Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...with his re-released first book, Digital Fortress. With no-one offloading The da Vinci Code into charity shops yet, the obvious conclusion is that it is being kept because it is good. This, then, was the nearest theediscerning would get for a while. Like the more recent book, this 1998 debut effort concerns codes. Susan Fletcher is one of the world’s best code-breakers, even though by now her job is largely redundant. Her employers, the US Government’s ...
...behemoth at the heart of Digital Fortress. No-one is supposed to know it’s working, and cracking terrorist's codes with ease ~ the civil liberties people, moaning that everybody’s email was subject to shady Government scrutiny, had been told it was a failure. But working it is... until it gets stuck, with its own nemesis writhing away inside it ~ a code that changes key, impossible to crack. Susan Fletcher, then, starts the book getting called in ...

theediscerning 20.10.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...the collection so I bought Digital Fortress for a £6.99 (paperback). It's probably much cheaper on E-bay now, but I can't confirm that since I am writing with no net to check my facts. Grr. After reading the Da Vinci Code, Deception Point and Angels and Demons (all in the wrong order, I might add, since the shameless promotion failed to supply me with the order in which they were written) I picked up Digital Fortress. Having enjoyed the previous ...
...you a crunchy nut?''' Digital Fortress is another suspense + codes + action = yay type novel from Dan Brown. My original disgust stemmed from the fact that Dan Brown who is constantly hailed as being original (or so the many pages of compliments from various sources tells me) is far from it. By the time I opened up his fourth book, I had picked up on the fact that the stories he had furnished me with were, in fact, all the same. Ok, so he had changed ...

ryanando 21.12.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

Despite hints from some people to the contrary, I am not a terrible book snob. I read crime, fantasy, s-f, thrillers and chick-lit quite frequently and historical romances from time to time. But even a 'genre' book needs to have a modicum of quality. Sadly, 'Digital Fortress' does not. It’s a debut novel of Dan Brown that has been re-issued due to the phenomenal popularity of the 'Da Vinci Code' and it is a blatant, mercenary and seemingly successful ...
...attempt to discount that popularity and generate some more revenue from a an earlier effort. 'Digital Fortress' is a thriller and thus I better start with presenting a bit of a plot. The plot is just about the only saving grace of the novel, and the factor that earns it its only star above 1. A code is created: and unbreakable algorithm that would enable everybody (including of course all the world's baddies bent on destruction of any of the pillars ...

magdadh 11.03.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...happens next. ~ ~ Digital Fortress explores the somewhat vexed and very topical question of public privacy. The National Security Agency (NSA) in the USA has developed and built a new super code-breaking computer called “TRANSLTR”, ostensibly to keep tabs on terrorist activity on the Internet to make sure that they’re not using the World Wide Web to plan and organise their evil deeds. But it’s not only terrorist groups whose emails can be intercepted ...
...his threat to publicly auction Digital Fortress to the highest bidder, it will open the floodgates for all sorts of extremely naughty people to get up to all sorts of evil little pranks on the Web, none of which they’ll know the first thing about. Tankado has covered his back against any “dirty deeds” (assassination) by the NSA by posting his new encryption code on the Internet, and giving a copy of the key code (the password which unlocks its secrets) ...

the_mad_cabbie 09.10.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...eminently readable and very enjoyable. Digital Fortress, published five years earlier in 1998, was next on my reading list and it seems little attempt has been made to disguise the fact that it is riding high on the success of another book – somewhat bizarrely, the back cover is plastered with praise for The Da Vinci Code, and not Digital Fortress, the actual story awaiting the reader within. I was therefore intrigued to see if Brown was, so to speak, ...
...good then? Well, yes – Digital Fortress is a top-notch thriller that proves just as much a page-turner as The Da Vinci Code. Brown has once again gauged the level of complexity to a tee; setting the scene by explaining the relevance and evolution of code-breaking with regards to the NSA, whilst making it all that little bit more interesting and free-flowing than you would have thought possible. As in Dan Brown’s other works, there are once again ...

tom1clare 01.03.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...relish that I picked up Digital Fortress. Not only was I a big fan of Dan Brown's other works, it involved computers, another of my interests. How could it miss? But it did. It missed on a number of levels. Not that it wasn't an interesting read. The story was fast paced enough to keep me turning the pages. The plot was interesting not only in context of the story, but it really made me think about the government and what it could be doing behind ...
...a secret branch of the government that protects the US from terrorists by tracking them on the web. They read e-mails, tracks the movement of people on the web and basically can find out anything about anybody. Susan Fletcher is their number 1 code breaker. She help to design their master computer which had never seen a code it couldn't break. The problem is, it's stuck. It is facing a code it can not break. It turns out there is someone out there ...

Shadowtwinchaos 28.06.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...world-famous author, there was this. Digital Fortress was his first novel, although having jumped about his books, I've arrived at it third. The books aren't connected, save for the latter two sharing a character, but I was keen to see if the "magic touch" displayed in tDVc was there from the start. The focus here, as in Deception Point, is once again upon Governmental conspiracies ~ this time dealing with the still-salient issue of "Big Brother" ...
...In true Brown fashion, Digital Fortress opens with a death; only here, in something of a departure from the genre's norm, it is the "villain" of the book who pops his clogs. However, in the form of his code, his legacy lives on ~ quite a neat innovation from Brown, adding a layer of intrigue and mystery to the search, as the reader knows the protaganists will never track down the creator for an explanation ~ there will be no easy answers. As with ...

Puggers 13.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...Anyway when I picked up Digital Fortress on a flight from Delhi to Pune, I assumed that this book would be different as this time it was related to my field computers and so there was not going to be any religious mumbo jumbo stuff or theories about secret societies. But minutes into the novel, it just hit me like a bolt in the blue. Just like our own Karan Johar or Yash Chopra, it seems Dan Brown had patented his own formula for writing, and its ...
...Leonardo Vetra and so in Digital Fortress its an ex Japanase cryptographer Ernie Tankado of a supposedly secret organization called NSA( National Security Agency) who gets bumped off in the beginning. So we have a heroine Susan Fletcher who is beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and supposed to have an IQ of 170 but at times behaves like a besotted high school teen. In fact compared to the female characters in DVC and Angels & Demons, this is one of the ...

cyberian1969 18.11.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

Yes I began to read this having already read The Da Vinci Code, which I had enjoyed. I was hoping for the same enjoyment from this book. Sadly I was extremely disappointed with the entire book. I began reading feeling hopeful because as someone who enjoys computers, this was based around computers and cryptography. This was also additionally interesting to me since it was one field my father had been involved in during his career. Now I accept there ...
...considering that Dan Brown prides himself on his accurate research for all his novels, he was lacking in a number of areas in this book. Not only from a cryptography and computing aspect but also from a geographical aspect. Some of his descriptions seemed aged, were completely and utterly unrealistic at times and were inaccurate when in Seville. I managed to get through the first few chapters without too much difficulty, but as I began to get towards ...

runetune 05.08.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...to get my head in Digital Fortress especially being heavily involved in the technology myself. Like all his work, Digital Fortress is a thriller and in my opinion a very good one at that. It was actually written long before the Da Vinci code and this to some extent shows as it is not as well polished and can be a little predicable in places. The timing of the book seems very apt with technology engulfing more of everyone's life and 'Big Brother' ...
...The book is set in headquarters of the American National Security Agency (NSA), what can be thought of as the I.T arm of the CIA, snooping on internet traffic and people e-mail in what they claim is an attempt to prevent it being used for organised crime. The book focuses on the NSA's key technology, a massive supercomputer, known as TRANSLTR which can decode any code in a very very short period of time. One of the main characters Susan Fletcher ...

CarlG 27.10.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...program this program is called Digital Fortress. This is a code generating program but the code is impossible to break even by TRANSLTRs standards. The reason that is impossible is because it isn't a set code it keeps changing. And when TRANSLTR has been running for 18 hours this causes a bit of a stir and the only way to stop it from running, is if you have the pass code and the pass code lays with the programmer who is dead. And if the code gets ...
...to enter US Intelligence... *-*-* Advantages about this book *-*-* Above I have just given you a little bit of the book, you think you know where the plot is going and then it sways dramatically. This is one factor that contributes to how good the book is. Another great thing about this book is you don't have to know anything about computers, hacking or anything to understand it. Because Dan Brown explains it crystal clear.Once you have read a ...

ste231191 09.08.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...is a decent read Digital Fortress begins as all Dan Brown’s later novels begin, with a mysterious murder, and then the story really takes off. This story is a battle of wits and beliefs, cantering around the government's battle against terrorism vs. individual privacy. It may sound a bit difficult to follow but this is a story that is fairly easy to follow for us amateurs, and as always, Brown does a good job of enlightening us about not only the ...
...In short, it may be worth it to check Digital Fortress out from the library, or borrowing it from a friend, but I don’t recommend actually purchasing it. If you are a devoted thriller fan or Dan Brown lover, I would recommend you to purchase it used, if possible. ...

baherbc 07.09.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

Digital Fortress is a thriller. Not your usual, run of the mill, brainless, Tom Clancy style thriller; but a thriller with a brain! The story goes as so: the American National Security Agency (NSA) has a secret, code-breaking computer that is supposed to be able to crack any code or encryption; but then it comes across a code it cannot break. An e-mail encryption code that cannot be broken puts international security in jeopardy. The culprit is ...
...helped build this computer, but disagreed with the principles of everyone’s e-mails being accessible to the government; and he’s given them an ultimatum to make the computer public, or the key (needed to use the code) will be sold. So the NSA call in Susan Fletcher, the head cryptographer, to help them; but she discovers more than she, or the NSA bargain for. The code is not what it seems and turns out to be a “worm”. A virus which, when triggered, ...

sanjurosama 15.01.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

Digital Fortress - DAN BROWN isbn 0-552-15169-6 £6.99 At the heart of Digital Fortress lies the issue of personal freedom versus national security. How much information should be available to government agencies? The villain of the piece is code named N. Dakota, whose core belief is that people are entitled to freedom of speech and in privacy when doing so. With the NSA's super-computer, TRANSLTR, the government are already privy to a wide range ...
...access to snoop potentially all digital communications. When attempting to insert the code however Strathmore makes the executive decision to by-pass GAUNTLET (TRANSLATRS essential safety filter mechanism). Keeping this lapse in protocol to himself, a terrible chain of events is started… For those who have some programming and hardware knowledge some of the concepts of the book will appeal, however, all 'jargon' is explained so that anyone could ...

wellybooty 07.06.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

...Let's take a look at Digital Fortress. I found myself (I am horrified to admit) actually quite enjoying reading this novel in the few hours it took me to do so. It is easy to read, not overly intellectually challenging and keeps the ever shortening attention span more than fulfilled with it's 1 page chapters and constant switching between storylines. The story breeds a sort of familiarity only experienced through reading all these books. National ...
...young cryptographer and slightly older, yet still handsome academic type. Will they unite forces to save the world from yet another conspiracy theory?? I wonder... The basic premise of the novel centres around the creation of an unbreakable algorithm; "Digital Fortress", which looks likely to put the National Security Agency out of the business of reading everyone's mail. The novel raises some important issues of personal privacy and initiates ...

cocoklo 03.11.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Digital Fortress - Dan Brown