Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "jack" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.misc Subject: Re: DEC and The Americans Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 05:40:55 +1100 Lines: 68 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net LWL2Kl2Y+RnTTAhPiAXDJgGUpqAcMnAr6fQrY9kSpSJWduJBY= Cancel-Lock: sha1:46PimMyHc0/Cb3beippARPS6YNY= In-Reply-To: X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Importance: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Live Mail 14.0.8117.416 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V14.0.8117.416 Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:157642 comp.misc:10125 "RS Wood" wrote in message news:dgmpjsF24gvU2@mid.individual.net... > 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, Nope, it had moved out to all sorts of places other than that, lots of accountants had them, before the PC and Apple II showed up. > or would they have already made the jump to other sectors Yes. > - such as diplomacy and bureaucracy? Dunno about diplomacy but certainly lots of the bureaucracy were using them for word processing etc. > 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. Sure, but not done with minis. > 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? No its not, and you can run your own cloud too. > 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. That's what your own cloud is. Not with a terminal tho. > [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 >