OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]

[Steven D'Aprano]

Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>> If I really didn't trust something, I'd go to AWS and spin up one of
>> their free-tier micro instances and run it there :-)
> 
> How do you know it won't create console output that stroboscopically
> infects you with a virus through your eyes? Because that's *totally*
> what would be done in the town of Eureka.

Anybody in IT who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" needs to hand
in their Geek Card immediately.

"Snow Crash" is nearly 20 years old now but still as much of a ripping yarn
today as it was the year it was written. Under-achiever, freelance hacker
and part-time pizza delivery boy for the Mafia, Hiro Protagonist, discovers
that somebody has written a virus that hacks into computer programmers'
brains via their optic nerve.

This book has drama, adventure, humour, vast amounts of exposition that
might even be almost true, a murderous Inuit who is his own sovereign state
(a *nuclear armed* sovereign state at that), Rat Things, Sumerian myths,
Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise, one of the most spunky teenage
protagonists I've ever read, and pirates listening to Reason.



-- 
Steven