1 11 21 1211 111221 ... What's the next number?

Finished reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. It's an engaging techno-thriller set in the tailend of the Cold War: an astronomer discovers evil hackers cracking into US military sites from his computer. He lays traps, plays cloak-and-dagger and hide-and-seek with the sinister forces behind the black-hatters. He saves the day for Truth, Freedom and the American Way.

Not!

A astrophysicist in charge with maintaining computers in Lawrence Berkeley Labs is fascinated by a problem: the 75 cents missing in their computer usage accounting. So he analyzes the problem, build tools to study it, and stumble upon a hacker that insidiously steals connection time to crack into military sites in the Arpanet and Milnet (remember these?).

This leads to a convoluted tale of hide-and-seek, of outguessing the hacker, of laying down traps to trace the culprit that lead to his eventual arrest, of frustrations with the supposed authorities on computer security.

The tech is good, the writing is even better. Combined with slices of Berkeley counterculture, and a dissertation on privacy issues and the internet, the book is a hodgepodge of ideas that reveal the *true* hacker ethos. Makes for fun science, as well.

Stoll is quirky. He's a bit of a Neoluddite, but a hacker, nevertheless.

And, oh, about the sequence: go figure for yourself. Quite simple, actually, once you think of it.