10Broad36

Halt and Catch Fire 2×6

& Joe: I’ve been knocking around tech for a long time, always working to the next new thing.
    Tom: Well, time-sharing’s not that new...
    Joe: Time-sharing’s just a way in. CompuServe started as a division of a life insurance company, then got bought by H&R Block who wanted to diversify. Now it’s a 500-pound gorilla in the world of commercial online service.

& Tom: So, how are you guys handling security? Are you multiplexing them in from an SNA network from the modem banks with task-switching...
    Joe: Comes a time when vision meets engineering... you hire people.

& Donna: Benchmarks?..
    Joe: For example, when I log onto Mutiny, the main screen, it’s boring. There’s a company in Houston that has news and weather as soon as you log on. Delphi has a travel agency. There’s an outfit in Galveston that has a stock ticker updated hourly. That’s the kind of thing that makes me the user want to stay longer.

& Donna: What? What is it that you need?
    Joe: Mutiny currently runs exclusively on Commodore 64s, right? 64s will be boat anchors by ’88. In the meantime, UNIX is poised to explode. If Mutiny could port to a machine that runs UNIX, say the new AT&T box, I think I could justify a lower price.
    Donna: But UNIX is a completely different operating system! That’s a major coding overhaul...

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& Donna: Could we fake an online connection?.. Have Joe dial into the network, but he’s actually just linked to another Commodore in the house?
    Cameron: I have completely corrupted you.

& Gordon: You know, it’s so interesting who we grow up to be... Have you ever thought about who you could’ve been if you’d have taken a different path?

& Joe: Here’s the interesting part. Just to avoid doing it, they ended up using a sophisticated Ethernet encode and streaming data over line they were using to steal pay television. The technology is called broadband. So new it’s only being used in a couple college campuses and military bases. Commercially it’s too expensive and there’s not nearly enough line laid, but...
    Jacob: But?..
    Joe: 10 years from now, it’ll likely make modems irrelevant. These kids rigged it up on their own in a day.

& Joe: I think we should acquire them.

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