause there's no way to send money online (Pay Pal, hee), not to mention there's no salespeople (which are essential to all consumer purchases anywhere ever he claims). Oh, and people will never buy books in an electronic format, nor will online news ever replace your local newspaper. -- 16:32, 23 March, 2008 (PST) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.21.33.74 (talk)

Boy, isn't it highly misleading to sum up his book as a series of predictions about the future? So what if he was wrong about e-commerce? The point of the book is to ask questions about where technology is leading us and if that is where we as a people want to be. It's easy to rag on a guy like Cliff Stoll after the fact. I wager 76.xx.xx.xx is nowhere near as an insightful person as Stoll. -----dude your a dick, why do you have to attempt to humiliate this man over the Internet?----

Since the passage is clearly meant to be "ironic" and detract from his book, I've rephrased it to be more NPOV.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.120.178.36 (talk) 13:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Layout

It seems that the article is formed so as to increase the "noteworthiness" of Clifford Stoll. A chronological ordering would be more neutral and encyclopaedic. 24.37.101.43 (talk) 05:33, 17 August 2008 (UTC)