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Linux and Gnome Go to the Movies
brandonj writes "Looks like the new movie, Antitrust, will be using GNOME as their desktop in the movie. Here are screenshots and the Antitrust movie homepage is here. The movie will in theaters January 12." The website has a little bio for Maddog and Miguel.
it is a very strange site, but I really like Tim Robbins, so perhaps it'll be interesting...
2001-01-04 16:16:01 Gnome goes Hollywood! (articles,gnome) (rejected)
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I personally found it humorous that the movie's producers seem to be aiming for the geek market, but apparently ommitted a Linux version of the screen saver. Think someone will throw a fit about this? :)
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Finding God in a Dog
How realistic the screen they show is, is usually up to the director. However, as the previous post said, the FX people who are in charge of providing the computer that does what the script says it does will invariablly use a Mac running something like Director (a sort of Power Point for more dynamic displays and cut-n-paste movies). The actors will have to interact with this machine the same way over and over through many reshoots of the same sceene, so you want something very... well, scripted... on the screen.
Let's take a solid example. Let's say that the person working on the screen is supposed to click on a link and then go to a shell window and run a command.
Take 1: Click on the link. Browser is sluggish for no obvious reason, ruins shot.
Take 2: Click on the link. Page comes up, click on text window to bring it to foregroud, but actor misses and brings wrong text window up. Ruins shot.
Take 3: Launch PC running GNOME out window and install Mac (with PC-like keyboard and monitor) running Director. Actor screws up line.
Takes 4-10: Actors get it right, but director want's additional coverage.
I hope this clears it up....
Its screenshots of Gnome, doctored up by a graphic designer and written into director-style animations, so all the actor needs to do to interact with it is hit a key to go to the next frame or animation sequence.
Actually, the computer industry is moving away from that practice and moving towards hacker doubles: CS majors who take the actor's place when he/she is at the keyboard. We already saw this in The Net... It *looks* like Sandra Bullock sitting in front of the computer, but in fact, it's Alan Cox.
He was wearing make-up. And a hat. Not the usual one. One Sandra Bullock might wear. Were you fooled too?
Check out this link to see how this movie is also going to involve RSA's secureID cards. This movie should rock. Good actors, good technology :)
Ian
Speaking of OSs in movies, BeIA is in Ahhnold's new movie. From BeNews,
;)
"... The fridge was shown twice during the movie, once in the beginning where Arnie tried to get some milk off the fridge and then he just
clicked some buttons on the touch screen and once near the end, when the "bad guys" went there to find Arnie, but they couldn't find him around. BUT, the IA
'betrayed' Arnie, because it was written on it his "Schedule of the Day", so they knew where to find him..."
Get the article here from BeNews
Yea, you don't care. Go ahead and -1 Offtopic it, see if I care
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Just because it's running GNOME doesn't necessarily mean its underlying OS must be Linux. It could just as easily be Solaris, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, or any other platform which GNOME runs on. Claiming it is Linux just by GNOME is highly erroneous.
Failing that they would have been asked for permission to feature their products gratis. Microsoft's absence implies express denial.
This is hardly surprising considering that this movie's badguy, like the badguy in 'Tomorrow Never Dies' could easily called 'Bill' with no change to the plot. Regardless of how you feel about him, a *lot* of people are uncomfortable with how much power this man really has in the world, and are wont to satirize him.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Is it just me, or did anyone else notice the Windows code in the screenshots? I.e., "GetDlgItemText(hDlg...)"
Rich
From what I gather, this movie is about a Gates/Jobs/Ellison type that is trying to take overe the world via corruption and murder. Why then, use Gnome in all of the screen shots? Shouldn't the hackers in the movie be using Gnome and KDE and all the heavies using Windows or Mac0SX?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
So, let me get this straight - the company whose founder is trying to take over the whole digital world (or so it seems from the trailers) is using Free Software to do it?!?! My God, what have we done?
I guess the prognosticators who said Red Hat would become the new Microsoft weren't that far off after all...
Right...
I found it entertaining that on an episode of "Angel" they were using what was clearly an iBook, but there was a sticky note on the back of it covering the Apple logo. I guess Apple didn't kick in their endorsement fee for that episode.
does anyone else find it interesting that video interviews of leaders of the open source and linux/unix movements are being show in quicktime?
"yeah bill, i've got my interview on the web!" - "where, mig?" - "right here, but damn hold on, gotta install windows first."
riiiight...
http://kered.org
John "Maddog" Hall
Miguel de Icaza
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Finding God in a Dog
The AntiTrust movie's website has an interview with everybody's favourite linux guy Joh "Maddog" Hall with questions like "What is Linux and what does it do? " and "What is open source?" Check it out, it is interesting watching and can only be good for getting the word out there.
If, by saying thanks, you mean watching a TV show or movie that we would otherwise find boring just because it features Linux, then you are correct.
Is it neat to hear that Linux has made it into a visible role in the entertainment industry? Sure. Is it enough to make me devote an hour of my time every week? Sorry -- I got over the "Whoa! They're using Linux." thrill long ago.
Besides, unless you have one of those Nielsen boxes in your home, it's not like anyone knows or cares what you're watching anyway. you may as wewll sit in your bathroom repeating "use Linux" over and over.
Rich
Rich
Am I the only one who noticed that their site ROUTINELY crashes Netscape for Linux? I tried it under Netscape 4.76 for Linux and was unable to get the main page (the one past the spiffy little splash screen) to display; the browser kept hanging.
Isn't it a wee bit ironic that a movie clearly aimed (at least partially) at geeks should have a Web site clearly tested only under proprietary OSes?
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
"This is UNIX. I know this."
Your comment would be funny, except its not. According to the second part of the quote, the girl apparently already knew UNIX, thus the movie says nothing about its intuitiveness. I hate being anal-retentive, but your oversight more or less ruins the joke. (I am dead serious here)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I thought I was crazy during the previews for this Movie. I remember catching a quick glimpse of Ghome.
This is weird because the majority of all movies that I see, they are using either Macintoshes or some sort of clone when they have a computer. I can't think of any movie I've seen where they have used Windows. (Except for "You've Got Mail" but that movie doesn't count)
"I know Unix!"
really? How'd they get that way? motorcycle accident with the gas cap? broken bicycle seat? only job available was to guard the Sultan's harem?
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
I ain't been this excited since the Fat Boys starred in The Disorderlies and they featured an Amiga 1000 on screen!!!
Of course, it turns out that the Amiga 1000's 5.5v keyboard is explosive when wet, if movies are to be believed.
It takes a Mac to wirelessly hack into a martian mothership and plant a system disabling virus.
Yeah! Lets just pirate the movie and watch it at home!
>>> Sarcasm mdoe off
You tell me how this code is easier to read than this code.
I show these examples to a lot of people (mostly casual coders) and not one tells me that Microsoft's official Hungarian style is easier to read.
I will admit that a simple prefix makes things easier to read, but stuff like rgbsyHash is garbage.
Need to save space? use wm2 :)
http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wm2/
There was another even more different WM I saw recently, where you have one main window at a time, with mini-windows for your non-focused ones. I don't think I could have gotten used to it though.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
he should have used diff at the command line...
Eh...
Good point, however, someone else already pointed out that their treatment of linux is a bit different than other films... that is, they actually mention it!
I haven't had a chance to research the movie much, but maybe the director is a linux (well, unix/gnome) buff and thought "hey, it'd be cool to use this in a movie instead of that obviously fake stuff everyone else has!". A minor point to most people, but it does (or could) raise the film up a bit more in the minds of geeks like us.
Even if they are doctored images, why are they doctored to look like the real thing, instead of the bastardizations that are normally seen, with 2" fonts and big flashing access denie messages? Seems to me if they were going to fake it they could make it look a lot cooler than the default gnome desktop...
Mission Impossible #1 used Netscape for most of the
computer screen shots.
You've Got Mail had the typist reading their mail
out loud to themselves.
Jurassic Park #1 used VR flythoughs on a Silicon
Graphics with Connection Machines in the background.
War Games had speaking computer terminals.
Original Star Trek has a feminine speaking computer. However, Spock always seems to be looking
into a oscilloscope hood for readouts.
2001: Space Oddessy was most prescient. They had
video monitor graphics before computer graphics images was invented. The best at the time was stoking lines on an oscilloscope display.
Won't it be strange to see Gnome running on a Mac?
Remember Hackers where everyone was using a Mac? Or The Net where every computer must have had a 3D card and a T3? Hollywood is so full of shit.
Hungarian notation is ugly on an aesthetic level. This alone however is not enough to condemn it's usage.
There are however, better ways for a programer to find out the type of a variable or the definition of a function, namely just run ctags on all your code, and then use an editor that supports tag-based navigation (vim and emacs do, off the top of my head). This allows you to effortlessly jump to the thing's original spot o' definition, and back to where you were. I dare say this is easier to use (no decoding xyLDsTRdyQvariable_name anymore)... ;-)
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
The link is here. (See the last paragraph at the bottom of the page).
While you have a valid point about product placement, the original poster's point about choosing an OS based on movies or tv shows still stands, IMO. Yep, Gateway has a strong brand identity and placing it on tv shows and movies probably works as well as Coca-Cola or McDonald's, but...
This is kind of a different animal, isn't it? If there were redhat logos or some other readily identifiable image to create an advert 'impression', then yeah, I would probably agree. But this is a glimpse of a desktop that probably only people who are already familiar with will recognize. I don't think it's the same thing as having Kramer carry around a bucket of KFC.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
The other repliers are all correct WRT it wasn't linux, it was IRIX, probably running on a Crimson (was the indy available then?). The program was called fsn and you can run it if you have a machine running IRIX 4.0.1 through 5.3.
It's interesting, becuase the childrens' interaction with the computer system got a lot of space in the book (proportionally way more than, what, 30 seconds or so in the movie). They actually had "screenshots" (in a sort of ncurses-ish way) in there to show what the kids were doing. Pretty interesting. (of course as a whole the book was a lot better than the movie but isn't that always the case?)
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
actually it was "fsn" on an IRIX box
renders your file-system as 3d columns, where the ehight of the column has something to do with the size of the file/directory. You fly around in the fs and can click on things.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Oh man, I hope I never acutally pay to see a movie where I watch someone code. Oh crap, he didn't terminate his statement, the killer is going to get him now......
I don't hate to admit it, I don't have to. I hate it. It's a personal preference thing - some (very few) like it, the majority don't. In fact, I've yet to see the source to a GPL'ed program which uses Hungarian Notation. Counter examples welcome.
Mr Torvalds' personal perference can be found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/CodingStyle:
C is a Spartan language, and so should your naming be. Unlike Modula-2 and Pascal programmers, C programmers do not use cute names like ThisVariableIsATemporaryCounter. A C programmer would call that variable "tmp", which is much easier to write, and not the least more difficult to understand.
Encoding the type of a function into the name (so-called Hungarian notation) is brain damaged - the compiler knows the types anyway and can check those, and it only confuses the programmer. No wonder MicroSoft makes buggy programs.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
This isn't any different than selling a distribution. GNOME is free software, no one has to pay anything. If they modified the code, they probably have to release that (I'm not sure if any modifications would be considered "in house" or not).
Wow. That will have a huge impact on Gnome usership, I'm sure.
When I was at Thinking Machines, they took the entire company to see Jurassic Park. What was more interesting to us was when the ubergeek bragged about networking together 8 Connection Machines (actually, they were just the cabinets, no processors; I don't remember, but they were probably running the random & pleasing blinkenlights hack that was floating around).
I'd suspect that you're kinda wrong about this one. Computer makers (I'm talking mostly hardware here) pour big bucks into television for product placement. Every computer on ER has a Gateway logo on it. Every time someone on that show is putting something into a box, it's got cow spots. Drew Carrey hauls an i-book around with him on his shows. Guess what... It's not an accident. Someone must think that it's worth the money.
On the other hand, graphic designers love macs. Pretty much every (screen shot|simulated screen shot|I want this to look high tech) graphic you see in print ads has MacOS widgets in it. You even see this in ads for MS products sometimes. Overall, I'd that that that hasn't convinced all that many people to switch from windows.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Will somebody please explain to me what this movie has to do with Open Source, and why there are biographies of John Hall and Miguel de Icaza, on the site? Is this movie modeled on real events or something? That site is just incoherent.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Unless someone with a copy of VMWare and QuickTime Pro converts it to MPEG, like this:
ftp://jk1.net/pub/antitrust.mpg
Unfortunately, the MPEG version is 26 megs. Doh!
Warning: rant starting
Tim Robbins was great in The Shawshank Redemption and all, but I have a hard time believing that idiot could run a neighborhood reading group, let alone be an Evil Corporate Execitive. In the scenes shown during the previews, he does everything short of mustache twirling to make sure you know he is a bad guy.
Just once, it would be nice to see a high-tech thriller that is not completely built around the Baby Boom Generation's irrational fear of computers, corporations, and/or suburban life.
What these Hollywood dicks fail to see is that normal Americans, especially young people who go to a lot of movies, don't fear technology. At all. Even if some nefarious Evil CEO(TM) wanted to sneak a camera into my PC, how would an actual hacker kid react? "Yay! Free camera! I bet I can hack this!"
Out here in the real world, corporations don't give a shit about who you are our what you are doing. They only care about what they can sell you and how much you will pay for it.
Every year, Hollywood makes another crop of movies to tell us that the Star Chambers of Wall Street are out to destroy us... but most of us know that Corporation is the river by which wealth and prosperity flow to us. Without corporations, there would be no Hollywood productions to complain about them, and no customers with enough money to go to the movies. So shut the hell up, Tim Robbins. Nobody cares about what frightens you.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Or, heck, a version of the trailer that isn't in Quicktime? (not that they can't be found elsewhere, I suppose..)
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New movie...
Heavy UNIX ties...
Gnome Desktop...
and a trailer in a format that can't be played on UNIX.
Maybe they're just trying to make a point...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
The Amiga community used to go gaga over TV shows/movies that either featured Amigas, or used Amigas in their production. SeaQuest, Babylon 5, and WaynesWorld 2 are 3 big ones that had the community all hyped up: "ooo the world will see that this is the best platform now." "Ooooh, won't those Mac/Windows users be jealous!" "ooo, Commodore is probably getting a lot of money for this -- We're SAVED!" Gee, where is that community now? It doesn't mean diddly-squat, people.
Does this mean that RMS will go ape crazy on their asses for not GPL'ing the movie because it includes GNOME (and GPL'ed code)?
End the insanity!
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
This has been said before about earlier movies, but NO movie director would put a real computer system in front of actors. Its screenshots of Gnome, doctored up by a graphic designer and written into director-style animations, so all the actor needs to do to interact with it is hit a key to go to the next frame or animation sequence.
Usually in films it is the big commercial offerings that get this sort of product placement, and the Directors don't mind, because expensive things are sexy status symbols (I fell for my last boyfriend because fo his car, so it is probably a bad mistake to make ;).
But for Linux, it is important that it try and be sexy to appeal to the vacant audience that Windows and Macintosh so succesfully manages. When it gets sexy enough, lots more people should start using it. People are stupid that way ;)
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
I hate to run this for you, but you can run VMWare under windows 2000. Then put Linux on VMWare, and then run GNOME on the VMWare Linux. Or even better, port XFree86 to Win 2000,and then run GNOME on it.... :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Let's see. The movie is being put out, in part, by RSA Security Systems; the script involves a dashing young computer geek with an artist girlfriend; and the GNOME shots, with a possible Miguel cameo, get the Slashdot crowd.
Do you think they may be aiming for a certain demographic? Hm?
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
I guess they only figured out that Linux was cool after they tried to forbid Free DVD software...? They _are_ part of the MPAA. Too bad the target audience won't be able to view this movie once it's kicked out of the bioses. Dehh.
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Mike.
--Ask a silly person, get a silly answer.
Remember that the dollars you give the studio when you go to the theatre are being used to lobby for laws like the DMCA, wage lawsuits like MPAA vs. Eric Corley, and lobby the FCC on copy-controls for digital broadcasts (just to name a few of the more well-known examples of the ways the MPAA members are attempting to limit your freedom).
Let's not give these pricks the chance to use our own money against us.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
A number of us have been looking forward to this movie for almost a year!
You see, it was filmed on the campus of the University of Britich Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. It was quite entertaining watching them film it. We all got a good laugh over the giant monitor and keyboard sticking out of the ground by one of the arts buildings.
As well, the large white building with the glowing "Computer Science Department" sign is actually our CS department! Unfortunately they didn't leave that nice glowing sign. =)
Anyhow, it sounds like a typical lame movie plot line, but who knows, it could actually turn out to be cool!
We're definately going to see it when it comes out, and will be playing "spot the UBC building" through the entire movie.
Cool to see Gnome was used in it too! I only wish we actually HAD linux machines available for student use.... well, we will in about 2 months, but that's another story. =)
antarctican at trams dot ca
RedHat should pay Fox to load Gnome up on Dana Scully's laptop with custom themes for GTK and Sawfish and then make those themes available either on Fox's home page or RedHat's (Or both.) It'd be some killer advertising, IMHO.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah i remember that line, its funny though, the girl in jurrassic park identified unix by looking at a 3rd party GUI tool running on linux and immediately identified it as unix. She was then able to immediately use that application to achieve tasks that the systems designers couldnt do 5 minutes earlier, seems all unix apps are intuitive after all.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
"Do our part to say thanks"?
who gives a shit what desktop environment is being used in a television program or movie? It's now the civic responsibility of geeks to midlessly support any tripe that happens to include a computer with linux running in the background? Get a life.
Hint: nobody chooses their next OS based on what they saw someone in some crappy movie/tv-show using.
And Antitrust looks like a shitty movie. Despite having Tim Robbins in it. Gnome or no Gnome.
/bluesninja