5 ms·
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,
by eesmith 3y ago
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.
- eternityforest 3y agoI 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.
- eesmith 3y ago"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.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoShe 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.
- eesmith 3y agoI don't know why others mock it, but as an older person working in IT, I can explain why I mock it even when knowing it was real software SGI shipped with IRIX. (Minor correction: it was not shipped with IRIX but a free demo you could ftp. After 30 years I had forgotten that until looking at https://web.archive.org/web/20070409024417/http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070409024417/http://www.sgi.co... and similar sites just now.)
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago> I can explain why I mock it even when knowing it was real software SGI shipped with IRIX. OK, please do.
- eesmith 3y agoLiterally my top-level comment in this thread.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI hadn't realized that was your reason for mocking the scene, I had thought it was just being kind of pedantic and making an observation about the scene.
- sumtechguy 3y agoThe one that really yanked me out of the movie was the first tom cruise mission impossible and he does a web search for 'job'.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoYeah 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.
- buzziebee 3y agoShe was the granddaughter of a billionaire so it's not unreasonable to imagine she may indeed have had access to high end hardware. "No expense spared".
- luismedel 3y ago> No expense spared but he only has one single IT guy in oncall during the emergency :-)
- esrauch 3y agoI think that part is actually explained: - the storm evacuates most people, essential staff only - Nedry deliberately creates the IT emergency situation to lock out the other IT people still on the island - The book has more details about how the IT system was over budget/rushed/flawed as another example of the hubris of the whole endeavor. The book has a detail I especially liked: theres an automatic dinosaur counting system but it was written such that it stops counting once it finds all of the expected dinos (because the spec said they couldn't reproduce), which delayed them realizing that the dinosaurs were actually mating and in a bunch of places they weren't supposed to be. Classic example of a bug caused by software working correctly exactly to the spec.
- eesmith 3y agoThe I would expect "It's an SGI, I know how to use it." Familiarity with 4dwm doesn't really transfer to NeXTStep or SunView, which were two other Unix window managers of the time. The people she interacted with would surely distinguish between different Unix vendors - Apollo, Ridge, SGI, Sun, etc. - we certainly did.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoYou're being unreasonably hard on a fictional 12 year old lol. IRIX is UNIX. She said she knows UNIX. It's fine.
- 3y ago
- dale_glass 3y ago> Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box She's related to Hammond, who owns an island. I'm sure he could get her an old box and some manuals to play with, if not outright a state of the art system. > As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. But isn't that exactly the sort of thing a clever kid with access to fancy stuff would mess around with? > We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors. Which would perfectly explain why it popped up on the production systems. To make it look fancier for Hammond/any investors/the people visiting in the movie.
- anthk 3y agoUsing the 3D browser would be akin to saying "That's Linux" upong seeing a Compiz cube a few years ago. I mean, yes, it would be technically correct, but not a defining term for deeply knowing Linux and its intrinsics.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoIt's not weird or wrong in any way though. Plenty of people were running compiz for a while, and a kid into Linux would recognize it.
- dale_glass 3y agoYeah, so? She's a bright 12 year old, not a burnt out and jaded Unix sysadmin with 20 years of experience.
- eesmith 3y ago"would mess around with", certainly. And quickly find it wasn't useful for actual file system navigation. The 2D file browser for IRIX was pretty nice, with vector icons. https://sgi.neocities.org/1.png https://sgi.neocities.org/1.png shows an example from https://sgi.neocities.org/ https://sgi.neocities.org/ . I made a mistake when I said we used it for demos. We did not use fsv for that. I was thinking of buttonfly - see example to the left of http://www.sgistuff.net/software/irixintro/images/irix-4.0.1-img2.gif http://www.sgistuff.net/software/irixintro/images/irix-4.0.1... . I did try out fsv, but again, it was slow on the desktop machine I had, and not useful.
- 111111101101 3y agoWhen I was a kid I had access to all sorts of exotic operating systems. SunOS, VMS, all sorts of Unixes. I was a very naughty boy.
- eesmith 3y agoSunOS and VMS were two of the most common workstation/minicomputer-class OSes out there, and rather less exotic than IRIX. I'm old enough that my college-freshman "intro to computers" and Fortran classes were taught on a CDC Cyber running NOS.
- bitwize 3y agoWhat if she were originally baffled by the 3D display, and then saw recognizable paths like /bin and /usr and realized the system was actually familiar?
- butlike 3y agoThey spared no expense at Jurassic Park, you know.
- test098 3y agoi grew up in university computer labs (parents were grad students then professors). all the machines in the labs were SGI Indys/Indigos running IRIX 4.x/5.x. as a 12yo, i used the 3D graphical file browser because it was fun and cool. it was installed on all the machines by default because it came bundled in a demo CD with every machine.
- UncleSlacky 3y agoThere's a modern clone of it now: https://fsv.sourceforge.net/ https://fsv.sourceforge.net/