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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."
No, it's not funny. This sort of geek-complaining-because-it-isn't-100%-realistic crap is what gives us a bad name. No one cares about shit like this. Please stop posting meaningless "Top N" lists like this. That "Top 10 Geek Girls" article from last week was bad enough. How many decent, informative articles were rejected to make room for this dreck?
1. Buscemi's Seymour (Ghost World).
2. De Niro's Harry Tuttle (in keeping with the Brazil theme posts this week).
you had me at #!
As with anything, Hollywood has a weird way of viewing computer technology and the people that use it.
It may be weird to you or I, but Hollywood does it that way because that's how your "average joe" sees it.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
Maybe it's just me, but I seem to find the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park a little less believable than a kid getting root.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
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/
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
They forgot the earth in the server list!
I always loved that turn in the HHGG. I still think it's a brilliant idea to think of the earth as a huge supercomputer to calculate the question to the answer "42" - and thus to actually formulate the question about life, the universe and everything - I think it's much more interesting than the Matrix version where the earth/reality just isn't the reality.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Ever watched E.R. with a doctor? This is hardly a computer geek specific trait.
There's nothing unusual about someone with knowledge in a specialized field finding the Hollywood portrayal of that field amusing. Because they are, 95% of the time, wrong and 50% of the time they're wrong enough for it to be funny to the person who knows better.
"I know this! This is UNIX!" is funny as shit. Okay, it's not funny at all to non-computer-geeks, but neither are the Hollywood gaffs that doctors, lawyers, auto mechanics, and ninja assassins find amusing to people not in those fields.
The enemies of Democracy are
they do that because it is quicker. Actual computer work is boring as hell to watch in a movie.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
20. Jack Stanfield, Firewall (2006)
firewalljack_stanfield_400
19. J-Bone, Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
jbone
18. Lazlo Hollyfeld, Real Genius (1985)
lazlo
17. Wyatt Donnelly, Weird Science (1985)
wyatt
16. Milo Hoffman, Antirust (2001)
milo_400
15. Dennis Nedry, Jurassic Park (1993)
nedry
14. Gus Gorman, Superman III (1983)
gus_400
13. Kevin Mitnick, Takedown (2000)
mitnick
12. Boris Grishenko, Goldeneye (1995)
borisgrishenko
11. John 'Captain Crunch' Draper, Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
crunch
10. Michael Bolton & Samir Nagheenanajar, Office Space (1999)
michaelsamir
9. Theodore Donald 'Rat' Finch, The Core (2003)
rat
8. The Puppet Master, Ghost In The Shell (1995)
puppet_master
7. Stanley Jobson, Swordfish (2001)
swordfish_400
6. Jobe Smith, Lawnmower Man (1992)
jobe
5. Kevin Flynn, Tron (1982)
flynn
4. David Lightman, WarGames (1983)
wargames
3. Dade 'Crash Override' Murphy, Hackers (1995)
crash
2. Martin Bishop, Sneakers (1992)
bishop
1. Thomas 'Neo' Anderson, The Matrix (1999)
neo
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.
Was Barnard Hughes as the I/O port in TRON (systems programming as allegory, all "Through the Looking Glass") all covered with patches and patches and patches so that he was literally an imobile tower... Somebody who got it wrote that scene.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
... 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)
movl (%esp),%eax # Load NPX control word.
andl $0xfffff2ff,%eax # Set rounding mode to nearest.
orl $0x00000200,%eax # Set precision to 64 bits. (53-bit mantissa)
pushl %eax
fldcw (%esp) # Recover modes.
popl %eax
is not binary. Writing something that is easily translated to machine code is not the same as writing machine code.
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
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.
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".
Indepence Day has flaws--many, many, many flaws--but the whole virus-on-a-Mac is not one of them. What Jeff Goldblum's character did was standard cross-platform development. He wrote the virus on his Mac, compiled it to an EvilAlienOS binary and uploaded it via the EvilAlienNetwork port on the captured spaceship.
This is more or less exactly what you'd do if you were developing for, say, an embedded microcontroller. The host computer doesn't need to be compatible with the target.
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. But enough about the frickin' Mac, okay?
This reminds me quite thoroughly of how movies depict video games as well. No matter what game, what system... most of the time, it's nothing but beeps and blips... usually not coinciding in the least with button-pushes on the controller.
Hell, half the time I recognize what game they're playing from a quick glimpse of it, and I'm thinking to myself "Oh come ON! I know that part, and there's nothing even CLOSE to those sounds there."
According to Hollywood... video games as well are stuck in the 80's.
HEY HOLLYWOOD! Move up another 20 someodd years, and you might stop parents from buying horrible crap games for kids, because then they might have a vague idea of what's good or current!
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
I'm surprised that The Net didn't make it onto the list. After all, this is the movie where the bad guys kill a guy by hacking into the computer controlling his car's anti-lock brakes.
Really.
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.
I can code for hours without touching the mouse. What purpose does a mouse serve when writing code? What does it provide that a keyboard doesn't? This isn't photo-editing or game-playing we're talking about, it's coding.
The only benefit I could see would be for cut-and-paste purposes, but even then a couple quick keystrokes in a good editor will do the trick faster.
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
It may be true that, in the present day, no one codes in binary, but I have. On a machine with bit variable instruction length! Also in octal, hexadecimal and even (a very tiny bit) decimal on an old IBM 1620. (You could actually load data and instructions into memory by typing digits on the IBM Executive-style typewriter console.)
Most of my binary etc. code was patched into previously compiled program images which couldn't be recreated from source for some reason, but a small amount was entered through the switch panel of what were then called mini-computers, including the DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 and the HP2116 (both A and B).
At the time (70s and early 80s), this wasn't even especially unusual.
In the six years that I worked as lead game tester in the video game industry, I had never gotten drunk, stoned, titted or laid because of my job. "Grandma's Boy" is such an unrealistic movie that I laughed all the way through.
I read the list about things code doesn't do in real life. The one about text not making noise when it is typed on the keyboard struck me that the one making the list is just a kid. Anyone who has used a real VT100 terminal, or a clone of such (remember Wyse terminals???) had a keyboard with a very quiet touch...so quiet that people were uneasy about typing on it, so they added an artificial key click on the keyboard, with a volume control. Every key pressed made a very short beep, at the same time it appeared on the screen.
And the part about the Gibson in Hackers being a 3D city and having a problem with it just means this guy has no imagination. Anyone remember the movie Disclosure? There was a "cutting edge" operating system being rumored to be developed in real life that was a 3D world that people walked around in and interacted with files, etc in a virtual reality. That metaphor was used in several movies. How else can non-geeks understand anything about what we geeks do without clear visuals? It's called artistic license.
What bothered be about movies is when they substitute one thing for another. For example, in Tron, when Flynn gets "lasered" back into the real world, the printer starts printing. The printer was a daisy-wheel printer, and it made sounds like a dot matrix printer.
Oh well. Lighten up!
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
The only security problem IRIX suffered from was that it was too easy to use. And that led to a lot of users successfully using such systems, but not having the background to keep them up to date and patched. It's much what we see with Windows today, although Windows has an arguably horrible security model to begin with. At least IRIX was based upon the far more reliable UNIX model.
Most of the security issues with IRIX systems were due to ancient versions of various HTTP, FTP and mail server software being used in production environments. As would be expected, such software did have security holes, those holes were well-known, and thus they could be easily exploited. IRIX often got the blame for problems with software that wasn't even developed at SGI.
And obviously nobody wants to watch a real hacker sit and type code that doesn't look like it's doing anything. The point was simply that anything is going to look more realistic in Hollywood when you're not familiar with the field, but once you get into something you recognize, you can see that they decided using something easy to film and interesting was more important than realism.
"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.
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.
I work in Level 2 tech support. I occasionally have other techs ask me to help them figure out why they can't mount a CD on a customer's server they're dialed into. I always start by asking them to check with the customer to see if the CD is in the drive SHINY SIDE DOWN. You'd be surprised how often the disk is upside down in the drive. I don't blame the non-techies, when every single TV show or movie that shows someone using a computer's {C|DV}D drive shows it shiny side up.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
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.
No matter what your area of expertise, you'll find flaws whenever a Hollywood screenplay tries to mimic whatever it is that real people do for a living, or even hobbies for that matter. As a guitar player, I find 90% of the instances when Joe-famous is playing guitar to be utterly hilarious. I'm surprised that even the audience can't tell that the actor obviously isn't playing what's being portrayed on the screen, but that's probably because I'm the only one paying attention. I'm sure Doctors, Lawyers, etc. all find movies portraying their profession to be as ridiculous as us software folks do.
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.
...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.
like infinite resolution (can you enhance that?), or clients that pull every available record on the database from the server and flash them on the screen while searching for dna/fingerprints/faces (no wonder they constantly complain about the network and servers being slow on 24).
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
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
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
I'm always vaguely confused by the Jurassic Park complaints. The Jurassic Park movie had almost nothing wrong with its presentation of computers or technology in general. (I'm not including the sci-fi cloning in that. I'm sure there were problems with that.)
First of all, yes, that's a real Unix system. A very stupid one, but a real one.
Secondly, the system was crap. And the point is?
It's a very badly designed system. It was designed by one person, and it's not finished. No one was trained in it yet, and the only person who understands it dies early, and it was sabotaged. Of course you have crazy stuff like not automatically switching the power over or the fences going down.
I mean, yeah, some stuff was slightly improbable, but it's the kinda shit that actually does happen in emergency situations, at least the first time...you discover that, hey, the damn generator didn't come on line or that the carefully constructed key-card security system is not, apparently, on the battery backups This is why you don't test with live data, or, in this case, live dinosaurs.
Again, unfinished, crappy system. Sorta like the actual park itself, when you think about it. Remember it was being worked on by someone who, at least for a short period of time, knew he was going to fleeing his job with a boatload of money for selling them out, and ask yourself if you think he really was working on fixing bugs during that time?
About the only thing I actually have issues with is the 'We can't get a phone line out' plot. But I guess, logically, those couldn't be 'real' phone lines, it's not like the phone company ran lines to the island. No, they have a sat or underwater cable connection with somewhere, and a PBX, and Nedry screwed up the PBX, and they don't know what the hell they'll talking about, all they know is they can't get a dial tone.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
There are several storytelling conventions in cinema, namely, computers make beeping noises when their graphics change. Though most computers don't now, they used to, and the convention was started around the time
At the time of that movie, most computers didn't have the ability to make sounds at all, and even fewer had graphics. It was all text and more text. I'm sure that there was a traceable moment when someone thought of doing that, but don't think that it's a reflection of reality.
These little "helpers" have been around for a lot longer than computers. There was a time that most plays ended with the gods coming out and making everything better. Like Deus Ex Machina, It's a crutch to support a bad design - like the non-instantaneous phone-tracing, and having the characters think aloud as a form of exposition. Realism is part of good story-telling, and all these things take away more than they add. There are other ways of doing it.
Along these lines, I could show you footage of a computer screen and give you nothing but a fan whirr, and you'd be bored and immediately looking around the room,
Okay, so you need sound. You've got a few real ones to work with - keyboards make sound. Mice make sound. And then there's that whole "soundtrack" thing you can work with - you can time the things that are happening in the music to accentuate what's happening on the screen. I've seen quite a few movies that let the soundtrack swell as the detective surfs.
Unlike the other unreal things I mentioned, most people have a computer, and most people know how they work. You're going to hit a lot more disbelief if you fake a computer than you are if you fake a phone trace, so it's worthwhile to get rid of that cinematic crutch.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, "heating engineer." Actually I screwed up with those suggestions, especially with Seymour, because of course they weren't computer hackers, but just geeks (for some reason I thought that page was about 20 Movie Geeks; D'oh!).
But there were "computer hackers" in Brazil; the real hacker was Sam Lowry, who used quite a number of techniques including social engineering: "ERE I AM JH." The funnier candidate would be Harvey Lime, who had the memorable lines, "Computers... are my forte" and "I'm a bit of a whiz on that thing," but was, in the end, revealed to be computer-incompetent.
you had me at #!
I'm hearing a lot of people pointing out where they've seen this list in action, where they (surprisingly) haven't, and what TFA missed -- but I don't see anyone disagreeing. I do.
Depends what it is. If said 8 year old is looking at binary, hex, or moving random text, then no. But if said 8 year old is looking at a Windows 98 login screen, he might try the unthinkable and hit "cancel". Or even the esc key. I did this, and I was maybe 12 or 14 or something.
While it's true that our environments could be a little more realistic -- maybe a web browser with some documentation -- I actually don't use the mouse much while coding.
I mean, I'm on a Mac at work, and it is kind of unusual to see a real OS in a movie, but I mostly am ssh'd in to a Linux box writing the actual code, and the Mac has a wonderful keyboard shortcut of command+left/right to switch between open terminal windows. It's not the same thing as tabs -- I can fit four 80x24 terminals (all green text on translucent black background, because I like it that way) on my screen at once. On my Linux, I have to twitch my mouse, which is annoying, even with sloppy focus.
But yeah, as I learn more about vim, I'm learning that the keyboard is pretty much all I use when editing and testing most of my code. And it actually does look kind of like the movies -- between my vim setup, and my typing commands in, and my seeming to type insanely fast (due to tab completion), and my kernel compiles and whatever scrolling past (which I do understand some of, enough to ctrl+z it sometimes if I'm curious)...
Which brings us to:
Yes and no. Code does not move, but output does. I watch logfiles with tail -f, I watch compiles (kernel and otherwise) and actually get an idea of the gist of what they're doing, I watch IRC discussions, and I watch the debugging output of my programs to get an idea of their progress.
It's not the same as Hollywood, where code is 3D and flying all over the screen, and I'm using VR gloves to put stuff together. Snow crash had the right idea -- even when the primary computer interface is 3D, we still go to Flatland for some things, including source code.
But, many of his points are weak, and most we've seen before. The #1 mistake I see is them dumbing down the computer stuff -- can you name a single hack that's actually been explained to you that made any real sense, without you inventing huge amounts of crap to fill the gaps?
I mean, even classic stuff, like that grabbing-the-fractions-of-a-penny stuff? Come on, what's stopping you from just doing a debit from one account and a credit to another -- shit, what's stopping you from simply making up a bunch of deposits from cash, and claim you got it from an unnamed Swiss bank account? Or how about the "Send Spike" of Goldeneye: "It jams their modem so they can't hang up" -- well gee, if it can do that, you've already 0wned them, why not just have their box traceroute one or two hops and give you that IP, then let them hang up and trace some random server that no one cares about?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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