Hollywood Treats Hackers Pretty Well

angry tapir writes "According to Damian Gordon, a lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology, hackers are treated pretty well by movie-makers. Gordon studied 50 movies, produced over five decades, to help write an academic paper for the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions. The results amazed him. In the movies, most hackers aren't teenaged whiz-kids. They're professionals, over 30 years old, who work in IT."

Comments

Yes, but

[colmore]

Too bad scenes of someone typing furiously at a computer are boring as hell.

Re:Yes, but

[uberjack]

As are command prompts, apparently. I'm still searching for that elusive hacking app with fancy graphics and controls that's portrayed in all hacking movies.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

It's open source. Write it yourself.

Re:Yes, but

[rugatero]

I'm still searching for that elusive hacking app with fancy graphics and controls that's portrayed in all hacking movies.

We should get that woman from CSI to write one in VB.

Re:Yes, but

[rsborg]

Too bad scenes of someone typing furiously at a computer are boring as hell.

You know, I think movies like Wargames, Matrix (and to a smaller extent, Sneakers) did this pretty decently. For example, the scene where Neo is first contacted by Trinity is a great example of how powerful text can be, if used properly.

Re:Yes, but

[Moheeheeko]

thats why they added Anjolina Jolie's tits to Hackers

Re:Yes, but

[mcgrew]

To be fair, Trinity not only used the command prompt, but a real, actual security tool. However, the exeption does prove the rule, doesn't it?

The last Die Hard movie was unbelievable in every respect (just like the previous three) but it was a great homage to us nerds. In fact, the only characters in the movie who weren't nerds were McClain and his daughter (and possibly the assassins as well, but those characters weren't developed enough to tell).

It even had the middle-aged fat nerd in his mom's basement in his "command center"!
"How do we find his house?"
"Uh, it'll be the one with the lights on."

It had the extra-nerdy attraction of two of the main characters played by Tim Russ and Robert Beltran (Tuvok and Chakotay). If you have enough suspension of disbelief, it's an incredibly nerdy and entertaining movie. Just get the unrated version, the theatrical release was crap. "She's at the bottom of an elevator shaft with an SUV crammed up her ass". How they thought a Die Hard without "yippiekayay motherfucler" would be a box office hit was beyond me, but they fixed it in the unrated DVD.

Re:Yes, but

[HTH NE1]

You might be able to pass off an established botnet's command and control system as being decked out with Hollywood-friendly graphical control systems (even twinkling with their mundane activities being monitored) while also allowing for a realistic example of someone typing really fast for a few seconds and exerting immediate visible control. Even without going to massively split-screen mode, you could have some of zombified machines in the same room just to confirm his latest code works before it is unleashed upon the network.

A plot line could follow a kid starting with simple programming rapidly progressing in skills over time until as a young adult (or whatever target demographic you need, and female if you prefer) he has achieved his own phalanx of zombie computers to do his bidding against whatever Bigger Bad your story requires. Less backstory if you just need him to do it for someone else. Establishing the hacker has an established power base of a sufficiently large botnet may be enough to satisfy both techie and mainstream audiences alike.

Re:Yes, but

[The Archon V2.0]

As are command prompts, apparently. I'm still searching for that elusive hacking app with fancy graphics and controls that's portrayed in all hacking movies.

Hell, no. Have you seen the fonts on those things, they're HUGE! You get less characters per screen than a VIC-20. And you have to sit through 20 seconds of animations of lined globes and screen-filling blinking/pulsing OVERRIDE and SYSTEM MALFUNCTION and PASSWORD DENIED every freakin' time you do something. It's like the UI designer made it for an uninformed audience watching the action second-hand on a television set, not for the person using it!

Re:Yes, but

[Rysc]

In fact Sneakers is probably the best hacker movie to date. Wargames is certainly in the top five, too.

Re:Yes, but

[Jeffrey_Walsh VA]

check out the "ease-of-use of the Zeus crimeware toolkit":
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/zeus-king-underground-crimeware-toolkits
In the YouTube video at 1:48 you can see the ZuesBuilder gui

Re:Yes, but

[jayme0227]

My question is, why do hackers always type so slowly? In fact, the only time I ever see people typing quickly on a keyboard is when they're obviously faking it. This always bugs me.

Re:Yes, but

[shermo]

John McClane didn't have a daughter in the last Die Hard Movie!

http://xkcd.com/566/

Yes it's the matrix but POINT STILL STANDS!

Re:Yes, but

[dmneoblade]

Firewall had a scene with the main character analyzing a network intrusion bu looking at odd packets in wireshark (now ethereal).

Accurate, and it looked good on screen.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if it's Sandra Bullock.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Firewall had a scene with the main character analyzing a network intrusion bu looking at odd packets in ethereal (now wireshark).

Accurate, and it looked good on screen.

FTFY

Re:Yes, but

[GodfatherofSoul]

Ever seen Swordfish? There's a laughably funny attempt at making Hugh Jackman hammering away on a keyboard look sexy and energetic.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still searching for that elusive hacking app with fancy graphics and controls that's portrayed in all hacking movies.

It's called Uplink , and a demo can be downloaded from here.

It's even made it to Steam ..

Re:Yes, but

[elrous0]

That's one of the many things I like about Wargames. David can actually type like someone who's pretty used to using a computer. And his room actually looks like mine did in the 80's.

Re:Yes, but

[dmneoblade]

This is what happens when you type 3 minutes before leaving for work.

Re:Yes, but

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> "The results amazed him. In the movies, most hackers aren't teenaged whiz-kids. They're
> professionals, over 30 years old, who work in IT."

With all due respect, Robert Redford raised the average age quite a bit. :-/

Re:Yes, but

[dangitman]

Dear Die Hard,

You rock. Especially the part where that dude is on the rooftop, and you use Emacs to reconfigure his system files to cause a buffer overflow.

P.S. Do you know Mad Max?

Homer J. Simpson

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, the scene where Neo is first contacted by Trinity

Wait...that was Trinity?!?!? I never realized that.

Re:Yes, but

[dangitman]

In fact Sneakers is probably the best hacker movie to date. Wargames is certainly in the top five, too.

Heretic.

Wargames in the top five hacker movies? Nonsense. Wargames is the greatest film ever made. No need to restrict the statement to "hacker movies." Get out of here with your foolish Sneakers superiority complex.

Re:Yes, but

[amasiancrasian]

Trinity used nmap and a tool called `sshnuke,' a tool that presumably exploited the SSH1 CRC32 exploit. If you want to talk about realism, nothing really gets more real than this in the movies. Here's a picture of this Hollywood anomaly.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. Click on the '#', while holding control.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You had a hot babe in your room in the 80's?

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

It even had the middle-aged fat nerd in his mom's basement in his "command center"!
"How do we find his house?"
"Uh, it'll be the one with the lights on."

My favourite part of that movie was where the kid hacks the car using social engineering. Why would you hack hardware or take the time to crack 2048bit encryption when you can just phone some minimum wage employee and bullshit them into giving you what you want? The weakest link of ANY security system is the users.
- fractoid-with-mod-points

Re:Yes, but

[Nyder]

In fact Sneakers is probably the best hacker movie to date. Wargames is certainly in the top five, too.

Heretic.

Wargames in the top five hacker movies? Nonsense. Wargames is the greatest film ever made. No need to restrict the statement to "hacker movies." Get out of here with your foolish Sneakers superiority complex.

Tron is the greatest movie ever made.

And it had hacking. and video games. And great quotes.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink/

Re:Yes, but

[xtracto]

Agreed. Hackers is *the* hacker movie IMO too.

Re:Yes, but

[EdgeCreeper]

Sorry, can only can offer a cartoon about it.

Starts here User Friendly. Ooh, and more here HollywoodOS

Re:Yes, but

[inKubus]

Last I heard you couldn't connect to private IPs via the Matrix. Pft.

Re:Yes, but

[Rysc]

Tron was a fine adventure, but to call it a good hacker movie is like calling Star Wars good science fiction. War Games, and to a certain extent Sneakers, portrayed thing realistically. I've never heard of a program kissing another program.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but that wasn't Robert Beltran.

You had me going for a minute, though!

Re:Yes, but

[mcgrew]

Since you;re linking a cartoon that's firewalled off here, I assume that either you're joking or referring to Die Hard III. Lucy McClain was a main character in Die Hard IV.

Gabriel detects Warlock's hack and speaks with him, McClane, and Farrell; he reveals to McClane that he has taken McClane's estranged daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) hostage. After Warlock traces Gabriel's location to Woodlawn, McClane and Farrel head there, where Farrell triggers an alarm in the facility to alert the FBI. As McClane deals with Gabriel's forces, Farrell manages to encrypt the downloaded data to block access to it, but is captured. Gabriel and his men then leave the facility, Farrell and Lucy in tow, before the FBI arrive. McClane hijacks Gabriel's semi and pursues. Gabriel hacks into the military's computers to deceive a United States Air Force F-35B Lightning II pilot into believing that McClane is a terrorist. The semi is wrecked, but McClane survives and tracks Gabriel to a nearby warehouse.

Wikipedia misspells w4rl0ck's name, somebody should edit that.

Re:Yes, but

[elrous0]

No, but Ally Sheedy was there.

Re:Yes, but

[mcgrew]

I checked the credits last night, and you're right, it's just a guy that looks like him. Tim Russ was in it, though. He played Agent Summers.

Looking at the wiki page I see Russ was in Spaceballs, too... Odd, I just watched that a week or so and didn't recognize him.

You call that well treated?

[Rysc]

The person's themselves may be realistic in terms of age and profession, but nothing else is well treated. Movies continue to routinely portray unrealistic and nonsensical computer interactions and capabilities, which is particularly harmful to a depiction of a hacker.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not convinced that computer interactions any worse than they do many other things. Hell, most movie depictions of actors seem absurd, and you'd think that's one they could get.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Manip]

While hackers are often shown to have super-technical abilities that make no sense, so are the "good guys." I think to some degree it kind of counter-balances the whole thing.

Computers/technology isn't accurate in films but that is a small part of a much larger science rant in which all of the fields of science are abused for your viewing pleasure, biology, chemistry, engineering, and psychics.

Heck even psychology is abused in movies and that is borderline pseudoscience anyway....

Re:You call that well treated?

[Em Emalb]

I beg to differ, I'm pretty sure Hugh Jackman's character in Swordfish was treated pretty well...during some of the "hacking" scenes, anyway.

Re:You call that well treated?

[0racle]

Harmful to whom? Stop defining yourself based on what some script writer, who has no real idea what they're writing about, puts on the silver screen.

Movies are entertainment and what 'hackers' do, no matter what the definition of the word you feel like using, is really very boring to watch.

Re:You call that well treated?

[ShiningSomething]

It's the same phenomenon at play in journalism. The more you know about a topic, the more you realize they have no idea what they are talking about.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Ethanol-fueled]

You call that realistic? Realistic would be an obese mouth-breathing zit-encrusted neckbeard with eyeglasses taped together screaming "LOL I troll you!" while typing furiously into a sticky keyboard, piss-bottle at the ready, bound in a semen-crusted dragon shirt and yellow skid-marked briefs.

What's surprising is that Hollywood dosen't use the actual stereotype as described above. The truth would be more amusing than the fiction they've churned out thus far.

Re:You call that well treated?

[camperdave]

While hackers are often shown to have super-technical abilities that make no sense, so are the "good guys."

I'm confused. You say that hackers are shown to have super-technical abilities, but so are the good guys. That doesn't make any sense.

[Blink]
Wait... Are you trying to say that hackers are the bad guys?

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever dude. It just means when I talk to people about what I do all day it leaves them amazed & jealous of my "minority report" style screen.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Talderas]

If by treated well you mean got his winky whacked. Sure.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Rary]

Computers/technology isn't accurate in films but that is a small part of a much larger general rant in which all of the fields of anything are abused for your viewing pleasure.

The above modified statement is, in my opinion, much more accurate.

As a software developer/general nerd, I cringe whenever someone on screen starts talking about technology. As a private pilot, I cringe whenever someone on screen starts talking about aviation. I've watched movies with people from all kinds of professions who cringe when their particular area of expertise is represented on screen. And don't get me started on those painful scenes in which actors who obviously have never picked up a musical instrument in their life try to play the role of a musician.

On the aviation aspect, one of my personal favourites was a movie I saw years ago (can't remember what it was) in which someone is flying a single-engine Cessna, and occasionally "the bad guys" would call him on his cell phone, and he would shut off the engine when this happened because he didn't want them to know he was "coming for them". Every time he did this, the Cessna would nose down and start plummeting to the ground, just to add some suspense. Because, of course, an airplane couldn't possibly, you know, glide for a little while— especially not a Cessna, which is so prone to dropping like a rock without engine power.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Bakkster]

What, you mean you've never hacked the Gibson!? Just because you're a bad hacker doesn't mean they should dumb down the hackers in movies for you.

Re:You call that well treated?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I think even the "realistic" parts of the portrayal are accidental. I mean a white male of professional age in a setting with lots of computer equipment isn't exactly a stretch. It's probably the opposite: most hackers fit into the most boring stereotype known to man.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to get out more. We don't all look like you.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Xelios]

CSI is particularly bad for this, "see if you can enhance that license plate"

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jackman typing on the Hydra in Swordfish reminds me of James Woods Comment in "The Specialist" As he fumbles with a bundle of TNT sticks. Who the hell is that suppose to fool?

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever watched Red Dwarf? Lister wasn't a computer geek as such, but you pretty much described his lifestyle. The show was very amusing.

Re:You call that well treated?

[BlaKnail]

...all of the fields of science are abused for your viewing pleasure, biology, chemistry, engineering, and psychics.

John Edward must be thrilled to know that he is a scientist now.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Rysc]

This is true but I think the degree to which computers are portrayed unrealistically is much greater then for most things.

Cars in movies are generally depicted with four tires, a steering wheel, windows, a radio, etc.. People are familiar with them so mistakes in this area are not common. Computers, however, are rarely depicted accurately. In the last decade or so the physical device has gotten better--mostly, though why all people need three 20+ inch LCDs is beyond me--but what's on the screen has remained very bad. It's almost as if no one cares to even *try* to make computers realistic, unlike most other cases where they try but get some of the facts wrong.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Skarecrow77]

This is normal for Hollywood. Look at their depictions of firearms or automobiles.

Every 9mm pistol sounds like it's got a subwoofer hidden in the barrel, and can one-shot-one-kill anybody it's aimed at (as long as the hero is pulling the trigger).

Every ford focus and subaru station wagon can drift around corners in city traffic at 80mph, avoding cops and pedestrians alike, again as long as the protaganist is driving. (notice that the cops, who actually have presumably taken agressive driving courses, always run into garbage trucks)

Re:You call that well treated?

[srussia]

You call that realistic? Realistic would be an obese mouth-breathing zit-encrusted neckbeard with eyeglasses taped together screaming "LOL I troll you!" while typing furiously into a sticky keyboard, piss-bottle at the ready, bound in a semen-crusted dragon shirt and yellow skid-marked briefs. What's surprising is that Hollywood dosen't use the actual stereotype as described above. .

Jurassic Park

Dennis Nedry played by Wayne Knight (aka Newman on Seinfeld)

A cartoon image of Nedry appears on the screen and waves its little finger disapprovingly.

CARTOON NEDRY: "You didn't say the magic word!"

ARNOLD: Please, God damn it! I hate this hacker crap!

Close enough?

Re:You call that well treated?

[Kell Bengal]

I love the way they realistically represent the way even minor vehicular accidents invariably erupt in a huge fireball. Or show the way cars skid around any corner taken at speed. Or reproduce the ability of people to walk away from ferocious car wrecks with little more than a manly scratch on the forehead. I would be greatly disappointed if they had failed to accurately depict the well-known physical reality of cars in favour of dramatic story-telling.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. They mkae up little factoids to put in the movie or TV show that a quick Google would show was wrong (or before the Internet a quick call to the appropriate deparment of a local college, would have taken a little longer than using Google does now, but not very much time). These factoids add nothing to the plot, sometimes the real facts would have actually furthered the plot more than the made-up one they use instead.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, I don't think hollywood script writing and screenplay adoption is anything like it is depicted in the movies.And (presumably) the writers know how these work in the real world. :D

Re:You call that well treated?

[Steauengeglase]

You my friend, have never watched Numb3rs.

Re:You call that well treated?

[shermo]

Every time I see a news article on something I have first hand knowledge of it's a distorted if not outright false depiction of events.

Every time I see a news article on something I don't know about it must be true, since it's in the newspaper.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Idiomatick]

I think everyone thinking I can take over cities on a whim is treated well... Hackers are good guys more than they are bad guys in movies.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heck do psychics have to do with science?

Re:You call that well treated?

[Hurricane78]

Heck even psychology is abused in movies and that is borderline pseudoscience anyway....

WTF? Have you jumped straight out of the 19th century??

But that’s what you get, when talking about a non-computer topic on Slashdot. People think they are experts in everything.
Well, let me tell ya: You don’t know shit!

Psychology nowadays is based on neurology. The science of neural networks and especially the human brain.
If all you know is therapists and medical doctors with no degree, disguising as experts in psychology, then of course you think it’s shit. The problem is, that it’s less than 20 years, since there is a proper law that separates every man and his dog who thinks he knows how people think, from real scientists. And all you know are those wannabees.

But hey, it’s likely that it’s not your fault. So let me give you a guide:
If someone can not deduce something back to neurology, he is not a psychologist. Period. Simple as that.

Modern psychotherapy for example deals with revealing repressions and understanding and fixing mis-associations in neural networks. All thing that are based on neurology. Mail me and I give you an explanation of it all, in a nutshell. And based on neurology.

Re:You call that well treated?

[captjc]

Have you ever used a system with 3 20" LCD monitors? Don't knock it until you try it. It is hard to go back to just one!

Re:You call that well treated?

[sourcerror]

Please tell me, how psycho-analysis traces back phenomenons to neural networks? Or transactional psychology?
Sorry to disappoint you but the science that researches neural networks is not psychology, but machine-learning. Psychologists don't know shit about neural networks.

On the other hand psychiatry dwelves into bio-chemistry and in the anatomy of brain, but it's a completely different profession, they're basically doctors, not some liberal-art majors. They might have more knowledge about neural networks as well.

I can't resist, but link to Feynamann.

Re:You call that well treated?

[JohnnyBGod]

What... like this, this, this or this?

Re:You call that well treated?

[hey!]

You know, I do find the results of wavelet sharpening pretty darn amazing. Pretty close to magic, although not quite as magic as in the movies.

Re:You call that well treated?

[electrons_are_brave]

Hello - qualified person speaking here. In defense of my field:

(a) The practice of clinical psychology ranges from evidence-based (e.g. CBT) through to "Lets go into the safe room and I'll wrap you in a blanket and regress you through your past lives". Evidence based practice is based on science, random placebo-controlled trials and so on, so it's as scientific or unscientific as any other medically aligned field.

If you ever need a psych., get a referral from a doctor or a hospital, check that they are registered with the professional body in your country, what their quals are and - at the first session - ask them to describe the treatment plan, how many sessions it usually takes, what the prognosis is for the method they use and so on. STAY AWAY from anyone who talks about "repressed memories", thinks "dream analysis" is a science or who uses the words "deep" "buried" "unconscious" and "mind" in the same sentence. These people are a dying breed, fortunately.

(b) The theoretical basis of psychology is basically that human behavior is determined by your biology interacting with a complex social and physical environment within a framework of the habitiual responses you have learned in the past. So different researchers focus on differnt part of this complex system e.g cognitive neuropsychs look at the architecture of cognition, brain models etc, physiological psychs look at neural networks, hormones, brain structure, social psychs look at the social influences and how these moderate behaviour, evolutionary psychs speak circular crap in the popular press and so on.

BTW, psychology may well be a "liberal arts" major in the USA, but that's not the case in my neck of the woods - at my university its taught in the same department which teaches nursing and other allied health fields, although it vaires from uni to uni.

Re:You call that well treated?

[sourcerror]

"BTW, psychology may well be a "liberal arts" major in the USA, but that's not the case in my neck of the woods - at my university its taught in the same department which teaches nursing and other allied health fields,"
That's what I called psychiatry. (btw I'm not from US)
Check this.

Re:You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, frequency domain filtering is freakin awesome, but it's only specific cases where it works. And that one "look an unreadable blurry numberplate becomes readable and unblurry" pair of images is probably responsible for 90% of the "wait, stop, enhance that image" bullshittery in movies and tv programs today.
- fractoid-with-mod-points

Re:You call that well treated?

[xtracto]

Well gee! part of what makes movies interesting is that they are a dramatization. I am sure any lawyer will tell you that the average case is not as interesting as the ones in the movies (and chicks don't usually go dancing like in Chicago).

Think for a moment about a very successful and known hacker like Gary McKinnon; imagine a movie depicting his hacking:

- Well let's see, nasa.gov has an ip of 74.203.241.33, so I will run an app to look for computers in 74.203.241.xxx and see which have RDP access....

- Gee wiz! there are like 20 computers with RDP open, lets try to connect to one and use this bruteforce warez I downloaded to enter..

- nice, the windows computer didn't have password.. lets just install PC Anywhere and download some pron they have here.

 

Re:You call that well treated?

[sourcerror]

It's funny that those who voted me down didn't even care to check the link.
That's slashdot.

Re:You call that well treated?

[sourcerror]

Lets go into the safe room and I'll wrap you in a blanket and regress you through your past lives

No, they won't talk about your past lifes, they'll speak about your childhood traumas. That's called psycho analysis. I wonder what kind of psychiatrist you might be if you don't even know that.
(I'm into computer science and AI, and even I know that. Btw. I did some psychology course as well, just for fun. (Cognitive psychology (here you can find a lot of experiments), transactional psychology (that's just a bunch of anecdote)))

Re:You call that well treated?

[electrons_are_brave]

I was making a joke, but one that was unforgivably obscure for a non-psychologist group.

Explaining a joke is equally unforgivable, but ...

.. there was a time when psychologists and psychiatrist routinely did all sort of things (hypnosis, drug therapy, dream analysis) in order to recover repressed childhood memories of trauma (usually sexual abuse). This was based on a very flawed understanding of how memory functions, and those types of freudian techniques have now been rejected by almost all psychologists. In Australia at least, the practice of recovered memory therapy is pretty difficult due to our ethical code code and the way our malpractice laws work. (I don't know about psychiatric practice - I'm a psychologist).

Saying something like "Lets go into the safe room and I'll wrap you in a blanket" is a joking way that psychogists refer to this sort of therapy. Adding "regress through you past lives" is a shorthand way of saying that psychoanalysis is about as scientific as trying to find out who you were in your past life.

Re:You call that well treated?

[sourcerror]

Well, the Rorschach Inkblot Test is still used, and publishing it on Wikipedia made some real controversy.
Can you give a neurological explanation of its usage?

Re:You call that well treated?

[sourcerror]

Actually there's a graphology course at our university, you know the kind of that tells your personality from your handwriting, and it's lectured by a psychology Phd.
A guy asked some question about double blind tests, and whether the scientific process was observed when discovering the "rules" that are taught, and the lecturer got really pissed off, defending herself and her science with some ad hominem (you know pathologizing the asker with some obscure psycho terminology). (I personally know this guy and there was some discussion related to it at the university mailing list as well.)

Re:You call that well treated?

[electrons_are_brave]

Yes, it's very very annoying. Same with psych PHDs that publish those pop psych books which are half science/half nonsense. There one called "The Brain that heals itself" (or something like that) that I was reading a little while ago - it made me so annoyed. Exprapolating huge ideas from little lumps of evidence. Aggg.

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did this "study" get funding? Because it would make headlines.

Poor old Professor Knowsmath and his study of non-commutive ring structures in siberian oscillations. He'll have to make do with the money the university raised from raffling off that cat (4 euros).

Re:Stupid

[damiantgordon]

Why did this "study" get funding? Because it would make headlines.

Poor old Professor Knowsmath and his study of non-commutive ring structures in siberian oscillations. He'll have to make do with the money the university raised from raffling off that cat (4 euros).

Dude, get a grip, this study WASN'T funded, I just looked at a bunch of DVDs I have in my personal collection that I show clips from to my students.

News Flash!

[WrongSizeGlass]

Hollywood takes creative license ... produces more entertaining product.

Nothing to see here. Move along ...

Re:News Flash!

[Ltap]

No. It provides a more entertaining product... for stupid people. Anyone who has any knowledge of the subject matter or is intelligent enough to note the inconsistencies will be put off by it and dislike the writers for it.

Re:News Flash!

[0racle]

If they had to stick with real depictions of, well in this case hackers, every movie about it would look like Office Space and Dilbert. We've seen those so apparently no other movie about or related to the subject can ever be made.

Most people in any profession, if they can't let go of their insistence on reality, dislike or down right hate movie portrayals of what they do.

Re:News Flash!

[WrongSizeGlass]

IMost people in any profession, if they can't let go of their insistence on reality, dislike or down right hate movie portrayals of what they do.

I'm waiting for the movie about 'Slashdot Karma Whores'. I'm positive I won't like the way those guys are portrayed. Stupid writers.

Re:News Flash!

[Sir_Lewk]

I don't think this is true at all. Movies like Wargames manage to be decently realistic (at least not offensively unrealistic) and not boring at all. Best part of that movie is when he has to spend time researching his target.

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Anyone who has any knowledge of the subject matter...will be put off by it...

Name a favorite movie and there's somebody out there complaining that dinosaur genes wouldn't survive in amber, or Indy's plane would have had to refuel more often, or clownfish can't really talk.

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that's a personal opinion. These same people are the ones that annoy those around them by constantly correcting them, or in games are known as rules lawyers.. They always have to be right. That doesn't mean they're smart or dumb, it usually means something else..

Re:News Flash!

[Jurily]

We've seen those so apparently no other movie about or related to the subject can ever be made.

That might be because someone sitting and thinking is not inherently fun to watch. Make a movie about your day at work and let me know how well it sells.

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had to stick with real depictions of, well in this case hackers, every movie about it would look like Office Space and Dilbert.

Exactly.

If reality was as exciting as film, we'd have no need for film.

Filmmakers who focus too much on realism have day jobs in restaurants.

Re:News Flash!

[Skarecrow77]

If they had to stick with real depictions of, well in this case hackers, every movie about it would look like Office Space and Dilbert.

Even Office Space had such ammusing "we don't know what we're talking about" moments as Peter shutting down his Mac to find it sitting at a C:/> prompt. Either that, or somebody spent a lot of time building the most elaborate windows 95 UI shell ever.

I will say though, that by having the fate of the main characters depend on code that had an off-by-one-

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, only stupid arrogant cocksuckers like yourself.

Re:News Flash!

[mcgrew]

It's called "suspension of disbelief" and you need it for damned near any movie or TV show, especially action flicks.

Re:News Flash!

[jayme0227]

Too bad you don't get Karma for Funny posts ;)

Re:News Flash!

[izomiac]

Good story telling involves either overt fantasy or being plausible. Modern movies do neither in most cases. Story writers seem to have a very poor understanding of reality, and subsequently their work suffers. Technology is usually used as a plot device, something novel to surprise the audience. Generally it's novel because it doesn't happen in reality, which, in turn, is simply because it's impossible.

Some of the best examples of technology in non-technology oriented stories use it in the background. The seemingly mundane realities of the fictional world. The most recent examples that I've seen include Avatar's back story, and a character in A Certain Scientific Railgun using Irfanview to do bulk processing of image data from CCTV cameras.

Re:News Flash!

[Ltap]

Suspension of disbelief only applies to unlikely things, not impossible things.

Re:News Flash!

[dangitman]

I don't think this is true at all. Movies like Wargames manage to be decently realistic

Yes, a kid having conversations with an intelligent computer, who then evades authorities and escapes from the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD facility, and nuclear war is averted which the computer is convinced of the futility of war... is decently realistic. For unusual values of "realistic."

Re:News Flash!

[DMoylan]

and yet i always laugh my head off when i see this bit of typing on a console in red dwarf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYAlB1Kxayc

i think you are right but it is possible to make work on a console interesting. unfortunately the more realistic it is the smaller the audience that will understand what is going on.

Re:News Flash!

[mcgrew]

Suspension of disbelief only applies to unlikely things, not impossible things

Like time travel or warp drives?

Re:News Flash!

[Ltap]

Be reasonable. In a science fiction setting, it's assumed that things that don't exist (yet) exist. In a "real world" setting, it's assumed that you'll keep to reality.

Re:News Flash!

[mcgrew]

Yes, but according to what is known now, both time and FTL travel are quite impossible, not merely highly improbable (both break scientific laws and are as reasonable as a perpetual motion machine) but necessary for the stories themselves, just as magic is necessary to fantasy fiction. Insanely impossible stunts are just as necessary to action films, and I, for one, can overlook them easier than I can overlook FTL travel as long as the film maker makes it look real.

Re:News Flash!

[Ltap]

You're missing my distinction. The fact that the story doesn't take place in a real-world setting means that it can be excused. Something that takes place in the modern day or in history is not.

Re:News Flash!

[Sir_Lewk]

Notably absent from your list of unrealistic things in that movie is the actual hacking that it portrayed (you know, the stuff this conversation is actually about...). The movie was fairly realistic in depicting wardialing, the time/research required in hacking, and password guessing. Very rarely do movies get anywhere close to that much right.

Re:News Flash!

[atomic_toaster]

Most people in any profession, if they can't let go of their insistence on reality, dislike or down right hate movie portrayals of what they do.

Tell me about it. I've worked in the TV/film industry and even though I liked FX The Series, I couldn't help but regularly scream at the screen, "It's not that freaking easy!", "It doesn't work that way!" and/or "That's not how you do that!". It was especially bad if you took into account that the show debuted in 1996 (and the movies it was based on in 1986 and 1996, I think), and was for the most part set in the pre-digital-video era.

Really?

[Ltap]

While the age of hackers in movies seems to have increased lately (Die Hard 4, the most braindead one yet when you ignore television shows them as paranoid 20-somethings), they aren't shown as particularly mature.

Re:Really?

[Agent__Smith]

While the age of hackers in movies seems to have increased lately (Die Hard 4, the most braindead one yet when you ignore television shows them as paranoid 20-somethings), they aren't shown as particularly mature.

Yea, it's unusual for Hollywood to stick so close to the truth... lol

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that he's using a broad definition of hacker. Captain Kirk in Wrath of Khan qualifies for hacking into the Reliant and lowering Khan's shields.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn in your geek card, Spock was the one who actually did that.

Re:Really?

[Nukenbar]

I would argue Independence Day still has the most absurd hack of all time.

From the article: "A Mac hacking into an alien operating system and loading a virus. That's Steve Jobs' dream: The power of the Mac"

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because everyone knows how Slashdot only has mature reasonable discussion on it.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I thought, but if you actually go back, it's Kirk that does it. I doubt he could've done it without Spock, but it was Kirk.

Re:Really?

[CherniyVolk]

Maturity in IT really means that you're at the point where you finally realize, 'there really is no magic'.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Kirk's idea.

                                                KIRK

                Clear the bridge.

                                SPOCK

                Well, at least we know he doesn't

                have Genesis.

                                KIRK

                Just keep nodding as though I'm

                still giving orders. Mister Saavik,

                punch up the data charts of Reliant's

                command console.

                                SAAVIK

                Reliant's command...

                                KIRK

                HURRY.

                                KHAN

                Forty-five seconds!

                                SPOCK

                The prefix code?

                                KIRK

                It's all we've got.

Re:Really?

[DigitalPasture]

Perhaps not for those of us actually working in IT. I know I routinely do things that are simple for me and I amaze those on my sales team and the management with my "technowizardry". For instance, being able to set up a mobile hotspot using my cell phone and netbook out in the middle of nowhere. Things like that seem like magic to the uninitiated. I guess I don't really help out with stopping the stereotype though. I often answer with "FM Principal" (F*cking Magic) when I fix something and don't know what exactly the fix was (or if the person asking will not understand the explanation). I've been using the phrase FM principal for about 15 years and I have yet to be questioned on what it actually means. As for the portrayal of hackers in general in movies.... Get over it, it's fiction. Try and suspend your disbelief for just a few moments and you might actually enjoy that movie.

Re:Really?

[WrongSizeGlass]

I would argue Independence Day still has the most absurd hack of all time.

I concur. Like any alien race would be using anything less than a 256 bit instruction set architecture. When's Apple gonna come out with one of those, huh? I thought so. I'm still waiting for a 256 bit FSB!

Re:Really?

[flappinbooger]

Hey, now, they could have figured out the nature of the alien technology and figured out how the systems worked and figured out flaws and weaknesses in the ships systems and then figured out how to implement a virus to disrupt those systems and figured out how to make the mac interface with the ship.

He had plenty of time! Maybe he did it when he was drunk.

Or, maybe he downloaded a trojan toolkit from the interwebs. Probably found it on limewire, that's where all the other viruses are!

Re:Really?

[zach_the_lizard]

Nah, the aliens were using Limewire, and that is the vulnerability. Any race that uses that aboard a mothership is not as advanced as we think. They had to get their alien porn fix, you know, and that opens up all kinds of opportunities.

Re:Really?

[chronosan]

The aliens in ID4 weren't exactly social animals, devouring worlds and such. Maybe they developed all that technology because they didn't have social conventions that would merit them taking time to bother worrying about network security. If so, someone with a rudimentary understanding of their systems could hijack their systems? Then again, they did 'hack' the satellites... myExplanation--;

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better, thhey downloaded it using the alien ship at area51 accidentally while looking for sleezy alien tentacle porn.

"No Really! We were conducting 'Valuable Cultural Research! We didn't mean to download that virus!"

The rest is what made it past the editors.

Re:Really?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I guess I don't really help out with stopping the stereotype though. I often answer with "FM Principal" (F*cking Magic) when I fix something and don't know what exactly the fix was

Ah, the Proximity Of Genius effect ("hey it suddenly works now you're here") and it's dark-side equivalent the Gabriel Effect.

Re:Really?

[Idiomatick]

Hackers are paranoid. Hell look at /. users and how insane half of them are about privacy. And hackers, ones in north america rather than russia/china are generally pretty young. Often university or even highschool aged. Older than that and most of them get out of it or get a job. I mean not everyone has money to full time hack. And hacking is 50% contacts and being on the cutting edge. You won't be the best unless you spend a lot of time at it.

As for mature, they are (mostly) doing something criminal for fun. And they are very very smart. Which only leaves immature to explain their actions.

Re:Really?

[Sulphur]

A Mac hacking into an alien operating system and loading a virus.

The guys on the probe ship figured that no use could be made of the Mac they left behind. It was only later that

they remembered the prototype virus, and the damage it could do.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using the phrase FM principal for about 15 years and I have yet to be questioned on what it actually means.

Have you been questioned on how it's actually spelled? Because unless you're in charge of FM Elementary School, I think you're doing it wrong.

Re:Really?

[Ltap]

Not really. It depends on what you're doing, but an activity being criminal doesn't necessarily make it bad. Most of the less mature and less dedicated ones tend to give up when they fail to achieve some ideal they imagined. The rest either use it as a means to an end or do it for the sake of finding things out.

Re:Really?

[dangitman]

He had plenty of time! Maybe he did it when he was drunk.

Sounds plausible.

Re:Really?

[dangitman]

Maturity in IT really means that you're at the point where you finally realize, 'there really is no magic'.

Huh? Why would you think there was magic in the first place? Does anybody start a career in IT believing it is run on magic?

Re:Really?

[Bucc5062]

28 years in the field....best quote I've read on the topic. Now if hiring managers would understand the same idea.

"How many years experience you have in c#?"
"28 years"
"In c#?"
"No in programming, its all the same under the hood"
"I don't get it, but you don't get the job, NEXT!"

there was a time when it was about critical thinking, the ability to adapt, now its about the banality of do I know the difference between {} and BEGIN END or ; vs . or ' vs // or [] versus () for x number of years.

Yes, I'm a product of downsizing...Yes I'm looking for a job, and yes, I'm a little jaded about an industry I've loved for 28 years.

Re:Really?

[Zerth]

Computer(noun): strange constructs that do your bidding if you know cryptic phrases, gained through research and memorization, that brings you hidden secrets, creates intricate illusions, shows visions of distant lands, controls mechanical automatons, and, if misused, can turn on the user to cause almost perversely unexpected results and possibly great destruction?

Not at all like magic, nope.

Re:Really?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Kirk also re-programed the computer to make the kobyoshi maru scenario winnable.
Sounds like a hacker to me.

Mcyroft

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats mature about hibernating in a basement in front a computer all day and night. You should be out enjoying life, chasing skirt...

Re:Really?

[damiantgordon]

Kirk also re-programed the computer to make the kobyoshi maru scenario winnable. Sounds like a hacker to me. Mcyroft

Absolutely, in the new Star Trek movie in the deleted scenes it actually shows how he achieved this (in the new parallel universe) by sending an e-mail to his grenn-skinned girlfriend which activates his hack.

And my company?

[msantosn]

Damn....

If I could be treated "just well" in the company I work for... =/

I should move to Hollywood then...

Hollywood isn't reality - we want it that way

[LockeOnLogic]

Who would you rather watch on screen? A pudgy thirtysomething typing code in a dark room or a bunch of really attractive young people?

Hollywood figured this out a long time ago. If we are going to stare at a screen for two hours we want eye candy.

Re:Hollywood isn't reality - we want it that way

[Anonymous Coward]

Neve Campbell dressed in highly-polished black latex catsuit with black balletboots, of course. Nancy McKeon comes a close second unless there is a motorcycle involved then she moves into first place.

Anonymous Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the ad on the left more than the article itself. Amazed to see a human connected chat advertisement integrated to publicize the company

LA

[c0d3r]

Either there are too many hackers or almost none in LA (I think almost none). It is pretty scarce to find free internet or even reliable internet in this town, or even anyone who know what their talking about unless they are holding up a company. Then again, I'm from the SV.

"Teenaged whiz-kids"

[dsavi]

Welcome back to the mid-90s. Do these teenaged whiz-kids do their personal computer hacking on-line? They probably use the World Wide Web too, from Mosaic or something, surfing through cyberspace. Now I feel like washing out my mouth.

Re:"Teenaged whiz-kids"

[Anonymous Coward]

and it has a PCI bus. But you knew that

Re:"Teenaged whiz-kids"

[The Archon V2.0]

Welcome back to the mid-90s. Do these teenaged whiz-kids do their personal computer hacking on-line?

No, dude, they use.... TERMINAL ENTRY. Hackers AND terrorists! It's two great tastes that taste like Z-movie together!

(For the truly bored, a semi-dramatic reading of box blurb available here, 4:20ish-5:20ish, after annoying commercial message.)

Re:"Teenaged whiz-kids"

[mcgrew]

Now I feel like washing out my mouth

You typed that with your tongue? EWWWWW!

Re:"Teenaged whiz-kids"

[dsavi]

No, speech recognition. Fool.

Obligatory

[srussia]

If we are going to stare at a screen for two hours we want eye candy.

I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head...

Re:Obligatory

[FrostedWheat]

Hmm.. I must be looking at the wrong Perl program, all I saw was a big beardie guy.

Re:Obligatory

[Sechr Nibw]

No, you need to get one of those matte finish monitors, the anti-glare. You're just seeing your reflection in the monitor. It's been awhile since you showered and shaved, so you probably don't recognize him.

Oh really?

[PolyDwarf]

I'm hacking the Gibson. Your argument is invalid.

50 years?

[Nukenbar]

Who had hacker movies in 1960? Can anyone name a hacker movie off the top of his head before War Games?

Re:50 years?

[H0p313ss]

Who had hacker movies in 1960? Can anyone name a hacker movie off the top of his head before War Games?

This was well explained in the article.... kids these days...

Re:50 years?

[doug]

1960s movies aren't my thing. Tron was the only pre-War Games movie that I thought of. You should RTFA because we have all seen 4 of the 6 listed before War Games.

- doug

Re:50 years?

[mikestew]

It's three links deep and an Excel spreadsheet, so one can be excused for not RTFA: Hot MIllions (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063094/).

Re:50 years?

[baegucb]

Tron might qualify as being before War Games. It came out in 1982.

Re:50 years?

[mikestew]

But the question was "in 1960", and that movie was made in 1968. So PC World got it wrong, it's only over the last 40 years (first in 1968, last was 2008).

Re:50 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be pedantic, the summary says "over 5 decades," so movies from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s would include 5 decades. Technically. Definitely word-smithing for hyperbole.

Re:50 years?

[EMB Numbers]

"Colossus: The Forbin Project"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/

An artificially intelligent supercomputer is developed and activated, only to reveal that it has a sinister agenda of its own. The scientists scramble to hack into it.

Re:50 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes? Not sure of the date on that one, though.

Re:50 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who had hacker movies in 1960? Can anyone name a hacker movie off the top of his head before War Games?

The Time Machine (the version made when men were manly men), was 1960. But of course that depends on your definition of hacking; I prefer the MacGyver definition, because that explains both my forest admin achievements and why my car looks the way it does.
 

Re:50 years?

[piltdownman84]

Who had hacker movies in 1960? Can anyone name a hacker movie off the top of his head before War Games?

The Original Italian Job from 1969. In that movie they hack the traffic computer in Turin to create a traffic nightmare allowing them to escape in their Mini Coopers.

Re:50 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who had hacker movies in 1960? Can anyone name a hacker movie off the top of his head before War Games?

Not from the '60s, but worth mentioning:
1975 - Three Days of the Condor - Starred Robert Redford who hacks the phone system, re-routing his call around the world to prevent the CIA from tracing him.

Sneakers

[jgtg32a]

Sneakers is the best hacking movie ever.

Re:Sneakers

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah. I often wish they'd make a special edition DVD of that with commentaries and such. I suppose it's one of those things I'll never see but if we could.

Wonder who their geek consultant was on that film?

Re:Sneakers

[Anonymous Coward]

cattle mutilations are up!

Re:Sneakers

[evilviper]

Sneakers is the best hacking movie ever.

"War Games"

Serious subject.
Culturally significant.
Perhaps the most realistic "hacking" in Hollywood history.
All tech involved was just a small step removed from the real thing.
Dated today, but holds up very well.

Re:Sneakers

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounded like a cocktail party.

Re:Sneakers

[zach_the_lizard]

One of my CS intro classes made us watch this movie, and though it was dated by decades, it was still enjoyable.

Re:Sneakers

[CharlyFoxtrot]

All tech involved was just a small step removed from the real thing.

Except it also has the most overused and silly computer-related tropes ever in it : the logicbomb.

Re:Sneakers

[Chris Burke]

Except it wasn't silly, it was one of the best examples of defeating a computer through logic ever. It wasn't just some self-contradictory piece of logic that made Joshua go into an infinite loop or go offline while saying "does not compute". It was a challenge to beat itself at Tic-Tac-Toe with a lesson which Joshua learned and then intuitively applied to Thermonuclear War. It wasn't a logic-bomb, it was logic. Joshua learned that nuclear war was futile.

Compare with all the examples from E.g. Star Trek where the contradictory logic causes the computers to fail.

Personally, I think that trope page should list Wargames as averting the trope. :P

Re:Sneakers

[Anonymous Coward]

All tech involved was just a small step removed from the real thing.

I have to wonder what other movie was made with the title "War Games", because you can't possibly be describing the one that ends with a computer drawing philosophical conclusions from playing a game.

Re:Sneakers

[Idiomatick]

Hackers 1 had topless Lara Croft .. I mean Angelina Jolie in it. So I dunno what you are talking about.

Re:Sneakers

[Lisandro]

Meh, i'll take Sneakers over War Games every day. Sneakers shows that realistically hacking is more about social engineering than typing cryptic commands on a computer. And on top of that, it was a FUN, really well put togheter movie. The final scene ("Tahiti is not in Europe!") is great and gets a laugh out of me every time.

Re:Sneakers

[turing_m]

I have to wonder what other movie was made with the title "War Games", because you can't possibly be describing the one that ends with a computer drawing philosophical conclusions from playing a game.

I think he was referring to the cracking techniques not the AI, e.g. war dialing, which is the only cracking technique I can remember from the movie. But that was realistic - a brute force attack on a search space, logging hits on solutions.

Re:Sneakers

[sootman]

The best hacking films are...

• 1983 - War Games - realistic depiction of old-school hacking
• 1992 - Sneakers - realistic depiction of social engineering
• 1995 - Hackers - Agelina Jolie briefly topless
• 2001 - Swordfish - long scene of Halle Berry topless

The best hacking film of all time, therefore, is Swordfish, followed by a two-way tie between War Games and Sneakers. Hackers comes in fourth--not even a naked 19-year-old Angelina Jolie could save that piece of shit. :-)

Re:Sneakers

[Zordak]

All tech involved was just a small step removed from the real thing.

Um, you do realize that you're talking about a movie with a sentient computer, don't you? Also, the war dialing wasn't even realistic, because the computer had no way to disconnect the phone between calls. He just picked it up off the cradle and put it in the modem, and it magically made a bunch of separate calls.

Re:Sneakers

[Anonymous Coward]

Len Adleman was one, the "A" in "RSA". Which is why the math in that movie actually makes some sense.

Re:Sneakers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sneakers is the best hacking movie ever.

Better than the 12yr old hacking an ED209 in RoboCop III?

*rofl*

Shit I can't even say that with a straight face ..

Re:Sneakers

[evilviper]

Um, you do realize that you're talking about a movie with a sentient computer, don't you?

It wasn't sentient, of course. It was a simplistic (far too advanced for the time) AI. It was given a bit more "personality" than any AI would really have, but only to make it interesting on-screen. Sure, you can attribute it's action's to "sentience" but almost all can be traced back to following simplistic rules... Calling back a phone number. Looking-up a person in a phone directory... Continuing a game that has been started. Yes, it was a bit of a contrivance, but not nearly as bad as most.

the computer had no way to disconnect the phone between calls. He just picked it up off the cradle and put it in the modem, and it magically made a bunch of separate calls.

It's a rather minor technical detail that they didn't show how the phone was hung-up between calls. But it's also not at all impossible... in the days of phreaking, a number of tones were discovered that would allow service modes, which would interrupt calls, and allow making a new connection without hanging-up the receiver. Phreaking does figure prominently in the plot, from not getting charged for all the long-distance calls, to using a pay phone for free... Not to mention unlocking doors with tape-recorded tones....

Re:Sneakers

[Zordak]

It was given a bit more "personality" than any AI would really have, but only to make it interesting on-screen. Sure, you can attribute it's action's to "sentience" but almost all can be traced back to following simplistic rules

I can follow you on this for most of what Joshua does. But at the point where Joshua decides philosophically that his programmed function of launching missiles is futile because the war can't be won, and thus rejects his programming, they pretty much crossed over.

Re:Sneakers

[evilviper]

But at the point where Joshua decides philosophically that his programmed function of launching missiles is futile because the war can't be won, and thus rejects his programming, they pretty much crossed over.

That's not what happened, actually. It was NOT designed to "launch missiles". It was designed to analyze attack/counter-attack scenarios, and determine which would guarantee the greatest success.

In the end, it ran through thousands of possible scenarios, and determined that there was no viable strategy. It's certainly not at all beyond a computer program to examine a logical puzzle and determine there is no viable solution. No philosophy required. Note the death tolls it produces at the end of each simulation. Just simple math...

Of course the point of it all was something akin to "Kids say the darnedest things." ie. A logical, unemotional robot with minimal intellect states, in one succinct sentence, the simple fact we struggled with for decades. Numerous times throughout the film it's well illustrated that it's decidedly non-philosophical, not understanding that it shouldn't launch the attack to continue "the game".

But I digress. Continue to believe as you please. It's hardly worth an argument.

Search burbling, no cursors, huge fonts

[uberchicken]

I try to allow for artistic license, but real computers DON'T MAKE CUTE R2D2 NOISES WHEN THEY'RE SEARCHING!

Grrrr..

Not strictly on-topic, but that felt good for me.

Re:Search burbling, no cursors, huge fonts

[droopycom]

Off course they do!!!

$ apt-get install r2d2

Re:Search burbling, no cursors, huge fonts

[mindwhip]

No... they make dog sniffing and scratching noises a little while after the search... thanks for that one Microsoft.
http://windowsdevcenter.com/windows/2004/06/01/graphics/figure1.gif

Re:Search burbling, no cursors, huge fonts

[mcgrew]

I try to allow for artistic license, but real computers DON'T MAKE CUTE R2D2 NOISES WHEN THEY'RE SEARCHING!

Well, they CAN, you know, if you want them to. I once had a boss named Dave and changed all his Windows sounds to samples of HAL from 2001. "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid you can't do that."

Re:Search burbling, no cursors, huge fonts

[BitwizeGHC]

The Wii makes little beeping sounds that grow and fade in volume when it is connecting or downloading.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

...They obviously did not see Swordfish or Hackers as they would understand what REAL hackers are. Those films contain the most accurate representation of them I've ever seen.

Re:Huh?

[Shimbo]

...They obviously did not see Swordfish or Hackers as they would understand what REAL hackers are.

And you obviously didn't see the list of films. they studied.

UNIX

[CAIMLAS]

The only instance of 'movie hackers' which spring to mind is:

"It's a UNIX system! I know this! "

Re:UNIX

[CharlyFoxtrot]

The worst thing is "Jurassic Parc" is on his list but he counted Nedry (the fat nerd who locked out the system) but not the little girl in that infamous 'I know UNIX' scene. Pretty bogus.

Re:UNIX

[slimjim8094]

That 3d box software is a real thing for IRIX - called fsn (filesystem navigator). At least that was real. It's even conceivable you could use it to run a shell script that would do whatever it was they needed.

Still waiting on my blowjob

[Chas]

Seriously. I wanna know where you go for a job interview that tests you under pressure (excuse the pun) of a blowjob.

I'd apply in a heartbeat.

Several times.

A day!

Re:Still waiting on my blowjob

[Chris Burke]

On the plus side, I found a place that does that.

On the down side, it's the IT dept. for Big Gay Al's Big Gay Animal Sanctuary, and Al does the interviews himself.

Re:Still waiting on my blowjob

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to remember that not only was it a blowjob but that it was done with a gun or the threat of a gun. I am guessing under those conditions that I would be unable to perform in either sense of the word here.

DUH!

[ArhcAngel]

If your a movie studio and you believe there is a worldwide consortium of hackers that can call on each other to attack a specific target you are going to tread VERY lightly in poking fun at said group.

Re:DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, I am from Anonymous, an internet hacker group that likes to call on each other to attack specific targets. After 'trolling' the 'interwebs' for 'luls', I have come across your post. I wish to say that we do enjoy these movies as well as a jolly good ribbing. There is not much to fear as we are all kind and wonderful blokes who strive for peace and nonviolence. Keep the jests coming, good sir.

- Anonymous (The Notorious Hacker Group)

How about Racism in Hacking films?

[Anonymous Coward]

Name one, I mean ONE Asian male in a "hacking" film.

This is one of the largest demographics in the computer industry (if not THE largest), and I can't name a single one in any of these films. Interestingly enough, there are plenty of African American programmers in Hollywood (which is much smaller demographic in the real world). The Matrix trilogy springs to mind as the most offensive in this regard.

Live Free or Die Hard has not one, but TWO Asian **female** hackers, but no male ones to speak of.

As an Asian male, I don't find Hollywood's treatment of hackers to be very positive at all.

Re:How about Racism in Hacking films?

[ThatMegathronDude]

Did you notice the pattern of Hollywood rarely portraying reality?

Re:How about Racism in Hacking films?

[mdarksbane]

Probably depends on where you live. I'm not sure the tech company I work for has a single asian man working for us, nor did my last one. A few Indians, African-Americans, all nature of white guys.

I knew plenty of asian programmers in college, but they weren't the majority by any means.

This is in Columbus, Ohio, though, where pretty much the only asians who grew up here have parents working at the Honda plant.

Wonder if the movie studios are trying to shy away from the more obvious stereotypes.

Re:How about Racism in Hacking films?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go watch Office Space.

Re:How about Racism in Hacking films?

[Macgrrl]

I can't remembe the names of the characters of the top of my head, "Blade" was one of them I think. The UBER hackers in the movie Hackers were asian.

Hack the Planet!

HPAV Crowd Then and Now

[kenp2002]

Time wise, if we assume Hollywood lags about 10 years behind the times then they are accurate suprisingly. Back in the days when ACiD, TRiBES and iCE were waging a holy war of ANSI art packs across the BBS era and when USENET was full of useful information rather then spam and people still cared about blue boxes the scene was largely '))>>{

P.S. Anyone know where I can find the old ANSI animation "The Slug"?

Hackers as hot as Angelina Jolie w/ short hair

[axl917]

is a fiction I can certainly live with.

HACK THE PLANET!

[kaizokuace]

HACK THE PLANET!

Re:HACK THE PLANET!

[BitwizeGHC]

They're TRASHING our rights! They're TRASHING the flow of data! TRASHING! TRASHING! TRASHIIIIING!!!

Re:HACK THE PLANET!

[kaizokuace]

How is taking down the Gibson offtopic?!

They got a few things wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

They got the Doritos and Red Bull wrong, wait a minute. Never mind.

Hackers becoming like movies

[phorm]

Actually, when you think about it, a lot of hacking/cracking has become more like the movies. You end up with fancy GUI tools that any script-kiddy who's willing to pay $19.99 can use. Heck, keygens have had sappy demoscene SID-tunes and fancy effects for ages.

Even sysadmin tools are becoming a bit more TV-esque, and my Linux Desktop is certainly filled with more "omg effectzors" than years ago. Yes, I still use a terminal very regularly, but in some cases the GUI tools are pretty damn good too.

Mirror image

[Anonymous Coward]

No one wants to see a 300 pound unwashed guy sucking back big gulps and eating nachos while living in his parent's basement for 90 minutes.

I am coming mom!

I hated firewall

[anglico]

There was a scene where somebody was breaking into the system and this IT expert freaks out and Harrison Ford says something to the effect of 'just create an exception rule to block his IP'.
My girlfriend asked if that was true and I said yeah but even I know that and I'm not any where near as skilled as that guy is supposed to be. After that I just had to leave the room I couldn't watch anymore.

Re:I hated firewall

[mjwalshe]

but you do see Harison typing real IOS commands into a routers CLI

Who cares.

[daschlag]

Thanks slashdot, for allowing crap like this to get into my RSS reader.

realistic?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least outside of hollywood people have made realistic portrayals of hackers

You call that well treated?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have just saved this image file for use in a digital forensics course I am putting together. If only law enforcement could pull off such digital wizardry to see a suspect's face captured on grainy video surveillance.

Now, how do you portray "hacking" well on TV?

[Opportunist]

Thanks for all the rants how Hollywood seriously crashes and burns when it comes to "sensible" display of hacking, how it is constantly a firework of flahy graphics and nonsensical flicker output... But, well, how else do you want to do it?

Your goal, when making a movie, is to show something that the viewer wants to see. Hacking is not exactly a spectator sport. What do you see? Some guy, reading various boards, hunting for new 0days, trying stuff against his own server (again, text only, why bother writing a graphical frontend... because none exists since, well, what you're doing SHOULD not work and is certainly not the "normal flow of operation"), then, when it's time to actually pry the juicy server open it's again a few tools and their text output that tells the (informed) hacker which exploit might work, he prods again, maybe gets some garbled output, then a few lines of scp and a few (textual) progress bars...

I think if you want to show hackers sensibly, the only way is the same you see in medical series: Concentrate on something other than the "actual" work. How often do you actually get to see some doctors operate? An operation can take hours, yet you might see a minute or so of OP time in a show, if that. The focus is elsewhere, and there's a really good reason why: You, the viewer, without a medical background, could not tell a healthy liver from one that's gonna blow in a minute anyway. You would not "get" why everyone's getting hectic even though there isn't a geyser of blood squirting from the patient's belly. Likewise, the whole "shit hits the fan and everything starts flashing" crap should be canned in favor of one of the hackers telling the viewer why hell breaks lose (to give a reason just why he explains it, have one of the non-tech guys with them so there's a reason he tells the viewer how his friend just stumbled over a tripwire in the server security) and put the focus elsewhere in your story.

Sorry, there is no "good" way to show hacking as entertaining to watch and realistic too. It just isn't interesting to watch a hacker do his magic when you have no idea what's going on. A few lines of "realistic" stuff are fine if they're there to build tension. A blinking caret can be a great cliffhanger when the audience gets explained that the next output will make or break their run.

Not just movies, TV shows too.

[antdude]

An example with 24 where Jack and Chloe were looking at Pine v4.44: See http://deflexion.com/2006/03/pine-in-fortune-magazine-and-on-tv for HD screen captures. I mentioned them in my original newsgroup/usenet thread in http://groups.google.com/group/comp.mail.pine/browse_frm/thread/81bfe60f7300713c/9fae5db5f1015572?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=24+pine+HDTV#9fae5db5f1015572 ...

You were saying.. ?

[Madsy]

From the movie Clear and present danger : http://www.mechcore.net/images/clear-and-present-danger-code.png

Reality is boring, fantasy usually has mistakes

[hellfire]

I have a great example of how reality gets in the way of fantasy.

The Watchmen comic series. Love this series! I agree it's the greatest comic series of all time. However, When Nite Owl sits down at a computer, and begins to basically "guess" passwords until he's able to get in and crack the plot and find out what's going on, I thought simply that even the greatest comic book series of all time had to use one of the worst plot devices of all time.

My major problem with this is that the computer belonged to the "most intelligent man in the world." Even in 1986, intelligent computer users are supposed to know that you don't pick a password that's easily guessable.

I've had arguments to this day with noncomputer users who say I'm being overly picky, despite arguments proving my point time after time. Fantasy is just not as entertaining as it could be when you know too much about reality.