Top 10 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do

An anonymous reader writes "From blowing up your keyboards to developing a malignant sentience, Expert Reviews rounds up the things that movie makers believe computers can do, even though they use the same technology every day to write scripts." I like the summary of how you crack a password in movies. I hate that this page splits into multiple pages. Very lame.

Comments

Re:My personal favorite

[penguin_dance]

Matrix Reloaded: Trinity exploits an actual vulnerability to hack into the power station.

Very lame indeed.

[MrNemesis]

If you want to read something alot more entertaining and you're happy with it being spread across multiple pages, read the pages at TV Tropes instead: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalComputer It includes all the ten tropes in the list, plus many more, without obnoxious advertising.

It's much funnier, has exhaustive examples, and will ultimately ruin your life.

A bit more back on topic, my favourite "enhance" button was seen in some terrible movie starring Jack Black as a CIA hacker which I came across whilst, er, herbally medicated. It featured the usual "enhance" button with a (literal) twist - using "inference AI" it could turn a patchwork of images into a 3D model... including the bits that weren't filmed. The wall-banging stupidity of this was even a major plot point - the model was done so they could find out where someone had stashed the microfilm, or some such rubbish - typical modest programmers, they write their AI to infer things and it turns out to be an all-seeing eye that can observe past events witnessed by no other human. The only reason I'm sad I can't remember the name of that film is in case I accidentally start watching it again.

Re:My personal favorite

[corbettw]

Seems like that's been subverted a few times. A quick check of TVTropes.org should prove whether it has or not. You go ahead and look. No really, it'll be fine. You won't get sucked in and lose the rest of your day, I promise.