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I love this show. It's not the greatest drama of all time, but there's something that's very compelling about it for me. Even though it's set 30 years ago, there's something refreshingly futuristic and optimistic (even if overly so compared to reality) about how the various characters, especially Cameron, see computers and the internet revolutionizing society. It's a strange connection but the show reminds me the most about a novel I like, Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, about the attempts in the USSR to computerize their economy in the late 50s/early 60s and the similar sense of information technology bringing a better society about. Also, I didn't realize until looking her up just now that Mackenzie Davis is going to be in both Blade Runner 2 and the new season of Black Mirror. Both good fits for her.
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Aug 27, 2016 22:49
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joedevola posted:They're having a loving laugh with the tech at this point. By the mid 80s this one small tech company has invented: In 1986 these things were invented over and over again by tons of little startups and they never went anywhere because they weren't at the right place at the right time.
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Aug 27, 2016 23:37
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Yeah. I mean, of course it is unrealistic to have the same people involved in all of that. But of the innovations themselves they are actually not that far off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS_door Pre-teen me would spend ours connected to a BBS playing MUD and other door games (my favorite was the legend of the red dragon, where you could even flirt and marry other players), and after playing these games I'd hang out in chat. There is a bit of a forrest gump aspect to halt and catch fire in terms of them being in the forefront of all these things, but in terms of the tech itself they were not too far off. It's just that these things were all super niche and smalltime, because while you could do something akin to an mmo or social networking, reality is that there would be maybe 100 to 200 people using that service if you were a REALLY popular BBS. But if the 4 key characters being involved in everything is a bit much, they do get a lot of the other stuff right, like the cutthroat competition and ripping off of each other. I had a barbecue at a friend's place once and one of his acquaintances was freaking out that there was a thunderstorm coming, because it could degrade the quality of his phone line and he was going to lose his player base for his BBS. The first internet provider I ever used started out as a small time BBS which grew not because of them acquiring other BBS services, but through heavy courting of other users while guaranteeing a pretty good connection.
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Aug 28, 2016 01:43
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There's a pretty good documentary on the BBS days, http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ find a copy somewhere. IIRC they also covered the sea vs pkware lawsuit that I would guess will show up in the show in the near future in some form.
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Aug 28, 2016 04:30
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The only thing I really remember about tech from the mid-80's was that everyone I knew with a computer at home (less than 5 people) had a C64. My HS had one Apple and a bunch of C64's. Everyone wanted to use the Apple because it had a hard drive and looked cool. The C64's had 5.25 floppy drives which were much faster than the tape drives everyone had at home. I remember programming in games from Commodore magazine (?) and then going to have lunch while the program did it's thing and hoping it would be running when we got back. In the 3rd week of our programming class the teacher, Mrs. Kefgan (something like that) told me I had an A+ for the class and asked me to be her assistant (I had already surpassed the curriculum and her in programming knowledge). I couldn't understand why everyone didn't understand the simple logic of BASIC. The teacher was all excited about Prodigy (I think), she was the "nerdy" teacher. That was it, I didn't touch a computer again until my girlfriend's parents got a 386sx (late 80's). My first computer was a 486DX. Didn't get involved with BBS's until around '94-95. I bought a t-shirt from the local BBS and the owner/sysop drove it over to my apartment. For awhile I was on Compuserve then got an internet connection from Time Warner. The internet was still a wild west then and the thought of commercializing it made people very angry.
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Aug 28, 2016 05:53
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In high school in 1984 I had an Apple IIe with the obligatory 2 floppy drives! Didn't do much coding but Appleworks was great for doing word processing/reports for school and it kicked the typewriter to the curb. I got the computer from my Dad's work at a huge discount else there was no way we could afford $2k for a "typewriter" replacement. My nerdy friends had Commodore 64's for sure. I later used Prodigy in 1991 to order a 4mb RAM chip @ $160 for my 386, lol.
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Aug 28, 2016 21:43
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I really liked something about the shot and pan transition from joes party into the clarks house that led to the closet.
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Aug 31, 2016 06:48
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Silver balloons and projectors? MacMillan you loving biter
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Aug 31, 2016 08:25
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i have the same headphones joe does
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Aug 31, 2016 14:00
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This is a good show, that was a good episode.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:47
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Ohhhh, Matthew Lillard, you sly dog... you almost got me with that moustache of yours, you really did, but I know it was you!
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Aug 31, 2016 22:47
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Watching Joe trying to teach himself how to program with a BASIC manual in his office was an unexpected smile.
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Sep 1, 2016 04:31
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It seems as though they're setting Ryan up to develop the first software crack. That shot of Joe attempting to write some kind of nag screen in BASIC was foreshadowing. Remember Neverlock? 
SpaceAceJase fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Sep 1, 2016 |
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Sep 1, 2016 11:34
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SpaceAceJase posted:It seems as though they're setting Ryan up to develop the first software crack. That shot of Joe attempting to write some kind of nag screen in BASIC was foreshadowing. He writes the crack under Joe's instruction, the board flips out and starts an investigation, and Joe throws kid under the bus to save his own skin, kid goes to jail, the damage is done so the board agrees to just release it for free with ads.
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Sep 1, 2016 17:53
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I was thinking it was going to be more along the lines of having Ryan pump out viruses. MacMillan would of course have the definitions earlier than anybody else and would gain more user share.
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Sep 1, 2016 21:05
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phosdex posted:I was thinking it was going to be more along the lines of having Ryan pump out viruses. MacMillan would of course have the definitions earlier than anybody else and would gain more user share. Like, the whole deal with Joe is that he's not as evil as people think he is, and he actually wants to be good.
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Sep 1, 2016 22:00
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Ersatz posted:He's not going to avoid doing something scummy to his customers by totally violating them instead. He might want to be good, he might be trying but I have the sneaking suspicion he's going to gently caress someone over anyway. Or everyone.
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Sep 1, 2016 22:25
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Yeah I don't think the 2 are really mutually exclusive. I'm just assuming that by seasons end, Ryan is going to be another person who is disillusioned with Joe and trying to think of his path there.
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Sep 1, 2016 22:37
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Joe is irredeemable at this point. - Stalking Cameron at the university, bringing his textbook along for his pre-prepared lie. - Playing games with Gordon. - Instructing Ryan to quit to Gordon's face. He's toxic, and has no intention of leaving them alone. I'm not sure I like what they've done with his character, but I commend Lee Pace for his brilliant work.
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Sep 1, 2016 23:33
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SpaceAceJase posted:Joe is irredeemable at this point. The offer to Gordon during the deposition was genuine. Joe's instruction to Ryan was spiteful, but much less so than Gordon turning down 70% of Joe's company simply because he couldn't bear the thought of working with Joe again. These are complicated characters; Joe isn't a toxic monster, and Cameron et al are no angels. Cameron, for instance, is just as narcissistic as Joe, but lacks his self-awareness.
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Sep 1, 2016 23:49
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the guy playing ryan is bad at acting and the character is uninteresting & going nowhere fast. a course change would be emphatically welcome
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Sep 2, 2016 00:26
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TheRationalRedditor posted:the guy playing ryan is bad at acting and the character is uninteresting & going nowhere fast. a course change would be emphatically welcome he's good at playing a computer nerd is what I'm reading here.
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Sep 2, 2016 00:29
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That's definitely the positive spin on it. Nothing involving his character has been compelling yet on a show where everyone else is, so it's been distracting me thus far Top Level Hussin' this episode. Tooling those Swapmeet guys was another exceptional marquee moment for Boz.
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Sep 2, 2016 10:07
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Boz should be on screen for at least a quarter of every episode. Does anyone watching not think he is the best character?
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Sep 2, 2016 18:11
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Spacebump posted:Boz should be on screen for at least a quarter of every episode. Does anyone watching not think he is the best character? he is going to gently caress diane silly
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Sep 2, 2016 18:16
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Spacebump posted:Boz should be on screen for at least a quarter of every episode. Does anyone watching not think he is the best character?
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Sep 2, 2016 18:18
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Ryan is terrible but I can only assume there is some plan or purpose to that character other than young idealistic genius gets used and abused by man in suit. I feel like that was what season 1 was about in some respects. Also, I don't understand how Gordon turning down Joe's offer was "spiteful". The guy stole his software, and then turned around and said hey, I'll give you 70%. I mean, I would have taken it in a second, but it's not like its the right and moral thing to do to accept a fraction of something that was built off of your sweat and ingenuity. He's fully right in my opinion to say a.) that's insulting and b.) even if it wasn't, I don't want to take it if it means I have to work with you. But I would have leapt on it because gently caress what's right, I like to get paid.
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Sep 2, 2016 18:40
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Jake Armitage posted:Ryan is terrible but I can only assume there is some plan or purpose to that character other than young idealistic genius gets used and abused by man in suit. I feel like that was what season 1 was about in some respects. I called Gordon's decision spiteful because it was motivated entirely by his hatred for Joe. And, to be fair to both characters, Gordon corrected errors in his code so that it could be used to reverse the damage it had done, and Joe ripped off the end result. But the entire notion of generalized anti-virus software, in this universe, is pure Joe. Gordon's an excellent engineer, but he lacks Joe's vision drive, and without Joe's vision and drive, there would be no company at all. Gordon simply wouldn't have connected the dots between what he'd done and the potential product/profit. 70% seemed more than fair.
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Sep 2, 2016 18:52
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Ersatz posted:I called Gordon's decision spiteful because it was motivated entirely by his hatred for Joe. Joe put Gordon in a no-win scenario during that scene. If Gordon rejects, he's spiteful. If he accepts, he's just greedy. Joe has burned all of these characters multiple times now, Gordon wasn't being spiteful to reject the offer because he could probably see straight through Joe's bullshit that he'd get called out as greedy, and even if the offer was genuine he'd still end up getting burned somehow in the long run. Also Ryan comes off more like a dick weasel who thinks he knows how to do everything perfectly because he's good in one specific thing, but has no idea how to actually make anything work as part of the whole. As soon as he was given exactly that opportunity - to work a whole product and not just his tiny little package, he started flopping around aimlessly and just working on things in his comfort zone.
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Sep 2, 2016 20:01
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ApathyGifted posted:Joe put Gordon in a no-win scenario during that scene. If Gordon rejects, he's spiteful. If he accepts, he's just greedy. Totally agreed that Ryan is a dick weasel. I'm a patent attorney, and I've run across far too many engineers like that IRL to tolerate them in my entertainment. I'm kind of hoping that Ryan gets hosed, for no other reason than that he's so irredeemably and unjustifiably full of himself. His comment to Boz during he meeting was infuriating.
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Sep 2, 2016 21:28
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Ersatz posted:Totally agreed that Ryan is a dick weasel. I'm a patent attorney, and I've run across far too many engineers like that IRL to tolerate them in my entertainment. I'm kind of hoping that Ryan gets hosed, for no other reason than that he's so irredeemably and unjustifiably full of himself. His comment to Boz during he meeting was infuriating.
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Sep 3, 2016 00:22
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TheRationalRedditor posted:Ahaha, what are their prevailing traits, an overwhelming sense of revolutionary self-importance without an ounce of the charm required to ever attempt to dazzle anyone into believing their arrogant lies? Like Ryan, these types often fail to understand that people other than themselves have something to contribute, and are especially arrogant when interacting with non-technical folks. Most engineers are reasonable, down-to-earth people. But the profession also, unfortunately, attracts a lot of asshats who convnce themselves that being good at math, e.g., makes them superior to other people, and who refuse to recognize/work on their own deficiencies in other areas.
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Sep 3, 2016 00:38
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SpaceAceJase posted:It seems as though they're setting Ryan up to develop the first software crack. That shot of Joe attempting to write some kind of nag screen in BASIC was foreshadowing. Where did you get that he was writing a nag screen? He was writing a program to output when Easter was and got an error when he ran it. I didn't see anything other than that when I went back and looked.
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Sep 4, 2016 04:32
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Spacebump posted:Boz should be on screen for at least a quarter of every episode. Does anyone watching not think he is the best character? Boz is my favorite character on the show, has been since season 1. He better be getting it in with Diane by the end of the season, my man Artie needs a smart woman.
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Sep 4, 2016 04:49
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Jake Armitage posted:The guy stole his software... I don't remember it that way. From memory Gordon gave him the software and when Joe realized it's potential asked Gordon to be a partner and he refused. Gordon is a smart guy but is his own worst enemy.
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Sep 4, 2016 06:23
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wormil posted:Joe realized it's potential asked Gordon to be a partner and he refused. Gordon is a smart guy but is his own worst enemy.
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Sep 4, 2016 06:35
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ArmZ posted:i have the same headphones joe does MDR-7506? I really want a pair of those.
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Sep 5, 2016 20:58
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In fairness to Gordon, he was trying to fix his marriage. Definitely should have at least heard Joe out before a flat no, though.
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Sep 5, 2016 21:39
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So, are we supposed to be rooting for Cameron to fail? She's just such an arrogant short sighted character who keeps stumbling into success despite her failings. Hell, you can say the same thing about Gordon too. I really want Mutiny to completely collapse all due to Cameron while Joe picks up the remains and turns it into something actually good.
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Sep 10, 2016 14:48
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Yeah Cameron is coming out of the gate super hateable this year. It's all about Donna & The Boz holding everything down
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Sep 10, 2016 20:07
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