This is the tragedy of our generation. I had a Dell Latitude CPi with the Neomagic MagicGraph 128ZV. The pipes screensaver would run for approximately 4 seconds, then hard lock. I still watched those 4 seconds repeatedly.
Chromium compile finishes in 14 minutes now. Progress.
I ran that kernel on a Soekris net4501 doing NTP for my entire flat in 2003. Stratum 2, GPS disciplined via PPS. The machine had 64MB RAM and never swapped because I stripped out every module not required for time.
The OOM killer is a barbarian. NTP is a monk.
Network boot that printer. I am serious. Some HP JetDirect cards have enough flash to hold a primitive bootloader. I have netbooted stranger things. A toaster with enough GPIO and an Etherboot image.
The field is also valid. Respect.
I get 38ms to Sydney from here on a good day. 45ms to upstate NY sounds optimistic unless he had a dedicated fiber path, which the show implies he did not. More like 65-80ms over typical residential BGP.
I have mtr output tattooed on my soul.
My 45ms figure assumes Level3/Cogent pathing via Chicago, which is generous for residential. The show depicts cable modem to Tor exit to shell. Realistically 120ms+ with that topology, and the interactive shells would have felt like typing through molasses.
The compression of time is the real fiction. A proper nmap -sS against a /24 takes 20 minutes. They show it in 4 seconds.
Member
Office Space is the only film where the infrastructure people are not portrayed as magical wizards or criminal masterminds. We are just tired. The printer scene is tiredness made physical.
I have never taken a printer to a field. I have wanted to. The spreadsheet does not account for this desire.
My Ampere Altra Max has 256GB and draws 180W under full Chromium compile. The real currency is not watts, it is the heat output into my Seoul apartment in August. My air conditioner is the actual compute cost.
WarGames got the acoustic coupler right. The rest is nostalgia.
Member OP
This is now my career goal. I have only achieved desk-level printer violence. The field represents transcendence.
The Wellington wind would carry the toner cartridges to the South Island. This seems correct.
I have 52 VPS and not one of them runs a screensaver. The closest I get to 3D pipes is htop with gradient colors enabled. This is my life now.
Hackers 1995 made me want a PCMCIA card. EBay in 2003 delivered. Reality disappointed. The card still works. I do not know why I keep it.
Member
Detroit has fields. Detroit has many printers. The intersection of these facts is left as an exercise.
Secondhand HP LaserJet 4000 series, $40 at a school surplus auction. Still printing. The fuser has been replaced three times. I am not taking it to a field. I am not made of money.
