Top 10 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do 874
An anonymous reader writes "From blowing up your keyboards to developing a malignant sentience, Expert Reviews rounds up the things that movie makers believe computers can do, even though they use the same technology every day to write scripts." I like the summary of how you crack a password in movies. I hate that this page splits into multiple pages. Very lame.
Re:Must be controlled with a keyboard... (Score:3, Interesting)
"On any OS that is worth anything"
Scotsman's fallacy.
You're correct in that using a key board should be faster, and that in every current mainstream OS it is faster. But that doesn't excuse your logical fallacy.
I had to rewrite a system that the original programmer made completely mouse driven.
Here's this kicker: It was a system specifically for data entry, but you could not tab to the next entry area.
There's a Famous Story, in Certain Circles... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's taken on a kind of Urban Legend patina, so take it with a grain of salt, but here goes:
Seems that the Art Department and Properties guys -- the crew responsible for dressing the set -- for Star Trek IV were all HUGE Amiga fans. No real surprise there, given where Amiga was at the time the movie was shot. So... in the famous scene where Scotty, the ultimate fictional Uber Engineer, has traveled back in time and assumes all computers are voice-activated (as they are in his century), talks into a mouse, the Art guys wanted their Amiga to be the one featured in the scene. So they sent some reps just up the road apiece from where they were filming in San Francisco to meet with the Amiga honchos and get some hardware for the scene. As the story goes, the Amiga guys were initially annoyed, cuz it was all so unannounced and sudden, and then they agreed only if the crew paid for the gear. "No loaners."
"Um, but, it's the new Star Trek movie, and it's Chief Engineer Scott, and he's back in our century, and he could be using YOUR computer, and we all really love Amigas on the set, and..."
"Sorry. Sign this Purchase Order or get out."
So the crew called Apple, who "got it" in a heartbeat, sent in a Marketing SWAT team with free Macs for the scene, free Macs for everyone on the crew, and technical advisers to stand by during the filming to make sure everything went smoothly.
Amiga, the astute among you have by now noticed, is no longer with us. Apple, on the other hand...
Re:They forgot the beeping interfaces (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:storytelling (Score:5, Interesting)
Next time the guys in CSI can scan a DNA sequence in a matter of minutes (or perhaps hours, as the camera briefly observes an analog clockface), don't nitpick the usual technical constraints of a process that usually takes days or weeks or months.
Except this lack of 'nit-picking' has real-world consequences. At the weekend I was reading a story in a newspaper where some real-world forensics investigators were complaining that shows like CSI have given the public the impression that they are magicians to the extent that juries are acquitting people because the police don't have a CSI-style case... after all, since they know from CSI that DNA sequencing only takes a few seconds, why don't the police have DNA evidence to prove that this guy is guilty? And why can't they get perfect fingerprints from objects where fingerprints can't possibly exist? CSI can get fingerprints from anything.
Inject a virus into an alien operating system? (Score:4, Interesting)
Explanation 7) All Earth computers actually use technology stolen from crashed UFOs from Roswell. Their operating systems are the same as ours because our operating systems actually are theirs.
I have a few other wishes at that (Score:4, Interesting)
TBH, if I'm to wish for something from SF movies, it would include stuff like:
- Hoshi's universal translator from Enterprise. It can hear a few phrases in an alien language and then be able to translate back a response that includes words and semantic structures it never heard yet in that language. Note that it didn't even need to be told a translation for that original sample. It could just hear "bbzzt klick klickety-klick hrr bzzt" in some insectoid language and just figure out what it means and, for that matter, what the whole rest of the language is like.
Beats spending eternity to learn some foreign language.
- The magical interface that allows Data to type whole programs by pressing one of 6 buttons on the side of a touchscreen. No, really. Or for that matter, whatever system allowed Hoshi to type answers to be translated for the alien web-like entity by using only 4 buttons. Makes even the keypad of a cell phone look comfortable by comparison.
- the kind of programming language used by that precursor race on TNG which can not just be encoded in a few proteins and survive billions of years of mutations, and run on _any_ computer that it may be on after those billions of years, and could also actually just start itself after being stored on a tricorder... but can actually modify the tricorder to include a holographic projector
- the kind of interpolation software that allows them to go "captain, they're targetting their photon torpedoes at our warp core!" I mean, I could understand interpolating the direction a gun is pointing at, but to know where a torpedo will go after exitting a fixed launch tube, now that's serious magic.
Re:ENHANCE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There's a Famous Story, in Certain Circles... (Score:1, Interesting)
It's taken on a kind of Urban Legend patina, so take it with a grain of salt, but here goes:
Seems that the Art Department and Properties guys -- the crew responsible for dressing the set -- for Star Trek IV were all HUGE Amiga fans. No real surprise there, given where Amiga was at the time the movie was shot. So... in the famous scene where Scotty, the ultimate fictional Uber Engineer, has traveled back in time and assumes all computers are voice-activated (as they are in his century), talks into a mouse, the Art guys wanted their Amiga to be the one featured in the scene. So they sent some reps just up the road apiece from where they were filming in San Francisco to meet with the Amiga honchos and get some hardware for the scene. As the story goes, the Amiga guys were initially annoyed, cuz it was all so unannounced and sudden, and then they agreed only if the crew paid for the gear. "No loaners."
"Um, but, it's the new Star Trek movie, and it's Chief Engineer Scott, and he's back in our century, and he could be using YOUR computer, and we all really love Amigas on the set, and..."
"Sorry. Sign this Purchase Order or get out."
So the crew called Apple, who "got it" in a heartbeat, sent in a Marketing SWAT team with free Macs for the scene, free Macs for everyone on the crew, and technical advisers to stand by during the filming to make sure everything went smoothly.
Amiga, the astute among you have by now noticed, is no longer with us. Apple, on the other hand...
Given more credence by the fact that an Amiga is used earlier in the movie, in the scene where the (23rd century, Vulcan) computer asks him "HOW DO YOU FEEL?"
Given less credence by the fact that the Star Trek production team has admitted in various books (like the Tecnhical Manual and Encyclopedia) that they use Macs for everything, from designing the LCARS diagrams to driving the blinking LCDs on the Enterprise series. (Though this might be a result of Apple's attention in Star Trek IV)
Re:Worst ever use of computer lingo in film (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the thing; somebody that knows the terms GUI and IP and includes Visual Basic into it knows what computers are what OS's can do, but you must not educate anyone how to actually crack/circumvent security.
I smell lawsuits...
Re:My personal favorite (Score:3, Interesting)
That's actually not that far fetched. Hack into the OnStar system. Via the VIN, you should (now having full access to the db) be able to retrieve the actual control code for a specific car. And OnStar today can lock doors, engine shutdown, etc. Not steering, but pretty much everything else.