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.
I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address!
Every time they showed a screen in Hackers I giggled and enjoyed the movie without taking it too seriously.
Macs running Unix? Yeah, like that will ever happen
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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!".
you mean like this one? (this is from Red Dwarf - Back to Earth, their "Picture Zoom" sketch).
One deleted scene referenced that modern computers were derived from the Area 51 alien spaceship. The deletion of that scene created the plothole, but the plothole isn't really a plothole.
i am a film buff. so i knew about the movie swordfish a few months before it came out (from fan sites like aintitcoolnews.com, etc.), and i knew sketchy plot points about the movie, namely that it would be about illicit transfers of illicit funds
i also used to work for a large multinational bank as a programmer. and a few months before swordfish came out, i was developing a system used by the bank for monitoring internal transfers. on a lark, i code named the system in development as "swordfish" as my own personal inside joke. it was never intended to be a more widely known nickname
but in email conversations with my boss, i, um, kept calling it swordfish. oops. my boss wound up raving about the system, to his bosses, to other middle management, to everyone. he started telling everyone who would listen about it because the basic idea behind the project was a sound one and it was important for the bank. unfortunately, he kept calling it "swordfish," and the name stuck and went into general use
awareness of the swordfish project just happened to peak when the movie came out. to widespread media coverage and exposure and advertising. and the basic details about a hacker breaking into a financial computer system to transfer funds became common knowledge, even to people who didn't see the movie. and at the same time, here was my boss making an internal push to distribute this program to wider use for testing, and trying to drum up support for it amongst the higher ranking middle management... and it was called swordfish
he stopped raving about the program, and my boss got in the habit of shaking his head and smirking every time he saw me
so the plot guys get the technical details wrong sometimes
i am living proof that sometimes the technical guys get the plot points wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No kidding. I can't believe that in this day and age when computers are ubiquitous that Hollywood is still treating them like semi-magic boxes.How many people are left in the US that still think that programmers do all their coding on multiple screes with nothing but spinning 3D graphics. This is especially prevalent when someone is "hacking" into a "secure" system. Half the time they show someone manipulating a strand of DNA and are just mashing together what a four year old kid would say that heard a parent talking about computers. Something like:
[Picture the monitor showing a fractal spinning on the screen with shiny spheres flying around and attaching to it randomly with techno music in the background]
Hacker guy: The firewall has 7337 -bit encryption. That's more options than there are atoms in a car
Hot chick: Really! So it's going to take you like two days to hack the NSA Excel 4-train database. Are you using the Bernoulli quadratic equation?
Hacker guy: No, I'm already past the firewall. I dropped in a logic bomb and spammed the secure email SQL server with a hydra worm.
Bad guy: Wow, it took Linus 14 hours on a Cray XMP Beowulf cluster linked to a direct fiber-channel modulator to do what you did in 17 seconds.
Hacker guy: Yeah, I know. Just think how much faster I could have done it if you hadn't shot my best friend five minutes ago, didn't have a knife in my back, and I didn't have to power the mainframe with this hamster wheel.
Bad guy: It'll all be over soon. Once you get the launch codes for the neutron bomb from the ZX81 RAM pack.
Sure no cyborgs, and we're still working on ED209, but back in 1987 Robocop had:
- computer interfaces that resembled web sites
- a device for tracking Robocop that looks suspiciously like a smartphone
- digital video recording, as well as DVDs (didn't exist until '93)
Plus:
- stupidly oversized cars that wasted gas (6000 SUX)
- ultraviolent games for the whole family (Nukem!)
- Ford Taurus police cars (back when Crown Victorias were standard issue, they looked very "futuristic")
- ads for medical services (unheard of in '87)
- privatized police, military, prisons, and spacecraft
- and autoflush urinals!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Hi, this is Jerry Bruckheimer, we read your script and we'd like to hire you on as head writer for the newest show in our franchise; CSI Fuvk Ya!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.