Randall
Lawrence Waterhouse is a fictional character from
Neal Stephenson's novel,
Cryptonomicon. An
astronomer by
education, his real drive in life is
computers,
networking, and all around
information technology not limited to the mere dirty work. He also has working knowledge of
encryption, and a strong
genetically inherited grasp of
advanced mathematics. He is also a skilled
hacker (
programmer).
While Randy suffers from the inability to ditch his long-term live-in girlfriend of nearly a
decade, he is still drawn away from this life by his friend
Avi, who summons him up to form another
business foray, which the two have a history of doing together anyway. For most of the book, he spends his days in
Manila, a large city located in the
Philippines, and the fictional
island sultanate of
Kinakuta, and aboard boats with
Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe and his daughter
America Shaftoe, whom he
lusts after.
Randy has a strong affinity towards
UNIX and UNIX-like systems, running
Finux, a fictional operating system with a nearly identical description to
Linux, right down to its nation of origin (
Finland) and it's
community-based development and
open-source nature.