Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ButlerianJihad 17 days ago
You must be joking about Jurassic Park, right?

The systems in Jurassic Park are clearly and obviously running IRIX on SGI workstations, and the girl character says as much when she recognizes Unix. The file system navigator app is famous from its appearance there.

Plan 9 has never been portrayed as a running system in Hollywood, because it has never run any system of consequence in real life either.

2 comments

In fact, it was quickly superseded by Inferno and Limbo, in AT&T race to compete with JavaOS, which is why Dis also got initial support to convert between bytecode formats.

Overall, after the sale to Vita Nuova, one could assert Inferno has had much more real commercial use than Plan 9 has ever had outside Bell Labs.

Yet Plan 9 fans seldom acknowledge it was a transition between UNIX and Inferno.

... it's a joke. A perfect example of how Plan 9 humor works.
I am unclear what the joke is here. GP appeared to be sincere because there is a still image from the film embedded in the FAQ for no reason.

The “joke” is not part of the FAQ. So, what actually is the joke? Has the joke been made in public forums before today? We're unable to find prior art concerning this joke or meme. Does "plan9 humor" consist mostly of making shit up?

If you look at the image from the film you will note it has the cat(?) clock of plan 9 fame. So its fairly obvious that the image is doctored.
Also her screen is running Doom, which wasn’t out when Jurassic Park was released (1989).
I know I'm probably missing a joke, but Jurassic Park came out in 1993.

Still, Doom was released after the movie, so unlikely it would be in Jurassic Park.

I don't know about the film, but the Jurassic Park novel is set in 1989.
the joke is that plan 9’s not UNIX, and thus does not run Jurassic Park. the absurdity arises from the fact that using such a capable operating system for dinosaur husbandry (im told this is what jurassic park is about) would be, frankly, philistine in nature.
So, falsehoods are jokes now? Hey guess what? I wrote xscreensaver! Haha, funny joke, right, philistine? Hilarious!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistinism

> So, falsehoods are jokes now?

Yes. It says so in the AT&T SysV R4 User's Manual.