Slashdot Mirror
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.
I wish i could just yell "ENHANCE" at a photo on my computer to make it magically uncover detail that was never originally there. That would be awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU
In Terminator 3, the Terminator T-X is able to take over complete control of automobiles simply by sending a virus to their onboard computers. Forget that none of these cars (most of them older ones at that) have any way for the onboard computer to access steering, acceleration or brakes; the real kicker is when the movie shows one of them actually shifting into gear on its own. And not ONE of them was even a Toyota!
And, on the opposite side, I would like to recognize the movie "Wargames." It wasn't perfect (the AI is certainly exagerrated), but it's definitely one of the most realistic computer films to ever come out of Hollywood. If they remade that today, they would probably show Joshua blowing up buildings and sending robotic minions after David. As it is, Wargames makes a simple ringing phone and a countdown clock way more suspenseful than anything ever produced with CGI special effects. Kudos to John Badham for getting away with making a movie that's pretty thoughtful and low-key--and just a year after Tron showed us how evil programs can suck you into the digital world with a laser, no less.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In Star Trek, Kirk need only ask an alien computer to "Explain. The. Human emotion. Known. As.....Love", for it to go into a bizarre loop where its logical systems can't computer and it explodes.
I hate it when my machine can't computer.
I can't perform my daily sysadmin duties unless I'm getting fellatio from a chick under my desk at the same time as having a loaded gun pointed at my head while someone counts down from an arbitrary number.
Still, Jeff Goldblum's power book hacking into and planting a virus in highly advanced space faring alien architecture has to be my favourite. Don't know if that made the list.
I hate that this page splits into multiple pages. Very lame.
Then...don't reward them by linking to them?
"BAD, Johhny! Don't pull your brother's hair! Here's an ice cream sundae."
Please help metamoderate.
Yeah I read TFA .. but I can point out an exception to "the good guys only use macs". In one of the robocop movies (#2?? I know I never saw #3 or anything later if there was anything??) the robocop interface is shown as DOS like, but his nemesis is shown having a mac like interface.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
That’s what they are.
Plot tools.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The article tries to assert that somehow a keyboard is not an effective way of controlling a computer in a hurry. I would like to say that they are full of shit. On any OS that is worth anything, I do more work with the keyboard than with the mouse; especially if the situation is urgent. I don't want to be inconvenienced with a mouse when something important is going down, I want all my fingers available for typing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That's one thing that always drives me nuts when I'm watching computers being used on TV or in the movies... EVERY user interface element BEEPS. Text will scroll on the screen (no idea why it won't just show all at once) and as the computer renders each and every single character, it lets out a beep. That sort of machine would drive me nuts after about 3 minutes of use.
Scorta futuere amo!
Isn't this a rip off of a Cracked.com article of the same name? http://www.cracked.com/article_15229_5-things-hollywood-thinks-computers-can-do_p3.html Oh, I'm sorry, it's 5 vs 10. That makes it okay, right?
However, if DRM really gets a grip, this could become fact not fiction.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
To get my VR glasses & navigate the virtual file system on my very own Gibson super computer. I'll look for oil and stuff with it... Good times!
Holy happy hippy crap!
Anyone got a mirror?
is old and boring, how many of these articles are there? I swear one of these pops up every 6 months.
Nope, it's the same one that gets copypasted every single time with some minor changes.
How about all the fancy GUI Hollywood shows when someone is coding/hacking? I want them to show someone using VI.
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. -Mark
When John Wayne fired a gun, at least two Indians dropped instantly. *At least* two. You can keep those computers, I want to better understand the technology behind The Duke's bullets...
The V'ger reference at the end annoyed me. It was given life by other beings, it didn't just become sentient!
"The connection has timed out"
"The server at www.expertreviews.co.uk is taking too long to respond."
That will teach them to create split pages ;)
Hollywood does not actually think computers can currently do nor do they think they ever will do these things.
Hollywood does think is that having computers do such things in a story usually (not always, but usually) makes it easier or faster to tell the story the way it is intended, rather than getting bogged down in the real life technicalities that are actually involved that would bore almost anybody.
The only real problem with this is that some people could be left thinking that computers do or can do some of these things. But that's more a case of those people not being able to tell fiction from reality, which has nothing to do with how Hollywood tells stories, it has to do with what sort of education and life experience a person has.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I read page 1, then the site got slashdotted, appearantly. I can only imagine the fire alarms going off, server rooms on fire, sparks everywhere, chaos, mayhem... Much more interesting than a "an unexpected error has occured. contact your administrator." windows dialog on a machine.
Well then, without the original article... I guess one thing that Hollywood thinks computers can do, is for servers to be ab-so-lu-tely quiet... In series such as 24 and CSI, I see rack after rack of Dell equipment, and they must be on because there are blue lights everywhere... Yet people can have normal conversations. Also, especially in CSI:NY, why are the server racks in the office rooms? Oh, and come to think of it... In CSI, where people are supposed to scrutinize every little detail, not to miss everything... Who thought it would be a good idea to work on transparent screens? I would imagine that all the distractions you see *through* the screen, would make you miss essential clues? Weird.
That is easy. One indian was killed by the bullet, the other by his evil look.
Ow, ow, ow...my brain!
It's just an aspect of storytelling. Most stories are about conflict and resolution between the characters, not the intellectual masturbation of what layer in the network stack is responsible for ack/response. Details like that don't matter. Struggling against time, intrigue, and moving the plot along: that's what matters.
In the movie House of Flying Daggers, there's a swordfight scene where the two rivals finally clash in an epic struggle as the seasons change from summer to fall to winter all around them. Obviously nobody can fight for nine months. Obviously the sword choreography was on a completely different time scale to the environment they were in. Details like this matter if you're a weak-minded literalist. As pretty as the visuals were, it simply communicated a story like a line in a novel. It was a powerful visual metaphor.
Next time the guys in CSI can scan a DNA sequence in a matter of minutes (or perhaps hours, as the camera briefly observes an analog clockface), don't nitpick the usual technical constraints of a process that usually takes days or weeks or months. Just insert "no technical challenge will stop this team." Even for geeks who enjoy the technical aspects, some details are like watching paint dry.
[
I was using ICQ back in 1998, and it had the option of displaying each chat character as it was typed. It meant you could express more complex thoughts, without requiring the other person to sit and wait patiently for you to develop a whole paragraph. It let the other guy step in and say 'I see where you're going, but let me stop you there...'. It opened up opportunities for dramatic timing and deliberate use of backspacing for comedic effect. It was more 'live' than a one-line-at-a-time chat modality, despite its warts. While this style of online chat may not be particularly popular today, it was (and still is) readily available.
In real-life telephone conversations, you don't get to review each sentence before it goes out over the wire; if you choose the wrong word you just have to live with it.
To the other point, I just have to say -- what? People can perform tasks flawlessly in movies? It turns out that unless required for dramatic effect (as a somewhat-lazy shorthand to convey nervousness or poorly-concealed deception), characters always speak in clear, perfect setences and never use the word "um". Their shoelaces are always tied, their hair is always perfect, and they never miss the bus unless their character is required to be unlucky or miserable. People in movies seldom need to visit the washroom, and then only to have private conversations -- never to defecate, except as a route to teen-movie fart jokes.
Movies are a projection of reality, not an exact duplicate. People tend to do non-visually-arresting and plot-irrelevant things faster or behind the scenes. Watching someone make typos for two hours isn't my idea of a good time.
~Idarubicin
Start small, like with the JFK "Magic Bullet" theory. Once you grasp that, you can move on to The Duke and such puzzlers like the 24-shooter that really looks like a 6-shooter.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Then...don't reward them by linking to them?
Instead, we can link to TV Tropes: Magical Computer and ruin each other's days the right way.
ICQ had this ability in a realtime chat mode about 10 years ago too.
It let the other guy step in and say 'I see where you're going, but let me stop you there...'. It opened up opportunities for dramatic timing and deliberate use of backspacing for comedic effect.
Kanye?
"Here's a link for the top 10 things that computers can do in movies but can't do in real life"
*clicks link*
"A rendering error occured"
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.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
It's taken on a kind of Urban Legend patina, so take it with a grain of salt, but here goes:
Seems that the Art Department and Properties guys -- the crew responsible for dressing the set -- for Star Trek IV were all HUGE Amiga fans. No real surprise there, given where Amiga was at the time the movie was shot. So... in the famous scene where Scotty, the ultimate fictional Uber Engineer, has traveled back in time and assumes all computers are voice-activated (as they are in his century), talks into a mouse, the Art guys wanted their Amiga to be the one featured in the scene. So they sent some reps just up the road apiece from where they were filming in San Francisco to meet with the Amiga honchos and get some hardware for the scene. As the story goes, the Amiga guys were initially annoyed, cuz it was all so unannounced and sudden, and then they agreed only if the crew paid for the gear. "No loaners."
"Um, but, it's the new Star Trek movie, and it's Chief Engineer Scott, and he's back in our century, and he could be using YOUR computer, and we all really love Amigas on the set, and..."
"Sorry. Sign this Purchase Order or get out."
So the crew called Apple, who "got it" in a heartbeat, sent in a Marketing SWAT team with free Macs for the scene, free Macs for everyone on the crew, and technical advisers to stand by during the filming to make sure everything went smoothly.
Amiga, the astute among you have by now noticed, is no longer with us. Apple, on the other hand...
I've cracked passwords in a few minutes using rainbow tables. Granted you need the weeks/months before hand to generate said tables, but if you have a few hundred gig laying around, no reason not to.
The movie was faithful to Alan Moore's take on how passwords were cracked in the graphic novel.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Looks like a variation on the "5 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do" article from cracked.com.
Also, i'd like to point out that the Expert Reviews version used really poor examples for their #1 case that computers which are just left on will develop intelligence. V'ger didn't develop intelligence on its own, the original primitive computer was massively upgraded and reprogrammed by some aliens who found it, it wasn't just "left on." In Skynet's case the basic computer was powerful enough to develop sentience and did so almost immediately after being turned on, there was no "just leave it on long enough" involved. The WarGames example from the cracked article was better because it didn't show any signs of intelligence immediately after being turned on, and it involved completely understandable and by now quite outdated technology that clearly would have a hard time opening a modern webpage, much less developing intelligence.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I always find it annoying how everything one can do on a Hollywood computer makes a sound. Moving a mouse across the screen? Woosh! Enlarging a window? Zipp!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
While on the subject of CSI, don't you love the way they just happen to have a custom spinny-roundy 3D database for just about anything you can care to think of.
That, and the rather optimistic natural language queries they type into the aforementioned databases.
Computers respond to any understandable human terminology! And it turn, computers respond in a equally understandable manner!
You pick the one most plausible.
I know it's popular to rag on that, but it's actually plausible:
1) They studied the system for years.
2) The system might not have been a Mac. Could have been a custom OS.
3) There a hive mind race. they would not have any really need for security.
4) Electronics are electronics faster smaller. But from a black box approach, no different.
5) You Assume that the system would some how be perfect.
6) He exploited a trusted system by exploiting another trusted system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...that a computer can take over a car. They believe that the audience is a bunch of rubes who will buy that sort of thing.
And guess what? They seem to sell a lot of tickets.
rj
but the fact is, doing a scene where a sysadmin bangs around in a terminal typing commands just isn't fun for the viewer. The reason we laugh so hard at these things though is because technology is our thing. It's true for almost anything in an entertainment-oriented (as opposed to educational) movie. Try some of the following:
Watch a few cop movies with actual cops.
Watch some hospital-based TV shows with some doctors, nurses and paramedics.
Watch a couple of movies that focus on car chases/stunts with some mechanics.
The list goes on and on. What you'll see though is, those people will have the same general reaction to Hollywood depictions of their areas of expertise that we have regarding use of computers/technology. Accuracy and entertainment just don't always go well together.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Can we stop with hyperbolic negative comments about TPM? Did it not live up to a lot of expectations? Yes. Was it in the same league as Drop Dead Fred? No. I bet this douchebag has it on VHS, DVD, and Blue Ray.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
While I wait for the /.-ed website to load, I will give the one movie that bothered me when it came to "technology", 2012.
Ok, it was 2012. We're not talking a movie that doesn't have holes the size of planets in the logic. But suspending disbelief (and to just watch the eye candy of CGI), it came down to the Arcs. Here all the main characters are, standing on the bridge of one of the Arcs and they're talking about calculating the time when the big wave will hit them and someone notices an error and needs to recalculate the impact count-down clock...
The DIGITAL clock doesn't just instantly flip to the new time... no! That would be too modern. It has to quickly speed down from the current time to the new, shorter time. With, appropriate sound effects making it sound like a mechanical clock. Ok, I got a kick out of that.
Of course, the other movie I got a kick out of... was Avatar. Sure, there's all kinds of things people can point out about this film when it comes to the science of it all, however, the one thing I loved was how these Avatars (which apparently cost so much money it couldn't be mentioned) didn't have a GPS tracking chip in them. That seems like the most logical thing to embed in this thing... you know, just in case it gets lost.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Yes they can.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Mmm... this copypasta is delicious. Would you like some?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
And it was a really bad design choice.
Oblivion Awaits
If you are given a video stream from a security camera and the subject is moving slowly relative to the frame (e.g. license plate of a car taxiing towards a gate), you may have a chance to recover more spatial resolution using temporal information. The idea is that each pixel in the camera will "scan" slightly different parts of the subject in different frames, like how a flatbed scanner works. If you can accurately track the subject in different frames, then you can stitch together a scan of the interesting pixels to uncover subtle detail. Here is a commercial product that implements this feature.
I once had a signature.
11. Hollywood thinks that the web can present information or articles all on one page, and not broken up into multiple ones. Those silly screenwriters! When will they learn that [NEXT >>>]
sneakers is the real deal, if you want a semi-realistic hacker movie.
sneakers was the most real one remake it and keep it like how things are done in real systems.
Yes, the original article says
3... "As we all know, all zooming into a poor-quality image would do is give a muddled blurry mess on the screen. This technique was recently brilliantly parried in Red Dwarf."
Since Red Dwarf was cancelled in 1999, it makes me wonder how old this article is.
Also makes me wonder if they fired all their copy editors. "recently parried"?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Forget the Gibson, the computer at the school controlled the sprinkler system!
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
They might change that after they get a gander of what their server room looks like now. ;)
Easily guessable passwords are real, as tons of other slashdot stories remind us. Of course, they often can't be quite that simple, because of password security rules. But that could lead to a new Hollywood password cracking scheme:
Geek Hero: Try "password"
Hot Girl at Keyboard: That'll never work, they've got strict password rules at EvilTech
GH: What are they?
HG: Has to be at least 8 characters including upper and lower case, at least one but not more than two numbers, and exactly one special character. Can't contain a dictionary word or abbreviation in any of 87 languages, including !Kung and Klingon, nor can the numbers be a day of the month or of special significance nor...
GH: Stop right there, there's only one password which matches those rules... try this...
HG: We're In!
Explanation 7) All Earth computers actually use technology stolen from crashed UFOs from Roswell. Their operating systems are the same as ours because our operating systems actually are theirs.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is called suspension of disbelief. It's a contract between the actors and the public, sometimes work and sometimes doesn`t.
I have seen a computer begin to smoke when a fan failed. If the computer hadn't been processing so many triangles the fan wouldn't have run so long, and would likely have lasted longer. It essentially overheated and smoked from processing too hard. There have been a number of highly publicized reports of laptops bursting into flames. I know it was the batteries, but still computers can go up in flames.
On my personal top ten list of "Things I Wish Media Knew Computers Could Do," #1 is displaying entire articles on a single freaking page.
Can someone post the list? This website is hopelessly retarded and doesn't know how to go to page 5. Not that it's a particularly good list.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
TBH, if I'm to wish for something from SF movies, it would include stuff like:
- Hoshi's universal translator from Enterprise. It can hear a few phrases in an alien language and then be able to translate back a response that includes words and semantic structures it never heard yet in that language. Note that it didn't even need to be told a translation for that original sample. It could just hear "bbzzt klick klickety-klick hrr bzzt" in some insectoid language and just figure out what it means and, for that matter, what the whole rest of the language is like.
Beats spending eternity to learn some foreign language.
- The magical interface that allows Data to type whole programs by pressing one of 6 buttons on the side of a touchscreen. No, really. Or for that matter, whatever system allowed Hoshi to type answers to be translated for the alien web-like entity by using only 4 buttons. Makes even the keypad of a cell phone look comfortable by comparison.
- the kind of programming language used by that precursor race on TNG which can not just be encoded in a few proteins and survive billions of years of mutations, and run on _any_ computer that it may be on after those billions of years, and could also actually just start itself after being stored on a tricorder... but can actually modify the tricorder to include a holographic projector
- the kind of interpolation software that allows them to go "captain, they're targetting their photon torpedoes at our warp core!" I mean, I could understand interpolating the direction a gun is pointing at, but to know where a torpedo will go after exitting a fixed launch tube, now that's serious magic.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Some Indian tribes developed a natural instinct to play dead upon hearing a gunshot. That allowed them to later recover consciousness and take revenge.
And thus having more fertile offspring, of course. That instinct is a beautiful proof of Darwinism.
Hollywood also thinks it is easy to "hack" in to any particular system to get whatever important piece of information is needed to move the story along.
While in real life some systems may not exactly be super secure, they would likely spend days digging through the system going "what the hell is this crap?" before actually finding any meaningful, correct data. And you never hear them say "Oh, we can't get in to this system because it is properly firewalled, up to date, and secured."
And on the other end there always seems to be some security room with lots of monitors where someone instantly detects the "hack" and asks the big bad/good guy what they should do.
In real life their system has been p0wned for the last two years and they never noticed, and nobody knows enough about the system to fix it.
is the most secure, sacrosanct computer at a top secret location in most movies. There might be an element of truth, but somehow an ultra-secure computer has to be a mainframe in the movies.
But first you must realize the truth... There is no bullet!
Oh yes, because an easy to make typo (note the position of the extraneous "r" beside the previously typed "e" key, and the fact that the subject matter is computers and therefore the brain is likely to glance at this and assume it's correct) completely invalidates the article. It's not the greatest article in the world, by any means, but if you have such a low tolerance threshold, how the hell do you manage to read anything online? How does your head not explode reading Slashdot?
1. Left long enough, a computer becomes intelligent
-Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?
And both comic and movie were set in the 80's. Who didn't use stupid passwords in the 80's? I remember using an adverb in the early nineties thinking I was cool because "no one would think of an adverb; everyone uses nouns". Ah, youth and inexperience.
If you're even mildly involved in real-life shooting, either as a hobby or professionally, you're going to spot a lot of gaffes.
I can understand simple continuity errors. By the time a film has been cut, edited, recut, edited again, Foleyed, CGI'd, etc. it's got to be difficult to keep track of whether the protagonist's gun should be empty. It doesn't take anything away to assume the hero simply reloaded offscreen.
But these things are a totally different matter:
-The mythical "Glock 7"
-The slow-motion sequence showing an entire round of ammunition going downrange, not just the projectile,
-Ammo "cooking off" somehow acting the same as if it were confined in a barrel (I'm looking at you, "Paycheck!"),
And I can't count the number of movies/TV shows where
-Someone "cocks the hammer" on a gun that doesn't HAVE a hammer, like a Glock.
Well, no IM system that people actually use shows each character as it is typed.
Seriously, who uses Google Wave regularly? Or Google Buzz, for that matter?
talk had this ability about 40 years ago (on the PDP-11). It let you tell your boss he was a complete moron^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdoing a great job.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Gunpowder.
AlecStaar was an APK sock-puppet all along? Well... that’s news even to me.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Likewise AIM for Windows still supports real-time IM. It's a real boon to the deaf community as it works much like a TTY device, but without needing special hardware or relay services. Just hit control-R to get going. More detail from this 2008 article: http://tap.gallaudet.edu/text/aol/ from Gallaudet University who helped develop the technology.
Who didn't use stupid passwords?
The smartest man in the world might....
The smartest man in the world who was secretly plotting a world-changing event that entirely hinged on secrect to pull it off, one who was perfectly willing to murder all his top staff and confidants and assistants....
just maybe he might not use a simple alpha-only password based on his very public alter-ego?
This would be like a Bruce Wayne... after unmasking himself as Batman to the public.... planning to deploy his super celphone tracking system / brother eye / omac system..... after murdering Morgan Freeman just to make sure it was secret.... would have his master password for this computer be "darkknight"
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Seems like they actually got this right, at least when I delete files all my nautilus windows update, and good luck to anyone who tries to recover files deleted from an ext4 filesystem...
Insert bashing of other OSes that don't do this here.
**TODO** [X] Steal someone elses sig.
Slashdot: where we pretend to know everything there is to know about cross-compiling toolchains when the article is about porting netBSD to a microwave, and then pretend not to whenever someone mentions Independence Day...
0 1 - just my two bits
When it is raining, it is because he is sad.
He once knew a call was a wrong number, even though the person on the other end wouldn't admit it.
If a monument was built in his honor, Mt. Rushmore would close, due to poor attendance.
His bear hugs are actually hugs he gives to bears.
His computer password Is unbreakable by anyone, even those who can read it-
He is-
The most interesting man in the world
etc...
TFA cites the exclusive use of keyboards as a flaw... but anyone who has to constantly switch between the keyboard and the mouse knows that it's an annoyingly constant interruption and a pain in the ass. It brings to mind something a former employer of mine once said: "I never really understood the invention of the mouse. Why on Earth would anyone want to take a programmer's hands away from the keyboard?"
"Before criticizing someone, first walk a mile in his shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away... and you'll have his shoes."
The missed a big one that has always bothered me.
Why does a video display sound like a teletype? Whenever they show characters being displayed on a screen, you almost always hear teletype noises. Do they really think that the characters are pounded into the glass by a mechanical mechanism hidden behine the screen?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I liked how they treated this in the movie Scanners.
[Keller backs away from the CONSEC mainframe computer as it shuts down]
Programmer: There's no need for that. It's all very quiet. It's just internal switching.
Braedon Keller: Really? No one's ever switched off a scanner before.
[The computers shut down, tape drives stop, the room goes quiet]
Programmer: See, I told you: no fireworks.
[Programmer's workstation explodes, and everything else]
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Random third party opinion here, looks like YOU are doing the stalking dude.
Selling something is hard. There are special events where street hawkers (not sure if that is the right word, people who sell stuff from a stand) compete. It is HARD, harder even then stand-up comedy. A comic can ignore or insult a heckler, but a street vendor only gets paid if the audience really likes him AND his product and can think of a reason to buy it. You need to be able to think on your feet. In a moments notice decide that HERE is a sales opporunity and then calculate cost and benefit on the spot and act on it.
The above story sounds a bit suspicious, although possible, because I have heard it in other forms. But the basic message is, think on your feet and never ignore an opportunity for some essentially free advertising. Some thing like this should have every sales clerk cumming in his pants, not sticking to his sales pitch.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Another annoying thing is interface design. They'll design these impractical but elaborate OS interfaces with all kinds of crap constantly moving and flickering.
I realize most of these things are done for cinematic effect or as a plot conveyance. But I think one of the big culprits behind this is an apparent fear of a static shot. In nearly every movie today everything has to be doing something. Computers need to scroll text, they need to spew a barrage of content all at once, buzzing and beeping the whole time.
Consider a movie like 2001. In this day and age there's no way in hell that movie would ever see the light of day. Compare that to something more contemporary and crappy like Mission to Mars.
Zoom in and enhance!
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
Forget Hollywood ... in Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, people were hacking into each other brains and stealing people's eyes. I give it 20-30 years (just so no one will remember it then) before we can do that.
The series 24 has been consistantly bad with the whole computer thing, comments about just "opening a port" etc. I also saw the worst peice of Product Placement on the show. It was around the 5th Season CTU was under attack from a hacker and an exchange along the lines of this took place. Technician 1: They're released a virus, we better do something Technician 2: Don't worry the Cisco Self defending Network should hold them for about half an hour.
Who, oh who decided that having a sound every time you clicked on an item in the start menu? One of the first things I turn off on a new installation of Windows.
Also on my Palm every button or item clicked by default had an annoying tapping sound. Fortunately it can be turned off.
Nokia on the N900 has a clicking sound for the menus that can be turned off. It also has the ability to turn on a clicking sound for every key you press.
So while it is annoying, it is definitely in use today.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Not just that, but they are visually interesting plot tools. Real computer use is too visually dull to be used in a Hollywood movie. And the text on the screen is much to small to resolve when the movie is shown on TV, so Hollywood makes the words really big. Maybe that will change when Blu-Ray becomes standard.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Not so. You can manage windows almost entirely by keyboard. For me, Super+Tab pages through windows, Shift+Alt displays them on a wall, Ctrl+Alt+Arrows move between viewports, Ctrl+Shift+Arrows alters opacity, Super+M inverts colors, etc. It's a lot quicker than having to constantly move the right hand between keyboard and mouse. The better a user interface is, the more flexible it will be when it comes to input devices.
To the other point, I just have to say -- what? People can perform tasks flawlessly in movies? It turns out that unless required for dramatic effect (as a somewhat-lazy shorthand to convey nervousness or poorly-concealed deception), characters always speak in clear, perfect setences and never use the word "um". Their shoelaces are always tied, their hair is always perfect, and they never miss the bus unless their character is required to be unlucky or miserable. People in movies seldom need to visit the washroom, and then only to have private conversations -- never to defecate, except as a route to teen-movie fart jokes.
Movies are a projection of reality, not an exact duplicate. People tend to do non-visually-arresting and plot-irrelevant things faster or behind the scenes. Watching someone make typos for two hours isn't my idea of a good time.
The big difference is, all of the examples you gave are of them removing things extraneous to the plot to help drive the story. Computers are one of the few areas where they don't remove things that might be boring or incidental, they go wacky inventing things to try and make it more interesting, and quite often it comes off as incredibly dumb and breaks all suspension of disbelief. If you can't make 30 seconds of someone typing look interesting, just show us five seconds and let our brains fill in the gaps, don't turn his wordprocessor into an environment that does advanced speech recognition and renders his musings as 3D representations.
Be used to browse TVTropes.
Wouldn't be surprised if there was a page with all of that lot.
I was going to make the same complaint about the dynamic typing bit they were criticizing. I personally loved that feature on ICQ and would like to know when the hell every other chat client is going to wise up and reinstate it.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Yes, and it was even worse in the comic. Nite Owl types "RAMESES" and the computer prompts him with the equivalent of "you're almost there! Do you want to add more letters?" to which Nite Owl then looks at the book and adds "II" (that's 2, in Roman numerals) to complete the password. What kind of security system tells you if you're warm and helps you break in?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Would you be able to maintain the same suspension of disbelief if the CSI guys asked their in-house leprechaun to solve the crime for them? No? Why not? Because most stories are also about atmosphere and plot, and that all gets destroyed if the realistic atmosphere is unexpectedly contaminated by the surreal and the plot depends on a rescue from a deus ex machina. The difference is that script writers know that their audience isn't "weak minded" enough to buy a magic fairie, but that they can and usually do fall for a magic computer. "Oh, but they meant it to be metaphorical!" is an obvious cop-out, when you should know as well as we do that they just don't understand their setting well enough to accomplish the same conflict accurately. There are script writers who understand science and technology and make a conscious choice to violate it for some dramatic (or comedic, Futurama) effect, but they're the exception, not the rule.
Yo! Who ate all of my fries?!
Here be signatures
The thing is that all those other things (e.g. missing buses) are real. You wouldn't have an expert car driver press a button and the wheels get replaced with skis (unless it's James Bond) in order that he could carry on chasing someone through snow. We know that cars don't work that way.
And this isn't the 60s any more when operating a computer meant going into a temperature-controlled room. Millions of people know what they do and that you don't need a slow-moving progress bar to move money from A to B.
There's a few plot devices to do with computers which are real and which I've never seen used in a movie. You could have a buddy cop scene where Bruce Willis is teamed with a geek and the perp deletes the file off his phone and the geek explains how it's not really deleted, just lost and proceeds to undelete the files. Or a sting where someone changes some router settings to use a different IP address so that they can get their password. You could still make it dramatic but use things that are real.
My all time favorite of really, really crappy computer use in a movie is from German TV. It's a scene from a notoriously bad action series, and unfortunately only available in German (duh, which network would be stupid enough to buy AND dub this crap), but here it is. I think its idiocy is even palpable if you have no idea about the dialogue.
But as in this example, computers are a neat deus ex machina for writers that managed to write themselves into a corner. Computers can do everything. And your average viewer has no idea what they can or can't really do. Whenever your hero needs access to whatever information, a computer becomes the key to success. Computers can get any video from any camera anywhere (CCTV? Ffffft, it's all on the internet. Or on the CIA/FBI/otherTLA network). They have access to all banking data and allow you to follow every money trail. They give you the whereabouts of your target because ... umm... yeah, we triangulate his cellphone. Somehow.
It's a bit like the inverted tachion beam in Star Trek. Whenever a deus ex machina is needed, just reverse polarity. Or in lieu of futuretech and technobabble, use a computer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In all the cases where I "cracked" a password, I simply opened up the employee's desk drawer and read the password off of a post-it note. Got it on the first guess! (Hmm... I currently have a post-it stuck to my monitor with a username/password on it, but at least it's not MY username/password.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm a computah!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Two times where Quantum Fireballs live up to their name. The flyback on one of my monitors blew making a popping sound, then smoke started coming out of the top. I have watched a power line inside the computer glow red hot and ignite it's outer casing. Also smoke suddenly coming from a power supply that had lit on fire internally.
I was going to say I've never seen a computer spark, but there was this one time that the positioning of variable DC voltage power transformer and a monitor was creating a strong magnetic field. I accidentally dropped the monitor cable onto the outside aluminum case of the transformer and it blew the thin layer of metal off part of the monitor cable creating quite the white light. The VGA plug had a thin layer of metal for some strange reason.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Do people really have some serious problem with the notion of FANTASY? None of these movies or tv-shows that have magic computers are documentaries. Ooh, I have another one. In real life a 30 ton machine making a sky craper leaping on the sidewalk, would go STRAIGHT through it. No just stand there. Oh and it would be collecting its gears in a paper basket, but Transformers failing to reflect this is not a reason to hate it (lousy acting is, anyone else think the movie would have been a whole lot better as pure CGI, no annoying humans to interrupt the action?)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here is how I guess passwords for users. 1st I pretend that I am a completly useless moron and type the first thing that comes to mind if I were that person. 2nd If that doesn't work I pretend that I have a highschool education and try it again. 3rd failing that I look around the desk for a post-it note with the password on it. I don't get it people act like I'm some kind of mystic when I guess their password, and I lose a little more hope for mankinds future.
Required viewing: Enhance megamix.. of course, the Super Troopers expertly makes fun of the whole concept.
Speak before you think
I think it's more a case of "Top 10 Things Hollywood thinks audiences think computers can do."
They aren't *that* stupid. But they think we are.
The funny thing about that movie is I hadn't read any Gibson at the time, so I totally missed the references. I laughed at it and made fun of how they got even simple concepts wrong (virus, worm, etc). Having seen it again recently and having read Gibson, the references make a lot more sense, as does the visual hacking stuff - it is obvious the screenwriters read Gibson and then wrote a screenplay without ever even meeting or consulting a real hacker. Of course, the whole thing is inane, but it made it at least a bit more enjoyable to just take it as total fantasy that has nothing to do with reality. That and I still find it hilarious that Zero Cool (the guy that played Eli Stone... real name is escaping me and I'm too lazy to look it up) was Angelina Jolie's first husband.
John Wayne used the same bullets used on JFK...
wake up and hold your nose
And nobody. Nobody ever says 'goodbye' when hanging up the phone. They usually just end the call after the end of a sentence, giving the person on the other end no warning or no real reason to believe that the conversation has ended. I always like to picture the person on the other end saying something along the lines of :"Hello? Hello?! You jackass, did you just hang up on me? ... Hello?"
Not to mention the fact that his sixshooter usually held enough bullets to last at the very least an entire gunfight. Unless it was dramaturgically necessary that he runs out of ammo.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What drives me up a wall is that, no matter how good the Watchmen is as a comic, and how much attention to detail it has, the whole scheme was blown wide open when Nite Owl looked at a book on the desk and guessed the password for a computer that belonged to the alleged smartest man in the world. Give me a break! If you say "well this was 1985" I call BS, because even then good password practices existed then, just not as well known since not everything was password protected or connected to a net. If you say "well maybe he wasn't that smart" and I call BS because he created an intricate plot and executed it successfully so he did have high intellect. If you say he was arrogant, and he was, then why plan so well every other portion of the plan and then leave open this tiny hole? Someone else could have done the same thing and stolen company documents and been far more destructive to the plan.
My point is that Hollywood isn't the only one who uses this old standby. I love The Watchmen but even that has to have flaws.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
... as if the bank computer as counting the bills (or coins) being transferred from one account to the other.
It would be nice to be able to keep people out of positions where their poor critical thinking faculties can be isolated from the rest of the world. Alas, that is unlikely to happen.
Perhaps, when it comes to potential jurors facing forensic evidence, there should be tests that attempt to determine the critical thinking abilities of the potential juror and their knowledge of the state of the art of forensics. If they pass the tests, they go into one juror pool. If not, they go into juror pools for trials that don't require forensic evidence.
In the silly Christian propaganda scare film "left Behind" the anti-christ is clearly seen using an old "Wallstreet" Powebook.
So not ALL the good guys use Macs. But then again, that depends on your definition of good guys.
http://www.normalbobsmith.com/worstmovies/worstmovies_leftbehind.html There is a screen-shot about half way through the review of the evil one cranking up his G3.
Seriously though, they use Macs because they look great under harsh lighting. Most PC laptops aren't as photogenic under harsh studio lights. Under bright lighs, shiny aluminum is still shiny, and plastic looks like, well plastic.
Do you actually *watch* people typing IMs? I think the vast, vast, vast majority of people just wait for the "ding" and then check what was typed.
Anyway, I hated that feature. I didn't want people to know how many mistakes I made. Plus, I frequently start typing one IM, decide it's a bad reply for some reason, then delete the whole thing and start over... I don't need other people seeing that.
Comment of the year
I see no reason to paint the target with whatever beam they use before actually firing the torpedo, though.
If nothing else, it already tells the victim where to divert shields / polarize the hull / whatever, or in a less ST scenario to activate the counter-measures or take evasive action. I mean, heck, if I had a dish with the reactor inside the dish like in Enterprise, and I knew those guys pointed a laser at the dish top near the reactor, _I_ would turn so I'm sideways to them and that missile will have the whole dish radius between impact point and reactor.
And generally, given how hostile a gesture that is (both realistically and in ST whenever it happens), I'm not sure why anyone would want to give the enemy a minute of warning before even deciding if they actually fire that torpedo.
But, really, such a sensor must be turnable on and off. Or you'd start any first contacts on the awfully wrong foot. Why turn it on in advance?
If I were to design such a weapon, it would actually be launched programmed to target the enemy by image recognition with an onboard camera. The technology already exists for missiles in this century. Then I'd turn on the painting a given area -- if I really want that -- only when the missile already did 2/3 of the distance on its own. Gives the enemy much less time to react and maneuver.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, no IM system that people actually use shows each character as it is typed.
e/pop (a corporate IM solution from a few years back) used to have this feature.
(Naturally, as the admin, I disabled it.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Well, there was Mycroft, the computer in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein.
In one scene a list of informants or related information was secured by a password. Manny, the lead character, provided a brief explanation of why they couldn't get the information.
Mycroft, aka Mike, offered a work around in the form of the necessary password. Mike was, after all, a friend of Manny.
Of course it helped that the owners of the computer had no idea that the computer had gained sentience as the result of adding more and more hardware capabilities. Manny realized this and was Mike's only friend in the formative years of being 'awake'.
This really should be number 1, because you can't count how much is wrong about this...
I haven't seen
for quite some time...
isn't it?
What I'm missing is
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
So does Unix "talk", but I'd be surprised if those systems had more regular users than Wave.
The Unix talk command also sent conversations character-by-character. This was made in the 70s.
This signature serves no purpose other than to help you see which posts were made by me.
Was it more annoying than watching that borefest of a movie? I swear, nothing ever happens in that whole movie.
It's known as "The Slow-Motion Picture" for a reason. Still, I am fond of the film for various reasons. It represents the few surviving elements of the "Phase II" show, it is one of the few times when Star Trek both had a decent budget and took a stab at some real "science fiction" (not hard SF, mind you, but at least it was largely dedicated to the idea of exploring and confronting the unknown) - it is a point in time when the original crew, while older, hadn't yet shriveled up entirely... And, of course, it brought us the "Enterprise Refit" - quite possibly the loveliest studio miniature ever constructed... Not to mention the K'Tinga, which got altogether too little appreciation IMO, winding up in the shadow of the "Klingon" Bird of Prey of the later films... Plus there's something about the era that I enjoy... the late-1970s sci-fi films...
But, yes, large tracts of that movie are dreadfully boring. As a model-maker, I love the Refit Enterprise model - and so I enjoy their extended fly-by sequence of it... But damn is that bit boring if you're not in it for the models. And worse, the original cut had all those klaxons going off all the time, various unfinished effects (wormhole asteroid, for instance? And I'd wager there was a real-world reason why they couldn't use the phasers.) - they say the production wound up rather rushed... which is a shame, because we all know how that played out in the resulting film.
Bow-ties are cool.
I was using ICQ back in 1998, and it had the option of displaying each chat character as it was typed.
This is called naked typing. Google wave has it by default and is very off-putting.
Eh? What did you delete? The post that you claim was made by me is still there.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
2. An explosion with lots of flames can throw a person 500' without injuring them
I always thought of this as the "Bruce Willis effect" - primarily as a reference to the Die Hard movies. The key thing is the character has to be in the air for this to work. Standing on top of a building when it explodes means you die. Jumping off the building just before the explosion means you live. The fact that jumping only puts you an extra couple feet away doesn't matter - since you are airborne, the force of the explosion simply propels you farther away from danger.
Bow-ties are cool.
No matter what computer system you're talking about, from ATMs, to the magical window based laptops they have, to alien spacecraft, all computers can talk to each other and all applications will run on all systems.
Think about Independence Day, Jeff Goldbloom wirelessly installing a virus on the alien's spacecraft that took it down.
The classic password guessing in the 80s was the one character at a time system as seen on War Games. We're damned fortunate not to have password authentication systems that work like the old "Mastermind" game.
"10. When systems go wrong, stuff starts to explode"
I do not know about explode, but I have seen sparks shoot out of a computer when it stopped working.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Haha this is so funny i laughed so hard when i read this.
"From V'ger in Star Trek the motion picture to Skynet in the Terminator films, Hollywood has this fascination that left turned on for long enough a computer will become sentient."
V'ger was enhanced by a race of sentient computers, it was not just left on to long.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
do you know which IM clients support this? ICQ doesn't seem to have this option anymore and AIM only supports it on windows.
"This is complete nonsense. Any computer left on permanently would suffer at least a few, if not all, of the following problems: mechanical failure (hard disk, fans, power supply and so on), software crash (operating system falling big time or some other bit of software just failing to work) and overheating due to dust being sucked into the case. The only thing that leaving a computer on will do is get you a massive electricity bill."
I think this is not necessarily true and especially in the cases the question is referring to it is wrong.
When you are talking big super computers mechanical parts can be hot swapped and software does not have to degrade over time as it is used. With diligent enough coding of the kernel and the ability to restart the other parts of the OS, this problem can be avoided.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
*crunch* *crunch* this popcorn is delicious!
I love the gall of this guy, stalks multiple people on Slashdot for a few days and then accuses one of his victims of "stalking" him because he posted on another forum.
Please keep going, this is hilarious!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I was using ICQ back in 1998, and it had the option of displaying each chat character as it was typed.
This is called naked typing. Google wave has it by default and * is very off-putting.
Your absence of "it" dramatically alters your meaning.
Glad you posted this. I didn't get a chance to see it before it was deleted. Good comment from Clone and I'm not sure why it was deleted.
BTW, are you going to set your virtual lawyer, you know, the one you said was on retainer, on yourself now that you've posted that? That would help everyone, keep legal fees down and stuff because you already know your own IP address so you will not need the subpoena to obtain it, and identify the person behind it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
APK,
Fuck off.
Seriously. Your bullshit, even if true, has no place on slashdot where it is offtopic, crass, and a distraction to everyone who is a user of slashdot.
Get your shit together, man. Either fucking sic your lawyers on Clone, and let them deal with it, or shut the fuck up.
And if you really do have lawyers on retainer who are advising you, I'm sure they'd say the same thing (albeit in different words) as I'm going to say right now:
You're not doing yourself any favors by continuing your bullshit on slashdot. You don't help any case you could build on past actions, but you do potentially hurt any case you could build.
Seriously. Get the fuck off slashdot with your threadshitting. I'm sick of seeing your bullshit posts, true or not. Even if you're 100% in the right, you're doing nothing but pissing people off. You have nothing to gain by chasing this white whale of yours.
Do us all a favor. Do yourself a favor. Stop posting here.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Oops, ignore the second paragraph. 99% of the AC posts are from you know who, and I misread it as a result.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What kind of security system tells you if you're warm and helps you break in?
While it may not have been obvious during that scene, certainly by the time Nite Owl and Rorschach confront Ozy in Antarctica it should be clear that Ozy was expecting them, and that the trail of clues they were following was not an accident or oversight on Ozy's part because he wanted them to figure out that he was behind everything and come confront him, getting them out of New York before he set off his psychic squid bomb.
Oh, and giving him his chance to explain everything and gloat.
But much like Ozy's speech was an inversion of the stereotypical villain explaining everything -- "Do it? Dan, I'm not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago." -- so too was the password breaking an inversion of the stereotypical easily guessed password. In this case, the password was deliberately easy to guess.
I'm sure his normal system didn't tell you how many characters to use, and his password was probably pa4Le*,xlg or something. ;)
The enemies of Democracy are
You mean they're not?
I like mice, but at times I find that keyboard is faster.
Uh, they do realize that Mac OS X is a fully certified Unix OS, right? And for that matter, that you can easily run Linux on Mac hardware.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Who didn't use stupid passwords?
The smartest man in the world might....
The smartest man in the world who was secretly plotting a world-changing event that entirely hinged on secret to pull it off, one who was perfectly willing to murder all his top staff and confidants and assistants....
just maybe he might not use a simple alpha-only password based on his very public alter-ego?
Yeah, based on Veidt's "smartest man in the world" persona (and the fact that, in the story, he does appear to have been smart enough to outmaneuver absolutely everyone) it does seem implausible that he wouldn't be able to choose a password that Dreiburg would be unable to crack.
So does one take this as a plot hole, or assume that Veidt intentionally gave Dreiburg a puzzle he'd be able to solve?
Many of Veidt's maneuverings prior to the confrontation in Antarctica had to do with keeping Kovacs, Dreiburg, and especially Osterman out of his way long enough for him to complete his plan. Once he was sure he couldn't be stopped, there was just the matter of secrecy, and of easing his own conscience. So leaving a trail for Dreiburg to follow would be a way to keep him occupied, to make sure he wasn't killed by the psychic trauma/exploding reactors, give Veidt a potential confidant and the opportunity to kill him off if it seemed like he couldn't be counted on to keep the secret.
Granting that assumption - that the weak password was an intentional choice - is perhaps a bit generous... So I wouldn't reject the idea that the whole thing is simply a plot hole. Still, I think it makes a certain amount of sense. Veidt was almost impossibly formidable, and very confident as well. (And, given his ultimate failure to stop Kovacs getting information out, overconfident...) He was also troubled by a guilty conscience and in need of validation - so it wouldn't be out of character for him to seek a potential confidant - given how sure he was of his ability to manipulate people, he probably believed he could do this without endangering his plan...
(Oh, and Morgan Freeman's character was named "Lucius Fox"...)
Bow-ties are cool.
Ever wonder why all the android workers in Ghost in the Shell have 20 fingers for speed typing? Wouldn't a USB or BlueTooth interface be faster?
I had totally forgotten about that feature of ICQ. It really was very nice.
Good-bye
Or maybe the smartest man in the world wanted the computer to be cracked.
Or maybe he never thought someone would try it.
Ntalk had this before we even knew to call it IM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_%28software%29).
"Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?" --Pinky
> The only thing that leaving a computer on will do is get you a massive electricity bill.
So you're telling me that the sentient AI that I've been growing in my basement for the past 15 years.. isn't?
Well, f%!# me.... :-(
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
The computer graphics are simply storytelling. They are advancing the plot. A facial recognition program always displays the subject and the comparison photos, despite the additional overhead that could be better used for searching. Plus, the searches should be done remotely, so we wouldn't even have access - upload and wait for a "job finished" message.
They are trying to graphically illustrate what the internals of the computer are doing. To most people, computers are magic anyway, so who cares if it's realistic magic or unrealistic?
I didn't read the other 5 pages of comments, but the first page was just "writers are so dumb" so I stopped. Sorry if it's a dupe, hopefully I'm not the only person to apply critical thinking and come up with a reasonable explanation.
When I was a kid, I thought the young John Connor hacking ATMs and locked keypad doors was the coolest thing ever on that Atari laptop-type thing he had going. They made it seem feasible enough, just seemed to pound away random numbers until it hit the code. However, IIRC, it "locked" numbers into a final code when it hit them correctly. That seemed dubious. Oh wait, the whole movie did!
When John Wayne fired a gun, at least two Indians dropped instantly. *At least* two. You can keep those computers, I want to better understand the technology behind The Duke's bullets...
The gunshot was just coincidental, what brought them down was his musky scent.
You can't take the sky from me...
if you're going to go that far, then why didn't these satellites also have nukes or lasers to eliminate indigenous problems with also?
First, orbital weapons are more expensive than satellites that just run a clock and broadcast the time. (Remember this was a commercial operation...)
Second, at the start of the film the Na'vi were treated as dangerous but not as a major threat. The situation hadn't broken down into all-out war yet, and there was still some discussion of finding more-or-less peaceful resolution to the conflict. So the characters could have felt such weaponry simply wasn't called for (i.e. the cost of it wasn't justified) - so they wouldn't have orbital weapons platforms for the same reason they didn't have bombers.
But going back up the thread a bit - the basic question was why the avatars, being so valuable, didn't have some sort of lo-jack system via GPS. The answer to that isn't "because there's no GPS satellites" - because it would be a relatively simple and inexpensive process to deploy some.
Bow-ties are cool.
It seems the only winning move is not to rtfa.
"Online chats always display each character as its typed."
This was completely standard 25 years ago, when the closest thing to IM was the Unix 'talk' command.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
When John Wayne fired a gun, at least two Indians dropped instantly. *At least* two. You can keep those computers, I want to better understand the technology behind The Duke's bullets...
Mad magazine did a great spoof of this many years ago.
They were advertising surplus Hollywood "Western" props. Things like "shotgun - when fired by little old lady with eyes closed and pointing gun 45 degrees in the air, will hit an Indian riding fast on horseback 500 feet away". Another was "Indian horses, guaranteed to fall down on front legs every ten paces" and "Six shooter - fires eleven rounds without reloading".
Well, that's how I remembered it.
I am anarch of all I survey.
I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but in what way is it a boon to the deaf community? I don't get it.
Your criticism would be entirely apt if the article's complaint (and my subsequent comment) had anything to do with speech recognition or silly 3D rendering.
~Idarubicin
Have you accomplished anything in the past 8 years, or are you still living on past glories like some pathetic high school athlete who is now pumping gas at the local Shell station?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
> What kind of security system tells you if you're warm and helps you break in?
Supposedly, the original DEC-20 password system used the same command completion as its command line. Type a character, hit escape, and if it matches, the password was completed for you, and not in hidden text like when you entered it the hard way. A friend claimed to have worked on a project to harden the OS, and amazingly that was not the first thing that they found or fixed (I didn't work on the project, so I can only assume that he wasn't kidding).
Nat already did a humorous look this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIX9NjpRWMg
In no.10, it's possible that stuff might explode because its temperature, or power input etc, might have been controlled by the no-longer-existent computer. And no.1 is a bit narrow-minded, it's like writing in 1840 that powered flight would never be possible because a sufficiently powerful steam engine could never be made small enough. Maybe computers centuries hence just might not have hard drives, fans etc?
And I'll repeat the same answers. Your software wasn't fleetingly classified as malware, it still is classified as malware, and has been, from what I can figure out, for several years. It continues to be so long after you've made legal threats to those same organizations.
And my privacy being what it is, no I'm not going to list every single application I've developed, magazine article I've had published, or anything similar, but I will point out, again, that I no more need to write malware and write articles promoting snake-oil solutions to viruses to criticize your stalking and harassment of your critics, than Jon Stewart needs to run a major, corrupt, corporation in order to criticize Kenneth Lay.
My comments, and the comments of others here, stand by themselves. I have no idea whether you're too stupid to understand that concept (which seems possible, because if you're to be taken at face value then you've gone about defending yourself against some great slight to your reputation in the most inanely stupid way possible), or whether you're just trying to stir the pot even further, but the people reading this are listening to what's being said, not taking sides based upon who they think has the better qualifications; but even if they did think the way you're claiming to think, and did this through some superficial claim of qualifications, engaging in a kind of ad-hominem reading/comprehension system, they'd still be taking the side of those you're harassing, because it's a choice between someone whose qualifications are "unknown" (though Tom has actually been fairly public about his legal experience and success with the legal system), and someone who has software classified as malware to their name, and who's written articles promoting evidently idiotic solutions to virus protection online. They'd trust Jon Stewart over Kenneth Lay.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The notion that encryption is crackable bugs the hell outta me.
"Can you access the main system memory banks? We need to get to those files!"
"I'm trying, but it's protected by a security code. I'm attempting to override..."
(tappity-tap-tap)
"Got it! OK, we're in the system. Patching through to the satellite..."
I hate that this page splits into multiple pages. Very lame.
Please leave unrelated personal opinions out of the article...
I am not devoid of humor.
I really can't agree with number one of this list on *one* thing. Right, a single personal computer could not be left on for that long without problems, but most of the "suddenly-sentient" systems in movies are something akin to servers and data centers and they have all sorts of redundancy, along with tons of other stuff to allow them to keep running. Add to the fact that most of the BS fiction has these systems running some sort of "special" programs that somehow, metaphorically speaking, allows them to grow a brain...I'm not saying these things aren't ridiculous, just get your argument right.
EOL = "Enhance" Out Loud
You are accusing me of plagiarism? Aww, apk, don’t you know that you have to post a link showing that the code isn’t original? If it’s copypasta you have to show where it came from.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
Irrelevant.
Irrelevant. I'm a member of the community here.
Yes.
No less than your post was, and I said something I felt it was important to say.
Let it go, man, let it go. Clone's not the one I see stalking users of slashdot and bringing in the off-topic tripe on every post. You're the one I see doing that. You did it to me because you didn't like what I had to say. You're obviously not mature enough to handle regular discussion.
I've read several of the exchanges. It's clear to me you went there first.
I swear, I know eight-year-olds who are more mature than you. Let it go, man, let it go. I don't give a flying fuck about your argument with Clone. What I do give a fuck about is you threadshitting all over the place. I thought this time I'd respond to one of your posts since I'm sick of using my mod points on your crapfloods.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What's your point?
That you have an axe to grind?
I couldn't care less about your argument with Clone. I really don't give two shits about who did what first. I don't care who started it.
You're not getting anything accomplished here. So why bother?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Does it matter if I have a degree in psychiatry? I believe you are insane. Whether or not you consider my opinion to be valid is a different story. The reason I believe you are insane is because you keep repeating the same actions, somehow expecting the outcome to be different. Whether the general public would consider my assertion that you are insane to be fact is also different.
Maybe you need a lawyer, since you are not aware of what conditions are necessary to support a tortuous claim of libel.
There is no way I could be libeling you. One cannot libel an anonymous figure.
You mistake what I have the issue with. I don't care what happened between you and Clone. Really. Your stupid links aren't going to make me care. Nothing you can post will make me care. My intent was not to defend Clone. My intent has been, all along, to make you aware that you're annoying, and that it pisses me off, and to ask/tell you to stop. Really, you're like an immature eight-year-old. "Waaah waah waah he started it". Grow up. Get some help. Drink a beer, take a pill, or smoke some weed, if that's what it takes. Chill out dude.
I was hoping that you'd get the point, and shut the fuck up. Oh well, I guess you're either too wound up, or too obtuse, to understand that I really don't care about you or your arguments. I'm just sick of seeing them, which is why I posted.
Now that I've reiterated it for the nth time, you should get it. But I fully expect you to make another ridiculous post where you try to defend your actions by linking to some post by some other anonymous figure I don't care about. Really, I don't care who wrote what or when they did it. I just want you to understand that, regardless of anyone else's behavior, your behavior is a shitty way to participate in an online community.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Ah. So your point is that (1) I'm lying and (2) I'm powerless.
I happen to know that (1) is false -- I have not stated anything I believe to be false. Expressions of personal opinions are not lies, even if you disagree with them.
(2) I may be somewhat powerless, but I'm not absolutely powerless.
I have the power to compel you to respond to my posts.
Go ahead. See if you're man enough to withstand my powers of Troll Compulsion. Can you really hold back from responding to my posts? Or will you prove my power once and for all? ONCE AND FOR ALL!
See, here's the thing. You're an ineffective buttplug that spews crapfloods on the internet. I don't care what happened between you and Clone. When you write lengthy responses trying to "prove" something that I don't give a flying fuck about, all you do is make me more powerful. Soon I will be more powerful than you could ever hope to imagine. Mwua-ha-ha-ha.
In the meantime, you can continue wasting your time arguing with someone who thinks you're an idiot. I'm starting to enjoy it. At first I laughed at you. Then I pitied you for your poor mental health. But now it's full circle, and I'm laughing at you again. Because you don't even *realize* how foolish you look.
Nothing Clone or anyone else writes could ever do as much harm to your reputation as your posting style does today.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I don't think that's going to happen. I just followed a link presumably posted by clone, clicked on Parent a few times, and got to this.
It looks like exactly the same thing we've been tracking here: the bogus legal threats, the spamming of testimonials, the demands critics prove they have arbitrary qualifications... and it's from one month ago, from what I can figure out from an entirely unrelated argument.
I waded into this a few days ago, tried a different tack to get APK to behave normally (well, my first few comments were constructive, now I'm trying to make it clear he's causing information about his more dubious activities to be spread further if he continues this), but I'm having no luck either. The man is either stupid, or psychotic.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yeah, I know. I read the Clone threads, some of your threads with him... some of the other ones on slashdot.
I also mosied (moseyed?) over to ars technica to read some highly amusing threads from 2002 with this moron. There were also some good ones on other sites. This guy makes Pudge seem positively normal.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
from what I can figure out from an entirely unrelated argument
No: The same one. I’m not kidding: APK has stalked me constantly EVER SINCE THAT ARGUMENT. He’s been posting his shitstream in response to nearly every post I make... I’ve generally tried to ignore it but every now and then I get sucked in. :/
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Can I just say how nice it is to see a comment of mine has two replies, open it, and find that they're both legitimate ;-) Geez, in my case this has only been going on for less than a week in my case, I can't imagine how you feel!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Well, it’s a combination of hilarious and apk making an utter fool of himself, as usual. I can’t say I mind a terrible lot, really.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I was using ICQ back in 1998, and it had the option of displaying each chat character as it was typed
Yes, I too was thinking of the ICQ real time (character by character) chat from the late 90s. I just installed the latest ICQ after not using it for probably a decade but I don't know if it still has that function (I don't know anyone on ICQ anymore; was just taking a look at how it has progressed over the last decade but hard to do when you can't use it with anyone). I actually would prefer to chat that way just for the reasons you mentioned.
Oh, you poor deluded bastard. You have no idea of how this site works.
Go back to a forum where they want your company... if you can find one.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Logic doesn't work that way I'm afraid. Not answering a personal question you have no right to ask that's ludicrous on the face of it doesn't mean the answer is "No", and further, an absolutely huge portion of this industry is comprised of people who program and who don't have degrees.
What you've implied, repeatedly, is that nobody has the right to comment on your "achievements" unless we've done something similar.
Your achievements are writing crapware, including software classified, for several years, as malware by the malware community, and writing a guide to system protection based upon a ludicrous, stupid, and demonstrably useless "anti-virus" system, namely placing all of the hostnames used to deliver viruses in a HOSTS file. As has been pointed out, the system can easily be bypassed either through the use of dynamically generated hostnames and wildcard DNS, or even more simply, and even more obviously, by using IP addresses, neither of which HOSTS can bypass. Add that to the lead time required to identify a new "evil" site and get it into HOSTS files for all users, and it's fairly obvious that not only is the method flawed, but anyone proposing it as a solution is either a certifiable idiot, or is being deliberately disingenuous.
My guess? You honestly think that people will delay giving their money to real anti-virus companies, who you're pissed at for identifying your tools as crapware and components of malware.
Here's the billion dollar question: will you respond to these points? Will you explain why you think HOSTS is an adequate solution given the above OBVIOUS statements debunking it, or else withdraw your claims about it as a virus-protection system, or will you continue to stonewall, demanding to hear people's educational history, employers, applications (which in my case are stuff you'd never have heard of anyway, unless you work for one of several major automotive concerns, and then only if you work in particular departments, so why would I bother telling you them?) we've written, and other crap that has nothing to do with matters at hand?
People can see through ad-hominem arguments, indeed, that's why there's a name for that kind of argument. They especially see through ad-hominem arguments based upon nothing at all, which is what you have.
But of course you're not going to answer, are you? You're just going to reply to this with a demand for more lists of qualifications or bizarre rants about how great you are. And meanwhile, people will ask themselves about IP addresses and wildcard DNS entries, and see your lack of a response as yet more proof that you're full of it.
"Will you explain why you think HOSTS is an adequate solution given the above OBVIOUS statements debunking it" - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 09, @10:35PM (#32151184)
Uhm, illiterate one? APK's security guide espouses a lot more than the use of a HOSTS file only. You're not only stupid, but you have "fixated yourself" on 1 portion of this only. His security guide here: http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?s=79c7b230a57544836234fc76bec0634f&showtopic=89123 Works based on the concept of "layered security" moron. Learn to READ, because it's ALL UP THERE IN THAT URL (one of many like it).
"My guess? You honestly think that people will delay giving their money to real anti-virus companies" - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 09, @10:35PM (#32151184)
Oh, you mean the "real antivirus companies" who have flaws in their wares like this one that showed up today and this week earlier too, so they are ABSOLUTELY CURRENT evidences thereof? See here: Critical Flaw Found In Virtuall
Still trolling, huh? Can't let it go?
Have you made an appointment for a clinical evaluation yet? You really need some counseling and/or meds.
And FYI, I post as myself only. I do not post as AC, nor do I have sockpuppet accounts, nor am I a sockpuppet of another account. Please stop attributing posts of others to me.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Thanks for posting this. It was a great mash-up of all of your cliches and ridiculous phrases and arguments and helped immeasurably when I wrote this
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Here's an idea: why don't you start replying to your own posts?
He already does.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Profanity does not in and of itself make something offtopic.
Wow, you really are a five-year-old. "No I'm not, YOU are!" Do you know what a troll is?
What do you mena, getting shot down? You have yet to address my points in the least. Instead you address straw men you have set up. Really, I don't give a fuck about you an clone or anyone else. My points are entirely based upon the fact that you're a threadshitter. Everytime you respond with page-length posts with irrelevant links in response to my posts, you simply reinforce my point -- that you're a threadshitter.
I honestly don't know or care about your personal situation. I ignore everything you write that has nothing to do with my point. Seriously, dude, tl;dr.
You are paranoid, dude. And narcissistic to boot. Get some help.
And stop threadshitting.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Why are you quoting other people in response to my post?
And why do you think anyone cares what you have to say?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai