Programmer Debunks Source Code Shown In Movies and TV Shows 301
rjmarvin writes "Someone is finally pausing TV shows and movies to figure out if the code shown on screen is accurate or not. British programmer and writer John Graham-Cumming started taking screenshots of source code from movies such as Elysium, Swordfish and Doctor Who, and when it became popular turned the concept into a blog. Source Code in TV and Films posts a new screenshot daily, proving that, for example, Tony Stark's first Iron Man suit was running code from a 1998 programmable Lego brick."
Re:common and fun (Score:5, Informative)
Watching 'Castle' the other night. Enjoying it for the accurate, serious show that it is. Beckett indicated the entry wound was too big for a 9mm round. Had to be something bigger. They later found a .357 which was the right size.
25.4*.357 = 9.07mm She has a good eye. Actually she has great looking eyes.
Debunk? (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm. I am the person who created that Tumblr. I'm not trying to "debunk" anything. Just showing what it really is: sometimes it's nonsense, sometimes it's there's an amusing juxtaposition, sometimes it's a fun Easter Egg.
Re:oh duh (Score:5, Informative)
One of the many things that impressed me about Wargames (aside from showing social engineering and the actual hard work and research going into a serious hack) was that David could type fast, as you would expect from someone who spends all his time on a command-line computer. It's just one of those many little details that made that movie so impressive, and still makes it fun to watch even 30 years later.
Re:oh duh (Score:5, Informative)
As is usual with /., ignore the written-by-illiterate-simians summary and click through to the article/ website (I know, I know) and your concerns will be put to rest. The blog is less about 'code in movies is wrong' and more (and more interestingly) where did the code shown come from? Knowing that Iron Man's suit is powered by code written for a lego brick gives the concept more verisimilitude - at least if you've played been playing Lego Marvel Superheroes as much I as I have recently.
On a related note... (Score:4, Informative)
On a related note, many shows (including modern ones!) have been using a snippet of tape loading sound from the 1980s Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer which made its way onto some special effects library somewhere. The latest sighting (sounding?) was on an episode of The Wire a few years ago. With some effort (there's lots of other noise in the clip) it was decoded and turned out to be part of the loading screen for a game made by Ultimate: Play the Game (of Knight Lore and Jetpac fame). Ultimate became Rare before being bought out by Microsoft.
Re:common and fun (Score:5, Informative)
Including numbers greater than 255 just makes it look obviously fake.
Nuke password is 00000000, really, seriously ... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, everyone knows that "Password123" is probably what will get you into most corporate systems.
And for govt nuclear weapons, the code is 123456.
From Ars Technica: "Well, for two decades, all the Minuteman nuclear missiles in the US used the same eight-digit numeric passcode to enable their warheads: 00000000. That fact, originally revealed in a column in 2004 by then-president of the Center for Defense Information Dr. Bruce G. Blair, a former US Air Force officer who manned Minuteman silos, was also mentioned in a paper by Steven M. Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University who teaches security architecture. Both of these sources were cited this week in an article on the site Today I Found Out written by Karl Smallwood, as well as in an article in the UK's Daily Mail."