DEC and The Americans

From	RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups	alt.folklore.computers, comp.misc
Subject	DEC and The Americans
Date	2016-01-25 17:26 +0300
Message-ID	<dgmpjsF24gvU2@mid.individual.net> (permalink)

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

Show all headers | View raw

Anyone here familiar with that TV series, The Americans?[1]  If you're 
not, I can recommend it - it's pretty well done drama, set in about 
1982 Washington DC, where undercover KGB agents and the FBI are facing 
off.

Thought I'd mention it because every scene shot within the Russian 
embassy to the USA (ie, the USSR's building in Washington DC) features 
a lot of prominent shots of DEC VT100 terminals gracing everyone's 
desks.

At first I thought, typical Hollywood - they chose DEC because the 
terminals look a bit more dated than the more modern PCs sitting on the 
desks of the FBI, but poking around a bit [2], it might be accurate: 
the VT100 reigned from about 1978 to 1982, so that would correspond 
with the show.

That got me thinking about how likely it would be for a diplomatic 
mission to invest in DEC terminals (and presumably a mini somewhere in 
the basement to which you could connect) to do business.  What would 
you do with them?  Word processing, maybe database work, but would they 
have invested in custom software for something or other - processing 
visas or equivalent?  Then I thought, the Soviets had their own 
hardware around that time - I'd think they'd have chosen something 
native to the USSR rather than buying American hardware (which would 
run the [very real] risk of backdoors).  In 1982 would VT100s still 
have been anchored in academia, science and research, or would they 
have already made the jump to other sectors - such as diplomacy and 
bureaucracy?

Final thought (mostly because I just finished Bruce Schneier's _Data 
and Goliath_ - a highly recommended read that will show you in no 
uncertain terms just how deeply the modern surveillance state goes[3]): 
 I'm wondering if there isn't room for a new age of minicomputers.  If 
surveillance scares customers out of the cloud, there's room again for 
something serious in the workplace.  Other than software-as-a-service, 
why run the risk of offloading all your data to some cloud provider 
(read Schneier's book!) when you can keep it in house.  It might look 
different, say thin clients and VMWare serving centralized desktops and 
a couple racks of storage servers etc., but is the move to the cloud so 
inevitable?  I kind of like the idea of everyone going back to a 
terminal on their desk and some behemoth of a machine in the basement, 
quietly keeping everything in-house.



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_(2013_TV_series)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT100
[3] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22253747-data-and-goliath

Back to comp.misc | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

DEC and The Americans RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-01-25 17:26 +0300
  Re: DEC and The Americans Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-01-25 10:58 -0500
    Re: DEC and The Americans Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2016-01-25 11:47 -0500
    Re: DEC and The Americans John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> - 2016-01-25 16:47 +0000
      Re: DEC and The Americans Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2016-01-25 17:41 +0000
        Re: DEC and The Americans mm0fmf <none@mailinator.com> - 2016-01-25 19:25 +0000
        Re: DEC and The Americans Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2016-01-25 16:15 -0500
      Re: DEC and The Americans Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-01-25 13:17 -0500
        Re: DEC and The Americans Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2016-01-26 08:20 +0000
          Re: DEC and The Americans mausg@mail.com - 2016-01-26 11:32 +0000
          Re: DEC and The Americans "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2016-01-26 17:23 -0600
        Re: DEC and The Americans Eric Pozharski <whynot@pozharski.name> - 2016-01-26 19:08 +0200
        Re: DEC and The Americans "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2016-01-26 17:20 -0600
          Re: DEC and The Americans scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2016-01-27 19:40 +0000
        Re: DEC and The Americans Yeechang Lee <ylee@columbia.edu> - 2016-01-27 22:40 -0800
      Re: DEC and The Americans Eric Pozharski <whynot@pozharski.name> - 2016-01-26 21:16 +0200
        Re: DEC and The Americans "Jack Myers" <jmyers@n6wuz.net> - 2016-01-28 10:07 -0800
    Re: DEC and The Americans "jack" <jkl8976@nospam.com> - 2016-01-26 05:48 +1100
    Re: DEC and The Americans jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-01-26 13:56 +0000
      Re: DEC and The Americans "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2016-01-26 17:43 -0600
        Re: DEC and The Americans jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-01-27 15:42 +0000
          Re: DEC and The Americans pechter@pechter.dyndns.org (William Pechter) - 2016-02-03 00:36 +0000
            Re: DEC and The Americans jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-02-03 14:25 +0000
  Re: DEC and The Americans Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-01-25 17:27 +0000
    Re: DEC and The Americans Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2016-01-25 11:18 -0800
  Re: DEC and The Americans "jack" <jkl8976@nospam.com> - 2016-01-26 05:40 +1100
  Re: DEC and The Americans "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-01-25 19:12 -0500
    Re: DEC and The Americans RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-01-26 14:22 +0000
      Re: DEC and The Americans Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-01-26 16:20 +0100
        Re: DEC and The Americans Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2016-01-26 11:36 -0500
        Re: DEC and The Americans "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-01-26 18:37 -0500
          Re: DEC and The Americans Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2016-01-27 03:58 +0000
            Re: DEC and The Americans Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2016-01-27 06:16 +0000
            Re: DEC and The Americans jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-01-27 15:42 +0000
            Re: DEC and The Americans Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-01-27 18:14 +0000
      Re: DEC and The Americans "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-01-26 18:34 -0500
  Re: DEC and The Americans bleep@compy.0-0 (Colonel Bleep) - 2016-01-30 07:07 +0000
    Re: DEC and The Americans "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-01-30 09:43 -0500
      Re: DEC and The Americans Marek Novotny <marek.novotny@marspolar.com> - 2016-01-30 09:02 -0800
    Re: DEC and The Americans Alfred Falk <falk@arc.ab.ca> - 2016-01-30 20:36 +0000

csiph-web