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Servers, Hackers, and Code In the Movies
Billosaur writes "As with anything, Hollywood has a weird way of viewing computer technology and the people who use it. To help quantify things, take a look at The Top 20 Movie Hackers, the Top Ten Movie Servers, and the things code doesn't do in real life." From the servers article: "3. UNIX environment - Jurassic Park (1993). The UNIX environment here is a classic geek joke. Everything we saw was real - created by Silicon Graphics and called IRIX. InGen was the corporation funding the island, and from an IT perspective they let the worst possible thing happen: they allowed one programmer to design the infrastructure with no supervision. What's worse, they obviously required no documentation of what was done. The result was a kid had to hack in and gain ROOT privileges. The likelihood of a young kid knowing a way to get ROOT (and not a more experienced programmer) is pretty hard to swallow. The hardware for this server was probably minimal, running door locks and starting Quicktime movies. 'We spared no expense!' You would think that with the millions of dollars they spent on the park, they could have hired a couple newbie programmers and added a server on the backend."
While I realize this list is written for folks who enjoy this kind of stuff, I don't think *anyone* would find that adding another half hour of film devoted to showing how Jurassic Park hired computer experts and documenting their security systems would benefit the movie.
If Hollywood isn't accurate regarding computer technology, I shudder to think what else they've depicted might be wrong. Next you're going to tell me good guys don't have unlimited ammunition, you can't trick a killer to confesing to a murder on national television, and that ugly women can't be transformed into supermodels merely by taking off their glasses!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Yeah, Cretaceous Park more like.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Take Swordfish for example where he hacks into some top secret site whilst having a gun pointed at him, a gorgeous blonde giving him a blow job and Halle Berry looking on. In my entire working career that's only ever happened to me twice (ok probably cos I live so far from Halle Berry). But still.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'd kill to have a program that makes terminal output sound like it does in the movies!
Yes. Then you'd very quickly be snuffed out by everyone who has to be anywhere near you.
... that projects the back-to-front green text onto the face of the user.
Oh, and the image processing software that takes a poor quality security camera image, and 'enhances' it so you can see the villains face reflected in the sunglasses of the victim.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
If you want to quibble, you could ask where he got the EvilAlienOS programmer's reference manual or the EvilAlienCPU's architecture description or how he managed to find an exploitable vulnerability in EvilAlienOS so quickly.
EvilAlienOS is actually Windows95, which they, like everybody else in the universe, were forced to install on their hardware by Microsfot.
This is actually the reason they invaded in the first place.
Fortunately, once Jeff Goldblum figured this out, finding an exploitable vulnerability wasn't a problem.
Tweet, tweet.
Makes sense to me. You have to understand, that like every other being in the galaxy in the year 1996, these aliens were forced to use Windows 95. Very easy for Jeff Goldblum to hack into from his laptop.
In fact, that's why the aliens came to Earth; they were looking for Bill Gates...
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
My personal favorite was in a CSI episode: A guy took a photo, but the tip of his finger got in the picture...so they figured ohh wtf, lets lift a print from this scanned 3x5" photo that's been through a fire!
. . . When you were gwowing up, didn't you notice that anything was possibwe in cawtoons? Do you weawwy think Howwywood movie diwectors ow pwoducers awe any diffewent? It isn't weawity, you know?
Oh, BTW, that weminds me . . . I went out hunting this weekend and the stwangest thing happened. Weww, I saw this wabbit, you see. So, I chased him down and he wan and jumped into this howe in the gwound. I said, "I'm gonna get you, you wascawy wabbit!!". You wouldn't bewieve what he did!! He jumped out of the howe, gwabbed my big, fat cheeks and kissed me wight on the mowth!! Then he jumped up again, spinning in a compwete bwur at about a thousand times a second, to which, at his apex he jack-knifed and did a Gweg Wouganis-style dive, wight back into the howe. So I stuck my double-bawwel shotgun in the howe and said, "Now, I've got you, wabbit!!". Suddenwy, I fewt a tun on my gun, and befowe I know it I was in a tug-of-waw with him. He yanked and I yanked back. Yank . . . yank. . . yank, . . . back and fowrth. When I finawwy puwwed my gun out, it was tied in a knot!! As a wast wesowt, I puwwed the twigger and bwew my own face owff. That was the wast time I went wabbit hunting.
Now, I just wook fowawd to duck season. If that doesn't wowk out, I'ww just take up painting.
I've never had to be an admin on a Unix machine, but I've been a molecular biologist/population geneticist for 10+ years.
Let's just say you and I are equally annoyed for completely different reasons.
All hardware is compatible.
I remember watching "The Lone Gunman" one day (thank God that show didn't make it!) and they needed more processing power to crack a password to take over a hijacked plane. "We could do this if had one of those new Octium 4's!" Well, they get one, right before the plane hits the building, they pull out their existing processor and drop in the Octium 4 (without so much as powering the machine off) and BAM! They had their password and saved the plane. (Oh, and no processors had any type of thermal anything!)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Uphill both ways in the snow?
You know, the first language I learned way back when was COBOL. I didn't love it much, but that's only because nobody ever told me that you could create a Terminator with it!
Of course, even as a junior programmer I probably would have been sharp enough to send information directly to the brain on the cyborg rather than just doing a printout to the eye. But you know how it goes - machine generated code is always crap.
as a senior unix admin, I gotta say I personally enjoy the mystique surrounding our profession, especially that of the hardcore sysadmin. if they wanna think that it takes some uber-genius to be a sysadmin, and therefore keep our pay up in the ranks, let em! I may even buy a skateboard and hold onto limos while I intercept garbage files on a floppy from the teenager who just rooted my Sun e25k. heh.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
You mean the General Lee can't survive repeated 50-foot jumps without a scratch??
Yeah, like an actual hacker would be able to last longer than 5 seconds during his first ever blowjob.
Try being a firearms afficionado and watching some action movies.
.223 caliber brass is hitting the ground?
.357 magnum revolver?
Like when Neo is going akimbo with 22. caliber pistols and
Or when someone is firing shots from a semiauto pistol while the slide is locked open.
Or when someone tries to fire an empty semiauto pistol and the slide didn't lock open after the last bullet or it has locked open and yet there is still the sound of a hammer falling.
Or when someone fires 10 shots from a
Or when someone assembles a rifle out of a case and hits a bullseye from 400 yards away.
Or when someone rapid fires a bolt-action rifle.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Ok, that does it, I just modded you down!
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
"Computer? HellOOOO, Computer!"
- Montgomery Scott, Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales
(It's actually subtitled "The Voyage Home" but admit it, you remember it as that too)
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.