Clifford Stoll Quotes
Data isn't information. ... Information, unlike data, is useful. While there's a gulf between data and information, there's a wide ocean between information and knowledge. What turns the gears in our brains isn't information, but ideas, inventions, and inspiration. Knowledge-not information-implies understanding. And beyond knowledge lies what we should be seeking: wisdom.
Stoll, Clifford. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. Doubleday, 1995.
There was the beginning of a major debate in the advanced countries over the notion of copyright to protect authors and knowledge being a public property. The solution for America and most nations was to allow copyright protection for the specific expression of the knowledge but not the knowledge itself. You cannot copyright an idea or the laws of science—just the way they are expressed. Therefore all are free to discuss the knowledge and also write about it.
Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll is an American astronomer, author and teacher. He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to the capture of hacker Markus Hess, and for Stoll's subsequent book The Cuckoo's Egg, in which he details the investigation.