More Than 20 Years of the Web on the Big Screen

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "WSJ.com has compiled clips from a dozen movies over the past 23 years that depict the internet, with varying degrees of accuracy. Among the selections: WarGames, Sneakers, .com for Murder, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The Matrix Reloaded used real Linux code, while Mission: Impossible had the improbable email addresses Job@Book of Job and Max@Job 3:14. In a related article, WSJ.com reviews some of the more-absurd Hollywood conventions when it comes to the web. Harry Knowles, of Ain't It Cool News, says, 'The thing that always gets me is watching people send emails. You click "send" and the entire document begins to fold into an envelope and disappear into the screen. I tend to send around 300 to 400 emails a day, and that would drive me insane.'"

Comments

Wow

[koreaman]

I can't believe that list of inaccurate depictions left off Independence Day. No, you can't write a computer virus on your Mac and upload it to alien ships on the fly. And even if you could, it probably wouldn't show a pretty blue progress bar that said "uploading virus" while you did it.

Honestly, that's the worst depiction of computers in film that I've ever seen

Re:Wow

[Rob T Firefly]

No, you can't write a computer virus on your Mac and upload it to alien ships on the fly.

Maybe you can't...

Re:Wow

[mgblst]

To be fair, the film screws up so badly in all areas, it would be weird if they got the computer stuff right.

How did Jeff Goldblum's character figure out the alien signal?
How did they know how to fly the alien ship?
All of the characters in this film are stereotypical.
The President of the United States of America flies a fighter plane against alien ships.
The town drunk is a hero for no reason.
I could come up with more, but like a child who had been molestered by her uncle, I don't like thinking about it too much.

Possibly the most idiotic film of the past 30 years.

Re:Wow

[mwvdlee]

It's a movie about a friggin' alien invasion, yet you complain about the computer stuff being unrealistic?

Re:Wow

[linvir]

How can you complain about the president flying a fighter plane? It was one of the greatest moments in the history of accidental satire!

Re:Wow

[dorkygeek]

A. He got probed up the ass by the aliens, he's got to get some comeback. It's a classic tale of revenge and redemption. Positively Shakespearian.

Some of us here would be very happy to get it at least up the butt. Although a kind of "revenge" afterwards woul be nice too.

Re:Wow

[TopShelf]

They should really revisit that film, and digitally include a "Mission Accomplished" banner after his triumphant landing...

Re:Wow

[finkployd]

I'll play

Their ship is pretty big, One- fourth the size of the moon, although an object that size in near-Earth orbitmight be expected to cause tidal waves, there are none!


That is a really good point and I had not thought about that. However we do not know the nature of their drive system, I'm assuming not propulsion (which would have leveled the cities simply by hovering over them), so let's pretend some kind of anti-gravity thing which could in turn be used to negate any gravitational pull their mothership would have exerted on earth (or the moon for that matter, probably knocking it out of orbit).


Why are the aliens using hours and minutes, in their doomsdays signal?


They are not, the are simply using a increasingly short interval between their signal transmissions. Jeff Goldblum (exercising his acting skills by being the only character he has ever attempted) figured out that it was a decreasing pattern and extrapolated when it would end. Then he displayed that information using hours and minutes. Note that nowhere did he "translate" the signal or its meaning.


If these creatures can field a spaceship a fourth the size of the moon, why do they bother engaging in aerial dogfights with the U.S. Air Force?


Presumably they wanted Earth and everything on it, minus the pesky ape decedents who tended try to protect stuff and cause problems for the new alien overlords. They could have wiped the planet clean or just nuked it at once, but then they would have lost the resources they were supposedly after (not sure it they just wanted raw materials or technology or what).

And why don't they blow up everything at once?

Well my understanding is that they did blow up every major city they were hovering over at once as soon as their countdown hit zero. However rather than show a bunch of split screens in real time the director choose to show each explosion in sequence.


Or knock out the Internet with a neutron bomb, instead of simply causing snow and static on TV screens?

The purpose of the static was not to knock out communications, it was to synchronize their attack. Perhaps they were after our swiss clock technology since they obviously could not coordinate time on their ships. Maybe they caught a bit of Parker Lewis Can't Lose that we beamed into space and were intrigued when the characters said "synchronize swatches". I can see the discussion now: "Hey, those earthlings know how to keep accurate time, think of what this technology could do for our invading forces? No longer would we be limited to invading planets which have the communications satellites in place we need to coordinate!". No wonder their computer system was so vulnerable.

That said, your complaints about the moving sucking were right on, it was pretty unmatchable. Even Judd Hirsch couldn't save this one.

For my money, Sneakers was probably the best computer geek movie. At least until someone makes Cryptonomicon into a movie (on second thought, as much as I liked that book I think the movie would probably suck)

Finkployd

Re:Wow

[Zaphod2016]

The day I see the President of any political party fight aliens in a jet plane, I will pay double my taxes and adopt a family on welfare.

Re:Wow

[myth24601]

Here in Hazard County, we normally keep ramps setup all over the place in case you need to jump your car over somethin.

Visual Incremental Password Decryption

[4of12]

My favorite: the odometer/slot machine password cracking software, whirring the last few places as you hear the Bad Guy® coming down the hall...

Re:Accurate or not

[amliebsch]

Jason had some of the best lines

For someone who claims to love the movie, I'd think you'd know it was Joshua, not Jason! Nerd card SUSPENDED!

Reminds me of a Buffy scene

[Anonymous Coward]

Willow: "Have you tried Googling her?"

Xander: "Willow, she's only 17!"

New Spam King in Town?

[gregarican]

The WSJ writer claims, "I tend to send around 300 to 400 emails a day, and that would drive me insane."

Just the thought of sending out 2,000 e-mails per workweek would drive me a bit apeshit as well. Is he the new distributor for Matthew Lesko's wares?

Chloe O'Brien - Master H4Xx0r!

[a_nonamiss]

First off, I love the show 24, but when I watch it, I have to shut my computer nerd brain off.

CHLOE: Jack, I'm going to open a socket to CTU so you can use your phone to upload the data from the thumb drive.
JACK: I can't upload it. Something's wrong!
CHLOE: It looks like the terrorists are trying to overload the router with IP addresses.
JACK: Can you find out where it's coming from?
CHLOE: I can't Jack, they're using a level 4 encryption algorhythm. It'll take me a few hours to decipher it.
JACK: Maybe you can use some of the bandwidth from the FBI servers to help break the encryption!
CHLOE: That might work, but I'll need level 5 network access from the FBI. I'll call you back!

It's a damn good thing that show has other good qualities...

Re:Chloe O'Brien - Master H4Xx0r!

[elrous0]

You expect realism from a show where all the good guys use Apples and all the bad guys use PC's?

-Eric

Re:Chloe O'Brien - Master H4Xx0r!

[soft_guy]

That seems like the most realistic part.

Re:I remember "The Net"

[Anonymous Coward]

ac@server:~$ ping 23.75.345.200
ping: unknown host 23.75.345.200 :(

not only the web

[kunzy]

Oh, this is a *Unix* system. I know all about this. --Jurassic Parc

Mass Mailing

[digitaldc]

I tend to send around 300 to 400 emails a day, and that would drive me insane.

Man, that's nothing. You should see Jim Carrey sending email in 'Bruce Almighty'

Re:jurassic park

[OzPeter]

Forget the stupid programming stuff. Who was the dumbshit project manager that signed off on the backup generator being located *outside* of the safe command compound?? The whole project design was an engineering nightmare that should have been squashed from the start!

Movies For Nerds Stuff That Entertains

[Heir Of The Mess]

I remember when I was in school I went to see The Terminator with some friends. When the assembly code was scrolling up the screen many of us recognised it and sang out "Hey he's a Commodore 64".

They probably all read slashdot now. Hi Guys!

Amusingly -

[Geminii]

As an office tech, I was once pulled aside to demonstrate screenlocking to a new employee. I told her to put in a password while I wasn't looking, then locked the screen and had her unlock it. Then, to kill five seconds, I said "And now look what happens when I try to guess it," and with half a neuron thinking of "WarGames", quickly typed "Joshua" into the password box and hit Enter.

How was I to know it was also her kid's name?

My favourite moment

[ascii]

The show / movie escapes me but I'll remember this pants wetting funny awful sequence to the day I draw my terminal breath:

> DELETE ALL SECRET FILES
SECRET FILES ARE PROTECTED. CANNOT DELETE.
> OVERRIDE
DELETING ALL SECRET FILES...DONE!

Re:My favourite moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn it on your own time..

Re:My favourite moment

[Master of Transhuman]

Now do it in Perl.

The result will look like this:

$..=$_ for( qw(^,?y,(.),:^ y?y ?@xz?:^ .?y .mvm.:^ :?y :grr::^ .? udvn
+'',(ebmv% //,^ .)[1,0,2]:^ :?~e :^,\1:^ `^ &^'::^y?~f?@xz?xz@?:^:?~e:^,\1^,\2:^2
+^1^2::));
$_=$.;y*^y: @wx fez %db uvm?*$q; auc ysh top jil=*;eval;print for($q,$
+;,$ .,$/)

(From Perl Monks Obfuscated Code Web page.)

Re:This is nothing...

[amliebsch]

"Amar Akbar Anthony...Mother needs blood."

Was it a trap?

"Document begins to fold into an envelope..."

[ebonkyre]

Dammit, man! Apple's going to sue you if you leak details about the next OS X like that!

Re:Accurate or not

[stunt_penguin]

The main thing that they got wrong in that scene was the fact that he actually impressed an attactive young female with his hacking skills, rather than eliciting a blank stare, a yawn or a breakup.

So unlike real life.

Re:Web != Internet

[turgid]

Quite. My mother-in-law thinks that Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet.

Re:Accurate or not

[Chr0nik]

Chicks like guys with skills...

Numbchuck skills, computer hacking skills....

The one that always gets me is...

[smithmc]

from Clear and Present Danger - "We're wayyy beyond birthdays now. I'm gonna have to write... a special program, here."

Re:Accurate or not

[nuzak]

Note to self: change combination on nuclear launch code suitcase. -- GWB

Re:The Web != The Internet

[Fred_A]

It seems impossible to film anything, save naked humans or other animals in pristine nature, without violating something.

That whould explain the popularity of porn. It's the only honest cinematography left.

Ewwww!

[Rob T Firefly]

Obviously, that lingerie store had some high-tech, holographic VR camera setup, which makes me really wonder about the store owner.