ve and costly research and development. Computers are relatively new and involve a number of features making them and their software difficult to protect from encroachments by other manufacturers and designers. Computer companies have had to develop a number of legal and corporate strategies to protect their discoveries, and the legislation and case law are still developing in this area.
Clearly, there are a number of different issues related to computer protection. Clifford Stoll's book examines the problem of computer break-ins and the protection of privacy, while the movie Sneakers examines these issues and the problem of industrial espionage and the stealing of computer company secrets. Stoll himself was an astrophysicist who had a change in direction in his life when he became a computer programmer and systems manager and was told to find the source of an error in the accounting program which billed various departments for time used on the computers at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. He found that the unaccounted time was bein
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