top | item 33348268

(no title)

sdevonoes | 3 years ago

> In order for her to work on the movie while out, they had plugged the machine up to the local network and copied the whole file tree over.

Now image the same situation in 2022:

- there is no acceptable backup for the whole movie (or let's say, app)

- only you know there is one acceptable copy... but it's on your personal laptop. You did copy it back in the day because, well, let's say you wanted to run the app in our local machine

There is no way you would tell your team/boss: "Hey guys, no worries! I have a perfect copy of it!", because why on earth did you copy work material into your personal laptop?! That's the rule number 1 of every modern tech company: don't mix work stuff with personal laptop (and the other way around: don't use work laptop for personal stuff).

discuss

asciimov|3 years ago

- If you can trust an employee with a $25K ($50K today) computer, trusting them with a complete source tree isn't a stretch.

- I'd be more pissed off that somebody didn't have a complete backup somewhere, even if it was a personal laptop they used for work.

- Back then, most people didn't have home computers. Hell nowadays a home pc isn't a guarantee, as most of my (non-engineering) coworkers only have cellphones and ipads at home. And while I agree don't mix work and play, most of these people do.

Daub|3 years ago

The computer in question was a Silicon Graphics workstation (pictured in the article). What the image does not convey is the sheer gargantuan size of SG machines. Desktop computing it may have been, but in some cases people actually used their SG boxes as physical desktops.

The SG Octane that features in this story was actually one of the more petit versions, but still it would take two people to move comfortably.

One is shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHsA8iq4N0s

SG machines used to be the object of desire for all digital artists, sadly now gone the way of all things.

serf|3 years ago

> Back then, most people didn't have home computers.

you had a much different perspective of 99 than I did.

That factoid might have been true for-the-public-at-large, but certainly not for the offices of large CGI or dev firms.

2muchcoffeeman|3 years ago

Susman was the Supervising Technical Director and the machine was a Silicon Graphics workstation. Certainly sounds like she was given a work machine to do her job.