Ask Slashdot: Worst Computer Scene In TV or Movies? 1200
Cuban Devil writes "Yesterday I rented a copy of The Social Network. I won't comment on the story, but the Zuckerberg character's narrated performance on hacking Harvard servers made me wonder: what's the worst computer-related acting performance ever? I leave here my vote: Independence Day, when I had to see Mr. Goldblum upload a virus, using a Mac, when it did not connect even to an ethernet network, compromising the entire alien fleet. What other major technological gaffes have you seen?"
Agree (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Was Independence Day a film?
Yes, it was a documentary shot in real time. Duh.
Re:Agree (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Agree (Score:5, Interesting)
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AlienOS has the same problems (Score:5, Funny)
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That's like studying an IBM 1401 for 50 years and then hacking a PC with current software in an hour.
I agree.
However, do you really think the "alien space fleet" had just rolled off the assembly line? The ships that invaded, might well be the same vintage as the one that crashed 50 years ago.
Consider how much of the space shuttle is still 1970s tech... or wander into a mnaufacturing plant and see that MSDOS is still running things, or visit the mainframes running cobol applications from years ago at the hea
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Of course, Grace Hopper was an alien, from a race of intelligent orthoptera. The name gives it away.
That's why they have the insect she found in the Smithsonian museum... it was a fellow programmer.
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They actually had a good set up, but blew it. Remember, the military had been tinkering with their own crashed alien ship for decades. They could have worked out an interface between human and alien computers, had a pilot qualified to fly it, etc. Goldblum's character could have just provided some last critical puzzle piece. You could finagle some reason for Smith's character to come along.
Re:Agree (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but Goldblum had never seen their computers and wouldn't have the foggiest damned clue how to infect their OS.
...But he was using an Apple; "It just works."
Re:Agree (Score:4, Insightful)
From: CERT Bulletin
Date: 26 Jun 1996 15:43:18 GMT
Subject: CERT Advisory CA-96.13 - Alien/OS Vulnerability
Organization: CERT(sm) Coordination Center - +1 412-268-7090
Approved: cert-advisory@cert.org
Reply-To: cert-advisory-request@cert.org
Keywords: security CERT
Originator: cert-advisory@cert.org
CERT(sm) Advisory CA-96.13
July 4, 1996
Topic: ID4 virus, Alien/OS Vulnerability
The CERT Coordination Center has received reports of weaknesses in Alien/OS that can allow species with primitive information sciences technology to initiate denial-of-service attacks against MotherShip(tm) hosts. One report of exploitation of this bug has been received.
When attempting takeover of planets inhabited by such races, a trojan horse attack is possible that permits local access to the MotherShip host, enabling the implantation of executable code with full root access to mission-critical security features of the operating system.
The vulnerability exists in versions of EvilAliens' Alien/OS 34762.12.1 or later, and all versions of Microsoft's Windows/95. CERT advises against initiating further planet takeover actions until patches are available from these vendors. If planet takeover is absolutely necessary, CERT advises that affected sites apply the workarounds as specified below.
As we receive additional information relating to this advisory, we will place it in
ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.13.README [cert.org]
We encourage you to check our README files regularly for updates on advisories that relate to your site.
1. Description
Alien/OS contains a security vulnerability, which strangely enough can be exploited by a primitive race running Windows/95. Although Alien/OS has been extensively field tested over millions of years by EvilAliens, Inc., the bug was only recently discovered during a routine invasion of a backwater planet. EvilAliens notes that the operating system had never before been tested against a race with "such a kick-ass president."
The vulnerability allows the insertion of executable code with root access to key security features of the operating system. In particular, such code can disable the NiftyGreenShield (tm) subsystem, allowing child processes to be terminated by unauthorized users.
Additionally, Alien/OS networking protocols can provide a low-bandwidth covert timing channel to a determined attacker.
2. Impact
Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of your entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to files.
3. Solution
EvilAliens has supplied a workaround and a patch, as follows:
1. Workaround
To prevent unauthorized insertion of executables, install a firewall to selectively vaporize incoming packets that do not contain valid aliens. Also, disable the "Java" option in Netscape.
To eliminate the covert timing channel, remove untrusted hosts from routing tables. As tempting as it is, do not use target species' own satellites against them.
2. Patch
As root, install the "evil" package from the distribution tape.
(Optionally) save a copy of the existing /usr/bin/sendmai
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:All of them. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think "War Games" had a measure of accuracy, where the cracker spent weeks researching the private life of a system developer to try to work out what he might have used as a back-door password. Compared, say, to one of the Superman films -- was it Superman IV? -- in which all the cracker had to do was type "Override all security".
And don't forget the back-handed accuracy of Airplane II:
"Have you worked out what all those flashing lights mean yet?"
"No, sir. We're working on it"
All but one. (Score:4)
Halle Berry, with a gun, and not much else. Makes up for a hell of a lot of plot holes.
Re:All of them. (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding. I can't believe that in this day and age when computers are ubiquitous that Hollywood is still treating them like semi-magic boxes.How many people are left in the US that still think that programmers do all their coding on multiple screes with nothing but spinning 3D graphics. This is especially prevalent when someone is "hacking" into a "secure" system. Half the time they show someone manipulating a strand of DNA and are just mashing together what a four year old kid would say that heard a parent talking about computers. Something like:
[Picture the monitor showing a fractal spinning on the screen with shiny spheres flying around and attaching to it randomly with techno music in the background]
Hacker guy: The firewall has 7337 -bit encryption. That's more options than there are atoms in a car
Hot chick: Really! So it's going to take you like two days to hack the NSA Excel 4-train database. Are you using the Bernoulli quadratic equation?
Hacker guy: No, I'm already past the firewall. I dropped in a logic bomb and spammed the secure email SQL server with a hydra worm.
Bad guy: Wow, it took Linus 14 hours on a Cray XMP Beowulf cluster linked to a direct fiber-channel modulator to do what you did in 17 seconds.
Hacker guy: Yeah, I know. Just think how much faster I could have done it if you hadn't shot my best friend five minutes ago, didn't have a knife in my back, and I didn't have to power the mainframe with this hamster wheel.
Bad guy: It'll all be over soon. Once you get the launch codes for the neutron bomb from the ZX81 RAM pack.
Re:All of them. (Score:5, Funny)
Hi, this is Jerry Bruckheimer, we read your script and we'd like to hire you on as head writer for the newest show in our franchise; CSI Fuvk Ya!
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Thorny: "Enhance."
*tickatickaticka*
Thorny: "Enhance."
*tickatickaticka*
Thorny: "Enhance."
*tickatickaticka*
Thorny: "Enhance."
*tick...tick...*
O''Hagan: "JUST PRINT THE DAMN THING!"
Re:All of them. (Score:4, Interesting)
In some CSI type show I was watching the other day, they were able to "enhance" the footage from a security camera in order to "widen the field of view" and see someone "off camera".
I have to think writers just chuckle to themselves when they add something so silly.
Then you may be surprised to learn that there are security cameras that actually work that way, and are available now. You can buy a camera with a 180 degree fisheye lens and high resolution sensor that records everything within sight, and then run software that lets the user virtually pan and tilt in every direction, straightening the image so that it looks like it was shot by a normal security camera. I'm not saying that the CSI camera was one of these, but they do exist. Mobotix makes one that looks like a smoke detector.
In some situations the "enhance" that lets them "zoom in" on a face is also reality. If there is motion in the scene, such as you might get with a panning view of a scene or with a moving subject, the differences between frames holds extra information. There is frame stacking software available that can interpolate the edges between pixels. (Thierry Legault used this technology to produce some amazing images of the shuttle Discovery with a ground-based telescope, as reported on /. a few days ago http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/STS-133.html [perso.sfr.fr] .) By measuring the shift in values as those real edges approach the edge of a pixel, the software can extract enough information to figure out where the real edges are. You can kind of think of it as "ClearType in reverse" or "anti-aliasing in reverse". But of course this technique only works in certain circumstances, when the subject is moving in a fashion that is cooperative with the technology and resolution of the camera. Six frames of the back of a fleeing suspect's head is still not going to let you zoom in on the zit under his nose.
And these techniques are in use by video forensics analysts today. The lab guys I know may not be quite as sexy as the ones on TV, but they get results that yield convictions by making some pretty poor video useful in a courtroom. And I know the operators of these systems chuckle when their equipment helps bring down another bad guy.
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That image must have been taken with the standard 400,000 x 300,000 pixel security camera frequently used in cop shows.
Mission: Impossible (Score:3)
The usenet grep scene. *shudder*
Hackers, obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hackers, obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time they showed a screen in Hackers I giggled and enjoyed the movie without taking it too seriously.
Re:Hackers, obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Same reason Independence Day isn't the worst offender. Their computer scenes were as unrealistic as their physics which was as unrealistic as their politics. None of it was meant to be serious.
I find something like CSI much more annoying.
Re:Hackers, obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll just leave this here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU [youtube.com]
"I'll create a GUI using Visual Basic so I can track their IP address"
Re:Hackers, obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, this is exactly the right way to do it. it was a light-hearted romp which featured corporate malfeasance and corruption; liberated and powerful computer enthusiasts; an interestingly-clad Angelina Jolie; and a great period soundtrack. what exactly is wrong with any of this?
when i was in high school, it inspired a few otherwise-uninterested people to learn a little bit about computers, and was kind of a "cult classic" among those of us who already were. the people who were offended by it were (mostly) posers. i mean, come on, the tagline on the posters was "just when you thought it was safe to turn on your hard drive" or something ridiculous like that. it's pure cheese and that's just fun, no matter how serious it was meant to be (i suspect not at all).
also, "risc is good" was poetry compared to "it's got a 28.8 bee-pee-ess modem!" and "i bet it looks crispy in the dark."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are missing the point. Hackers was a FANTASTIC movie and it should be taken in a fairly tongue-in-cheek sort of way. If you're nit-picking Hackers, you're "doing it wrong".
I can't remember the movie, but a very long time ago, there was a movie I saw on TV. It might have even been made-for-TV. In it, an airplane everyone was on was somehow compromised and it couldn't be piloted. Thankfully, a teenage girl on the plane had an Apple laptop (this would have been around 1997, maybe?). She plugged her laptop
Re:Die Hard, obviously... (Score:3)
She plugged her laptop into the cockpit and was able to pilot the plane again, saving all on board.
Sorta like the bad guys in one of the Die Hard movies that used their computer to hack into the air traffic control system and "move the ILS down" so the incoming airliner would crash.
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Wasn't that an episode of the latest version of Human Target?
Hackers, obviously... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there is a difference between computer as plot device and computer as character and computer as magic. As a plot device, as it was used in Hackers it was quite inoffensive. I like the way they coupled the phones rather than using magic routing to hide the location. It was a valid plot device, like the Enterprise in ST:TOS.
Computer as magic, I really have no opinion one way or another. It is lazy writing, and has nothing to do with the computer. This is Independence day.
The computer as an integral part of the story is War Games and Jumpin Jack Flash are good examples of the form. A not so good one is Leverage. It is my opinion that they misused Data in ST:NG
Re:Hackers, obviously... (Score:5, Interesting)
The screens in Hackers are obviously a visual metaphor, and a good one at that. The technological nit that did annoy me is that the film doesn't seem to understand the difference between a username and a password.
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Also, all modern x86 processors have a relatively-simple (RISC-like) processor sitting behind a programmable instruction decoder. x86 hasn't been implemented directly in hardware for at least a decade now... it's too complex and badly-designed.
it turns out... (Score:5, Insightful)
hacking/coding/computing in real life is incredibly boring - reality doesn't make for a good movie.
Swordfish: The whole damn movie! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously... there are several scenes in that movie that are unbelievably bad. Pick your favorite!
true story (Score:5, Funny)
i am a film buff. so i knew about the movie swordfish a few months before it came out (from fan sites like aintitcoolnews.com, etc.), and i knew sketchy plot points about the movie, namely that it would be about illicit transfers of illicit funds
i also used to work for a large multinational bank as a programmer. and a few months before swordfish came out, i was developing a system used by the bank for monitoring internal transfers. on a lark, i code named the system in development as "swordfish" as my own personal inside joke. it was never intended to be a more widely known nickname
but in email conversations with my boss, i, um, kept calling it swordfish. oops. my boss wound up raving about the system, to his bosses, to other middle management, to everyone. he started telling everyone who would listen about it because the basic idea behind the project was a sound one and it was important for the bank. unfortunately, he kept calling it "swordfish," and the name stuck and went into general use
awareness of the swordfish project just happened to peak when the movie came out. to widespread media coverage and exposure and advertising. and the basic details about a hacker breaking into a financial computer system to transfer funds became common knowledge, even to people who didn't see the movie. and at the same time, here was my boss making an internal push to distribute this program to wider use for testing, and trying to drum up support for it amongst the higher ranking middle management... and it was called swordfish
he stopped raving about the program, and my boss got in the habit of shaking his head and smirking every time he saw me
so the plot guys get the technical details wrong sometimes
i am living proof that sometimes the technical guys get the plot points wrong
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Also, there are about a jillion home grown software pieces called swordfish. It's been used in security names and files far about as long as their has been computers.
For those who don't know: It's from a Marx Brothers movie. Which one you ask? i'm not saying, go watch them all.
Re:true story (Score:4, Insightful)
I interpreted it as a cheeky way for a Marx Brother's fan to encourage people to watch all the movies. Clearly it doesn't work on people with no sense of humor.
Easily CSI (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address!
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, but CSI Miami has completely divorced itself from reality, which make it fun. It doesn't even pretend to be sensible.
Whenever they show an IP address, all octets are > 255. And whenever there is a match, it is ALWAYS 99.32%. Or something like that. But it's ALWAYS the same.
But that's OK because Horatio has awesome lines and excellent sunglasses.
Re:Easily CSI (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever they show an IP address, all octets are > 255.
That is for the same reason most fictional phone number [wikipedia.org] start with 555 [wikipedia.org].
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They could use 10/8. This would never be routed to the internet, but would be a syntactically correct IP address (and more compareable to the 555 telephone numbers, which are also usually syntacticaly correct)
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Area Code 313 does have 555 [fonefinder.net]. It's in South East Michigan.
Re:Easily CSI (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do computers on TV have to display all the photos/fingerprints in its database when doing any kind of search?
Because it is a visually appealing and dramatically effective way of suggesting the size and complexity of the database.
Re:Easily CSI (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it make sense. This is one of those thing software GUI creators could learn something from the Movies..
People are impatient. When they have to wait they get frustrated.
Having a bunch of finger print go by keeps the person active so they don't notices it takes 15 seconds and not 5 seconds.
One time I was praised for dramatically increase the speed of a program. My secret? I put up a spinning DOS prompt.
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I knew I'd been hacking on screen update routines for lysdr [github.com] too much when I was watching NCIS rather than CSI and they did the "flash up millions of fingerprints" thing - and my first thought was "jeez, all those blits to the screen, that could be so much faster..."
Lawnmower Man (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically the whole movie.
Hackers... (Score:4, Informative)
"It's a P6 chip ... RISC architecture is gonna change everything".
Re: (Score:2)
Heh... Or...the Gibson... >:-D
Basically like LawnmowerMan and Swordfish, the whole movie was one giant computer gaffe.
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The Gibson name was used because Clay or SGI wouldn't lend them their name, iirc.
Re:Hackers... (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize Hackers isn't a film that you're supposed to take seriously, right? It's a great movie. Feel free to criticize technology in the majority of films out there, but complaining about it in Hackers is like complaining about how much Monty Python sucks, because "there isn't really any such thing as a ministry of funny walks!".
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Given that the Intel P6 chips (let alone the Pentium II, III, etc.) hadn't been released when Hackers was written, filmed, or in theatres, don't you think it's not entirely out of the question that they could have been making assumptions about the direction Intel would go in, rather than making a mistake? Intel *did* try to switch to RISC, after all.
Every time I see an x86 disassembly, it makes me wish I were living in the alternate universe where they succeeded.
Re:Hackers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey now, at the time it looked like the RISC architecture was going to change everything.
And if this site has proved 1 thing, it's the geeks always use hyerbole about new technology.
I call that scene: Accurate.
GUI Interface in visual basic! (Score:2, Informative)
This. [youtube.com]
Spew forth as many technical-sounding terms as possible to confuse the average person and make them think you know what you're talking about!
Blowfish (Score:2)
Hackers and Blowfish (err, Swordfish) stand out the most as appallingly bad. Though I have to admit it's the rare TV or movie that gets computer science in even the ballpark of plausibility.
I'd go through a lot of TVs and monitors if I acted on my impulse to throw bottles at the screen every time a 3D UI or infinite-zoom-and-enhance camera or other horrible Hollywood trope involving computers is used.
Re:Blowfish (Score:5, Funny)
you mean like this one [youtube.com]? (this is from Red Dwarf - Back to Earth, their "Picture Zoom" sketch).
Jurassic Park (Score:5, Funny)
Macs running Unix? Yeah, like that will ever happen
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Insightful)
Jurassic Park (Score:2)
It's a Unix system, I know this!
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn
FSN (File System Navigator), was a real application made by SGI for 3D viewing of file systems. That really is a real gui layer, and you can get a clone of it for linux called FSV at http://fsv.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Swordfish - Hack DoD Mainframe, orally pleased (Score:2)
The Net (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to nominate the Sandra Bullock abortion The Net [wikimedia.org]--the entire film. Compared to that movie, Goldblum's antics are totally plausible.
Re: (Score:3)
I thought "The Net" was the one where the main character hacked into a computer using an actual unix privilege escalation command-line from the time. I thought that movie was fairly accurate. No hacking passwords by magically typing keys, no remotely controlling things that had no internet connection. The most implausible thing was hackers hiding secret links in web pages, which I've known people to do. Or the hackers putting unnecessary animations onto web pages... oh wait, people did that too... espec
Mission Impossible 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mission Impossible 1 (Score:5, Funny)
The terrible bleeping text (Score:3)
Why the hell do they do that? What self-respecting geek would use something so annoying that it bleeps every time it displays a character?
WarGames 2: The Dead Code (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this movie exists. [imdb.com] And yes, it's godawful beyond belief.
Here's a review [blakeyrat.com] I wrote about the movie when it came out. But, really, every detail is awful-- not just the computer scenes, but every scene is brimming from top to bottom with WTF. It also doesn't help that they couldn't get any characters from the original, except WOPR (if you count that.)
Re: (Score:3)
WarGames is much like The Matrix... or Fletch... or Caddy Shack... or The Karate Kid...
One of the best things to say is, "That was such an awesome movie. It's too bad they never made a sequel".
The fact that there was, indeed, a movie made to cash in on the original's success which is not worthy to be its sequel does not make the statement incorrect. It is, in fact, the very point. Making a movie with the same name and even some of the same characters that purports to take place some time farther along the t
My secrect question (Score:3)
When ever I see a scene qui a computer, or a sculptor, or somebody speaking a "foreign language" that I know, I'm wondering ...
Are all the scene about things I do not know anythng about just as bad ???
Are all the docter cringing when they see Dr House ? (probably) and what do the lawers make of the "good wife" ? and new york women of "sex and the city" ?
Or are we singled out to be really interpreted badly ...
BTW I do actually laught but really hate the big bang theory ... is it really necessary for the US general public to believe that inteligent scientist are social looser to enjoy a movie ?
It's geeksplotation.. if you would stereotype any other human category as much you'd probably be sued to bankrupcy...
I guess we do have too much of a sense of humor...
What makes doctors cringe (Score:4, Interesting)
Are all the docter cringing when they see Dr House ? (probably)
Yes. Polite Dissent [politedissent.com] is written by a doctor who reviews medical issues as portrayed in House as well as other media (comics, other tv shows, etc -- today's page has him tearing into classic "train to be a nurse at home" ads from a bygone era). He rates the medicinal errors from "major" to "minor" to "nitpicking", and he explains it all in layman's terms so medically illiterate people like me can understand.
Unthinkable (Score:5, Funny)
Unthinkable (with Samuel L Jackson and Carrie-Ann Moss).
The bomb guy disarms the bomb with a Mac running EXCEL, randomly pressing keys in different cells.
http://i.imgur.com/8SMhl.png [imgur.com]
NCIS (Score:4)
Re:NCIS (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly I find all CSI and all its knockoffs/ripoffs to be just atrocious on all technical levels. It's not just computers, its chemistry, DNA analysis, optics... I mean, this isn't forensic sciences going on in these shows like you would find on a reasonably decent show like, say, Quincy (which generally stayed well within the technical capabilities of forensics labs in its day and age). These guys have want amount of magic faerie machines.
Probably the worst aspect is this idea that all these forensics guys are cops with fancy machines. When is the last time you ever heard of an actual lab tech getting into a chase with a perp, or, in most cases, even being in the same fucking building as the perp?
Re:NCIS (Score:4, Informative)
Furthermore, I read that doing all the tests they do for even one case, would take weeks even *if* they could afford it. One tech mentioned that to even rent some of the equipment required for a few of the tests would exceed their annual budget.
Star Wars (Score:4, Informative)
Tron (Score:3)
After they escape the game grid (which I'll admit was fairly realistically done), the programs get all excited about finding power. WTF? Hardware uses power; what programs want is memory. They should have been, all, "There must be forty-eight kilobytes here!! Gobble gobble, I'm gonna build another hash table!"
Or how about Ram, who I guess you're supposed to think "drank the koolaide" since he was going on about how insurance was a good investment. No insurance program would actually be able to really function, if it actually believed that. Maybe this wasn't a script error, though. Maybe Ram really believed that, and that is why he derezzed after fairly minor injuries. Or maybe he knew insurance-as-an-investment is a scam, and was trying to con Flynn into buying some insurance, so he died as a moral lesson on the importance of honesty.
Then there's Sark, getting all snippy with an underling, telling him to stop thinking because he does the thinking. That was stupid and made be guffaw at the idea that Sark was supposed to be some kind of bad-ass antagonist. Part of solving problems is break the up and get another process doing something, feeding you the answers through a pipe. Even if you don't have SMP (which was admitted pretty rare in 1982) multiprocess solutions still let you get work done while something is blocked on I/O, without all that bug-prone mucking around with threading.
Speaking of I/O.. the I/O towers! For all the praise Tron got for its graphics, you'd think they'd be able to get the color of I/O towers right.
Re: (Score:3)
the sense i got from Ram was that he was a regular joe, who understands his job is bullshit but can't get out of it, so he engages in self-deprecating humor to make it through. most of america talks like that at the bar after work.
sark: the whole point was that the MCP was an unsustainable over-centralized model that was removing the flexibility of the system; stet.
also the i/o towers were blue because they were the last vestige of open communication, in opposition to the MCP. it's not until the events of t
This begs the question... (Score:3)
How are most of these cheesy CSI-type programs created? I would assume they are done in flash. Are they usually interactive, in other words if the actor presses a button it does some predefined animation, or is the whole thing one long animation that the actor needs to time against?
Somebody here has to have created one of these...
Most Annoying This Year: Date Night (Score:3)
Ok.. I probably deserve this for watching "Date Night" ... horrible film. Why does Tina Fey act in any film she didn't write?
But anyway... not terribly unique "regular people drawn into a caper" comedy. There's a fundamental plot point that requires a USB stick being plugged into a Kindle (a little too obvious on the product placement). That can't happen.. no USB host port on a Kindle. Sorry, I'm a hardware guy, that was the final straw that made me hate the film (it had progress toward that hate by then already, even though I usually like just about anything with Fey or Steve Carell).
ID4 was fine (Score:5, Interesting)
A) They studied the tech for years.
B) The raise is a hive mind. As such crime wouldn't be an issue.
C) minimal to no software virus protection
D) He can write an emulator.
That movie complaint is unwarranted.
Re: (Score:3)
Getting "in" to a computer (Score:3)
Hackers getting "in" to a computer by navigating "around" the firewall. - Both of course displayed on the screen with some 3d blocks.
Close second: Searching a database. - Pictures or texts (depending whether you look for a person or a document) flash on the screen in rapid succession, till the computer than "finds" the right one. For the computer to "look" at it, it must apparently appear on the screen.
Spaceballs (Score:5, Funny)
There's no way anyone could ever use a hair dryer that big.
OTOH, Robocop was surpisingly accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
- computer interfaces that resembled web sites
- a device for tracking Robocop that looks suspiciously like a smartphone
- digital video recording, as well as DVDs (didn't exist until '93)
Plus:
- stupidly oversized cars that wasted gas (6000 SUX)
- ultraviolent games for the whole family (Nukem!)
- Ford Taurus police cars (back when Crown Victorias were standard issue, they looked very "futuristic")
- ads for medical services (unheard of in '87)
- privatized police, military, prisons, and spacecraft
- and autoflush urinals!
.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Informative)
Except that it actually WAS a UNIX system, SGI IRIX to be exact. And it was a real file browser as well. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that it actually WAS a UNIX system, SGI IRIX to be exact. And it was a real file browser as well. [wikipedia.org]
I think you're completely missing the point. Whether the system really was Unix or not is not the issue. What is so cringe inducing about the scene is that it leaves a far more important question unanswered: how does knowing that a system is running Unix enable one to understand the complex control software running a dinosaur park?
You wouldn't hear someone say, "hey the computers at my bank are running Windows 7: I know this," followed by the sound of all your money being drained from your account.
I hav
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Informative)
how does knowing that a system is running Unix enable one to understand the complex control software running a dinosaur park?
man parkcontrols
?
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You forgot that she had to open a socket first.
They always had to open a socket.
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Re:WarGames (Score:5, Insightful)
"Greetings Professor Falken"
need i say more? WarGames is probably the most cheezy movie of them all.
You shut your whore mouth!
Seriously, though, Wargames was probably the most accurate cracking movie ever made. Instead of "creating a GUI in Visual Basic and tracking an IP address" a la CSI: Braindead, the main character actually spent weeks poring over information about the creator of the system to try to work out how it was designed and what the likely methods would be to gain entrance. He also used social engineering techniques to gather information about his targets.
Re:WarGames (Score:4, Insightful)
The best part was that it was done with one of those giant acoustically coupled phone modems.
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Great point on the social engineering. In fact, there were SEVERAL different examples of social engineering, poor password security, and so on that I'm surprised more movies don't make use of it. Heck, didn't Ferris Bueller's day off have him using social engineering to get passwords in much the same manner? People don't call it a 'hacking' scene as "finding what some dumbass wrote down" or "pretending to be someone else" don't seem as magical, I guess, but we've seen countless examples of it being effectiv
Re:die hard 4.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
I just like how computers in general seem to be packed with either explosives or 5 megawatts of power in pretty much every sci-fi movie. Star Trek is one of the worst offenders for this. "Oh no, the computer is overloaded! *bzzzt, boom*" If I blew up a PC everytime it got stuck in a logic loop I'd be typing with hooks by now.
Hey, don't make fun of sneakers! (Score:4, Funny)
Not only was it a movie that was of Gaussian proportions, but it had accuracy too. A blind man driving, looks like the driving quality around MIT.
Re:Sneakers! (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes Sneakers enjoyable for me (other than Dan Aykroyd underplaying it this time, well done) is you have two very close buddies, one gets caught and becomes evil and rich after prison, the other hasn't changed, and the climax is all Temptation of Christ-like: Ben Kingsley asks Redford to join him.
I think it's a metaphor for our generation, given the key to the untold wealth of the global (tech) kingdom, which would you choose? Transfer funds from the budget of the Bureau of Firearms Alcohol and Tobacco (iirc) towards the Campaign for the legalization of marijuana. Heck that's MY hero. Suspend your disbelief on this one, and grab the popcorn.
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They should've had some comments in the code then. "/* I know this is a kludge but a case insensitive match on SARAH is good enough for now. */"
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Pre80s was the era where is something when wrong, the computer shot out sparks!