This whole article is so draaaaawn out. It's not supposed to be realistic, it's for delivering the story. Hardly any, if any at all, UIs back in the 80s and 90s were realistic. This level analysis just isn't necessary. It's a classic, legendary film for both the content/representation of the subculture, and the 90s "so bad it's good" style.
Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
91–100 of 147 posts
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#92Cereal Killer, Lord Nikon, and Phantom Phreak, real names not given. Disappointing because Cereal Killer's given name was Emmanuel Goldstein, an alias made famous by Eric Corley, editor of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. Eric consulted on the movie, and it probably would have sucked without him.
That and more of the names are given in the film, so I dunno if this person even watched it. Lord Nikon aka Paul Cook. Phantom Phreak aka Ramon Sanchez! And the aforementioned nod to 2600 for Cereal.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware. As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
She didn't need to know IRIX if she knew some other flavor of Unix, she was probably savvy enough to use man and access documentation if needed. The point is though most mock the scene as though the software they show was entirely fictional and made up, when it was in fact real and was in fact still UNIX.
The one that really yanked me out of the movie was the first tom cruise mission impossible and he does a web search for 'job'.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#94Cereal Killer, Lord Nikon, and Phantom Phreak, real names not given. Disappointing because Cereal Killer's given name was Emmanuel Goldstein, an alias made famous by Eric Corley, editor of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. Eric consulted on the movie, and it probably would have sucked without him.
And “Emmanuel Goldstein” was the name of a character in the novel 1984. He was the widely despised “enemy of the state” cooked up by the government to justify their autocracy.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware. As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
I don't remember her ever saying she actually has experience with the browser, just that she knows it. She could have just used UNIX in general and only read a lot about the file browser, or perhaps briefly tried then incredibly slow version. It's not even too much of a stretch to imagine she has never seen the file browser, but is able to figure it out on like one can with modern GUI apps.
"I know how to use it" is a bit stronger than "I know it."
fsv (the 3d file browser) was not shipped with IRIX, the 2d file browser was.
It's a pretty big stretch.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#96This whole article is so draaaaawn out. It's not supposed to be realistic, it's for delivering the story. Hardly any, if any at all, UIs back in the 80s and 90s were realistic. This level analysis just isn't necessary. It's a classic, legendary film for both the content/representation of the subculture, and the 90s "so bad it's good" style.
Probably openAI visual being fed stills from the movie.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
True enough, though if Trinity could jump between skyscrapers and run against a wall before disarming 5 machine gun totting henchmen, i imagine she could have enabled transparency in her Xterm in Enlightenment. But in more general terms, the representation of computer interfaces, with avatars walking rigidly in 3d pastel coloured surroundings (as presented in a variety of examples, my favorite being the corporate net…
~1999, you would have had Pentium III @ ~500 MHz max in a laptop, likely less. Pentium M wouldn't release for several more years. So transparency was arguably still something a true hacker wouldn't waste cycles on. To your general point, it felt like there was a shift around 2000, when computers needed to be "serious business" and the whimsy of the 80s and 90s was scrubbed out of software. Honestly, I think we all wo…
I think the change you mentioned (2000) has to do with maturity of the tech, as well as, maturity of the acceptance of this tech, as part of everyday life.
As far as the state of the web today, you can thank commercial entities. Yes, they did/do contribute to the web's existance, but at the same time, they make it much worse.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#98Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#99My favorite movie hacker tech is Tron: Legacy.
They literally just used Linux and Emacs, and it looks beautiful.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
She didn't need to know IRIX if she knew some other flavor of Unix, she was probably savvy enough to use man and access documentation if needed. The point is though most mock the scene as though the software they show was entirely fictional and made up, when it was in fact real and was in fact still UNIX.
The one that really yanked me out of the movie was the first tom cruise mission impossible and he does a web search for 'job'.
Yeah that's pretty bad. I don't know what I'd say the worst movie scene was, most of my bad examples come from TV. That CSI visual basic example is pretty infamous.