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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."
20. Jack Stanfield, Firewall (2006)
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19. J-Bone, Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
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18. Lazlo Hollyfeld, Real Genius (1985)
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17. Wyatt Donnelly, Weird Science (1985)
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16. Milo Hoffman, Antirust (2001)
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15. Dennis Nedry, Jurassic Park (1993)
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14. Gus Gorman, Superman III (1983)
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13. Kevin Mitnick, Takedown (2000)
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12. Boris Grishenko, Goldeneye (1995)
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11. John 'Captain Crunch' Draper, Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
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10. Michael Bolton & Samir Nagheenanajar, Office Space (1999)
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9. Theodore Donald 'Rat' Finch, The Core (2003)
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8. The Puppet Master, Ghost In The Shell (1995)
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7. Stanley Jobson, Swordfish (2001)
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6. Jobe Smith, Lawnmower Man (1992)
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5. Kevin Flynn, Tron (1982)
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4. David Lightman, WarGames (1983)
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3. Dade 'Crash Override' Murphy, Hackers (1995)
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2. Martin Bishop, Sneakers (1992)
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1. Thomas 'Neo' Anderson, The Matrix (1999)
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The screenshot for Jurassic Park looks like a normal Irix screen. But what anybody who actually watched that part of the movie noticed was that the screen in the movie was some weird flying-through-a-virtual-reality-landscape thing, which the kid immediately recognized as UNIX. Almost everybody with actual UNIX experience just laughed at that, because it was classic a Hollywood computer representation. Except that it really was Irix, but running a window manager only available to people whose UNIX system had superfluous accelerated 3D graphics in 1995 (i.e., movie CG folks). What the audience couldn't see, but the kid would have been able to, was that the landscape had, written on the ground, things like "sbin" and "usr", clear signs of a UNIX system of some sort. As for breaking in, when dinosaurs are taking over your facility, chances are you aren't patching sendmail every day. And, in '95, that would have been a problem.
A kid could r00t it.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
IANAL but I do provide IT support to a few firms.
You never, ever, see any paperwork, stacks of document boxes or any case files being used in any legal shows.
They make it seem(Especially in Boston Legal) that the defendant or plaintif just tells the attourneys their problem and then just go to court and argue it.
Sent from my computer.
Now GET OFF MY LAWN!
It wasn't like there was a 300 baud modem hanging off the back of WOPR - the army guy asks how the attack happened and the techie replies "he got into our network through a dial up at one of our remote facilities" - or something to that effect.
They go on to mention that this had now been diabled and wouldn't happen again. From that point on, it's WOPR phoning David back to continue the "game".
From the beep man page (in Debian):
Let's even ignore for a moment the fact that real hacking is boring to look at. What's interesting for Joe Average to watch a guy live on Chips and Jolt for hours and days while typing cryptic commands?
Imagine someone actually did a "true" hacker movie. Let's imagine a documentary. A "show hack" if you want, where someone who really knows what he's doing is giving us a 90 minute rundown of a hack. Using real tools, trying real exploits. How long do you think 'til certain three letter orgs step in and round up everyone who had even remotely anything to do with it?
Hacking isn't a funny game anymore. As more information and money is dealt through electronic channels, the stakes rose considerably. Hacking is a business, more than it ever was. And it has become a problem to the powers that be, more than it ever was.
Movies already tell BS in certain other areas, for example when it comes to chemicals used in bombs or how certain tools can be (ab)used to cause havoc, just to deter wannabe copycats. You think anyone would be allowed to do a "true" hacker movie in this climate?
Besides, nobody would want to watch it. Except maybe geeks, but you can hardly make a blockbuster that way. I mean, when was the last time your computer blew up due to a botched hack? See? No explosions, no gunfights, not interesting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
[OT]
Was that at the RNC in 2004? I used my video tape to get BS charges against myself (and possibly a few others arrested in Times Square) dropped. Hell, my ACLU lawyer didn't even have to show up in court. I just had the tape in my hands.
The window manager showed in Jurrasic Park is actually real, it's fsn. There's a linux port, fsv at sourceforge. As you'll notice, the view does make it possible to tell that you're in a *nix enviornment.
www.isoHunt.com
A counter example to this list was The Matrix - Reloaded. Where a documented exploit was used to gain access to the power grid. As for how a single system was able to bring down power for an entire city - well thats touches a subject called Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
"Flee at once, all is discovered."
The most powerful server was also the most dangerous. The 50 mile by 50 mile computer complex on "Forbidden Planet". The server could create anything a mind could think of. Even monsters from a Disney movie.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
The Terminator ran a MC6502 chip, at least it was 6502 assembler that you'd see through his "eyes".
...and ninja assassins find amusing to people not in those fields.
While I am not a Ninja Assasin, I am a Unix admin, and I did laugh at "I know this!". But in the same vien, I have studied martial arts for years, and whenever I see a swordfight, in a movie, it drives me insane.
The next time you watch a swordfight in a movie, watch where the swords are being swung. Most of the time, if the opponent just dropped their sword to the floor, the attacking swing would miss completely. In hollywood, they swing the swords at the other swords - blade to blade - instead of trying to actually hit the other guy.
That drives me nuts.
(Still working on the Ninja Assasin bit though...)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
A statement:
I am a sound designer and a programmer. I have on many occasions intentionally, even without being asked, cut "blip" sound effects for code scrolling across a screen -- not just code, but any sort of stdout/text output/situational awareness display.
I do not do it because I'm stupid, or am trying to dumb down the audience, it for a few specific reasons:
We put blips on a computer screen for the same reason ipods chirp when you press a button. Psychology.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
First off Jurassic Park is one of favourite films, so allow me to retort.
Myth: Dennis was the only programmer
Dennis was the only programmer left on the Island as all the others had left for their vacation. Jurassic Park was set during a vacation period hence why there were so few people and why the load speakers were telling people they had to make it down to the ferry. Dennis had purposely waited until there was only skeleton crew as this would allow him access to the cold storage.
Myth: The girl hacked into the system
No. The power had been shut off then turned back on. She accessed the system as it booted up the next time. It seems that they hadn't gotten around to setting a root password yet (the place was still in development after all). All she really does is:
All things that could be done by anyone who thinks they are a "hacker".
Off-topic but does anybody know whether the Apple used by Dennis is running Mac OS or Apples Unix A/UX
Umm..hard to do anything in MacOS 9 in 1996 ;)
(didn't come out till 1999, no I have no life)
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
The next time you watch a swordfight in a movie, watch where the swords are being swung. Most of the time, if the opponent just dropped their sword to the floor, the attacking swing would miss completely. In hollywood, they swing the swords at the other swords - blade to blade - instead of trying to actually hit the other guy.
A very noteable exception -- or maybe not since it isn't Hollywood but what you're saying is common of action movies from everywhere -- being The Seven Samurai. Everyone who uses a sword in that movie uses it to kill, and as a result most sword fights are one or two strokes long. While lacking the acrobatic beauty of a good ten-minute lightsaber duel, it did have a gritty reality that just felt right.
The enemies of Democracy are
Loads of different people are doing similar things - there was even a slashdot story on it in the last year or so. Just google something like "super resolution" or something like resolution+video+enhancement and you should get heaps of good paper links etc. :)
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(Super-resolution will actually pull up several different related things - stuff like increasing apparent resolution of low quality videos (upsampling and the like) as well as the idea given above (using multiple frames of video to track pixel displacement and get a frame of higher resolution than the original video)).
I found one ask slashdot that deals with the topic: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/19/2
I'm sure there were others.
You get a similar effect, although not as pronounced, on pretty much any specialist technical subject; you see a lot of common misconceptions modded up fairly high, while some actual facts are languishing down at 1 or 2.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
To be honest, the anime portrayal of computers is way more accurate that in most (if not all) western movies (both animated and non-animated). Western movie makers seem to either be stuck in the green-screen age or seem to think all computers run some über-futuristic 3D-desktop environment with lots of ones and zeros floating around for no apparent reason. In (non-futuristic) anime you usually see a normal desktop ("Mindows" seems to be a common OS), no beeps as a response to every action and often they even get the details correct. If you look carefully you can see the IME and kanji conversion engines working (that's what they use to write Japanese which has about a zillion characters). If you look carefully you can see USB connectors in Chobits and perfectly valid commands to compile a program in Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. All in all, if you compare anime and western computer-related movies, western movie makers have no idea :P