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🕑 Added 2018-07-02 00:01:35 +0000 UTC

Comments

R. Allen Murphey

Nyrath glad to hear that the medical emergency was the lesser of two evils! Wishing her a speedy recovery and best outcomes!

R. Allen Murphey

Walter Jon Williams might qualify as a sci-fi author with some information security and practices background. His HARDWIRED game supplement for R. Talsorian Cyberpunk 2020 RPG had a pretty nifty "crystaljocks" update to the base game. Instead of the William Gibson neuro-hallucinogenic cyberspace, the CrystalJocks were more BBS/internet server style hackers working with accounts, databases, connection links, and coding. But, I am not disagreeing with your basic point of sci-fi writers and sloppy deus ex machina "restore from backup and all is better". Tom Clancy at least had an interesting idea of how to get back to reality in his Jack Ryan stories...

Nyrath

that's right! More to the point in the story the secret organization used the time communication power of the Dirac to help maintain their monopoly

John

If I remember, James Blish's stories had a Dirac communicator. Every transmission had a "beep" or "blip". Turns out that blip was a compressed collection of other messages from across all of time. Or times. It wasn't clear if his universe was deterministic or branching. Still, getting messages from the far future was a thing with the Dirac.

John

And now, something less serious. Jet Kitten: Meowriiight. All the cash is gone and the world has stopped working as we know it. Pffft. Backups, secure backups restore all that info in a day and it's all better. SciFi authors have no experience with real cyber security and practices. Meow!