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Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

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Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#271

Post by twoodfin »

notahacker wrote: post #151
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

I did this research once, and actually consumer CPU’s didn’t hit the performance of the original Cray-1 (1976) until roughly the Pentium II (1997).

The Crays used in the fictional Jurassic Park (Y-MP’s?) would have been much more powerful still.

The Cray machines were incredible feats of design and engineering.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#272

Post by jambalaya8 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #251
jambalaya8 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was more about Macs not being used for scientific applications much until the 2000s. Up until a bunch of programmers up and switched to MacBooks, Apples were more usually used by more artistic types. They were quite big for writing and art stuff, then, mostly, though pricey. And no separate monitors.

That came later as Windows became dominant but in the era Jurassic Park was written/filmed in, I think they were used for industrial and scientific uses as well.

Some of it was probably chosen to make it seem expensive. And back then, they were seen as probably the priciest computer the average American might have recognition of, while being somewhat exotic compared to the IBM and IBM knockoffs.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#273

Post by [deleted] »

seedboot wrote: post #160
bdcravens wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

[deleted]

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#274

Post by nkrisc »

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.

Keep thinking. Where did the AI get the info from?

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#275

Post by stevenwoo »

solarkraft wrote: post #96
rakel_rakel wrote: post #20

What a great post! I would love to read more of these for other films. > Everything in the set was real. We couldn't fake any of it, because audiences are so sophisticated now in their knowledge of computers. > ... > - Cory Faucher (Special Effects Coordinator) This sentiment seems to run throughout the movie, and I believe it's why it's held up so well in terms of visuals, I don't think it would have aged nearly as…

What a respectful view of the audience. Too bad this approach was replicated what feels like approximately 0 times after it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=kl6rsi7BEtk

Mr. Robot and Person of Interest(iirc) got a lot of details right.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#276

Post by variadix »

justusthane wrote: post #263
pimlottc wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the only reason AI knows about it is because one human posted it online because they wanted to share a good story with another human

I really worry about AI leading to the information death of the internet. If everyone is getting their info from AI, rather than actually reading websites/blogs/forums, is there any incentive for posting things like this on the internet in the first place?

Even worse, people will discuss/diagnose/troubleshoot with their LLM of choice, some of which will be valuable, and the only way to get access to said information will be through the LLM provider’s paywall. I think we are entering an information dark age, for many reasons, that will likely only get worse from here on.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#277

Post by avhception »

kraquepype wrote: post #233
dhosek wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s a Unix system. I know this.” was definitely the line from the movie most quoted in online spaces in the 90s.

I wonder how many sysadmin or adjacent careers that scene helped to foster. As a kid JP was a favorite of mine, and eventually I got into Linux as an older teen. That sequence cemented Unix as this mythical thing in my mind and I knew I had to know more. I eventually got to work on AIX in my first sysadmin role which was great. I leaned more into Linux, but it had a positive effect on my IT career.

It definitely resonated with me as a kid, and I've had this fascination for the Unices of yore ever since!

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#278

Post by sombragris »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #185
ivolimmen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks really nice, I also have a weird love for this kinds of GUI's. Windows 95/98 & CDE are my thing, and I really miss it.

There's always NsCDE which should run on modern Linux. Haven't tried it myself. https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

I have both CDE and NsCDE installed on my system (Slackware64-current). Both run well and, surprisingly, good ol' CDE behaves better in some respects.

You can download the original CDE here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

Reading from the activity, it still seems to receive some fixes and updates although, as the SlackBuild author said, it would not be advisable to use it in an internet-facing desktop for security reasons.

NsCDE also behaves very well.

Otherwise, you can use Xfce which was heavily inspired by CDE; and now, even Plasma 6 have a very good CDE-like (or Motif) theme.

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