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Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

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Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#151

Post by notahacker »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #6

I re-read the book recently and it was really fun to read about the tech now. The descriptions of how difficult it was to build a database that could handle storing 3bil base pairs, which is trivia now. Probably the most sci-fi part of the book, they had image recognition tech so advanced it could track individual dinosaurs from arbitrary video angles alone. Also, Nedry got absolutely shafted by Hammond in the book.…

I still remember one of the characters in the book being awestruck by the number of Cray supercomputers the park had, and certain this must mean they were doing something really, really significant

Even by the time of the film regular consumer hardware had reached parity. Now we use more power to run to do list apps

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#152

Post by ricardobeat »

MrToadMan wrote: post #69
yoyohello13 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was kind of scary how prescient Jurassic Park was. Just swap genetics for AI and his warnings are incredibly applicable to modern times.

Much like his earlier work Westworld which was also scarily prescient for modern times. > These are highly complicated pieces of equipment. Almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they have been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work.

That’s an amazing connection, had no idea they were written by the same person but the underlying theme is pretty consistent.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#153

Post by ricardobeat »

TechRemarker wrote: post #141

In Safari (macOS Beta), none of the pictures load. In dev tools shows 403 error for all. If view the image urls directly shows "It appears you don't have permission to access this page. 403 Error. Forbidden." in a stylized font. Content blockers are "not" enabled. Able to replicate in Private window too. In Chrome however, images all load normally, also able to view the image urls directly. Very odd. No VPN and Priva…

Safari is riddled with bugs in the beta, nothing websites can do about it.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#154

Post by j5r5myk »

I work as a film prop master so this is fun to read and imagine my work being celebrated 30 years down the line. The art department will often lean heavily on me for tech-related set pieces because I have a CS degree. This article is a testament to the fantastic work of production designer Rick Carter, set decorator Jackie Carr, and prop master Jerry Moss.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#155

Post by anthk »

aa-jv wrote: post #90
anthk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much because a click on a menu would almost halt the entire network by design. Cheaper dumb Unix terminals were a thing where you jut used telnet and X forwarding.

The early web was born on the back of Mac's connecting to SGI machines...

That's a waste for an SGI machine. SGI's were mainly known for 3D stuff.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#156

Post by aa-jv »

ahartmetz wrote: post #123
aa-jv wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The early web was born on the back of Mac's connecting to SGI machines...

Err, no. SGIs were first very expensive (3D) graphics workstations and later mostly also-rans in some other markets like storage and general-purpose big servers. Servers were Sun, x86, HP-PA, IBM R6000 RISC (and probably some more UNIX / RISC systems). Workstations were PC, Sun, Apple (mostly for graphics / design), some NeXT.

Er, yes.

Many media companies onboarded to the web in the early 90's using SGI machines.

The Indy was a very popular multi-host system for such things. It was not a graphics powerhouse and in many low-end configurations its primary function was web serving.

(Disclaimer: I helped build the early web using SGI systems, with many major media companies as clients..)

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#157

Post by aa-jv »

anthk wrote: post #155
aa-jv wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The early web was born on the back of Mac's connecting to SGI machines...

That's a waste for an SGI machine. SGI's were mainly known for 3D stuff.

The Indy was a very popular platform for building an early web presence. I know, because I used it for multiple, major media companies who were getting onto the train.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#158

Post by kalleboo »

hananova wrote: post #117
kalleboo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the Amiga essentially limited to interlaced video? That basically relegated it to a machine for games or realtime NTSC/PAL video effects. Also I was never a big Amiga guy so I'm not sure, did they have an equivalent to QuickTime and Cinepak in 1992 to play video clips? Microsoft hadn't released Video for Windows yet.

> Wasn't the Amiga essentially limited to interlaced video? No, it supported very high res screens too, but it required special screens such as the A2024 (15" 1024x1024!) Later on there were also RTG graphics cards available. > Did they have an equivalent to QuickTime and Cinepak in 1992 to play video clips? The Amiga's graphics were ahead of its time, but the tradeoffs they chose proved very unsuitable for video pla…

Thanks for the reply!

I looked up the A2024

The monitor is quite unique in that it contains an internal framebuffer which is controlled via the RGBI lines of the video port [...] The monitor manages to achieve the high resolutions by effectively buffering four Amiga screens, whereby each screen displays a portion of the overall picture. Because of this, the "effective" refresh rate decreases to around 10-15Hz (software configurable). [...] It seems that the monitor by be able to individually refresh the separate quadrants of the screen, as the quadrant which contains the mouse cursor appears to be updated more frequently

What an amazing hack! Reminds me of the lengths people went to add larger external displays to the early 9" Macs using SCSI graphics cards that basically re-implemented QuickDraw

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#159

Post by bdcravens »

Waterluvian wrote: post #144
ronbenton wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is the social internet at its best. Pretty obscure question answered relatively quickly with answer and source.

AI immediately gives me the same answer. I can’t tell if I like this easy access to detail or lament the growing irrelevance of “social internet” for these kinds of things. It reminds me of pre-phone disagreements among pals. You’d argue and argue and maybe eventually agree to disagree. Today someone just looks up the trivia and it’s all over.

I don't know if I'm unique in this, but I find myself asking people I know about things that I know I can easily lookup faster. At this point it's more a social ritual than actual information gathering.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#160

Post by seedboot »

bdcravens wrote: post #159
Waterluvian wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI immediately gives me the same answer. I can’t tell if I like this easy access to detail or lament the growing irrelevance of “social internet” for these kinds of things. It reminds me of pre-phone disagreements among pals. You’d argue and argue and maybe eventually agree to disagree. Today someone just looks up the trivia and it’s all over.

I don't know if I'm unique in this, but I find myself asking people I know about things that I know I can easily lookup faster. At this point it's more a social ritual than actual information gathering.

It's just like we evolved to be social creatures!
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