Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Worst Computer Scene In TV or Movies?
Cuban Devil writes "Yesterday I rented a copy of The Social Network. I won't comment on the story, but the Zuckerberg character's narrated performance on hacking Harvard servers made me wonder: what's the worst computer-related acting performance ever? I leave here my vote: Independence Day, when I had to see Mr. Goldblum upload a virus, using a Mac, when it did not connect even to an ethernet network, compromising the entire alien fleet. What other major technological gaffes have you seen?"
hacking/coding/computing in real life is incredibly boring - reality doesn't make for a good movie.
Every time they showed a screen in Hackers I giggled and enjoyed the movie without taking it too seriously.
Same reason Independence Day isn't the worst offender. Their computer scenes were as unrealistic as their physics which was as unrealistic as their politics. None of it was meant to be serious.
I find something like CSI much more annoying.
"Greetings Professor Falken"
need i say more? WarGames is probably the most cheezy movie of them all.
You shut your whore mouth!
Seriously, though, Wargames was probably the most accurate cracking movie ever made. Instead of "creating a GUI in Visual Basic and tracking an IP address" a la CSI: Braindead, the main character actually spent weeks poring over information about the creator of the system to try to work out how it was designed and what the likely methods would be to gain entrance. He also used social engineering techniques to gather information about his targets.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
You do realize Hackers isn't a film that you're supposed to take seriously, right? It's a great movie. Feel free to criticize technology in the majority of films out there, but complaining about it in Hackers is like complaining about how much Monty Python sucks, because "there isn't really any such thing as a ministry of funny walks!".
Why do computers on TV have to display all the photos/fingerprints in its database when doing any kind of search?
Because it is a visually appealing and dramatically effective way of suggesting the size and complexity of the database.