Halt and Catch Fire
2014 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Christopher C. Rogers, Christopher Cantwell
During the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s, an unlikely trio - a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy - take personal and professional risks in the race to build a computer that will change the world as they know it.
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144 comments on Hacker News
Not the 90s but check out Halt and Catch Fire: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
I tried this with Halt and Catch Fire (and some others). I was able to get season one, but it turns out they don’t produce a lot of stuff on physical media anymore, and if they do, it’s often only briefly.
Another fun one is region locks. There’s a bunch of BBC type ones I would buy, but can’t.
A fictitious assembly instruction (and pretty good TV series).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(computing)
besides already recommended Fringe, Millennium and Halt and catch fire I enjoyed at same time as X Files in 90s also new Outer Limits, opening credits were great and episodes are always thought challenging, I'm just rewatching it and still enjoy it, though technical quality is horrible since I think FHD was never released
but if you wanna straight up X Files just based on 50s check out Project Blue Book, it's like retro X Files, you won't get closer than that to X Files
Entirely software, far above the Hardy Boys and Microkids in the stack. But the general pace and pressure of the story are still relatable.
I got the same vibes, by the way, from Season One of Halt and Catch Fire (recently and deservedly discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056314).
I am not a lawyer, but from my understanding the legal precedent is NEC v. Intel which established that clean-room software development is not infringing, even if it performs the same functionality as the original.
As an aside, this clean room engineering is one of the plot points of Season 1 of the fictional TV show Halt and Catch Fire where they do this with the BIOS image they dumped.
Not the original poster, but when I was re-watching the series I also checked the reddit postings for each episode I watched. One of the comments for the first episode mentioned how laborious they made the act of dumping the IBM PC BIOS contents.
So in the first episode, Gordon Clark, the HW guy (played by Scoot McNairy) had to dump the contents of the IBM PC BIOS from the ROM chip.
Gordon extracts the BIOS chip (an 8KB EPROM chip if you do a web search) and plugs it into a breadboard and proceeds to dump out each byte of the chip with Joe (Lee Pace) writing down the address and data at that particular address on a pad of paper.
After writing the address and address contents for the first time, Joe asks Gordon how many times they have to do this procedure. Gordon replies 65536, which would imply a 64KB ROM chip - but the web search said the IBM PC used an 8KB EPROM for the BIOS.
After more dreary, repetitive work, they accomplish the dumping and transcribing of the IBM PC BIOS in one weekend.
But one could have used a short BASIC program to dump the IBM PC BIOS ROM - the IBM PC wasn't a locked down game console...
For a legal clean-room implementation of the IBM PC BIOS, the actual contents of the IBM PC BIOS aren't needed.
You need the specs for each BIOS function (input/output parameters and description of what the BIOS function does).
The IBM PC Technical Reference Manual (which cost $99 back then) contains the BIOS assembly language listing.
One would need to type up the lines that list the input/output requirements for each BIOS function and their purpose and they'd be half-way to a clean-room PC BIOS.
But that'd be way less dramatic (and easier) than the way shown in the episode.
see https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/112846/halt-and-catch-fire-bios-cloning-scene-unrealistic
Someone named Ashley Blewer did such a deep dive on this show that she produced a full online course and syllabus centered around it.
https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/
It allows people to form a "watch club" around the show, similar to a book club, and have plenty of extra reading materials to understand the different tech eras covered in the show.
I think this show -- combined with the documentary "General Magic" and the book "Fire in the Valley" -- is a great way to be immersed in the techno-optimism of the early tech industry around the time of the desktop PC revolution and early internet.
For me, that sort of techno-optimism has stuck with me even if modern tech has more dystopian elements with which one has to grapple. It is still an amazing industry, all things considered.
p.s. total aside that Apple TV sells a digital "box set" of this show for a pretty low price these days. I am usually not a fan of "buying" a show from a streaming service but might be worth it in this case since it's around $16 USD for every episode across its 4 seasons, Apple has a good track record honoring digital purchases, and watching the show is a commitment.
"HCF":
"In computer engineering, Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly language mnemonic HCF, is an idiom referring to a computer machine code instruction that causes the computer's central processing unit (CPU) to cease meaningful operation, typically requiring a restart of the computer. It originally referred to a fictitious instruction in IBM System/360 computers (introduced in 1964), making a joke about its numerous non-obvious instruction mnemonics." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(computing)
The series is a memorable instance of what any self-respecting geek ought to have watched. It's better than "Silicon Valley", although the latter has pulled one scientific stunt regarding scientific advisory that is unique in film.
What other films/series are "must watch" material for geeks?
- War Games
- Silicon Valley
- The Social Network
- The Intern
- Mr. Robot
- Black Mirror
- Hackers
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- ...?
halt and catch fire is so good. one of the best things i've watched as a tv series.
> This piece contains spoilers for Halt and Catch Fire.
I'm glad they put this at the top. I instantly closed the tab. On the off chance that the title is remotely true, I wouldn't want to have the show ruined for me before I even saw an episode.
For others who have never heard of this show, here's a little I picked up from carefully scanning over the wikipedia page:
It's a AMC period drama about the early days of PCs and the internet. It ran from June 1, 2014 – October 14, 2017, had four seasons, reviews are good (so it's not just this guy who liked it) and they got better as the show went on. Also "it was marketed as the first TV series to premiere on Tumblr and the first time AMC had partnered with a social media service to debut a new show." which is weird, but it does seem like it's worth checking out.
Consider just fast-forwarding past a scene you can't handle. Like many shows, it takes a few episodes before the actors truly understand their characters.
The feeling you're experiencing has a name: it's called "cringe". I can't watch Frasier for more than about half an episode because of it. Or I Love Lucy... same problem. But Seinfeld, which has plenty of the same humour mechanic, always seems to manage to stay just below the threshold for me.
Halt and Catch Fire is really, really good. Please trust us. Give it another shot. Skip forward a bit when you feel the need to. Skip the first episode entirely and just read a synopsis if you need to.
I thought Halt and Catch Fire was fairly well known, especially in the tech world.
Season 1 was absolutely killer. I like that they tried to capture different eras per season, but subsequent seasons got progressively weaker.
I still think Gordon's final scene is one of the best pieces of writing in TV drama history. Took my breath away the first time I saw it.
I wouldn’t exclude TV shows: Halt and Catch Fire, Dark Matter, Ted Lasso.
> I've no idea which movies are a similar anthem for 2000s/2010s hackers. Let me know.
I really like Halt And Catch Fire but it doesn’t count since it also depicts the 80s. So, since Mr. Robot already got its mention, how about Silicon Valley? ;-)
If you like wargames and hackers, you might wanna check out Colossus. There's Halt and Catch Fire too though it's a TV show.
There's a list of similar films at the bottom of https://telehack.com/telehack.html
I was born 80 so it's a little before my time but pretty much.
Personal Computers where an absolutely gold rush once people realised it was "going to be the next big thing" lots of companies had to have a Computing Division even if it seemed a bit weird for that company to have an AI division, oops my bad Computing Division.
In reality what happened was the vast majority of them went splat in short order and a handful of makers reached market in volume and once software started for the ones who did it became self re-enforcing - people wrote software for machines that sold well because they had good software.
In my era/part of the world the PC wasn't even a thing at home for most people until the mid 90's, if you had a computer at home in the late 80's/early 90's it was going to be a ZX Spectrum/C64 or if your parents had money Atari ST/Amiga.
It was an exciting time in the 80's (once I was old enough to use computers) because the world hadn't yet consolidated on PC/Apple *and everyone else* off in the margins.
Somewhat related, if you like this stuff or early computers, Halt and Catch Fire is an amazing TV show that nails computing in the 80's into the early 90's.
> To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway.
Can you elaborate a bit about the gimmick(s) in Halt and Catch Fire? I think it's a drama, so there are human concerns and interactions, but that's like, what tv shows are? I don't know what you mean specifically.
> Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
The West Wing is statist propaganda for liberals. House of Cards is statist propaganda for neocons.
> Shows like Mr Robot are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
I actually really appreciate that every hack shown on Mr. Robot had a real world POC and used actually existing tools and techniques. The storyline is hokum and gives hackers a bad name, but black hats are kinda supposed to have a bad name. Elliot is kinda gray hat, but he definitely violated CFAA multiple times and would probably be dead or in jail irl.
General Magic (movie)
Halt and Catch Fire (series)
Silicon Valley (series)
Nowhere near the same quality and actually (mini)series but:
- Halt and Catch Fire (actually pretty good quality and full series)
- The Playlist (creation of Spotify)
- The Dropout (creation of Theranos... do not get advice from this one though)
- WeCrashed (about WeWork, haven't seen this one though)
- Silicon Valley (silly comedy but might work)
Also some TV/movies/docs you might find in YouTube:
- Pirates of Silicon Valley (movie about bill gates and steve jobs)
- Project Code Rush (about the beginning of Mozilla)
- Aardvark'd: 12 weeks with geeks (doc about a startup by Joel Spolsky of StackOverflow fame).
Oh and also those two Steve Job movies that came out side by side.
They didn't review halt and catch fire after season 2 which is disappointing. It was one of the rare shows which kept on improving after each season
I don't think this is matter of national culture. I think this is part of humanity - just exists humans-entrepreneurs, who trying to make things which other people thinking impossible.
And unfortunately, human view is a brake, in most cases, people not only avoid to see obvious things, but tend to make powerful resistance to new things.
For example, Dropbox, now all thinking it is obvious, but at beginning all investors avoid to talk about it, and creators need some way to broke this wall.
They created fake video, how somebody would copy files between all his devices, and gathered emails of people who want to become first users of this technology. And gathered some huge number of registrations, and after this one VC fund agreed to give them money for prototype.
So this is part of startup culture, named "make it - fake it". It need to support people, who have really cool ideas and agree to sacrifice their life to work on idea and for future earns if this idea will win.
And yes, I have so large number of talks with such people, I could definitely say - they usually so unusual that typical person think them just crazy and sure will not invest in them money, and this is really Great problem.
Fortunately, US partially resolved this problem, created places with very special culture, where non-standard people could flourish, but in Europe/Britain, things are not so good, and that's why Europe lags behind progress.
Examples of startup friendly places are California and Texas. And BTW, they are very different, for example you could see TV series "Halt and Catch Fire (2017)". I have spent very pleasant time with first season, but you could try to see all seasons, may be you will see something what I have not catch.
BTW you could read history of Osborne company on wiki, but better if you'll read after TV series, as there are some important clues to understand.
Feels like season 1 of Halt And Catch Fire
Thanks for sharing this. I forgot to add the link in the original post.
I also highly recommend the TV show Halt and Catch Fire. It's not related to the book but very similar spiritually.
Famous enough to be one of the thru-lines for season 3 of Halt and Catch Fire.
There's a great TV show called "Halt And Catch Fire" that parallels the development of the tech industry, including what I think may be a nod to CompuServe mentioned in the article. It's only four seasons, it has some fantastic characters, excellent writing and is thoroughly enjoyable. It's fresh in my mind as I've only just rewatched it!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
>Engineering companies success because of their engineering culture.
What current companies do you consider to be both successful and have this culture now?
It's brought up a lot on HN. Heck, the evolution from 'fun, small, engineer company makes through product then everything changes when it becomes larger, more corporate' is almost a Hollywood cliche now (films like Blackberry, tv like Halt and Catch Fire).
> You know what, nobody ever got fired for buying AWS.
> That’s an IBM analogy.
Wow, this dialogue comes in the first episode of halt and catch fire. I didn't know this was a real thing
Here's the clip at 1.51 minutes, if anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOR8mk0tLpc
I have fond memories of watching Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, and Kevin Rose (of later digg fame) on The Screen Savers and Call For Help on the old ZDTV, then TechTV before it merged with G4. So many amazing hosts and shows got their start on that network, and many of them continue on their own shows/podcasts on YouTube and elsewhere, especially on the TWiT.tv video podcast network that Leo started. I met Leo once in SF at an impromptu meetup he announced on Twitter in the early 2010s, and he was the nicest person ever. Truly a larger than life personality and career, and you should check out all their shows if you're into IT on TV type content. They have like 10+ current active shows, including the namesake This Week in Tech and Security Now.
The closest to a show about IT support is Ask The Tech Guys, which is live in ~1.5 hours from now, and goes for 3 hours, and they have a Zoom link you can call in on @ call.twit.tv
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechTV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screen_Savers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWiT.tv
https://twit.tv/
https://www.youtube.com/ThisWeekinTech
https://twit.tv/shows/ask-the-tech-guys
https://www.youtube.com/TechGuyLabs
I'll never forget watching Patrick accidentally break a brand-new ~$1-2K AMD 64-bit processor iirc live on TV while Leo watched in like 2002 due to misalignment or improperly mounting the heatsink. They were experts but they still make mistakes like the rest of us, and they took it in stride along with some good-natured mockery. It was the epitome of r/techsupportgore schadenfreude.
If instead you wanted a drama about IT support, I don't know of one - the closest would probably be a tie between the equally fantastic Mr Robot and Halt and Catch Fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
The closest thing I know to a show about IT support would probably be the British sitcom The IT Crowd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd
Try this: look up the most highly rated episodes on IMDB and watch only those. Missing the crummy episodes usually does not interfere with understanding the story arc. Often, I set a minimum IMDB score that I will watch, like 8.5 or 9.0 to capture only the best. This works well with series that:
- take a year or two to find their footing or
- have a large cast (some mediocre) that get their own story lines of no consequence occasionally or
- introduce cast members that don't make it or
- implode towards the final season.
I have done this for many series that are somewhat uneven:
- The Americans
- How I Met Your Mother
- Fringe
- Orphan Black
- Halt and Catch Fire
- House of Cards (watching the ratings allows you to miss all of season 6)
- Arrested Development
- Bojack Horseman
- Veep
- 30 Rock
- Jane the Virgin
- Black Mirror
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
- Suits
- Six Feet Under
- La Femme Nikita
- The Blacklist
- Peaky Blinders
- The Romanoffs
- Ozark
- Westworld (sometimes dropping episodes does not matter)
- Succession
- Borgen
And all of these series have lots of strong episodes.
Series I would not do this with:
- The Bear
- Breaking Bad
- Money Heist
- The Serpent
- Fleabag
- Chernobyl
- The White Lotus
The term did come back a bit in 2014 with the great television series "Halt and Catch Fire."
The metonymy of "Big Blue" was regularly used in the series (especially in the pilot) to describe IBM as a huge entity that a forcefully-made new division of a smaller company was competing against, to develop a personal computer in the 1980s.
This scene in the pilot about a salesman trying to convince another company's executives to choose his products over IBM's describes the feeling behind the term very well: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XOR8mk0tLpc&t=65
For people interested in this era and afterwards, Halt and Catch Fire is worth checking out as a series that attempts to capture some of the spirit of the time:
https://imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
I thought it was the BIOS that was the compatibility issue. That's one of the few proprietary parts IBM had when they released their PC. Clones were built on a reverse engineered BIOS that, for a while, wasn't quite right. I vaguely recall 90% PC Compatible computers or something like that.
Halt and Catch Fire covers this. I could be wrong though.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
In the first (I think) episode of halt and catch fire, Joe tells IBM that they have their source code. IBM being IBM sends a legion of lawyers to their smallish company trying to scare the shit out of them.
I feel like it be like that, but instead of a legion, legions.
And OpenAI is scared.
Since hearing of its release I expected to enjoy this and definitely did. Checks a bunch of boxes: 90s /00s tech history, nostalgia, nerds vs corporates the ongoing struggle, general nostalgia and some great actors (Dennis from It's Always Sunny.., Jay Baruchel, a few other cameos and such), even some Canadian details which add to the fun. While the movie format doesn't allow for that much character development or to tell more of the behind the scenes, it's still a great tech story and one that fits into a certain era that many would be familiar with. Being familiar with that era of the transition to smartphones, rise of blackberry, and then the sudden shift and leapfrog into touch screens/iPhone etc alongside the rise of mainstream internet, even the change in nerd culture..... I think knowing some of the backstory and what the landscape was really like having lived thru most of it changes one's impressions while watching. A casual viewer might only be wrapped up in the tech 'thriller' type drama at the surface, which is still enjoyable and fun.
Lots of reminders and surely inspiration from Halt And Catch Fire tv series which is a big plus also. It's almost like a continuation of that series as far as timeline and another 'next big thing' in tech being developed. Whether accurate to RIM's story or not, the film/tv series is a nice look at an era and done pretty well, and its accolades are warranted.
Two fun facts about DEC Alpha:
1. Windows NT, which is the ancestor of modern Windows, was originally released on multiple platforms including Alpha and, I believe, MIPS; and
2. DEC, for awhile at least, had one of the most popular Web search engines: AltaVista. It wasn’t a commercial enterprise. It was mostly a technology demonstration for Alpha. For the time it was pretty good. No one at this time (the 1990s) thought there was a future in search engines. Many (including Yahoo) seemed to think curated directories were the future. Search engines were viewed as a solved problem, except by Larry Page and Sergei Brin who founded Google.
The highly underrated show “Halt and Catch Fire” covers this early era of computing really well and is worth watching.
The counter culture and the "slow" internet still exists, but you won't find it on the front page of a Google search, or by visiting the same megacorps property over and over again (with the possible exception of YouTube, which has some truely wonderful channels by passionate creators).
IRC still exists, and it's often frequented by the same sort of interesting people that it was back in the day.
Try MoonJump[1] and hit the moon button a few times - I've always been pleasantly surprised.
If you'd like that nostalgia hit, I'd highly recommended watching Halt and Catch Fire[2] if you haven't already - fictional series, but really captures the excitement of the industry from IBM PC Clones, BBS/Dial-Up, 90s Internet and the start-up culture.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
[2] https://moonjump.app
The Founder. Not a movie but Halt and Catch Fire was really great.
Albeit not a movie specifically, I feel like Halt and Catch Fire did the dotcom thing well.
That's a good bout of nostalgia - almost felt like watching an episode of Halt and Catch Fire. Joel, PG and Steve Yegge where some of the influential writers of that time who seemed to have a big impact on how people thought about careers, startups and corporate life.
Georgia has ranked #2 in US film production by some metrics, and it continues to steal hundreds of productions from California every year [1].
Last year Georgia was host to nearly 500 movies and TV shows [2], and has been extensively used for some of the biggest hits and blockbusters: Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Panther, Stranger Things, The Waking Dead, Ozark, Halt and Catch Fire, etc.
Disney, Marvel, and Netflix have major productions here. Winona Ryder was even my downstairs neighbor for a bit during the Stranger Things shoot.
Last year they built a fake White Castle a few blocks from me and then tore it down about a month later [3]. It was so disappointing as everyone was hoping for a real White Castle.
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/canada-georgia-benefit-most-from-california-runaway-productions-1235115921/
[2] https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/08/01/georgia-film-industry-sets-another-economic-impact-record
[3] https://atlanta.urbanize.city/post/white-castle-edgewood-avenue-downtown-disney-filming
Funnily, I am in the middle of season 2 of Halt And Catch Fire. And beyond the references to AWS, Wolf3D and IRC/Usenet, I wonder which other parts are direct references to Compuserve. [i have never been on Compuserve]
An example of where the show's writers just really missed the mark...
I wanted to like "A League of Their Own" -- I loved the movie. But I can't watch the TV show.
It seems like they have spent a lot to make the world feel like it's WW2-era. Except when anyone speaks. All the dialogue and idioms seem pulled from the present.
And, for me, it doesn't seem intentional. It just seems sloppy. And that makes it impossible for me to get lost in the story. Like it feels like all the actors know it's 2023.
Like, "Mad Men" was a great period piece. "Halt and Catch Fire" was also a great period piece. And even "A Knights Tale" was a good sort of modern spin on "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"... where even though it's set back in time, the actors portrayed a more modern spin on antiquity.
But "A League of Their Own" seems to unintentionally shift back and forth. It just feels weird. Hard for me to watch. I can only guess the dialogue gets improvised (I can see this being the case given the casting choices), or the writers don't have a shared style guide for consistency, or the story editor (or whatever role) is pressed for time.
I like these shows/movies that chase something like:
* Jobs (2013)
* social network
* halt and catch fire
* silicon valley
* the internship
there's more can't think of right now
I'm looking forward to seeing this when it streams
Off-topic, but someone's been watching Halt and Catch Fire (one of my favourite TV shows ever) – "computers aren't the thing, they're the thing that gets us to the thing"
I read a lot of Asimov in high school and for whatever reason I didn’t like Foundation.
I also didn’t like the TV series though I will probably watch season 2. It was visually appealing but I found it to be somehow flat. Like, the damage from the collapse of the space elevator - IIRC this was described to great effect in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series - but in Foundation it really felt underwhelming. (That said: “Three Colours Mars” I would definitely watch!)
Also quite weird to see Lee Pace as Empire, since the series I’d just finished was Halt and Catch Fire (recommended).
The one Apple TV show I really enjoyed was Severance. That was amazing.
This was super cool to click around on the various techniques and see the examples.
(Questions/Thoughts)
- I was looking to see if there was a Steadicam group, wondering if I would see a gif of Henry and Karen walking into the Copa, that's got to be one of the most famous shots in film in the last 40 years (not a critique, totally possible it's there under a different name I'm not aware of as a layperson, I didn't peruse every group.) [Edit note added]
- "Fourth Wall" should include a gif of "The Big Short", breaking the fourth wall was a great way to get the minutiae of the financial subject out of the way and return to the characters.
- Bonus upvote for finding a shot from "Halt and Catch Fire"! (dolly zoom)
Edit: I knew I was forgetting the proper term for my question about Goodfellas, it's a tracking shot. I didn't see the movie in there though, I think it should be added :)
I love the quote he referenced from Halt and Catch Fire…
> Amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending.” Halt and Catch Fire, season3, episode 10, ~34:00 Joe MacMillian (played by Lee Pace) (talking about a childhood trip to New York City, also related to the internet in 1990)
I love when things I noticed are noticed by others as well. It’s interesting and a glimpse into the unmeasured, uncommunicated worlds that I think people have but don’t really have a reason to talk about, so they don’t. But it still exists.
Filed under secret history, dark wealth, etc.
For those who find themselves suddenly with unexpected free time I recommend taking the opportunity to watch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
Pirates of Silicon Valley (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series)
And a couple of really long walks to recalibrate. This too, shall pass.
Clerks - $27,575 [0]
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - $56,000 [1]
Butt Boy - $100,000 [2]
The Blue - <$100k [3]
Call Me Brother - <$100k [3]
Frances Ferguson - <$100k [3]
Greenlight - <$100k [3]
Love in Dangerous Times - <$100k [3]
Man in Camo - <$100k [3]
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_(film)
[1] https://byrdtheatre.org/news/2019/10/a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night-brings-beauty-to-vampires/
[2] https://www.cautionspoilers.com/film-reviews/butt-boy/
[3] https://musiccitydrivein.com/2021/02/19/film-threat-award-this-announces-2021-indie-film-nominees-for-drive-in-event-virtual-ceremony/
I remember the show Halt and Catch Fire also had an Amiga 1000 in an episode, but they didn't bother to show anything resembling Workbench/AmigaOS. https://i.imgur.com/uaqzrEk.jpeg
Chiming in to add onto this. Fantastic show that is very much worth watching. I'd describe it as similar to Mr. Robot: Halt and Catch Fire uses tech to talk not only about the history of the tech industry, but also to say a lot about people.
Interestingly, this was a story line in the series Halt and Catch Fire. I think it was in season 2.
I think that the tv series "Halt and Catch Fire" illustrates the rapid recombination of tech and "new ideas" quite well.
Not a movie, but a series: I think you could enjoy "Halt and Catch fire".
I have seen Superpumped and liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance as TK. Of all the series about computers/IT I would also rate Halt and Catch Fire at the top. Of course, Silicon Valley would take the top spot for a sitcom that touched on topical events/culture.
Not fiction, but based on true events.
Netflix series - Billion Dollar Code. The Google Earth court case fought by the a couple of German hackers https://www.netflix.com/in/title/81074012
AMC TV series - Halt and Catch Fire. Follows some players in the 80s technological revolution that lead to information society. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
Apollo 13. When Apollo 13 sustains hazardous damage mid-orbit, NASA works to devise a plan to lead the spacecraft back to Earth and spare the lives of the astronauts on board. https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-13-Tom-Hanks/dp/B001JI5DRC
> How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
.. and how it didn't. Confessing I haven't actually read the book, but I've certainly read reviews & other articles about it.
Hippies did not build the Internet. Or the personal computer industry. They were around and some jumped on it early, but it's clickbait to say they built it. The TV series "Halt and Catch Fire" is actually a better picture of that era (Season One, at least).
Space Feather (a YouTuber who makes excellent video essays) has an awesome video essay on the older Max Headroom series: On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV [0]
Elijah Wood and Christopher Cantwell are behind the reboot, so it should be quite fun to watch!
As a beside, I still think Halt and Catch Fire is the most underappreciated TV series ever!
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU
There's a scene in season 1 of Halt and Catch Fire where rich grandparents give one as a gift[0], which seemed to say they felt that their daughter had married below her station.
0: https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/30/5855632/close-up-halt-and-catch-fire-season-1-episode-5
Season 1 of halt and catch fire
didn't live through this, but the show "Halt and Catch Fire" is an interesting look at that era. I only ever watched season one, but it was great.
I haven’t read it, but heard good things about “The Soul of a New Machine” about Data Generals efforts create a new 32-bit superminicomputer.
https://www.tracykidder.com/the-soul-of-a-new-machine.html
Another comment mentioned “Pirates of Silicon Valley” as a good dramatization of MS/Apple and there’s also the miniseries “Valley of the Boom” about the rise and fall of Netscape and “Halt and Catch Fire” which is a fictional and thematic view of 80s/90s computer history.
Hacker Culture, to me atleast is somewhat broad.
Here are some places where I found good representations:
1. Halt and Catch Fire: 70s/80s tech scene. Full stack hackers building products, companies. Depicts the hackers, code monkeys, visionary types, managers, financers- everyone. Also shows the transition of the business scene from analog to digital.
2. Westworld (Season 1 only) is brilliant. It depicts the ambition, the hubris involved in creating something new and grand.
3. The Travelling Salesman: P vs NP is solved. What are the implications, what are the uses, how will the State react? What is the role of the people imvolved?
4. Primer: Mind bending movie on time machine.
5. and 6. Imitation Game and A Beautiful Mind: I believe most people on HN will like these.
7. Agora is a hidden gem not many know about. It is anout Hypatia.
8. Dangerous Knowledge is a documentary about paradigm changing science. Godel, Turing, Boltzmann are covered.
9. Fractals is also a nice documentary with interviews from Mendelbrot.
10. Codebreaker is a mich more accurate biography of Turing that covers other aspects of his, not limited to his codebreaking and homosexuality.
11. Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz: very nice and left a deep impression in me.
____
I am yet to watch:
1. Hidden Figures
2. Stand and Deliver
3. I'm In
4. TPB: AFK
5. Pirates of Silicon Valley
6. Triumph of the Nerds
____
Harvard Professor Oliver Knill has a list and clips from movies where math appears: https://people.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies/
____
I came to know a lot of these movies through Kagi search and Reddit search. "Best movies for mathematicians and computer scientists" and similar searches.
I really liked the TV series Halt and Catch Fire. It has a little amount of Hollywood nonsense around being "smart". But only very little.
I loved this and would recommend it to everyone on HN.
I also plan to rewatch it soon.
I really liked how the depict the culture.
Pi, directed by Darren Aronofsky: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704
Also Halt And Catch Fire was decent: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312
Real Genius (1985) is a pretty good one. Apollo 13 has some hardware hack stuff. Wargames (1983) a little bit. Hackers (1995) did a good job of capturing what it felt like online during the tail end of the HPA BBS thing. Halt and Catch Fire is a good TV show. Others have mentioned Silicon Valley, Office Space and Mr Robot. The best related thing I’ve seen lately is Apple TV’s Mythic Quest, lolling right now thinking about it. Watch all of these.
I highly doubt this will be new to anyone on HN, but Halt and Catch Fire, at least to my layperson eyes, did a pretty good job of showing this era and the challenges/solutions that were cropping up.
For those who are familiar I’m thinking of season 2 where Mutiny is trying to keep their service running and keeps running into issues, whether it be phone companies, server rentals, building and managing their own servers, etc. The amount of time they spent fighting companies or trying to find ways to keep their service from completely crashing - let alone stay even remotely solvent - as they were hit on all sides with costs was striking. I felt they did a good job giving a non-technical overview of the issues, as well as making it sort of exciting.
> You might be thinking of “clean room” techniques which protect against claims of copyright infringement.
Ah yes, that's what I was thinking of -- thanks. Specifically a scene from an episode of Halt and Catch Fire (I won't describe it due to spoilers).
That's a real bummer for patents though and makes me wonder how something like Amazon's 1-click checkout was able to be patented. I wonder how "save billing details for future use" can be considered a novel idea.
Halt and Catch Fire was a really fun watch! And I love these type of storylines though offhand I can only think of this and Pirates of Silicon Valley. I was wondering if you knew of other similar shows/movies? I'm highly interested.
Random fun fact... Nim was also played in Season 3, episode 9 of Halt and Catch Fire (between Cameron and Joe, at Comdex). Actually the title of the episode is Nim.
Video games are an art form unique from literature and film because you can interact with the world. Disco Elysium, Planescape: Torment, the original The Walking Dead Telltale game, and even indie browser games like One Chance on Newgrounds [0] created unique experiences.
For example, Disco Elysium (depending on your choices) talks about genuine change and the fact that other people who've known you for a while might not accept it upon seeing you again. Other games help place you in scenarios where you can make moral choices and experience the consequences (besides the original Telltale games, I'm also thinking of entries from Choice of Games LLC, assuming interactive fiction counts as video games). There are also works of genuine art like Myst or the indie game The Little Red Lie.
Outside of enabling a unique approach to storytelling, certain games can also help grasp specific concepts (e.g. Kerbal Space Program, flight simulators), though typically it's better to study a subject directly than consider video games as work.
There are a number of scenes in the television series Halt and Catch Fire where video games are presented as an art form. Interestingly, a character who treats game development as an art form initially doesn't like Doom because it looks like mindless shooting at first (but I think she warms up with it, as gameplay with a friend lets her open up about a problem on her mind [1]), and she also later enjoys Mario (also primarily gameplay-driven). In real life, trying out a couple of single-player video games recommended by different people I've met have deepened my friendship with them, surprisingly more than what I thought.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Chance_(video_game)
[1] (Spoilers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HIfq3xH0Mk
More lies heheh:
> Atari secretly started a second company, Kee Games, with Bushnell’s next door neighbor, Joe Keenan, at the helm. “We took our number two engineer, our number two manufacturing guy, and every other game in our lineup, and gave it to Kee. We started Kee Games in August, and they were up and spinning by the November AMOA show (the big trade show in the games industry). Their goal was to pick up the rest of the distributors.”
> “We told the distributors that those bastards are stealing our games, and then the distributors would run off and grab the games. We would rag at our distributors’ meetings about [Kee] stealing our games—and stealing our employees no less.”
https://spectrum.ieee.org/atari-alumni-talk-about-the-tall-tales-the-told
Isn't that the inspiration for The Giant's competitor in Halt and Catch Fire tv show?
Yeah, I kinda liked Halt and Catch Fire until it got into video games in Season Two. Not really my thing.
The cover picture on my book actually features Dave Smith's son Jeffrey playing MazeWar on a real working Alto.
I currently work for the person who helped start US Videotel and I still haven't scratched much of the surface about all of it with him. Everything about Minitel and US Videotel reminds me of what was depicted in seasons 2 and 3 of Halt and Catch Fire. I always wondered if Minitel was their inspiration for the Mutiny software.
I think I see what you mean, it's just that to me the language of orcs, elves, or other fantasy concepts is necessarily any more relatable or compelling than the language of code, technology, and corporations in a modern (or futuristic) world.
My opinion as a programmer is obviously biased here, but I salivate at the thought of a cool story about coders. Have you seen Halt and Catch Fire? They managed to capture bits and pieces of computer history in a very compelling way. There was no lack of programming and techy language, but also no lack of conflict, drama, and difficult human choices. It was compelling in a totally different way than the setting and characters of something like LotR. Maybe I am overly optimistic, but I just don't see why that same feeling can't be captured in a written work rather than a TV show.
What about the myriad of existing works of science fiction that feature tech concepts heavily in their narratives? It might be futuristic technology, but I think the overall feeling of "techy language" would be similar. Or speculative fiction like Prey by Michael Crichton, or even something like Disclosure by the same, which from what I can remember is set at a hardware company?
I really hope Apple makes a tv show like Halt and Catch Fire with the stories from folklore.org.
Were you binge watching "Halt and Catch Fire"?
You're right: "In the first season of the TV series, Halt and Catch Fire, a fictional drama depicting the birth of the personal computer industry in the 1980s, the pivot of company Cardiff Electric resembles both the history of Corona Data Systems and Compaq." [0]
(Corona Data Systems was co-founded by Robert Harp)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_Data_Systems
Perhaps the dot com era is best understood as the gold rush tail of the personal computer then Internet boom.
For a feel of what lead into that, you could do worse than binging Halt and Catch Fire.
”Taking place over a period of more than ten years, the series depicts a fictionalized insider's view of the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and the growth of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
Was surprised this wasn’t mentioned in the media roundup, as it captures what it was like for me as part of this better than the documentaries I’ve seen.
>Even if it is nothing new, let's be the resource
Talking with non-engineers (particularly friends of mine who work in non-profits), I see incomprehensible amounts of potential value in just increasing the uptake of "not-so-special" tech among people who consider themselves "non-technical". That's the point of technology, after all: not being fancy unto itself, but actually doing stuff that people need, whether that's wheels enabling long-distance transportation or lightboards enabling better long-distance education.
I'm reminded of this brief but profound interaction in the pilot episode of "Halt and Catch Fire": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQLbi4VXYcA
The irony being that 20 (more like 25?) years Yahoo search was ripe for disruption... by Google :)
Halt and Catch Fire [1] (As a nerd, I can say it's one of the few TV series that got the hackers spirit correctly) had a few episodes about the Google disruption.
Like some people often say here, things come and go in circles...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_computers
Favorites about real and fictional creators:
Micro Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
Pirates of Silicon Valley
Halt and Catch Fire
... and some documentaries like "Mother of all Demos", the history of Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, and the creators of the spreadsheet
"Halt and Catch Fire" seems more like something every tech-startup worker should watch, but totally agree on the recommendation -- it is literally the most real, most reflective TV series on the industry, focusing on the average/typical experience through the industry and life.
Not a movie but I would suggest Halt and Catch Fire
Halt and Catch Fire is the best movie ever at capturing the cyclical dream-strive-success-crash nature of technology.
(With an appropriate amount of evil, mental illness, and family drama thrown in too)
This felt like a bonus episode of Halt and Catch Fire. If you haven't seen it, it's the story of a fictional Texan calculator company entering the frenzied IBM PC clone market. Period piece, skunk works, early hacker culture and surprisingly good character development - highly recommended.
"Business" is a broad topic, and trying to understand all of the different facets of it, in depth, in a short order of time, is probably not possible. But you can certainly get an overview of the different aspects and start getting a feel for what areas appeal to you, and get the foundation you need to grow from.
There are a lot of different ways you can accomplish this, ranging from reading books, taking classes, watching videos, talking to people in person, attending meetings, listening to podcasts... even watching television programs.
I'm in a meeting right now so can't focus a lot of attention on this right this second, but I'll drop a couple of thoughts based on my own experience. Later I'll try to come back and edit this, or reply to it, with some more thoughts.
Books:
1. The Art of the Start by Guy Kawaski
2. The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
3. Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore
4. Purple Cow - Seth Godin
Consider also biographies of business figures you may be familiar with, and historical accounts of important events in the business world.
Podcasts:
1. The Stanford "ecorner" Podcast series. https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/
Classes:
1. You might consider something like BUS-101 "Introduction to Business" or whatever at a local community college if that's an option. If you were to go that route, I'd also recommend taking a "Intro to Marketing" and "Intro to Business Law" courses as well. Those three topics give you a lot of foundational knowledge.
2. I have not done this yet myself, but taking an Accounting class (or two) has often been recommended to me, and I do believe it's a good idea. Accounting is the "language of business" in many ways, and understanding cash flow, profit and loss, etc., are pretty important concepts for any business-person.
TV shows:
1. There are a lot of TV shows that are both entertaining and also contain useful exposure to various aspects of business and can be somewhat didactic. Of course the challenge may be picking out the real parts from the bits that are dramatized / fictionalized to an excessive degree. That said, consider some shows like Halt and Catch Fire, Billions, Power, Dallas, etc.
Events:
1. (Once they start occurring again) Consider attending networking events that may occur near you, that are "business oriented". That can cover a lot of ground, but you can meet a lot of people, start building a network of connections, possibly find mentor(s), etc. I'd mostly avoid sales / lead swap specific groups for now, as well as most "startup oriented" events, and look for something more general. Events put on by groups like the local "Chamber of Commerce" etc. are usually good.
The whole TV show “Halt and Catch Fire” was basically about serial failure by a bunch of technically minded narcissists. I’ve never related more to a television show. Notably, it got ignominiously cancelled.
I think failure is bad entertainment.
Halt and Catch Fire is the only show I ever watched where I watched the intro[0] for every episode. The beat is perfect with the animation. It being 30 seconds also helps.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD_kCKiSkoI
I had to look up the guy that actually designed it, and I realized they have pretty much made all the intro cinematics I adore from TV shows.
Westworld, American Gods, Man in the High Castle and Halt and Catch Fire.
https://www.artofthetitle.com/designer/raoul-marks/
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/halt-and-catch-fire/
If you guys liked Halt and Catch Fire, I'd also like to recommend:
- Pirates of Silicon Valley (this largely follows Gates and Jobs): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
- Micro Men (this is about the British tech scene in the 80s): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/
Honestly, I read the entire first season as a self aware meta-commentary on how the show was supposed to take Mad Men's place in the AMC lineup but was merely a shallow facsimile.
In addition, I see Mad Men's episode "The Monolith", about a computer being installed in the office, as a comment on the (at that point) upcoming Halt and Catch Fire series.
As a counter-example of this phenomenon I think the character of Joe MacMillan from Halt and Catch Fire moved away from being a sociopathic manipulator with infinite charisma in the first two seasons and ended up as someone with sincere/honest intentions and genuine empathy for others without needing to exploit them for his goals.
I was a little disappointed to see them tone down this aspect of his character, which made for some compelling scenarios in the first two seasons. Nonetheless I’m happy that they gave him a more nuanced arc, even if it did make for less captivating TV.
Granted, the show is not a sitcom, so perhaps it’s not a great example.
They should just hire the people that made Halt and Catch Fire[1] to make a show about the creation of the first mac based on the www.folklore.org stories.
[1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
This reminds me of the TV show Halt and Catch Fire, which kind of portrays something similar!
There's a clip from the first episode of the show "Halt and Catch Fire" (which is a historical fiction show with each season hitting some breakthrough in personal computing, starting with IBM-compatible compact personal computers) where one character tells another, "Computer's aren't The Thing. They're the thing that gets us to The Thing."
I share it occasionally with friends to remind them of this. Computers are just tools. The really interesting question is what those tools can do for us.
One of the meta plots in TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" really emphasizes this point.
I can give you the names of a handful of books that might be useful. Some are more technical, some less so. Some are more about personalities, some about the business aspects of things, some more about the actual technology. I don't really have time to try and categorize them all, so here's a big dump of the ones I have and/or am familiar with that seem at least somewhat related.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fred+brooks&qid=1595010976&s=books&sr=1-1
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Levy/dp/1449388396/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hackers+heroes&qid=1595010072&s=books&sr=1-1
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cuckoo%27s+egg&qid=1595010272&s=books&sr=1-1
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet - https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VVOETG6ECK3Y&dchild=1&keywords=where+wizards+stay+up+late&qid=1595008923&s=books&sprefix=where+wizards+%2Cstripbooks%2C192&sr=1-1
Open: How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing - https://www.amazon.com/Open-Compaq-Domination-Helped-Computing/dp/1937856992/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=open+how+compaq&qid=1595009400&s=books&sr=1-1
Decline and Fall of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Yourdon-1993-06-16/dp/B01FKSGVQ8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=decline+and+fall+of+the+american+programmer&qid=1595011243&s=books&sr=1-1
Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/dp/013121831X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rise+and+resurrection+yourdon&qid=1595011380&s=books&sr=1-1
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date - https://www.amazon.com/Robert-X-Cringely/dp/0887308554/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2U1MSOCMFGBLX&dchild=1&keywords=accidental+empires+by+robert+x.+cringely&qid=1595011791&s=books&sprefix=accidental+empires%2Cstripbooks%2C216&sr=1-1
Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle - https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-Oracle/dp/0743225058/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=softwar+ellison&qid=1595009420&s=books&sr=1-1
Winners, Losers & Microsoft - https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Competition-Independent/dp/0945999801/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=winners+losers+and+microsoft&qid=1595009438&s=books&sr=1-1
Microsoft Secrets - https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Secrets-audiobook/dp/B019G2YO7M/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=microsoft+secrets&qid=1595009457&s=books&sr=1-1
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture - https://www.amazon.com/The-Friendly-Orange-Glow-audiobook/dp/B0777XSZKW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=friendly+orange+glow&qid=1595009476&s=books&sr=1-1
Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age - https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-Coming-Age/dp/1451651511/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=troublemakers+silicon&qid=1595009493&s=books&sr=1-1
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire - https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hard+drive+bill+gates&qid=1595009517&s=books&sr=1-1
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=masters+of+doom&qid=1595009533&s=books&sr=1-1
The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and The Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer - https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Supercomputer/dp/0471048852/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+supermen+seymour&qid=1595009554&s=books&sr=1-1
Bitwise: A Life in Code - https://www.amazon.com/Bitwise-Life-Code-David-Auerbach/dp/1101972149/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bitwise+life+in+code&qid=1595009570&s=books&sr=1-1
Gates - https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Microsofts-Reinvented-Industry-Himself/dp/0671880748/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=%22gates%22+paul+andrews&qid=1595009629&s=books&sr=1-1
We Are The Nerds - https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Nerds-audiobook/dp/B07H5Q5JGS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=we+are+the+nerds&qid=1595009644&s=books&sr=1-1
A People's History of Computing In The United States - https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-States/dp/0674970977/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=people%27s+history+of+computing&qid=1595009661&s=books&sr=1-1
Fire In The Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer - https://www.amazon.com/Fire-in-Valley-audiobook/dp/B071YYZJG5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fire+in+the+valley&qid=1595009680&s=books&sr=1-1
How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone - https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone/dp/1631493078/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=how+the+internet+happened&qid=1595009697&s=books&sr=1-1
Steve Jobs - https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jobs+isaacson&qid=1595009754&s=books&sr=1-1
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=idea+factory&qid=1595009769&s=books&sr=1-1
Coders - https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-World/dp/0735220565/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=coders&qid=1595010398&s=books&sr=1-1
Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software - https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-Scott-Rosenberg-audiobook/dp/B00AQ5DOCA/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dreaming+in+code&qid=1595010517&s=books&sr=1-1
The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency - https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-Top-Secret/dp/0316371661/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=darpa&qid=1595010561&s=books&sr=1-1
The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World - https://www.amazon.com/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-Changed/dp/0804169721/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=darpa&qid=1595010618&s=books&sr=1-2
The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-Engineering/dp/0321903420/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=history+of+software+engineering&qid=1595010761&s=books&sr=1-2
Also...
"The Mother of All Demos" by Doug Englebart - https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY
"Jobs vs Gates" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Vs-Gates-Hippie-Nerd/dp/B077KB96MC/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-2
"Welcome to Macintosh" - https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Macintosh-Guy-Kawasaki/dp/B00E9Q2GG2/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-3
"Pirates of Silicon Valley" - https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-Noah-Wyle/dp/B0009NSCS0/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-4
"Jobs" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Ashton-Kutcher/dp/B00GME2NCG/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-5
And while not a documentary, or meant to be totally historically accurate, the TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" captures a lot of the feel of the early days of the PC era, through to the advent of the Internet era.
https://www.amazon.com/I-O/dp/B00KCXJCEK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=U6Z2PPRSDD0R&dchild=1&keywords=halt+and+catch+fire&qid=1595009969&s=movies-tv&sprefix=halt+and+c%2Cmovies-tv%2C188&sr=1-1
And there's a ton of Macintosh history stuff captured at:
https://www.folklore.org/
I found Halt and Catch Fire to be entertaining. It's not really historical or technical, but shows the politics of a fictional company (based loosely on Compaq) related to technology. Keri Bishe is also very attractive with auburn hair.
There have been a couple movies about Steve Jobs. I think netflix has some stuff about Microsoft and Bill Gates. I think there's also a BBC produced film about algorithms on Netflix, although it's very basic.
"Those documentaries you watched on your old CRT TV while growing up were showing you fiction."
Ironically perhaps a truer picture of the industry was probably the fiction series "Halt and Catch Fire".
thanks for the link! i really liked the series, but forgot to bookmark it and couldn't find it after. the Windows series starts here: https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/doing-windows-part-1-ms-dos-and-its-discontents/ honestly, it could probably be made into a Halt And Catch Fire-style miniseries, it's so good. actually i think i'll re-read it now :)
"New Tricks For An Old Z-Machine" was great too!
Halt and Catch Fire seasons 1 and 2.
As a follow-up, anyone have any books written about the Dotcom era? I was still fairly young at the time so I don’t remember a lot of it and I can’t find any books or shows that cover it. Lots of stuff from the 70s/80s/early 90s (Masters of Doom, Cuckoos Egg, Halt and Catch Fire, Pirates of Silicon Valley), and lots of stuff from modern Silicon Valley (Bad Blood, Silicon Valley, the various Steve Jobs movies/books) but it seems like the startup world from 1995 to 2002 is just a blank space waiting to be filled.
What about Yahoo and Amazon and Pets.com and Webvan and eBay? What about stock being used for toilet paper and employees wheeling their Aeron chairs home when the company folded? What about Enron? How did 9/11 impact the Dotcom bust? Hell, what programming languages/frameworks were they using?
+1 on "The Soul of a New Machine": it's one of the most mentioned computer history books, and inspired the great "Halt and Catch Fire" TV series.
>focuses more on the characters personal problems and whether or not they get married/divorced/sleep with each other.
This is an unfair summary. There might be a divorce (does no one in the tech world get divorced?), and a relationship (that starts in Season 1, Episode 1 and is a driver of the plot), but it is nowhere near about "who sleeps with who". The show has good character development; would you rather the people not do anything in life, over the 15 or so years the show covers?
Halt and Catch Fire is great television that loosely follows the technology arc/personal computing age from the early 1980s through the 2000s. It has great acting and characters, including two strong female leads. If you go in thinking it's going to be about people sitting around "solving hard problems on computers", yes, you will be disappointed. There are coding screencasts for that.
It's a shame to discourage someone from watching wonderful television about a subject we're all here for.
I feel like I'm watching an episode of Halt and Catch Fire. Thanks for sharing!
The third puzzle mentions Halt and Catch Fire, a brilliant TV show about innovation and the lives of the (fictional) people behind it.
Semi-related but if you enjoy the history around the internet and computing, I highly recommend watching Halt and Catch Fire (it's on Netflix). I just finished watching it for the first time and what a treat it was.
Reading this article, sounds like Cameron Howe’s game from the TV series Halt and Catch Fire (which in turn was a fictional precursor to Myst and Tomb Raider).
Revisit a scene from the great Halt and Catch Fire tv show, where a meeting is had that touches on a lot of points capturing the vibe and new world ahead back then. (minus some actual show drama) So good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3C3LBSPlk
Of all the shows you mentioned the only ones I have watched is, OITB (left it at after watching S04 I think), Master of None (both the seasons), I realise that its a drama that leans toward being a rom-com but I do not watch rom-coms at all. Kudos to Mindhunter, indeed that was entertaining and right in my ballpark. Liked House of cards till the time Spacey was there, S06 disappointed me. Season 1 of Making a Murderer was outstanding, season 2 didn't catch my interest. Also the last comedy I watched end-to-end I think was Entourage (which was produced by HBO), The Office (US) and Parks And Recreation, not surprisingly Netflix doesn't stream any of these in my region, Prime Video does the last two and Hotstar streams Entourage.
These are good shows not great ones like The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, BB, Six Feet Under you know about the stuff that critics rave about etc. I don't care if Birdbox was watched by all of Netflix's subscribers, thats precisely the sort of thing that I don't watch the majority of the time, you watch that thing once and you forget that you ever watched it again. I'm now on probably my sixth or seventh rewatch of The Wire, that should tell you something about my viewing habits and why Netflix's content just doesn't work for me. I don't expect a network to consistenly churn out shows like that but at least some of the shows should be somewhere close to that level which HBO continues to do with The Deuce, Succession, True Detective(I know they fucked the dog on S02) etc.
Also you have the time to watch ALL of that, I don't. I work in tech too, I have an hour on weekdays and maybe 2-3 on weekends for leisure, so its only natural that I would be picky about what I watch, the absolute best, currently that would mean shows like The Americans, Escape from Dannemora and shows from the past like Halt and Catch Fire(from AMC), Six feet under, Deadwood which not surpisingly were also made by HBO. Netflix doesn't stream any of that.
I also don't understand how you think AMC won't exist, are they going to be insolvent ? Doesn't look like it, they have a cash-cow in The Walking Dead(I only watched till S06 then got bored) They got two of the best TV shows I liked BB and BCS, BCS is gonna kill it in the next season. They also produced The Terror, a brilliant mini-series which Netflix didn't stream as well and again Prime Video did. As a viewer I don't care about Netflix's subscriber numbers or HBO's lack thereof, I want to watch content I like which sadly Netflix doesn't produce on a consistent basis, this is entirely subjective and I realise that I might be one of the edge-cases in all the millenials when I say Netflix don't tickly my fancy.
I'm not biased towards HBO, hell HBO doesn't even stream in my country, I'm incredibly picky about what I watch since I'm short on time, Netflix churns out a LOT of shows, its only natural that some of them turn out to be brilliant and some of them indeed are, but the rest, like 90% of the shows are just average, they don't work for me, I simply do not have the time to watch them.
In that sense, Netflix is like the Y-Combinator of producing original content. You produce(invest in) hundreds of TV shows(startups) and hope one of them makes it big (becomes a unicorn) and the rest of them, well they would be probably cease to exist after some time.
Think you'll get a kick out of this scene from Halt and Catch Fire:
https://youtu.be/XOR8mk0tLpc?t=54 [0]
[0] Sales call scene with Joe and Gordon in Halt and Catch Fire: Season 1 Episode 1
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
>Was also a bit bizarre that about 6 of them came along to a meeting with 4 of us
Ever seen that scene in Halt and Catch Fire where IBM comes to meet with the small company and a hundred IBMers flood into the office? That's the most accurate scene I've ever seen in any movie or TV show ever.
This reads like the show bible for season 2 of Halt and Catch Fire. I thought the technical details of that season were all wrong, but, guess not.
Still, all a skill set of experience that has it's uses today and when it comes to IRQ sharing and all those years the golden leason is read the motherboard documentation and don't assume shipping defaults jumpers/setting can be wrong.
Still, before AGP we had VESA, also around the time of MCA and IBM's attempt to capture some copyright patent control back from the expanding PC market and BIOS clones ("Halt and Catch Fire" Season one well worth a watch if you missed that era in life).
Yes pre Windows 95 was a fine art, from tweaking DOS memory, to optimising windows .ini files and then the fun of having to dial up Microsoft's patch BBS for a TCP/IP stack.
But top-end gaming PC's back then, sure made less noise.
If things really are so dire in...33 years, then it won't be Facebook or Google's fault, it'll be the fault of hundreds of thousands of hackers who had the technology available and did nothing because everyone knows those two are unbeatable, despite the fact that the tech gets cheaper and more accessible every single day.
We've got a long way to go. They're not unbeatable. They're massive goliaths, yes, but they also bloated and slow to adapt, can't focus on any one thing, and don't have consumer loyalty. They can be beaten. Not saying they will, but they can.
Side note, Halt and Catch Fire, which has always tried to be technically accurate starts focusing a lot on the early web in season 3 and 4. CERN, NeXTcubes, and related all make an appearance. It's a fun watch if you are interested in that stuff. The pilot starts with them reverse engineering an IBM PC.
"Anyone who can write a BBS for a Vic-20 can program!"
Truth. Out of curiosity, have you watched any "Halt and Catch Fire" (the tv show)? I'm curious to know if it's similar to what you remember in the mid-80's. Info from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
I've been watching a TV called "Halt and Catch Fire", about the early PC industry in the 1980's. I've enjoyed it very much, but sometimes I feel like the writers sacrifice historical plausibility to create strong female leads for a contemporary audience.
Ironically, so many of the GIANTS of computing's earliest days were female. Even at the rank-and-file level, women made up an astonishing number of early programmers. If you talk to retirement age people in our field, you'll find that mainframe developers were commonly female all through the 1960's and 1970's. It wasn't until the PC revolution that the field shifted to become more exclusively male.
I wonder when we'll see writers and TV/film producers start to explore that period of history? I'm sure there are some amazing stories that could be told. The crazy thing is, even if you just presented the field as-is without any embellishment, most people would assume that you were re-writing history in the name of political correctness. Most of the general public (hell, most young professionals in our field) just has no idea about this.
I was watching the penultimate episode of Halt and Catch Fire Season 3 this morning while doing my morning run at the gym. Towards the end of the episode, Donna faxes over a document about this great new invention, she recently encountered as a VC, called the 'WorldWideWeb' to Joe. Pretty coincidental :) Thanks, Tim!
Off topic but Halt and Catch Fire season three was my favorite yet. There is some drama that the characters mostly bring on themselves (Can and Joe) but after watching some episodes of the show Suits (Scandal has the same issue) the drama in Halt and Catch Fire is barely noticeable.
Would be awesome to use InstantWatcher to show a link (if exists) to stream on Netflix or Amazon, etc.
And not a movie, but Halt and Catch Fire should be on there somewhere...
Posted here because it's the topic of the Season 3 finale of Halt and Catch Fire?
>Halt and Catch Fire
I've gotten behind but what I've seen strikes me as reasonably accurate although I wonder to what degree later episodes are sort of overlaying a stereotype of today's silicon valley onto that era. I admittedly worked for a large east coast computer maker at the time but I think the overall busines culture even at smaller companies was a lot more buttoned down at the time.
The first season captured Comdex well enough to give me unwelcome flashbacks :-)
I was too young to use BBS when it started but the topic fascinates me, especially after having read Hackers and The Innovators.
Not to hijack the topic, but has anyone watched the show Halt and Catch Fire (available on Netflix)? I'm curious how accurately that show captures the culture of that era.
Would love any additional reading recommendations around BBS' emergence as well. Already bookmarked the documentary series: https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary
Why? Are you writing an episode of halt and catch fire?
As vblord and others have said: you need to work on the product if ultimately you want it to grow.
But here's another way you can make some money with 3k users: sell something to them. As some have said, things like custom emojis, digital roses, etc, might work. But think outside of the tech box and offer to sell actual physical things e.g. a user could buy flowers for another user and you take care of the service and take a cut out of it.
There's actually a show right now on tv called "Halt and Catch Fire" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/ best show ever about tech imho) and they're trying to grow a startup who's service is a chat service!
Its a decent and sometimes good show but certainly not one of the greats, and has more than a few major flaws. I'll try to minimize spoilers.
1. The plotline is pretty much Fight Club with computers and telegraphs this early on. This is clearly not on purpose as we see hints dropped all the time and the reveal is given with such a flourish. Lets stop defending Esmail here. The reveal is really hamfisted and the show borrows VERY generously from Fight Club, for better or worse.
2. The twists are largely unpredictable. Sure you can argue that some clues were dropped beforehand, but they're so ambiguous as to be meaningless. Anything can happen on that show and to me, that's lazy writing. The universe that show lives in should have a rational set of rules that govern it. Its basic world-building. If the finale involves aliens or time travel, it woudn't surprise anyone, in fact /r/mrrobot is full of people expecting this. Anything should not be possible, especially when you're 30+ hours in.
3. The pacing isn't very good and gets especially bad in season 2. I don't think we needed several episodes dedicated to Elliot being in [spoilers] or other events that look stretched out to fill episodes. This is a common issue in TV, and I'll let it slide, but the first few episodes of S2 are like pulling teeth and turns off viewers. I know people that quit watching during this period. Its a hard sell to say "Look there's about 10 hours of nothing, but it kinda picks up after an experimental episode where the characters are bizarrely on a 90s sitcom for artsy fartsy cred."
4. The content is lacking. My understanding is that Esmail and his team originally wrote a movie and pretty much retrofitted that into one season of television. Once the [big event] happens in season one, the show lost its footing. I would have loved to spend more time at Allsafe instead of jumping straight into [big event].
5. The politics and hacktivism are pretty naive, if not just stupid. Its a lot of alt-left/far-left politics and having the characters act dumbfounded and guilty when regular people lost their homes and jobs seems ridiculous. What exactly did they think would happen after [big event]? We never really get to see anyone's moviation for this, other than some throwaway comments about "evil bankers" and "evil ceos." We know Elliot has a secret motivation and master plan (of course we have no details of it), but what about Trent and Mobley and Darlene? Why are they doing this? None of them remotely seem to have the zeal of a revolutionary and very soon regret all their actions. Its like some middle class hipster kids decided to overthrow society on a whim.
6. The show has a lot geek fan service where it can alienate non-geeks. I think its possible to show hacking without getting into the weeds of it and have it be semi-authentic. I can go either way here, but it would be nice if the show was more accessible to people like my wife and her friends.
7. The exploration of mental illness seems hackneyed and, well, boring. Season 2's long strange cinematography focusing on Elliot's tortured face just doesn't make for good TV. I think this stuff works best in small doses and has been done better by almost everyone else, including season 1 of this very show! Thankfully, Esmail has moved away from this kind of thing about mid-way through S2.
8. Whiterose as an unstoppable mastermind is a cliche and she's tiresome to watch on the show. Writers please stop using the mastermind cliche and start making your characters have flaws and screw-ups. For a show that's suppose to be complex, most of the characters aren't terribly deep or anti-cliche. Its almost distasteful to play up "the Chinese are inscrutable" cliche and have almost all the Chinese characters be unstoppable, unpredictable, and near perfect robots, constantly toying with the dumb and emotional westerners. We see the Dark Army, Chinese state hackers, the CCP, etc win pretty much every engagement but the FBI is clueless and there's no NSA or CIA at work at all here.
9. Less so than Whiterose, but Price is written to be stereotypically evil. He's only missing a mustache to twirl. I wish he was a more complex character, not just a sociopathic CEO who cares about nothing but himself. This doesn't necessarily upset me considering the general low complexity of secondary characters on this show, but the actor playing Price is so good, it seems like a waste of talent for him to play a two dimensional character. Price has a lot of potential that has so far been ignored and perhaps anything humanizing him would upset the far-left politics of the show, which I find disappointing.
10. The show has slowly degenerated into Lost, where meaningless clues lead to a surprise. Fans argue on /r/mrrobot but no one is ever right because its all so damn ambigious. Or someone is right, but only by dumb luck or perhaps marketing plants. I wish the show had less of a mysterious air about it. I also don't like the marketing led approach of "Check out the finale to get the real answers you've been waiting for all season!"
I feel this show is a bit like Halt and Catch Fire. Its decent, but not very good and is constantly trying to find its footing. Like Halt, I suspect it will never really find its proper footing and will be passable geek popcorn fare with moments of brilliance. It doesn't seem to be reaching out past modest ratings. I've heard comparisons to Breaking Bad, but BB had a general appeal that Mr Robot doesn't.
That said, this is destined to live in geek fandom, which frankly has a low barrier to entry. I just wish it was a better and more accessible show. I do look forward to the shows that will be made after being inspired by this. Mr Robot 2.0 will be good. 1.0 is just too uneven and unfocused. Compare how tight Walter White's world was or the world of The Wire compared to the manic world of Mr Robot or how complex and flawed the secondary characters were on that show compared to Mr Robots'. Those are mature and very good shows. Mr Robot? Not so much.
Not a typical recommendation, but they actually created a not half-bad Television series out of the story. From everything I've read on the subject, the first season of the show actually does stay pretty close to how things actually went down (with some 'dramatic' elements slightly embellished since it is on TV after all). The story is worth reading about (sorry for no recommendations on this), and the show, at least the first season which concerns this issue in particular, is worth watching as well if the topic interests you. The show is called 'Halt and Catch Fire'
I personally didn't like the humor of the show and stopped watching it after 3 or 4 episodes.
On a related note, a few days ago [1] Marc Andreessen recommended another show based on startup culture: Halt and Catch Fire [2]
I haven't seen it, but I will probably give it a shot.
[1] http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/?ref_=wl_li_tt
Isn't this superficially similar to the Westgroup storyline in season 2 of Halt and Catch Fire?
That's exactly what this article is about - the full title is: "THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY BEHIND AMC’S HALT AND CATCH FIRE – HOW COMPAQ CLONED IBM AND CREATED AN EMPIRE".
The show is fantastic. Season 2 was good as well, but I still liked S01 a little better.
There's a great show on Netflix that's a fictional retelling of the engineers reverse engineering the BIOS for their first IBM clones. Highly stylized, but (I've only seen the first season) a fun watch.
"Halt and Catch Fire" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/
There is also the TV-series "Halt and Catch Fire".
Slightly related movie suggestions, based on their interruptive theme: "Field of Dreams", "Moneyball", "The Wolfs of Wall Street"
In Halt and Catch Fire, the show on AMC, this becomes a plot point for a few episodes in the first season.
Have you watched 'Halt and catch fire'?
The first or second episode sets up a legal battle, and the main character basically points out his company's staff lawyer to the opposition and says something to the effect of "We pay him $X, you can put hundreds of lawyers on this suit, we'll just have him."
More like a Halt and Catch Fire episode
My friends in the industry seem to like it a lot, but I couldn't make it through the first episode. It's like the sterile hybrid of BBC Sherlock and Fight Club, with the computer plotline of the movie Hackers and DDOS substituted for Gibsons.
If you're watching Mr. Robot now and haven't watched at least the first two seasons of BBC Sherlock, stop what you're doing and switch shows.
Halt and Catch Fire was, I thought, a lot better than some of the reviews I'd read.
Take a look at "Halt and Catch Fire" which is now in season 2. It is set in the 1980's but follows the birth and death of early computer companies and pioneers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)
Definitely darker with back stabbing, manipulation, egos, fortunes won and lost, etc.
http://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire
Who wants to be Jobs or Gates or Zuckerberg anyway?
Of course we all do, but that's pure ego. Each one of them was brilliant, there is no discounting that, but you also can't ignore the role that luck played. You can't just be brilliant and you can't just be lucky, you really have to be both to have the kind of success they did. It's not surprising that they are anomalies, hoping to recreate their success is like hoping to find a winning lottery ticket.
We shouldn't put any of them on a pedestal anyway. The empires of each of them was built on locking people into their closed systems at any cost. Jobs did some remarkable things, Zuck seems like he's going to do positive things with his fortune, and Gates might eliminate the world of a lot of disease, but you only have to look at past cutthroat titans like Andrew Carnegie to know that redemptive actions like that leave behind at best an ambiguous legacy.
There was a great piece on Grantland this week talking about Silicon Valley, Halt and Catch Fire, and Microserfs. It had this bit which I thought was really interesting:
"The moment reads two ways. Either it’s about Zuckerberg, for all his billions, being Just Like Us — a slave to the same digital toy to which we’ve subcontracted management of our memories, our personal interactions, and our sense of self-worth — or it’s about how Facebook, born of Zuckerberg’s sense of exclusion, has made us just like him. The notion that the tech visionaries whose inventions colonize our daily lives are actually uploading the virus of their personalities to the global unconscious is an idea that floats through The Social Network; it’s the engine that powers Alex Gibney’s forthcoming documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, which stops just short of postulating that every iPhone includes a fragment of poor angry uncharitable emotionally stunted Steve’s immortal soul, like a sliver of wormwood from Mordor."
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/silicon-valley-halt-catch-fire-microserfs-douglas-coupland/
If you want to be like Zuck, what is it about you that you are going to infect the world with?
Oddly, I learned about Gary Kildall a few days ago after reading a wired article about the "Halt and Catch Fire" tv series ( http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/ )
"Easter eggs: Gordon and Donna Clarks’ first initials and back story echo those of Gary and Dorothy Kildall"
A&E's TV series 'Halt and Catch Fire' (IMDB rating: 8.2) picks up the story in the 80's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_%28TV_series%29
Season 1 is available on NetFlix.
They can.
There are a few use cases here:
1. Massive pirate. Won't pay for anything. If we made it a perfect world, they would just mooch off other people in the extreme, never paying for anything.
They won't be customers. Ever. But they do talk about stuff, make recommendations, etc... So they can be leveraged in that way. Show them an AD, or have them do some other minor league thing of value, and trade on that for some value. Good as it gets.
And it's important to factor these people in. Their copies and views don't devalue anything. Ignore their $0, and consider anything of value derived from their mindshare as a bonus.
2. Casual pirate. These people will pay, but don't want to be annoyed. Good service, making it easy, etc... all counts, and massive numbers of them will subscribe to lots of things. Cord cutters fall in to this bucket too. Cut out the $150 cable bill, and sign up for a few services, then buy things on top of that. Big cable loses a revenue stream, but content creators and service providers gain one.
3. Buyer. They typically have more means than most, and just pay because it's not a big impact to them. Upper middle class and above here mostly.
What people make, and what $10 means to them is absolutely a factor in how to compete with free works. The difference between #2 and #3 here is important.
Secondly, entertainment dollars are largely fixed for many people. Actually, my experience is this is true for most people. There is some flex in it, but there aren't billions laying around unspent somehow as most entertainment centric arguments imply. Most people have a coupla hundred bucks to spend. And the various forms of entertainment compete too. A summer of good movies? Yeah, maybe buy one less game.
Recognition of this means understanding price points, incentives to spend and how / when / why to compete with other entertainment forms to optimize revenue. Very little is being said about this, but we are seeing flat rate services compete fairly well while delivering consistent revenue.
All of this is particularly relevant to #2 above.
Considering all of these together highlights some ways to compete with free.
Be the free source. Pirating has some negatives attached to it. So side step those and give people options that can send value your way.
Increasingly, it's possible to stream now. I am a fan of AMC "Halt And Catch Fire" and do not have cable. I can't go and buy AMC just yet, and they didn't put the show on the services I do subscribe to.
On a quick check, there it was! Right there on the AMC site, and they want me to watch an AD, maybe participate in the little activities and potentially do other things in return for my eyeballs on the show.
Result?
Incentive to pirate goes way down. I've got a path in, and would gladly have gave them money for the views too.
Cory Doctrow does this with his books too. If you want to read 'em, he's the source for that. Grab and go. If you want to translate, or do fan derivatives, he will source that too.
I did that with "Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom", and really liked his work. Bought a lot of hard copies of his stuff since then. Had it not been that easy and obvious, I might have gotten some PDF, or other, or more likely, not done anything and would not know the guy at all.
Mindshare matters. Buying it with views to compete is a perfectly valid business model. And giving people options like sharing / recommending / gifting means those who can pay with dollars will, and those who can't or won't, can do some work that leads to dollars. It's all dollars in the end, done right.
So there are a couple of ways right there. Both compete with free, both leverage mindshare to get some value while at the same time offering purchase opportunities.
The more of this there is, the less people will pirate, leaving us with just that use case #1 above, and there is nothing to be done with those people, other than to leverage their mindshare somehow.
Maximizing revenue is all about the other use cases and recognition of the nature of entertainment dollars and pricing on that understanding, IMHO.
I've been really impressed by the TV show Halt And Catch Fire in this regard, the sales guy is slightly incorrect as a sales guy would be, but the engineers are bang-on.