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Audio CD Description In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. Dan Brown has written a thriller for those of us who like our hardware with disc drives and who rate our heroes by big brainpower rather than big firepower. It's an Internet user's spy novel where the good guys and bad guys struggle over secrets somewhat more intellectual than just where the secret formula is hidden--they have to gain understanding of what the secret formula actually is. In this case, the secret formula is a new means of encryption, capable of changing the balance of international power. Part of the fun is that the book takes the reader along into an understanding of encryption technologies. You'll find yourself better understanding the political battles over such real-life technologies as the Clipper Chip and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software even though the book looks at the issues through the eyes of fiction. Although there's enough globehopping in this book for James Bond, the real battleground is cyberspace, because that's where the "bomb" (or rather, the new encryption algorithm) will explode. Yes, there are a few flaws in the plot if you look too closely, but the cleverness and the sheer fun of it all more than make up for them. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a lot of high, gee-whiz-level information about encryption, code breaking, and the role they play in international politics. Set aside the whole afternoon and evening for it and have finger food on hand for supper--you may want to read this one straight through.

Customer Reviews A Series of Fortunate Coincidences There are only two flaws with Digital Fortress... the plot and the characters. Lets start with the characters... I don't know why realistic characters are so boring to writers that they feel the need to go ridiculously over the top. "I'm a leggy blond move star/supermodel with six PhDs and rock hard abs" I mean common! Even through the dramatic rises and falls of the book the characters remain flat and uncoupling. Similarly, Dan Brown seems to feel the need to spice up the villains in all his books with physical quirks like albinism (DaVinci Code) or being wheelchair bound (Angels and Demons) ...in this one its deafness - just kind of distracting without adding anything to the novel. I actually enjoyed the set up of the book since it was an interesting premise and come of the developments proved interesting but on the whole the book relies totally on completely impossible coincidences time and time again. Also the characters prove unbelievably dense at times since seeing the obvious right in front of them would bring everything to a conclusion too quickly. The final obstacle in the book also only pose about as much of an actually crises as say... having to circle the block - a minor annoyance yes but a life or death crisis, I think not... Not terrible or anything but certainly are better things to read out there Technological BS I sure hope that the technological errors in Digital Fortress are not a reflection of Dan Brown's research abilities. Some of the errors were so glaring that I wanted to throw the book out the window. But I'm used to seeing some problems in movies, so I thought I'd go along for the ride. But here are some of the biggest blunders: 1. The NSA commander wants to patch some encryption code with a backdoor and replace the version on the web with his own. This won't work because no one in security trusts code that doesn't match a hash from the original author. This is how code is authenticated. Is standard practice. His patch would cause the hash to fail. Also, everyone else who really wanted the encryption code already downloaded the original version - just like the commander did. They aren't going to get a new one. What BS! 2. A $2B computer designed to crack codes would have separated code and data spaces in memory. It would be impossible for an encrypted communication to infect the host with a "virus" or "worm" because the communication would in data space. Just because Microsoft doesn't use really secure systems architecture doesn't mean the NSA wouldn't! More BS! 3. No one hand-solders CPUs even if they are in a $2B computer. And expecially if there are 3 million of them! Brown obviously connects hand-soldering with extreme technical knowhow because he later has the head computer geek hand-soldering a chip inside a running mainframe. Can you say BS! 4. When a computer overheats, the temperature tolerance of the CPU may be exceeded by a few degrees, especially in highly sensitive, high-performance equipment. Silion, by it's nature, changes in resistance dramatically when the temperature exceeds operational parameters. There's no way a "virus" or a "worm" could cause anything other than a system shutdown due to temperature variations - and a really sensitive system would automatically shutdown when the temperate range was exceeded by a few degrees. There's no way in heck the system would continue to run until it reached a temperature where the silicon would explode! Come on - I thought Brown did at least some research. If anything, these errors make me thing that Lewis Perdue actually did Brown's research for Da Vinci Code - but not willingly... Okay all the information provided by Brown is superb--how our government keeps tabs on our personal information, our e-mail, phone calls, instant messeges, etc. starts off very promisingly, but the finale is just too drawn out. worth reading, but don't fret if you never get a chance to.