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.
ENHANCE (Score:5, Funny)
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My favourite take on this by far was in Super Troopers. For an instant I thought they were actually doing it seriously ;)
Re:ENHANCE (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ENHANCE (Score:5, Funny)
The best example of this was in Red Dwarf: Return to Earth. They zoomed in on a business card, then zoomed back out. Found a reflection behind the people in the picture, enhanced the reflection, then found a water droplet on a telephone pole, enhanced the reflection from that, and THEN they used a window seen in the reflection on the water droplet to see the back of the card. Then, they flipped the image...all so they could read the address on the back of the card.
It was fsking epic.
Ow (Score:2)
Re:ENHANCE (Score:5, Funny)
That is nothing. Much cooler would be if they found a reflection on a planet approximately 1005 lightyears away from earth, and recorded the birth of Jesus Christ...
Re:ENHANCE (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, I would have thought the sci-fi comedy show, Red Dwarf, was seriously suggesting this was possible. I can now sleep soundly thanks to your enlightening post.
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practical video still enhancement (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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Not only the average person... copied from [clientsfromhell.net]:
Client: “I’ve sent the image. I can’t wait to see the final product.”
Me: “This image is 115px x 148px at 72dpi. Typically we need images around 1000px and higher with around 150+dpi.”
Client: “Can’t you just Enhance the images like they do in CSI.”
Worst ever use of computer lingo in film (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU [youtube.com]
Re:Worst ever use of computer lingo in film (Score:5, Funny)
Site with the article is down =/
This is Numb3rs' description of how IRC works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ [youtube.com]
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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:Worst ever use of computer lingo in film (Score:4, Funny)
I bring you NBC's Life's take on Prince of Persia: http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/prince-of-persia-on-nbcs-life/129534 [gametrailers.com] (Sorry for the ad-filled site; I can't find it on YouTube anymore.)
The lingo is awful, but the entire premise makes no sense whatsoever-- how do you hide a spreadsheet in a Xbox which can only be viewed if you make it to "level 10" on Prince of Persia? Moreover, does Prince of Persia even have a "level 10?" (No, it does not; the levels are names of different areas of the palace.)
Truly hilariously awful. Watch the actress whose fingers twitch while watching someone else playing the game.
I hope Ubisoft didn't pay anything for this product placement.
My personal favorite (Score:5, Insightful)
In Terminator 3, the Terminator T-X is able to take over complete control of automobiles simply by sending a virus to their onboard computers. Forget that none of these cars (most of them older ones at that) have any way for the onboard computer to access steering, acceleration or brakes; the real kicker is when the movie shows one of them actually shifting into gear on its own. And not ONE of them was even a Toyota!
And, on the opposite side, I would like to recognize the movie "Wargames." It wasn't perfect (the AI is certainly exagerrated), but it's definitely one of the most realistic computer films to ever come out of Hollywood. If they remade that today, they would probably show Joshua blowing up buildings and sending robotic minions after David. As it is, Wargames makes a simple ringing phone and a countdown clock way more suspenseful than anything ever produced with CGI special effects. Kudos to John Badham for getting away with making a movie that's pretty thoughtful and low-key--and just a year after Tron showed us how evil programs can suck you into the digital world with a laser, no less.
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could it have been nanites, not just a virus? Still, nanites are hollywoods latest scifi magic trick...
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I’m pretty sure the T-X injected totally new circuitry into the cars. Not only did it upload a virus, it used minuscule amounts of its own material to design completely new computer & control systems.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:4, Insightful)
Not totally inexplicable. Using some of her covering to create servos in the cars wasn't much of a risk, because it would be easy to recover later. This is quite different from bullets, which are often unrecoverable, so the T-X would have been slightly diminished every time it fired.
As for the melee aspect, the point is made several times in the films and spin-offs that the Terminators are infiltrators. Skynet has things like HKs for longer-distance killing of exposed enemies. The Terminators are designed to go into the resistance's bunkers and kill them.
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In Terminator 3, the Terminator T-X is able to take over complete control of automobiles simply by sending a virus to their onboard computers. Forget that none of these cars (most of them older ones at that) have any way for the onboard computer to access steering, acceleration or brakes; the real kicker is when the movie shows one of them actually shifting into gear on its own. And not ONE of them was even a Toyota!
I assumed she quickly installed servos for all that stuff before setting off after the gang. ;)
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In Terminator 3, the Terminator T-X is able to take over complete control of automobiles simply by sending a virus to their onboard computers.
You are mistaken. She has nanotechnological tranjectors. In other words, she's installing tiny remote control drones in those electronics. Not a virus, thousands of little remote control robots.
LK
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Most cars have had electronic "throttle by wire" systems for a while. Power-steering systems already have all the mechanical systems for electrical control of steering, and I seem to recall some luxury sedans having some sort of computer "assistance" (power steering gain is adjusted based on speed, etc). Finally, conventional car's brakes are completely independent, but hybrids that use regenerative braking involve the computer. No so far fetched.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Informative)
Matrix Reloaded: Trinity exploits an actual vulnerability to hack into the power station.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Funny)
Matrix Reloaded
InvalidArgumentException: movieTitle does not exist. "Matrix" collection only contains one item.
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I immediately shut off the DVD player and never finished watching the movie.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Funny)
I also love it when terrorists are kind enough to color-code their wires to a standard and go to the trouble of attaching a big red countdown clock on their bombs. Very sportsmanlike of them.
It's understandable. It only takes one or two terrorists to sync the internal timer with the clock in their workshop without realising their watch is slightly slow and (assuming they escape relatively unscathed) you've suddenly got a safety-feature evangelist.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like that's been subverted a few times. A quick check of TVTropes.org should prove whether it has or not. You go ahead and look. No really, it'll be fine. You won't get sucked in and lose the rest of your day, I promise.
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All I remember from the first film was that one of the octets in an IP address was in the 300s. Boy did that ruin an otherwise spot-on movie.
Yep - a blog elsewhere says "75.748.86.91" and "23.75.345.200" were used.
IPV4.5?
Thats would have been purposely done to prevent people deciding to attack a real IP belonging to someone out there after seeing it in the film, something along the lines of the 555-xxxx phone numbers they usually use. Of course they could have just used a 10.../192.168.../172.16.. address instead.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Informative)
Here's another one I can recommend for pseudo-realistic hacking: Sneakers
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/ [imdb.com]
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Ding! That was the first (of a very few) dvds I bought. While a few parts were exaggerated, the overall concept of how security testing firms do their testing was accurate (for its day).
But of course, the best part is the infamous lines:
"I want peace on Earth and goodwill toward men."
"We are the United States government. We don't do that sort of thing."
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Re:My personal favorite (Score:5, Funny)
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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
FTFA (Score:5, Funny)
In Star Trek, Kirk need only ask an alien computer to "Explain. The. Human emotion. Known. As.....Love", for it to go into a bizarre loop where its logical systems can't computer and it explodes.
I hate it when my machine can't computer.
Hollywood is partially right (Score:5, Funny)
I can't perform my daily sysadmin duties unless I'm getting fellatio from a chick under my desk at the same time as having a loaded gun pointed at my head while someone counts down from an arbitrary number.
Re:Hollywood is partially right (Score:5, Funny)
You had me at 'fellatio'.
Obligatory (Score:2)
Still, Jeff Goldblum's power book hacking into and planting a virus in highly advanced space faring alien architecture has to be my favourite. Don't know if that made the list.
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Still, Jeff Goldblum's power book hacking into and planting a virus in highly advanced space faring alien architecture has to be my favourite. Don't know if that made the list.
Yeah, it's the rule where good guys always use Macs.
Yup, It's Obligatory (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
You pick the one most plausible.
I know it's popular to rag on that, but it's actually plausible:
1) They studied the system for years.
2) The system might not have been a Mac. Could have been a custom OS.
3) There a hive mind race. they would not have any really need for security.
4) Electronics are electronics faster smaller. But from a black box approach, no different.
5) You Assume that the system would some how be perfect.
6) He exploited a trusted system by exploiting another trusted system.
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.
Re:Oh please (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Its not plausible. At all. If you had any idea how difficult it is to migrate a program from English to French, you wouldn't be saying that. Decimals to Comma's, that alone messes up tons of Accounting databases.
1) They still didn't know how it worked, they mentioned that.
2) Regardless, the idea is that its a human OS and not alien.
3) Then they wouldn't have shields.
4) Not all electronics work the same. This is why there are issues with video games on differing video cards, why you can't run MS-DOS on Solaris machines, etc etc.
5) No, I'm assuming that the system is beyond our skillset to manipulate. Like if they use quantum computing and quantum encryption, we wouldn't have the means to inject our own code into a stream. Not too mention our own code, C or assembly or even Matlab won't run on alien architecture, like how most Windows games don't run on Macs.
6) His exploit was mystically deciphering an entire alien legacy of computers and machinery in order to disable one function. If I had that power, I would have turned off the cooling systems for the plasma firing weapons. Have them blow themselves up.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
If you watch all the scenes they cut from the movie, you learn how he was able to do this.
The aliens used a linksys router and left the login info as admin/admin.
then don't reward them? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate that this page splits into multiple pages. Very lame.
Then...don't reward them by linking to them?
"BAD, Johhny! Don't pull your brother's hair! Here's an ice cream sundae."
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I think they were punished by having their site slashdotted. Seems fitting, somehow.
Re:then don't reward them? (Score:5, Funny)
Considering that one of the things it seems the article's computer *can't* do is handle a slashdotting without crashing and going up in flames, I would hardly consider linking to them being a reward.
Re:then don't reward them? (Score:5, Funny)
Considering that one of the things it seems the article's computer *can't* do is handle a slashdotting without crashing and going up in flames, I would hardly consider linking to them being a reward.
I love that someone used that "going up in flames after being Slashdotted" cliche on an article about things computers don't actually do.
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Shit, I was going to get some work done today.
Good guys only use macs (Score:2)
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my guess there, mac is what is available for the studio crew. So when the script say "computer" they grab the nearest one for the shot, and it will more likely then not be a mac, thanks to its longish history in media circles.
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Well, considering that Robocop 2 was made in March 1990, a few months after System 6.0.5 and a few months before Windows 3.0 were released, it is hardly surprising that they used a DOS computer. That's what most people would have recognized after all. The whole "good guys use Mac" meme is a much more recent phenomenon.
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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:There's a Famous Story, in Certain Circles... (Score:5, Insightful)
....is still churning out shit that no one in their right mind would want?
They've got a license to print money with their AppStore and have made many people incredibly wealthy. What have you accomplished by comparison? You don't even have a Slashdot account.
Plot tools (Score:4, Insightful)
That’s what they are.
Plot tools.
Must be controlled with a keyboard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(zoomy experimental mouse/OpenGL file browser shows on Iris Crimson minicomputer...)
Lex: This is Unix! I know this!
Re:Must be controlled with a keyboard... (Score:5, Insightful)
The bandwidth of ten fingers and 104 keys is far greater than a two-dimensional vector and a couple buttons.
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"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.
Re:Must be controlled with a keyboard... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are other problems: their #1 problem is "Left long enough, a computer becomes intelligent", citing Terminator and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
However, the computers weren't just "left long enough" in either movie. In Terminator, SkyNet was an AI designed by the military to have intelligence. The surprise wasn't that it became intelligent, but that it decided to kill everyone. In Star Trek, Voyager was discovered by an alien race of intelligent robots (or something like that) who repaired and upgraded Voyager.
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It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press
I got that quote into this post by copying and pasting it here. I used command-c and command-v without thinking. It took far less than two seconds; about the same amount of time as it takes me to hit any other key on the keyboard. I don't decide which special-function key to press at all; I send high-level commands from my brain to my spine and it sorts it out. I don't think about typing letters either. I actually can't spell a number of words that I type r
They forgot the beeping interfaces (Score:5, Insightful)
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suspense, pure and simple.
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Try booting up Windows ME on an old Gateway. If you don't get blue screens and beeps every 3 minutes you've managed more than I ever could.
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Re:They forgot the beeping interfaces (Score:5, Interesting)
Cracked.com (Score:4, Informative)
copying files deletes the original (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if DRM really gets a grip, this could become fact not fiction.
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Whether its the EMH or just a mundane collection of data. Once it's been copied from its original place the orginal has gone.
So *this* is where we got the notion that piracy==theft from!
Computers? Big Deal... (Score:5, Funny)
When John Wayne fired a gun, at least two Indians dropped instantly. *At least* two. You can keep those computers, I want to better understand the technology behind The Duke's bullets...
Re:Computers? Big Deal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Start small, like with the JFK "Magic Bullet" theory. Once you grasp that, you can move on to The Duke and such puzzlers like the 24-shooter that really looks like a 6-shooter.
Survival of the fittest (Score:3, Funny)
Some Indian tribes developed a natural instinct to play dead upon hearing a gunshot. That allowed them to later recover consciousness and take revenge.
And thus having more fertile offspring, of course. That instinct is a beautiful proof of Darwinism.
V'Ger (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The V'ger reference at the end annoyed me. It was given life by other beings, it didn't just become sentient!
Likewise the reference to Skynet - I think we can all assume they were trying to make a self-aware system. It's not like it was the OS in a vending machine and it got bored of counting quarters one day and started wondering if there was more to life. I can't, off the top of my head, think of any examples of an ordinary computer system developing self awareness independent of human interaction.
Yet another rant on hollywood computers, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hollywood does not actually think computers can currently do nor do they think they ever will do these things.
Hollywood does think is that having computers do such things in a story usually (not always, but usually) makes it easier or faster to tell the story the way it is intended, rather than getting bogged down in the real life technicalities that are actually involved that would bore almost anybody.
The only real problem with this is that some people could be left thinking that computers do or can do some of these things. But that's more a case of those people not being able to tell fiction from reality, which has nothing to do with how Hollywood tells stories, it has to do with what sort of education and life experience a person has.
Re:Yet another rant on hollywood computers, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Our heroine has snuck into the villains office and starts to hack into the computer to find evidence of the crime. After a some furious minutes of password guessing and file browsing, she finds the incriminating file! Then, just as she prints the file, there is an error of print failure. Our hero starts a browser and starts to google for an updated driver. After a few misses, she finds one in the manufacturers Taiwanese website. But after installing the driver, the error still persists. She returns to Google and starts looking for other people with similar issues. After 20 minutes of searching she finds an obscure tip in the forums to disable PCL-emulation in the registry. After changing the setting she reboots the computer and we nervously wait for another 10 minutes for the login to complete and document to reopen.. It works! The document prints! Our heroin snatches the print and slips out of the side door just before the villain re-enters
Now that's entertainment!
Heh. (Score:2)
I read page 1, then the site got slashdotted, appearantly. I can only imagine the fire alarms going off, server rooms on fire, sparks everywhere, chaos, mayhem... Much more interesting than a "an unexpected error has occured. contact your administrator." windows dialog on a machine.
Well then, without the original article... I guess one thing that Hollywood thinks computers can do, is for servers to be ab-so-lu-tely quiet... In series such as 24 and CSI, I see rack after rack of Dell equipment, and they must
storytelling (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just an aspect of storytelling. Most stories are about conflict and resolution between the characters, not the intellectual masturbation of what layer in the network stack is responsible for ack/response. Details like that don't matter. Struggling against time, intrigue, and moving the plot along: that's what matters.
In the movie House of Flying Daggers, there's a swordfight scene where the two rivals finally clash in an epic struggle as the seasons change from summer to fall to winter all around them. Obviously nobody can fight for nine months. Obviously the sword choreography was on a completely different time scale to the environment they were in. Details like this matter if you're a weak-minded literalist. As pretty as the visuals were, it simply communicated a story like a line in a novel. It was a powerful visual metaphor.
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. Just insert "no technical challenge will stop this team." Even for geeks who enjoy the technical aspects, some details are like watching paint dry.
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.
Re:storytelling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:storytelling (Score:5, Insightful)
Mistaking dramatic license for technical error... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was using ICQ back in 1998, and it had the option of displaying each chat character as it was typed. It meant you could express more complex thoughts, without requiring the other person to sit and wait patiently for you to develop a whole paragraph. It let the other guy step in and say 'I see where you're going, but let me stop you there...'. It opened up opportunities for dramatic timing and deliberate use of backspacing for comedic effect. It was more 'live' than a one-line-at-a-time chat modality, despite its warts. While this style of online chat may not be particularly popular today, it was (and still is) readily available.
In real-life telephone conversations, you don't get to review each sentence before it goes out over the wire; if you choose the wrong word you just have to live with it.
To the other point, I just have to say -- what? People can perform tasks flawlessly in movies? It turns out that unless required for dramatic effect (as a somewhat-lazy shorthand to convey nervousness or poorly-concealed deception), characters always speak in clear, perfect setences and never use the word "um". Their shoelaces are always tied, their hair is always perfect, and they never miss the bus unless their character is required to be unlucky or miserable. People in movies seldom need to visit the washroom, and then only to have private conversations -- never to defecate, except as a route to teen-movie fart jokes.
Movies are a projection of reality, not an exact duplicate. People tend to do non-visually-arresting and plot-irrelevant things faster or behind the scenes. Watching someone make typos for two hours isn't my idea of a good time.
Re:Mistaking dramatic license for technical error. (Score:5, Funny)
It let the other guy step in and say 'I see where you're going, but let me stop you there...'. It opened up opportunities for dramatic timing and deliberate use of backspacing for comedic effect.
Kanye?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I was using ICQ back in 1998, and it had the option of displaying each chat character as it was typed.
This is called naked typing. Google wave has it by default and is very off-putting.
Irony (Score:3, Funny)
"Here's a link for the top 10 things that computers can do in movies but can't do in real life"
*clicks link*
"A rendering error occured"
Very lame indeed. (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to read something alot more entertaining and you're happy with it being spread across multiple pages, read the pages at TV Tropes instead: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalComputer [tvtropes.org] It includes all the ten tropes in the list, plus many more, without obnoxious advertising.
It's much funnier, has exhaustive examples, and will ultimately ruin your life.
A bit more back on topic, my favourite "enhance" button was seen in some terrible movie starring Jack Black as a CIA hacker which I came across whilst, er, herbally medicated. It featured the usual "enhance [208.116.9.205]" button with a (literal) twist - using "inference AI" it could turn a patchwork of images into a 3D model... including the bits that weren't filmed. The wall-banging stupidity of this was even a major plot point - the model was done so they could find out where someone had stashed the microfilm, or some such rubbish - typical modest programmers, they write their AI to infer things and it turns out to be an all-seeing eye that can observe past events witnessed by no other human. The only reason I'm sad I can't remember the name of that film is in case I accidentally start watching it again.
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Re:Very lame indeed. (Score:5, Funny)
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If you want to read something alot more entertaining and you're happy with it being spread across multiple pages, read the pages at TV Tropes instead: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalComputer [tvtropes.org] It includes all the ten tropes in the list, plus many more, without obnoxious advertising.
It's much funnier, has exhaustive examples, and will ultimately ruin your life.
Yes, the linked website hits one of my favorite classic computer no-nos "slot machine passwords". Remember the movie "
Another version... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, i'd like to point out that the Expert Reviews version used really poor examples for their #1 case that computers which are just left on will develop intelligence. V'ger didn't develop intelligence on its own, the original primitive computer was massively upgraded and reprogrammed by some aliens who found it, it wasn't just "left on." In Skynet's case the basic computer was powerful enough to develop sentience and did so almost immediately after being turned on, there was no "just leave it on long enough" involved. The WarGames example from the cracked article was better because it didn't show any signs of intelligence immediately after being turned on, and it involved completely understandable and by now quite outdated technology that clearly would have a hard time opening a modern webpage, much less developing intelligence.
Of course those scenes are rediculous.... (Score:5, Insightful)
but the fact is, doing a scene where a sysadmin bangs around in a terminal typing commands just isn't fun for the viewer. The reason we laugh so hard at these things though is because technology is our thing. It's true for almost anything in an entertainment-oriented (as opposed to educational) movie. Try some of the following:
Watch a few cop movies with actual cops.
Watch some hospital-based TV shows with some doctors, nurses and paramedics.
Watch a couple of movies that focus on car chases/stunts with some mechanics.
The list goes on and on. What you'll see though is, those people will have the same general reaction to Hollywood depictions of their areas of expertise that we have regarding use of computers/technology. Accuracy and entertainment just don't always go well together.
The password thing (Score:5, Funny)
Easily guessable passwords are real, as tons of other slashdot stories remind us. Of course, they often can't be quite that simple, because of password security rules. But that could lead to a new Hollywood password cracking scheme:
Geek Hero: Try "password"
Hot Girl at Keyboard: That'll never work, they've got strict password rules at EvilTech
GH: What are they?
HG: Has to be at least 8 characters including upper and lower case, at least one but not more than two numbers, and exactly one special character. Can't contain a dictionary word or abbreviation in any of 87 languages, including !Kung and Klingon, nor can the numbers be a day of the month or of special significance nor...
GH: Stop right there, there's only one password which matches those rules... try this...
HG: We're In!
Re: (Score:2)
is old and boring, how many of these articles are there? I swear one of these pops up every 6 months.
Nope, it's the same one that gets copypasted every single time with some minor changes.
Re:Slashdotted already :( (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone got a mirror?
Believe me .. in this case the slashdotting is a benefit and not a drawback
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh but don't you know? In real life nobody uses keyboards!
This article is totally a joke all around. The only difference between these guys, and the Hollywood guys, is that the hollywood guys are going to make a lot more money while demonstrating their lack of computer knowledge.
Re: (Score:2)
You better watch it with the nested posts, your stack might overflow
*ba-dum ching*
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, no IM system that people actually use shows each character as it is typed.
Seriously, who uses Google Wave regularly? Or Google Buzz, for that matter?