Slashdot Mirror
On Hollywood and the Portrayal of Computers
"Can a movie show a programmer who is not working on a Macintosh (Apple's product placement team should get a medal)? Can the exposition describing the virus/program/whatever not make me wince and/or laugh out loud? Can a programmer work without muttering under their breath to explain to the audience what they are typing? Can the breakdown of a system be indicated in some other manner than every screen in the room flashing in exciting patterns?
As a programmer, I recognize that part of the problem is that real programs rarely look cool when they work. Just about every one of my favorite programs has had pathetically uninteresting results to the uninitiated. "Look, it printed a 6 instead of a 3! That's so great!" Or, for the glorious day when the test suite is passed without errors, there's no response at all. I realize that this is not easy to make exciting on screen.
In the interests of research, we went out and rented "WarGames" and "Tron" last night. "WarGames" was just fantastic -- and the hacking was generally excellent, I thought. I don't have a phone phreak bone in my body, so I have no idea how silly that stuff was, but I enjoyed it all. "Tron" was boring and silly and we had to give up not a half hour in.
Any other votes/recommendations?"
My take? Hollywood just has problems fitting in the all of the non-verbal and cerebral aspect of compter use and falls back on the tried and true method of glitzing things up to make up for the shortcoming. What do you folks think?
If they made it so they didn't mutter what they were doing only geeks would know what was going on
> 'Can a movie do a good job of making programming (and/or cracking) seem dramatic without being stupid?'
Can a movie do a good job of making anything seem dramatic without being stupid?
OK, they do make exceptions now and then. But the baseline fact is that most of reality simply isn't dramatic. If they try to make scrambling eggs dramatic, it's going to come across as stupid. If they try to make taking the dog out for a poop dramatic, it's going to come across as stupid. Etc., etc., etc.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I wonder if early hollywood films portrayed cars as steel-toothed monsters? I think the novelty will wear off.
i consider myself a geek, but i'd rather see sex and violence, as opposed to computers and their associative nerds. i'd take lesbian sex over cracking into the pentagon anyday.
If you think about it, Hollywood doesn't really portray *any* career correctly. Things have to be changed in order to keep the attention of the audience. Hospitals aren't always like "ER", Submarine XO's aren't always like Denzel Washington in "Crimson Tide". Although, if you want to see a movie where hackers/crackers are portrayed in a positive light, check out "Sneakers". Granted, the guys in that movie see more action than any shashdotter, the personality traits are almost dead-on.
Computers themselves are just plain boring. Say you're a mega-leet haxxor trying to break into some system... (not a skript kiddie, trying out one root kit after another; although that'd be boring too.) You're the real cheese, so what do you do? Pour over the source codes, look for holes, etc. Text terminals aren't interesting to look at to the public! Hell, they're not even interesting for me, and I have to write perl on em all day! ;)
And once you've broken into a system, what do you do? Transfer money from billg's account to yours? Copy the solaris sources to your own ftp server? Leave backdoors? Again, what on earth could possibly interest Joe Beer in that? Now if you had porn in the netscape window in the background...
I would surely hope so but the way things look the more a computer company sponsors a movie the less realistic it has become.... Take mission impossible which told us that the spy world uses mac laptops and the big hacker dude wants a "cutting edge" Cyrix Dual 6x86 laptop.. Not to mention the role of macs in "Hackers" :) What about "Golden Eye" and it's IBM is everything point of view. More recently in "Fight Club" (a great movie) the main characters blow up a computer store with apple's logo prominantly displayed. Unfortunately movie's are not about portraying what's real. They're simple enterainment based marketing.
How can the WOPR determine its gotten each digit of the passkey correct? Do the SAC silos send back detailed error messages? "Sorry, you only got the 3rd and 5th digits of the PAL key correct. Please try again..."
:wq
I think Hollywood might do well to look at programming that has social
and political consequences, such as cryptography stuff, *BUT* (unlike
in every movie on the subject I've ever seen) they should hire a real
cryptographer to make them leave the bs on the cutting room floor. I
am pretty sure they won't do this, but if they did it might be fun. CME's
cryptography timeline
http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/timeline.html
has loads of interesting historical stuff they could use.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Okay, I know that Sneakers was not exactly a spot-on portrayal of hacking, but I found it to be a lot more plausable at least stylistically than that terrible movie "Hackers".
Of course, I'm sure that some of you will now chime in and proclaim "Hackers" to be one of the greatest movies of all time. You are entitled to your opinions, but you are also wrong. God, that movie had many elements this article/question was trying to dispel. Yick!
It's manipulating abstract relations in a formal language and doesn't provide the kind of straight forward visual dynamic story that good movies are made of. Now the result of a program may produce something of great visual interest, but the process of programming itself is not the visually interested.
To think of it another way, do you know of any good movies about writing a book? I don't mean the action described in the book, I mean the actually process of an author writing.
If you are doing anything useful, they don't show you anything fancy on the screen. Despite what people say, the number one use of computers is still pushing around text. We don't have fancy 3d oses because there's no real need for one. How many of you program with just a bunch of xterms?
And cracking is another area that is even more internal to the computer, and has nothing to do with what's on-screen.
I've decided that computers will _never_ be portrayed correctly in movies, simply because people can't bear to think that most people still use _windows_, or worse yet some other WIMP interface like CDE. People see movies for something cool and fantastic, not what they see all day every day.
And what about _Sneakers_? They used a minimum of macs and flashy graphics and made cracking look cool!
The main problem is that movies are a *visual* medium, and as such, can only represent things that can actually be seen.
What happens inside computers, on the other hand (programs, viruses, networking, port scanning, hacking), is essentially abstract and lives only in the programmer/hacker's mind, so it's quite difficult to represent it visually.
I don't remember exactly that quote from "The mythical man-month" about the programmer working from thin air with invisible things", but I think it's the most appropiate one here.
A bunch of Harvard MBA's hired me for a high-paying consulting job. Apparently something that went in my favor was that I had a photo on my web page that made me look like a "hacker."
As far as I know, everyone feels misrepresented by movies. Psychiatrists complain that all movie psychiatrists are unethical; so do lawyers (instert snide comment about accuracy here). Hollywood isn't about accuracy and fair protrayals, it's about excitement and stereotypes. The movie-geek works because an audience can see a geek in a movie and instantly figure out exactly what kind of person that character will be. The same thing happens to everyone in a mainstream movie. It won't get better because reality is confusing and complicated, and that doesn't work in a movie which has to be two hours of non-stop excitement.
Computer flicks aren't the only ones that suffer from inaccuracy. I imagine most any movie with some type of specialized skill as a theme does.
I can't count the number of times I have seen an action movie where the firearm action was, well, pretty damn inaccurate (e.g., someone firing thirty or fourty rounds from a handgun, or shooting an MP5 full auto for an extended period of time without reloading). The only reason I notice such things is because I have a working knowledge of guns, just like you notice the blunders in computer movies because you (seem to) have a working knowledge of computers. I'm sure vulcanologists laughed at Volcano.
Hollywood's function is not to produce movies that are accurate in every minute technical detail. Movies are for entertainment. If you want accuracy, go watch the Discovery Channel.
Try the movie "Sneakers". I think it's the best movie that I've seen that portrays computer security without too much Hollywood fanfare, but still have it be interesting. Of course, I saw this movie four or so years ago so I might be wrong. :-)
> Is Hollywood ever going to portray computers > (and the people who use > them) in a light that's closer to reality? Name me a profession which Hollywood portrays in a light closer to reality. Hollywood portrays characters in the way that the movie needs them to be portrayed. And if that means the janitor is going to be a world karate champion software hacker who writes entire virtual reality engines in a weekend, then so be it.
It brings to mind a novel I read. I think it was called "Queen's gambit". It was a story about a Chess player, that really gets into the mind of how a chess player thinks. But you didn't have to know anything about chess to enjoy it, AND it was interesting and dramatic.
Frankly the problem Hollywood has is that what we do isn't actually very dramatic. It's like watching a writer write. His finished product might be beautiful or exciting or wonderful to comtemplate, but the process, what he DOES and lives for, is pretty dull. A movie is like 90 minutes... can you write much of a program in 90 minutes? Or how about this... let's say for some reason you and 5 friends were shown a room with a bunch of bulk cat5, rj-45 heads, a crimper or two, a hub, and a very large box of assorted hardware, and told you had 90 minutes to build a network, would it be exciting to watch? No, especially if you don't understand the issues involved, though certainly you and your friends would have a blast. Ours is not a spectator sport.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Called 'Sneakers'... Not bad at all...
They make it silly and overly dramatic, because otherwise, non-geeks would get bored... It's the same when they make movies about cops... I know a couple guys who are cops and they spend most of their time driving around in circles, and the rest is spent on paperwork, very little is spent chasing robbers or whatever else...
I think that it's just a fact of life that peopel don't go to movies to see mundane details of life (with some exceptions... mostly not mainstream films), people go to movies to see dramatized and crazy stuff... It's always been that way, and i think it'll probably stay that way for ever more, with computers, cops, etc...
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Forget it!
;-)
Hollywood do not have a mission of *informing* the people about things, but only to make $$$$ on them.
Hmmm... I think a good question would target the Media, and not Movies... oh, but wait... media, advertisement, money,.... oups
I'm kinda suprised how the Internet itself is handled. Probably the best example was the first (second?) episode of Sliders (which was what, 95, 96?) where Arcturus says to the TV repairman "You got an Internet connection?" and the answer is yes.
Let's be honest here, how would you turn "The Cuckoo's Egg" into a thrilling movie? It's kinda hard to do. Or even Snow Crash would be hard to do. Cryptonomicon would make a good TBS movie, but they'd have to cut 90% of it. "Pirates of Silicon Valley" had to cut out a good portion of "Fire In the Valley" to do it - and they had to throw in side notes to explain some of the finer points.
I don't think that it's that Hollywood can't make the movies. They can't. It's just the subject matter is very specialized, and hard to create into an interesting movie and be confined to 1 hr 30 min.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Coding isn't flashy, neither is a compile, but that is what real programming is. Hollywood needs to make it flashy to draw in a crowd, so the only way to make programming, cracking, and hacking flashy is to dumb it down so that it looks easy.
As my friends that do 3d animation, some people would believe there is a make art button, to get some the cool 3d graphics in movies. After watching some of the makings of movies I might even agree with them. Carry that a step farther, those that have never attempted to write full programs, and debug them, would believe that creating programs just require you to drag what buttons and scrollbars on a screen and you have a program.
So to finish beatting around the complete issue, I believe that until the majority of computer users know what, and how to program(even little scripts for their own guess books), Hollywood will continue to make computers to be a flash and little else.
Well I will let you ponder the abstract axioms of life; while happily hack away creating new ones.
--Joe "Ender" Mitchell
2001 did rather good job describing computers. I don't know if Kubrick tried to say as little as possible to avoid bad mistakes or did he have a clear vision of what computing should be. (From user interface point of view, not exactly from viewpoint of life support or person being supported..)
I once heard someone say that most tv shows, movies, etc., as a rule, are meant to be put out at no higher than the third grade level. Judging from most of the drek out there, I tend to agree.
:o/
Furthermore folks, let's face it... in a time where AOL boasts a usership of 17,000,000+, you're just not gonna get a quality hack/crack film.
"When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I've t
Not until they think the *majority* of the audience would "get it" if they didn't dumb it down substantially. It is a business, now more than ever, and they gotta get butts in those seats.
Think about it, there can't possibly be a complete lack of literate people in Hollywood, and yet there has yet to be an honest movie about computers. Why? 'cuz people would run screaming from the theaters. The things hackers do are too technical to be explained in any satisfying depth (I'm talking satisfying to geeks and to reg. moviegoers) in the movies (guns, guns, car chase, jiggly women) as they are made now.
People who don't understand what they are watching don't keep watching, and today's moviegoer doesn't want to have to sit through an education just to get the plot.
At least that's the thinking in Hollywood.
fh
I have yet to see this movie but I can probably guess what it was like...Sure it would be great if hollywood would come up with a "techie" movie that would keep me on my toes, but how many "ordinary" people would like? How many people would even understand it? Very few probably. It all comes down to making money, and when it comes to techie movies, lame effects, flashing lights and media buzzwords sell.
Perhaps doing some research into the field before writing a script would help. I understand that most average people would not be interested if the appropriate jargon, etc. were used. Movies like 'Hackers' and the 'Net' are stupid when viewed by those that actually are involved in the field but would be largely uninteresting to the public in general. It is more feasible to make a movie that is not true to it's roots and be more popular because most people could understand it.
It's sad but true. I doubt that we will ever see a movie that is centered around computers and appears to be possible. Maybe some movie studio will prove me wrong, but I doubt it.
Hollywood *is* glitz. Why wouldn't they add glitz and glamour to hacking/cracking? Especially when it *is* mostly cerebral and ultimately boring to the average moviegoer?
You ask if they can make a movie without doing this... of course not. Nobody'd go see it. Just teh same as I wouldn't go see a movie about someone cutting their lawn or brushing their teeth. You have to add atomic bristles and ninja-star blades or it's nothing out of the ordinary.
Hah! You've hit the nail right on the head. This is a trend I've noticed so much, and I can't seem to understand why they can't make things more realistic. I avoid computer-related movies b/c they just piss me off.
Independence day cracked me up particularly because of the way that they uploaded a "virus" to the alien "mainframe".. good thing those alien ships had serial interfaces, eh?
One of my favorites is the movie GUI. Anytime you see people using computers in the movies, the windows ALWAYS zoom, make neato swooshing sounds, the mouse clicks always are audiable (*click!*), etc. etc. Hollywood computers are the most audiable computers, even more than the Game Boy. Being a geek, this ticks me off for some reason. Hell, they usually do such a ugly mock up GUI, I find myself asking "Why don't they just use friggin Enlightenment, it's alot cooler looking than that!"
The South Park movie made a good joke relating to this, I'm not sure if everyone picked it up. When the kids are trying to look at the Internet porn of Stan's mom, it says in big red letters "ACCESS DENIED" (something you always see on computers these days
Also, it gets annoying when computers always talk to their users in movies with that oh so pleasant female voice.
I always love it when people staring at computer screens don't have just a glow over their face, but the letters on the screen are actually reflecting off their face! That's always funny. Usually this is used when a person is looking at random "code" or something (or even ones and zeros) flying by on the screen Matrix style.
The list goes on, but I'll let everyone else go off from here.
--
That said, I can't stand it when they show those 72-point fonts indicating that Sandra Bullock has broken into whatever, and it really bothers me when they show computers exploding instead of dumping core. Hey, at least they aren't showing spinning tape drives any longer.
I'm sure that some of you will now chime in and proclaim "Hackers" to be one of the greatest movies of all time. You are entitled to your opinions, but you are also wrong. God, that movie had many elements this article/question was trying to dispel. Yick!
I certainly don't think "Hackers" was the greatest movie of all time... just an average (teen) film. BUT... I think the people who made Hackers realized they would fail if they tried to portray hacking realistically, so they went for an abstract angle. I really appreciate and respect that.
I don't believe it is possible to respectfully depict computer programming, hacking, or cracking in Hollywood. Obviously they tried to do that in "The Net" and failed to do their homework- which is always bound to happen.
Here's why: A realistic depiction of computing, hacking, etc. is not fit for mainstream public consumption. It will just fly over their heads. And if you try to educate the audience, you're just going to bore them to death.
What about Pirates of Silicon Valley? In my opinion, that was the most accurate computer-related movie that has ever come out of Hollywood. It did contain a few minor glitches, but it still wasn't all that bad.
Triumph of the Nerds and Nerds 2.0.1 are also great, although they don't exactly fall into the category of high-profile Hollywood movies.
I see a lot of people suggesting Sneakers as a "hacker's movie" and I just have to respond:
I enjoyed the movie immensely while I was watching it (and I still do to some extent) but surely you all realize that the plot has holes you could throw a dog through.
Example: When Redford sets off the alarms in the big building we get an outside shot of security cars/vans racing everywhere in the parking lot. Minutes later during the escape we get another wide angle shot of the parking lot: totally empty. They couldn't find the burglar so they all went home?
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The problems that we, as hackers (true sense), have with technical movies about hacking are manifold, but boil down to 2: technical inacuracies and overdramatization.
These problems are not, however, restricted to our little baliwick. And they are not caused by "writers/producers/directors who just don't care", though they are exacerbated by such people.
The problems are basic ones of the art of storytelling, and I guarantee you, that the further from mainstream experience something is, be it hacking, neuroscience, or astronomy, the more it will be altered in the art of storytelling.
This is not an evil, because storytelling is about emotion, and emotion is not about technical details. The flashing screens are there because they elicit the emotion in a non-technical audiance that the 5 character error message would elicit in a technical audiance.
They are called "metaphors", and the form the cornerstone of storytelling, and incidentally, learning. We start with what the people already know, and we add something.
So when you watch a technical film on a subject which you know something about, ask yourself this: "Was the metaphor of representation good, and did the audiance come away with a better understanding AT ALL of the subject?" If the answer is no, bitch away, but if it is yes, don't critasize the writer/director/producer for poorly explaining a subject in 90 minutes which took you 5 years to understand.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
You were watching "The Net" with **Sandra Bullock** and all you could think of was hacking?
Chris
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
The movie covered all the 2600 basics: The infamous red box, Unix, Social Engineering, Dialing for dollars, and getting raided. In the beginning when Crash Override was walking in school he bumped into The Phreak who was making an international call from a school pay phone. They didn't stop and explain he was red boxing but to the people in the know they understood. The Phreak also mentioned NyNEX - anyone not in New York would not know what that was but I did as many as you did also. I knew the whole LOD vs. MOD story we knew they just about controlled NyNEX.
In The Net they were trying to be realistic and they failed. So in a sense Hackers stayed true to computers not by having realistic computer interactions but by having realistic ideas and by mentioning those things I was able to sit back and enjoy the show. Now in my day, when BBS' ruled, we didn't have the Hacker/Cracker debate so I didn't mind the title.
So in my opinion Hackers is an excellent movie and I have it on laser disc - not to mention the soundtrack was awesome.
And the soundtrack wasn't bad either.
Ok, the guy was a mental case, but headaches that bad would probably drive me batty, too.
Office Space.
It's called The Matrix.
Okay, so it's not a real representation. But think about it. All those scrolling green lines look just like code to the unitiated. A big chunk of the manipulation happens with one guy at a keyboard (or six).
So how did they make it dramatic? The only way they know how. Turn the code into real objects, like chairs, and old style television, a dojo, a woman in a red dress, etc, etc, etc. Then, my friends, hacking is cool.
Otherwise, it's just some guy doing bit manipulation in a fairly well lighted room to get the desired result, which is usually a lack of stuff happening. Wow. Big deal. I think I'll go watch something more interesting, like the grass growing.
Which brings me to my next beef. How come nobody hacks in a well lighted room, a la ST:TNG? Why is it always in some dingy dark hole? Explanations wanted, apply within.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
It's not really Hollywood, but to me "Pi" captured the essence of geeky devotion to the kind of mathematical problem solving that hacking conveys.
Seriously, its no small feat to bore a programmer, but cracking is just dull. I recall recently reading the detailed description of how the guy who won the PCWeek challenge cracked into the CGI script on the Red Hast box, and I nearly passed out. Yawn. Crack attempt #12241 didn't work so lets try again. And then once in a blue moon you may actually get into the machine. Wow...so what happens now? I don't know about you people, but most computer systems are really uninteresting to me...my computer has all the neat software I like, and it doesn't take me 3 weeks to log in. For someone who doesn't see the appeal of doing this in real life, I find it hard to imagine how a realistic movie about crackers could possibly be entertaining. Programming is fun because you get to create something, watch it evolve and benefit from your work. Cracking is both monotenous and pointless. In conclusion, I'm not going to pay $8 to see some kid in his basement eating doritos for 7 hours while waiting for portscans to complete. Give me Sandra Bullock anyday :P. -W.W.
Why the act of hacking? As long as you can represent the end result who cares? Simple example: Kid hacks computer system, show kids face, show kids fingers on keyboard, show kid get some coffee or some Jolt. Show kid type more. Cut to next scene, show someone getting a call at 4am and the guy on the other end saying "our systems have been hacked, get down here right away" There ya go Hollywood, now you can send me a big check.
Its CODING... writing something that is completely and totally unintelligible to the heneral public and discernable only to those who are trained in it. Would you want to watch a movie about the nuances of quilting? Hell no. Movies aren't about accuracy in the slightest, they are about glitz and glamor. Why? because you, you personally, you the one who is asking this very question, would not pay to go see something that is boring. If you WANT to see a guy slumped over a keyboard at 4 o'clock in the morning wired on caffeine, well, you have to start going to see boring movies. Boycott The Matrix and rent movies about washing machine repair or fishing videos. Esperandi
Just yesterday, I picked up a new Anime called "lian". I had no idea what it was going to be about. I was just trying to get into some new anime... something different from the typical Macross type stuff. Well, it has programming, hacker, and net themes in it. It is a very abstract series. If you are interested, then take a look at the official USA site for it: http://www.pioneeranimation.com/16/synopsis/m_lain .htm And if you want to get the DVDs, then head on over to www.planetanime.com or some other similar site. If you dig anime, and you want something that is nice and "hacky", then check out _lian_.
"Why not get the Linux source code instead?"
"Fine, hack into the ftp.us.kernel.org mainframe instead."
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Well, sort of. In the movie Office Space, a realistic looking Mac OS desktop is used in the scene where a virus is uploaded into a bank computer. Only problem was that the Mac OS interface was running on a WinTel box. And winNT was running on the same computer during the remainder of the movie. go fig...
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
I must say, I've seen an excellent movie, all around and hacker-specific. Pi, from Artisan Entertainment. It's right around 1.5 hrs long, black and white, and absolutely amazing. One of the first films picked up by the same company that then got The Blair Witch Project. It's all about mathematics, number theory, chaos theory, the stock market, and a paranoiac migraine-sufferer in Brooklyn, caught between corporations and Kabalistic Hasidics.
The first time I saw "hackers", I squirmed in my seat. I would have gotten up and turned it off, but I was watching it with people who had seen it before, and positively gushed about it.
Then I realized why they loved it.. It's friggin' hilarious! By the time I got to the scene where they were admiring the girl's "sweet", "cutting-edge" laptop, I was rolling on the floor, right along with my friends.
Movies like this provide a great source of entertainment, just don't take them so seriously. Or seriously, at all.
fh
nt = no text
Damn! I knew it! After all that work, and the network lives only in my mind! I suppose I could call it a virtual private network.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I don't know why you would think that there is anything special about programmers that would make Hollywood portray them accurately. As a rule Hollywood doesn't portray anything accurately, and even if they ever manage to you can bet that it was just dumb luck. To ask if "our world is something that is just beyond their comprehension" is just moronic. Of course it is, but so is just about everyone elses world as well. Again I don't know why you would think that there is anything special about the computer world that makes it any more or less complex than that of other peoples.
If you want to, you can come film me in my room. You'd get a fat, lazy, and irate C and Perl coder doing nothing but looking at a screen. Maybe the occasional sign of life to water my bonsai tree or get something to eat. Whee. "Hackers" is a good movie - - if you dan't think about haw fake it is. Same with all the other movies. It's just the kind of person (like this REALLY annoying girl in my school) looking at you and asking in awe, "are you a hacker?" It's pretty sad. I was feeling evil one day so I told her I was hacking a Web site by logging on to a random FTP server and typing ls. She believed me. Now I can never leave my house without her asking me about my latest haX0ring exploit. UUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHH...
Ok, now for the POINT of this story: No, mavies won't ever accuratly portray hackers and crackers begaouse it just isn't interesting for the dumbed down masses. Just sit back and relax, for some they may be thrillers - - maybe we can just treat them as comedies? That way there is a REASON the most advanced computers in the world make the noise of a cholichy dot matrix printer (see Alien).
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Get used to it.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am.
I remember the girl in Jurassic Park saying "that's a UNIX system" (I watched the film in german translation, they didn't even pronounce it correct) and then she plays with some sort of 3D-filemanager. Well, on my desktop SGI and Linux systems. While the SGI machines deliver COOOOOOOOLEST 3D-gfx, none of the systems has such a (dumb IMHO) filemanager. come on. hollywood must dramatize. they do everything in this manner...
As for a movie that actually used real computers, I think Sphere showed some examples of shell scripting on a *nix system. Remember the scene where they are trying to translate what the computer says into English ?
Here you go, all you film-makers to be, I'm giving an idea away for free:
Main dramatic scenes in both crackers rooms and sysadmins room. Make sure the crackers have a non-trivial plan, so the audience can see problems coming for the sysadmins. Picture the sysadmins/crackers (must be more than one, so they have to communicate) during the heat of the attack. Intense activity, short phrases passed back and forth. Have a manager-type (boss/villain) of some kind on each side so they'll have to explain some of it, but most of the drama can come from the sysadmins/crackers expressions rather than flashy screens. Cuts back and forth between crackers and sysadmins to see how they react to each others actions.
I'm sure there are some monitoring tools out there (Cheops or hopefully better) that would give the impression of everything just tumbling down around the sysadmins heads.
Would take a helluva scriptmaker, and I'm not expecting to see this happen, but I'm sure it can be done. Best example I've seen is Contact You get the intensity, the tenseness, from the way people react.
-Lars
Does the public want Hollywood to portray the world in a realistic light, or do they want movies that support and build on their pre-conceived notions of how life works?
This is entertainment, remember...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
In terms of cool looking computer UI in movies, translucent text windows are frequent, as well as far out window shapes. Clearly Hollywood has found Enlightenment.... and Eterm.
Remember, the UI in a movie is *never* inacurate. They just have an E theme you dont.
--Ben
Geez, I thought HACKERS was pretty realistic.
Haven't we all been the victim of that rabbit virus (flu shot! flu shot!) and surfed through three dimensional operating systems over a 14.4 modem connection by typing commands such as "fly up" and "fly down"?
-- It's not my imagination - I've got a gun on my back! -Black Flag
I know this is grossly off topic, but I'm in rant mode... We geeks sure are a whinny group. Not all of us, of course. I'm just tired of people complaining about the EXACT same crap in 1/4 of the articles on /.
"The media is portraying us as something we're not." The media does that to everyone. At least everyone they cover, which discludes 90 percent of occupations. Techies get almost as much coverage as polititions. We should be proud.
"Non-tech people always use hacker instead of cracker. It makes me feel like crying" Once again, no one cares. The battle is lost, and it was a stupid, pointless battle in the first place. We don't have a copyright on the term, and it happens to be a slang term. In other words, it's meaning is decided by those who use it. And fifty million people are convinced that a "hacker" is someone who breaks into their computer, and causes icq to shit purple rainbows, or whatever the current myth is. Give up, go write some code. If you don't know how to write code, go learn. Stop complaining.
I'd love to participate in that. :)
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
A buddy of mine coined this interface (as seen in Hackers ) "FreeLSD"... :^)
Closest the ever came to portraying the true nature of a programmer was in the matrix. Asleep at the keyboard, works in a cubicle and answers to an executive who doesn't know jack. But you notice the movie hardly focuses on that. Just think about a movie about a person staring at a screen for hours on end. Doesn't matter what's on it, they won't be interested
It would go against everything that is true of all movies. It would be a documentary. If fictional it would be, well, a work of fiction that looks like a documentary.
For instance, take a popular hacker issue that involves a big, evil government and has at its heart the invasion of privacy. The bad guys would naturally be the NSA and the good guy could be pretty much anybody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the stupid audiences out there, it would hammer home the point over and over that we have to worry about our privacy now while we still have some.
This could be made into a dramatic movie, right? And it would probably involve hackers typing away on computer terminals, right? Right on both counts - such a movie has in fact been made and if you've seen it you know exactly the movie I'm talking about: Enemy of the State.
It isn't a very good movie. It's your typical action plot that involves corruption in high places, and the guy (Will Smith) has a wife that keeps nagging him that we have to worry about our privacy, which makes it very campy. And of course the computer geek is a fat messy Dennis Nedry sort who has a mean streak a mile wide and types fast and has a maniacal laugh.
That's about as close as it'll get I think.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I'll tell you exactly how they'd do it.. they'd concentrate on Stoll's personal life. They'd concentrate on his relationship with his wife and his actual day job.. you know, the stuff that he was supposed to be doing when he WASN'T tracking the ~75 cent accounting error. ;-) They'd concentrate on his hippie style and his dealings with the spooks. Now that I think of it, it'd probably make a pretty decent movie. The only sad part is they'd replace the printers sitting around on the floor logging all the net activity with some high tech 50" monitor, alarms, and stuff that is completely made up just in the name of catching the audience's eye. In the end, I think it'd make a better documentary than an entertaining movie.
I loved this film - a neatly plausible plot (with a decent basis in reality), interesting characters (again based on real people), aesthetic cinematography and a good story with lots of wit and "in-jokes".
Did anyone ver read the article years ago in Omni about the aliens landing sequence? If you've seen the movie you'll remember the wiremapped terrain on the computer screen when they were landing. Apparently, this guy (I can't recall his name) was contracted to render some sort of computer output to be played on the video screens in the cockpit. The results were "too real" the producers said, no one would believe it was a computer. So the guy went back and dumbed it down to the wireframe that is now in the movie. That my friends is how concerned Hollywood is with portraying computer accurately. P.S. - If I see one more movie where the text output scrolls slower than I can touch type and beeps with every letter I am going to go postal!
Anyone saw Sneakers? IIRC, all the monitors ever displayed was text and some vector graphics (OK, and one splashy graphics scene when their phones were being traced), and that was a pretty damn exciting movie. The excitement really came from what the audience knew that the characters were breaking into, and knowing how much trouble the characters could get into, not from what was being displayed on the screen.
Hang in there. I'm sure some screenwriters will read this slashdot article and catch on. =)
Off the top of my head, here are some of the things you see all the time that just make me squirm, and want to get up and leave.
You can almost visualize the producer running over budget and hiring some high school kid to throw together a half-baked simulation of a logon screen, and that's what you get.
--
This film is not directly about hacking but does show a mathematition programming on a text terminal in a dark room. It even has the whole cpu / mb everywhere thing that us overclockers love to see
When one of the characters gets angry at the "fax" machine, he shouts "PC Load Letter? What the hell does that mean?!". The POS HP LaserJet 4M printers around here all spout "PC Load Letter" to the display when it's out of paper. I believe it stands for Paper Cartridge Load Letter (size paper). Not particularly the most realistic portrayal of computers, IMHO, but at least something was gleaned from the Real World(tm).
The only movie I can think of in which a hacker/cracker portrayal would be amazing would be a movie based in the future (ie. a Neuromancer movie) because whatever is around right now seems boring because it's mundane and normal. however if you made a movie about the modern programmer in, say the 30's, then they would seem amazing (using typewriters to crack governmant security).
I wrote this a long time ago, but it still holds true today.
Okay, I'm sure we're all used to seeing glaring inaccuracies with regards to computers and the Internet in the media. I thought it might be funny to make a list of the more absurd things that Hollywood tells us about computing. Here's a few I thought of, to start with. Contribute any more you can think of.
1. NOBODY'S QUITE SURE WHAT COMPUTERS ARE ACTUALLY CAPABLE OF. All computer games are primitive, side-scrolling action games with blocky, pixel-based graphics and sound effects that generally don't go much beyond a "beep." Except that all games include full, high-quality speech, of course, even 5-megabit games on video game consoles. Though game technology hasn't advanced at all in the past 10 years, bandwidth is entirely unlimited. All websites, even websites with sound and large, TV-quality video, load instantly, even over modem lines.
2. ENCRYPTION IS A JOKE. Distributed.net is a joke, why spend years brute-forcing an encrypted message when everyone knows that a 17-year-old kid with a laptop can crack any encrypted message within two days? 4096-bit public key encryption? Not a problem! All the kid needs to do is press random keys on the keyboard for a few seconds, and the encryption will conveniently be broken.
3. ZANY AUTHENTICATION SYSTEMS. Whenever an attempt is made to access a computer in an unauthorized fashion, a large red box containing the words ACCESS DENIED will appear in the exact center of the screen. Sometimes it will flash, or make loud klaxony noises. After the 17-year-old kid presses random keys on the keyboard for a moment, the box will change from red to blue (or sometimes green) and will flash ACCESS GRANTED.
4. "HACKERS". "Hackers" are nerds with godlike powers who are capable of causing any remote system to do anything at all, regardless of whether or not it's possible. All "hackers" are well versed in the use of firearms, capable of using anything from a Saturday Night Special to artillary weapons. Whenever an authority figure attempts to arrest a hacker, upbeat rock music will begin to play, and the authority figure will pursue the hacker down fire escapes, through alleyways, etc. Hackers can run quite fast and show more physical prowess than one would expect. Police officers and government agents are idiots and will be easily fooled by any of the hacker's tricks. If a hacker can get access to a computer connected to a company network, the hacker can immediately shut off power to the entire building, and do anything else for that matter. Actually, screw the company network. The hacker can do that from his laptop, whether or not it actually has any kind of network connection at all. Hackers are quite adept at causing other people's computers to flash "ACCESS GRANTED" in large letters.
5. THE WORLD WIDE WEB IS THE INTERNET. The internet consists of nothing but webpages. Anything is possible using the World Wide Web. All computers have snazzy web-based interfaces that remote users can use to access any information contained on that computer, complete with nifty "ACCESS DENIED" boxes.
5. GOVERNMENT COMPUTER SYSTEMS. All confidential government data is kept in an easy-to-use database on a public server connected to the internet. A web server runs on every computer containing top-secret information. Anyone accessing this web server is presented with the large red flashing "ACCESS DENIED" box. Any 17-year-old kid can press buttons on the keyboard for a moment, calling up the "ACCESS GRANTED" box, and allowing full access to the system. The system has a convenient graphical user interface making it very fast and convenient for the kid to find any information in the database within several keystrokes, and of course, all information on the page will load instantaniously. Much of it will be encrypted, but again, a few keystrokes will remedy that. Full write-permission is available for all information on the server, allowing the kid to change any information he wishes. In the 30 seconds that this has taken so far, the FBI will have arrived at the kid's door. The kid will, of course, have a pistol at hand and a gun battle will ensue, and end with the kid being chased through dark alleys by the FBI agents.
6. OH YEAH. Everyone either uses Microsoft Windows, or some made-up OS that somehow manages to look twice as useless. This made-up OS includes full support for flashing ACCESS DENIED/ACCESS GRANTED screens. The remote administration/security software that comes with this OS by default allows any remote user to access the computer in any way, assuming that person is a hacker and can press a few random buttons when the ACCESS DENIED screen pops up and begins flashing. Not only is this the default security setting, it's the ONLY security setting.
Hehe, that's just what I was going to append.
7. Computer viruses can infect ANYTHING: not just computers, they can completely control cars, toasters, elevators, etc. Not only can they infect anything, they can DO anything on the infected systems. They can talk, cause the machine to explode, etc. Computer virus infection isn't just limited to "running infected programs" or "booting from infected disks." Anyone can infect anyone else's computer with a virus, via the internet. No access to the computer is required, the virus is just pointed at the target computer and manages to take over the entire system just by "coming in contact with it" in some weird virtual way. Computer viruses aren't programs, and aren't constrained by the limits of what software can do. Oh yeah, and anyone can code a virus in under a day that will take down any computer system, even alien ones.
I think I made a post of this effect on a different story...the one about the "MTV: I'm a Hacker" bit.
;]
The reason you don't see real, true-to-life terminal windows, in-depth plots about poring over perl scripts, or the like, is because, well, watching a lot of geeks staring at vi and guzzling Mountain Dew is just not that interesting to the general public.
(I find it hilarious. The later the hour and the more freely the caffeine flows, the more uproarious the wisecracks. It's like one continuous MST3k of life itself.)
Look at it this way...I sometimes watch ER and find it fascinating. I'm sure it's not always completely correct, and some medical professionals probably wince as badly as I did when watching "Hackers", but the way it's dumbed-down for the public makes it interesting eye-candy for me.
The public is just out to be entertained. They want eye-candy. They want something to turn their collective mind to mush in half-hour, hour-long, or two-hour increments. And Hollywood panders to them.
Whatever happened to "Go read a book?"
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
Anyway, what I find even more annoying are the movies that insist on making all computers make that loud floppy disk access noise (think late 80's mac floppy noises). Clear and Present Danger was a good example of this. Do people even use floppies anymore?
I was at an event discussing anime at my local library yesterday, and the guy giving the erm... seminar, I guess you could call it, said that he'd seen an anime called "Perfect Blue," and they decently protrayed computers in it... it was still a mac, but there was real attention to detail put in it, i.e. no blazing fast computers, no T3 speeds in someone's house... and one of his friends was able to pin down the exact model of it by the apps loaded and the behavior of it. I'd like to see it but I hear it's got really poor distribution in theaters, I'll have to wait for the video (which he claims is coming soon).
-- Your IP is showing
I mean even if they payed an average teen-age kid to go over the cut and say "hey wait, that's not believable at all" I would be happy. I find movies like "The Net" an insult, and find it hard to sit through the whole movie.
To enjoy a film you have to get lost in the story and forget that it is not real, and blatent inaccurate portrails of computers and their uses just sends me spinnnig out of the story and I find it hard to get back into it.
But I suppose afterall we are the minority and the masses will be just as happy to be fed this crap....
"Always play with their minds" -=Kid Rich=-
Dude.. the word "cod**e**" is not in "coding" =) Now you could make that point if the word "cod" meant encrypting, but.. well.. it doesn't.
I don't think that Hollywood can do it, it is not mainstream enough. I think that some independent producer *will* do it sometime though, and it will be a minor success. Geek culture seems to be an upcoming market that people are beginning to recognize. There is more of a market out there for a movie about real (or well semi-real :) hacking than you might think.
I see the problem simply as this:
The average Joe has no clue what the gibberish on a monitor means without accompanying graphics, sound effects, or dialogue. If he sees a bunch of Unix commands on the screen, he's got the proverbial snowball's chance in Hell of understanding it. Those select few who DO understand it comprise too small of an audience that the filmmakers have no motive to actually make it accurate.
A solution: Foster the art of hacker movies. Find a couple independent filmmakers with a penchant for hacking and make sure they get it right. Maybe set up a hacker's film festival. Producers catering to a large audience won't pay attention to detail, but those making films especially for hackers will make sure they get it right, or their reputation will suffer.
I know what I suggest sounds implausible to implement... It just needs to happen, I suppose. But if any hacker moviemakers are reading this, keep it in mind...
I would have to disagree that movies could not be made to be more realistic and still be interesting and entertaining. I used to race bicycles before getting into computers and the most realistic movie about bicycle racing was Breaking Away. Why was it better than something like the movie with Kevin Costner (I can't remember the name of the movie right now)? It really did not deal with bike racing! It was about a group of kids coming of age. Bike racing was secondary. If they could write a compelling story and then use computers as only a plot device, it could work. Instead they have to concentrate on the computers and all the flashiness that they think that entails and forget about any kind of real story.
Isn't everything that hollywood puts out unrealistic?
---------------------------------- I like fig newtons...they're tasty
I guess so. It used to be more fun when actually getting into the machine MEANT something. A new environment to explore... new programs to play around with, etc. Now half the boxes out there are Linux boxes and if you break into them.. BFD. I could get the same shit by installing a redhat CD on my home system. The thrill of discovering something new is almost gone. That just leaves people who do it for the excitement of being able to get the better of someone else.. that and the other people are are just lame lusers who like to crack into other peoples' systems to cause damage. I won't even give these lusers the benefit of equating them to hackers in ANY sense of the word. Read the Hacker Manifesto sometime and you will understand. So, these days, the only crackers left are: bored lonely guys who can't get dates, luser kiddies, and criminals. The first guys have nothing else to do on a saturday night except try and justify their meaningless existence by trying to prove to themselves that they can crack yet another box. Big deal. The second type downloads 3xpl01tz from some site and tries to crash as many machines as possible so that they can feel like they are hot shit.. these are the wankers of the new millenium and they need to be beaten down. They don't understand the old ways of being a hacker. They need to be put in their place. Thankfully most of them are complete idiots and are easy to apprehend. The third is the type that worries me. Career criminals who crack into systems for profit and/or political motivations. These are the people you have to worry about when you are protecting a site.
Think about it. Hollywood people are paid for movies that will sell. Profit is their main concern, so why the heck would they fill a movie with ten minutes of footage of some pasty-faced, acne-encrusted computer nerd h4x0r1n6 the Pentagon in a really, really, really boring manner? It doesn't make sense money-wise, so they don't do it.
Watching someone with an iBook or something equally outlandish h4x0r1n6 the Pentagon in eight seconds with lots of flashy graphics and huge text on the screen looks better to the viewer, so they use that. They're in the business of pleasing their audience, not a bunch of nerds on Slashdot, sadly.
"The Net" made money. The company who produced "The Net"'s marketing tactics obviously worked on the masses. We are not the masses.
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
The problem is, given just about any profession, a writer will make some miniscule attempt to research it. But for some reason, everyone out here in hollywood has a damn powerbook, and they think to themselves, "oh, I have a powerbook; I know all about computers." And then you see yet another movie where there's a nice screen that has bitmapped fonts saying "hacking into pentagon...please wait," with "wait" flashing, until it says in a different font/colorscheme "hacked into pentagon...press any key to continue."
...was in Enemy of the State, that duck/naturalist guy analyzed that video dat with a nice Sparc station using a rather ugly CDE interface. Bravo for Sun. Also later featured in the movie was what appeared to be Linux (!) on Brill's laptop when he's in the car after his compound exploded.
later.
Dyslexic.
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
'tis sad, but Hollywood is consumed by commercialism and showing a program printing a '6' instead of a '3' (I love it!) does not sell one bit. To give a certain idea of the mindset that Hollywood caters to: I recently helped a friend of mine fdisk a HD that I had given him and help him rebuild the MBR by using fdisk /mbr. After we had finished he started talking "shit" about how much of a computer god he was and how l33t he was. After this, I gave him a shell account on my Linux box so he could learn more about it, and now he talks about how he is a Linux hax0r. It is this type of person hollywood catches with their flashing screens, and misrepresentations of computers/hacking/programming. Until this type of mindset changes (which, unfortunately, it most likely won't as computers becomes more proliferated and easier to use) Hollywood will continue to spread disinformation and propogate these myths. Just my $.02.
Charlie
hehehe, as a side note: with Hollywood's idea of "hacking" involves flashing screens, imagine the generation of new computer users that will swear they were hacked when they get the ubiquitous BSOD. hehehehe.
ps - What IS the deal with all the phreaking stuff in WG? Good flick, the stuff with the talking computer via dialup was a bit out there... but, on the whole, a decent view.
-- .sig files go when they die?
Child: Mommy, where do
Mother: HELL! Straight to hell!
I've never been the same since.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
It was probably just their way of showing the viewer how close the computer was to cracking the key - the more digits it locks, the closer it is.
.... NX .... NX
Obviously it is bull - if it worked that way the problem of breaking the key would be reduced from (assuming letters and numbers like they had):
36 * 36 * 36 * 36 * 36
tries in the worst case, to
36 + 36 + 36 + 36 + 36
tries, for X number of digits in the code
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
One facet of the representation of computers in movies and TV that has always irritated me is that they have to boop and beep everytime they do anything, such as print a text to the screen, or zoom in on a map.
I have yet to see one movie where the onscreen computer doesnt go wheedle wheedle beep constantly .
If mine did that I would destroy it! Or, um, maybe turn it off.
Juln
No only are Computers badly represented, but so are Pagans. How may times do you see a Witch represented as an ugly hag, or able to change their hair color with a wave of their hand?
Witches, Druids and other Pagans are like everyone else, except they have a different belief system.
Sure Hollywood is about Fantasy, but I like my Fantasy to have a basis in Reality.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Whould you like to hack? >Yes Where would you like to hack today? >? CIA? >No Bank? >Yes Hacking complete, have a nice day. --------------------- Will we ever see anything even close to the real thing? I doubt it, the only way I stand it is with lots of caffine and a few tylenol. Pour on the sex and violence.
In the old days of barbarism, the people fought with hatchets. Civilized men buried the hatchet, and now fight with g
I dont think it is beyond the film industry to portray real hackers in a true to light form. But lets be honest, what most of us do, the rest of the world would find terribly dull and would never sell in this market. There is a reason why geeks are in short supply these days ya know. It would be almost impossible to push a good and real cyber movie onto a society that accepts windows because its easy and hides what a computer really is from them
Hacking was not the focus of the movie(it was a apy thriller, but is did a few few things well with computers: 1) it used computing well as a plot device( the key plot involves a labourous and frustrating image anhancement of an 'incriminating' photo. it takes days. the hero must find the spy before the photo is reslolved enough to show a face, the hero's) 2) the computing peopleare not in dark rooms with funky looking equipment. 3) no "instant image enhancement" or other freak of nature. 4) the computer engineers in question are unfit and older. 5) there is no mention of jargon in the entire movie.
Well, I'm just a lowly computer geek, I've been lurking on /. for quite a while (several months) but have never posted anything before (hence I don't have an account). I'm currently going to school, and over last summer I wrote a movie script that has Linux in it... It's called CyberQuestrian, and here's a summary:
/. community to make sure my portrayal of Linux is 100% correct and not in any way lame.
:)
13-year-old Jamie lives on a horse farm which her family rents from a nice old farmer. When he decides to sell the farm to a real-estate developer, Jamie must use her knowledge of the computer world and her love for horses to save her way of life.
I'm not sure about giving out the script, since I have a person interested in producing it, but if you'd don't think the idea is totally stupid, please email me at moose at flyingmoose dot com (in other words, if you would actually pay to see a movie with Linux in it). I might even ask for some help at some point from the
Anyway, Winblows does not show up at all in this movie, only Linux (or some other form if the GPL has any restrictions on using the display in movies), and I'm hoping to be able to have the characters drinking Jolt
--- Moose
How can you expect Hollywood to get using a computer correctly if they insist that a monitor projects what it is displaying on the users face.
I don't know about you, but I think I would find it hard to use a projector as a monitor.
Mercury Rising seemed pretty accurate. Saw IE in one of the scenes. Course, computers weren't featured that much, but I guess it was accurate for what it showed.
About GUIs that always zoom and make sounds on clicks... sounds like Enlightenment.
I thought the movie Hackers was a bit interesting. In particular, the responses of the viewing public. Most of the usage of computers and phones was contrived and Hollywood-invented glamour. Like The Net, it was much BS in an attempt to be eye candy without content. OK.
But the best part was them redboxing. They played a recording of tones and called. Simple. Effective. Best of all - realistic.
What shocked me most was the response of my friends. I went with a large group, none of them geeky. They all could relate to, and believe everything in the movie. When I asked them specifically about the redboxing scene, they all laughed at how fake it was.
Perhaps the problem is greater than just Hollywood...
I've been watching hollywood botch the movie scene with reguards to programming for a long, long time...I remember when Wargames came out, and everyone thought it was the coolest thing...and I remember thinking "that's not the way it is(!)"
My favorite is the user who types his password which promptly comes up in letters that fill the whole screen and arn't protected by some kind of character echoing sceme (like asterisks or something..). Or the guy who types out a whole line of stuff and never hits the "enter" key or the spacebar even once...*real* users know those keys make destinctive sounds....
My opinion is that hollywood hasn't a clue what it's about at all. I mean, if you're an actor, you probably wouldn't have time to program anyway...
Anyone who would like to see a documentary about hacking should watch Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" which is at least based on reality.
This is my dream and maybe one day it will all come together as I believe that it is possible to make a good film about computer stuff, and maybe even have a 'sorta mainstream' crowd not hate it too! Of course, this would entail creating at least two parallel plotlines which both 'groups' could enjoy (kinda like a disney film having an 'adult' story among the kid story -- I'm talking about having a 'geek' story among the kid, er, mainstream story).
I could use some feedback on this though -- what kinda support from 'the community' might there be? Could the fervor of a 'blair witch' be harnessed? Support would go a long way to making this kinda movie happen. Imagine a movie you could walk out of and be really proud to be a 'geek', and your mom could see it and 'understand' (at least a little) and be proud of you too?!
That's my dream. Maybe some of you share the dream too.
If there is a big enough response I'll put together an 'Ask Slashdot' on what kind of 'computer' film
Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
The one computer stupidty that still makes my jaw drop was in Jurassic Park. At a couple of points during the film, the characters talk to one another via a computer videoconferencing system. The images of the people on the other end are QuickTime movies with the progress meter obviously progressing towards the end. That, and the girl who sits down at a computer, exclaims "This is a UNIX system! I know this!" and then appears to be playing Star Wars on an old Vectrex.
Hollywood stereotypes everything and everybody in a way that fits into the public imagination. For instance, have you ever seen a Middle Eastern man in a movie who was not a terrorist?
:) )
The same goes for just about every profession and group. The reason they do this is because if you suddenly deviate from the public image, you may end up confusing the dumbed down audience.
The safe money lies in following the beaten path.
Here, let's count the stereotypes:
1) Hackers: nerdy, unshaven guys wearing odd colorful clothes; often wear glasses; weird laugh; stumble and spill stuff. Or.... the opposite extreme - goth freaks with wild outfits and rapid typing skills.
2) scientists: mostly male, always wear long white coats, glasses. Talk technobabble and look thoughtful. If a scientist is a female, she has long legs which are revealed at some point, and the plot surprises us in the middle of the movie by showing how she is a repressed sexual tigress.
3) Politicians: sinister eyebrow action and lots of glaring, dark suits, depraved sick lifestyle.
4) Japanese: funny mannerisms, thick accent, lots of bowing. Skilled at gadgets.
5) Construction workers/truck drivers: If it's the hero, he's handsome, witty, and a dashing Romeo with the ladies (oddly, he has a sweet tender heart which is supposed to surprise everyone after the depiction of disgusting tobacco habits and prolific booze consumption). If it's not a hero, he's just disgusting and stupid. Lots of body hair, bad clothes. (And geeks think they have something to complain about unfair portrayal?
6) Women : 'nuff said.
OK, add your own. Maybe geeks get off fairly generously. Just imagine how much worse it could be if movies showed them as drunken child molesting perverts who live with their parents.
Oh, one excellent movie for portrayal was Contact - the female scientist (Jodie foster) was quite nicely shown as informally dressed, passionate about science, smart, etc., etc. Big win for astronomy geeks there. I liked this one a lot. It was surprisingly realistic in the dress code. Hardly any difference from Nova documentaries.
L.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while... I've got a video capture card, some friends, and some cameras. Why not just make a geek movie?
The script may suck, and the acting may be horrible (Dammit Jim, I'm a hacker, not an actor!), but I can promise you that all computer related content would be accurate to the last drop!
The movie would never actually be put on film for the general public to be confused over. Just mpeg encode it and distribute over the net! I suppose the question would be this: would anyone actually download it?
The computer stuff would be fine, yes, but there would be no sets (or very obvious chroma-keying of sets) and all of that horrible acting I mentioned above. Downloading a movie is no small act towards which to commit your resources, especially for those of us *cough* still repressed by Bell Atlantic and our local cable companies...
The project would be fun... but so would not wasting all that energy and just perl hacking instead...
F0 07 C7 C8
I've seen very few computer related movies, and all of them quite boring if not plainly stupid.
On the boring side there's, as you said, "Tron". Good for that time, with some visual effects that were interesting... then.
On the stupid side (ID4) there are things as cracking an alien spaceship's computer (from the very networking protocol to 'seed' a virus on an unknown OS... bullsh*t). And in record time.
But you can't ask Hollywood to be a good seller and tell the truth. If you expect both from Hollywod then you're not far from madness: you're confusing reality with fantasy.
I mean, are A-bombs seeded weekly in NY? Why not, let's say, Denver or Redmond?
Are all cops good looking, cultured, on excelent physical shape?
Do all American programmers use Macs?
Hollywod not only fails to 'fitting in the non-verbal aspects...', it must fail everywhere unless it's a documentary.
The real problem is when you see the same crap in the 9 news and then believe that's the truth...
We need some type of 3D shell that'll do spiffy effects that, somehow, correlates with whatever you're typing in. You know, like on Hackers (and, according to IMDB, called Cybernet in Japan). Then maybe we'll do some real hacking on the big screens.
That was because they were blowing up useless status symbols in defiance of the decadence of a consumer-based culture.
Don't you remember what the man said?
"Why do you know what a GUI is? Is it something that's essential to your survival? In ten years you'll be standing here, in leather clothes that'll last you your whole life, watching people typing cryptic commands on text terminals, using computers that don't come in your choice of five fruity colors. You are not special, do not think different, all your bits are part of the same core dump as the rest of us."
...it was something like that anyway.
For what it's worth, here is MHO:
;-)
:-)
Hollywood survives on HYPE. Nothing in Hollywood bears close examination. How many times did you see Tom Cruise pull 12G full 'burner turns in Top Gun, and not even raise a sweat? How many times does Arnie pump out what must be 2 ton of lead in a few minutes? Where *does* he carry all that ammo? And his gun *never* seizes up either
Hollywood has to sell an image. The image must be razzy, flashy, fast'n furious. Reality can take a back seat, baby (Oh behave!) When it comes to computers, Hollywood plays on the sheer ignorance of 99% of viewers. That's why the Net sucked so badly for those with hackerish tendancies, but the great unwashed loved it. If objectively assessed, The Matrix wasn't too accurate either, but I still loved it, 'cause it tried really hard (plus it was filmed in good ol' Oz).
I try not to look too hard at the movies. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to enjoy the spectacle. Ask me a week later to describe what I saw, chances are I'll be quite vauge about it. I don't enjoy seeings things I do know about protrayed stupidly, but hey! That's show business
That's about 2 cents worth...
Bullfrog
Hey I know the headaches must have sucked, but when people I know get migranes they just sorta curl up and wait for death.
Blar.
I thought this had been done! I actually haven't seen this film... but... damn, do I want to.
A. 2 kids make a grrl in 'Weird Science'
B.Sandra Bullock uses whois to lookup a domain
C.Tom Cruise emails 'jobe' in 'Mission Impossible'
D.Meg Ryan falls in love with Tom Hanks in 'You've got mail'.
This symolism is an effective way to associate the hero or vilan as a clever little hacker. This symbolism generally helps the computer industry by raising it's profile. A good thing.
Let's consider another industry that has continually gotten the shaft from the movies. I'm talking about Heavy Industry. Ever wonder who makes all those wonderful connectors? your USB plugs? Your computer cases? Floppy discs? Hi-tech Industry does. I'm talking about mold companies such as Nypro Mold that have 12 cavity molds automatically fed by robots 24/7. Hutchinson technologies that makes the reader heads in your hard drive. Amp incorporated, running 18 out dies at 2000 stokes/min with an optical inspection system collecting SPC(statistical processes control) data in real time. These are the movers and shakers of our economy and how do the Movies portray them? A Hazard
Invariably, every movie ends up with a chase scene ending in the industrial plant (the end of 'the net') Or the final fight to the death taking place an a hazardous and dangerous industrial plant (the end of Terminator 2)
What does this symbolism do for heavy industry? It associates it with danger,death and conflict. Despite the fact that it is very hi-tech and well paying, It makes it hard to atract kids to the trade.
So don't think you've got it so bad when you watch a hacker in a movie pull off the imposible. The writers are just trying to make there stars look smart (and as a result, you too!)
It's spelled "Lain"
:)
,reverse qq;):zrekcahzlrepzrehtonaztey; );"
Lain is an exceptional series about a girl, some cool tech themes, a lot of surreality, and the idea of artifical intelligence being more viable than natural intelligence.
Further, Lain's father has a __6__ head display! That is 6 monitors for one machine! He's introduced into the series when he comes home gloating over some new cards.
Lain is a must see for geeks, from the theme song (which is in english, nicely enough) to the bizzare imagry and Hellmouth themes to the accurate portrayal of computers (albeit futuristic), Lain is a geek's geek anime.
There is even REAL LIFE C Code in Lain's class. She's learning control structures as the story begins
See it.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
perl -e "print join q( ), split(q.z.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
the upcoming movie about Kevin Mitnick, "Takedown"? Surely, things will be portrayed seriously in this movie? I mean, they certainly won't have a makeup enhanced overweight Skeet Ulrich hiding in a dingy apartment with his computers and cell phones? I mean, didn't Kevin spend a lot of time shooting at police, driving fast cars, and hiding out in night clubs with strippers and the like?
sigh... no, Hollywood, IMO, is incapable of making a movie about hacking/phreaking/whatever that isn't downright stupid (well, I thought The Matrix rocked, but that was meant to be an action type movie, not intellectual). Of course, you realize, so long as the majority of the stupid public buys into these movies and sits there like brain dead idiots laughing everytime they see a virus pop up a skull and crossbones (ala Independence Day), the Hollywood machine will keep pumping out these lack-of-reality-which-is-far-too-boring movies.
jaraxle
However, for movies, it has pretty much stayed within the lanes for filmmaking. Everytime a new kind of film comes out, from The Breakfast Club, to Pulp Fiction to the latest Blair Witch, people are reminded that some of the greatest things they can see is what is not in pop culture. While this could continue into what's right and wrong with pop culture, the better analogy I was hoping to represent is that what we need is for someone to finally make a true film that displays the lives of these people (real programmers (Linus, Carmack), hackers, important computing people in gen.) in their true light. Not as freeloaders, not as dorks, not as superstars. They are real people who do things for real reasons and some, believe it or not, think that what they produce from months in front of that monitor could actually change the world. These people should be celebrated and understood for the work that they do, and how they do it. And why they do it. The real hardcores do what it takes to change. The "hackers" do nothing but prohibit it. They should not glamorize that for the same reasons you don't glamorize selling drugs -- it just doesn't make sense.
The "Joe Beer" people of the world don't understand what coding is, they don't understand what the difference between Linux and Windows9x or NT X is. All they know is that now ATMs are better than having to go to the bank and deal with the tellers. They know that email is fast and great and they don't care how it got there, they don't care about the people who made it, they just know how to use it and that's all the understanding they need. The movie world has never had a computing film that has a real plot, that has real starts and endings, and is, truly, real. Real programmers, real code, real results. Because when the end of the day comes, a lot of smart people all over the world are going to sleep, and everyone's lives change more because of it. Programmers don't show in two hours time their greatness or what they can do. They do it in years, when more and more everyday, people begin to listen to what is going on in the electronic world. And when it comes their time to speak, and it comes our time to listen, who will be at the helm? Who will be spouting the "truth"? The more the computing world grows, the quicker it will too have its superstars, where everything they touch is gold and if they want to spout lies or misconceptions and if we only hear those, then what a sad lot we are.
Tomorrow is today, only more so.
Evan Erwin
Systems Administrator
obiwan@frag.com
Unfortunately, Get Smart was very accurate. Oh, I'm sorry, were you saying something while I was under the Cone of Silence?
umm..PC load letter also happens when you print using a letter size and your paper tray has A4. justa little tidbit.
HAHAHAHHAA -- that is the BEST reply I've read all day :) Thanks very much for sharing that with us...it's *exactly* how I feel. Definatly a 10/10
Look at some of the portraials of someone amasing a fortune in these movies.
There is absolutly nothing in the "action" efects or odd camera angles that wold look familer to what the wealthy people around experinced.
They do it because it's how you "dramatize" or show something that's longand tedius in a much shorter timespan while letting eaven those movie goers with little/no knowlage of that area understand what goes on.
More disturbing is when they have computers and hackers perform the imposible. I.e. Indipendence day when they uploaded a Virus to the Alien ship that disabled it's shilds. Just as how a Mac or Linux Virus ( They exist. just not very eficent ) will have little efect on a Windows machine. When did these people get a chance to figure out what OS/Software the Alien ship was running ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
What I've always wondered was what they used to create the interfaces to the computers that they use in movies. It's never quite Windows, not quite E.
They show them getting e-mail, and it's always this big envelope out of a 3D mailbox and some sexy voice going "you have new e-mail from [someone's name]"
Or else they will show a command-line. and it's some big green letters. They type in a command on some big green dos/bash hybrid like "search Joe Blow" and everything about Joe Blow including his shoe size is printed out in 2 seconds.
I've always wondered what OS they used for the effect and what programs they used. Like I was told that the 3d file manager from "Jurassic Park" was a well known program(forget the name) for Irix(where does a 13 year old girl learn to use Irix I dunno) (^_^)
I've just seen some pretty slick interfaces over the years in movies, and never could fine similar windowmanagers, themes, or programs that quite matched it. Anyone know how it's done?
Tron is one of the greatest movies of all time!
Maybe the obsessive attitude was good, but the core of the movie was nonsensical.
Consider the fact that a computer suddenly becomes conscious when the OS crashes, and it prints out an eternal truth at that point. Oh please.
Also, the hero plugs in a different "classified" CPU into his existing machine. That was kinda lame.
The whole math mysticism was also quite off the mark because they reduced it to simplistic gobbledegook. The trouble is they should have made it complex looking at least, if they couldn't make any sense.
an accurate portrait of any group in a movie? As a hacker and a biker I've seen dozens of screwed up stereotypes and technical faults. One of my favorites was the bright green neutral light always being on in the second Crow movie. I also love the idea that we're beer swilling, fight starting, non-showering jerks.
It's hard for the entertainment industry to accurately portray any group whether it's hackers, bikers, or emergency room workers. If you think its because they're lazy, maybe you should give it a try sometime. I'd bet you'd be surprised how hard it can be.
OK, the first issue is knowledge. Most screenwriters today have at least used a computer, many of them use them regularly. Directors are likely to be less computer literate. Neither screenwriters nor directors are likely to be truly knowledgable about computers, they just have their focus in a different direction. The good ones will find a technical advisor that can help.
The second issue is screen presence. Any computer that is used for something real will have more information on the screen than is good for dramatic impact. The viewer needs to be able to quickly find and interpret the information displayed, and an 80x25 screen would just have too much text displayed too small for that (not to mention the 80x50 or 132x60 screens that some of us use). It always looks goofy when they make a computer display have huge characters in a proportionally spaced font, but that's something we're always going to have to live with.
The third issue is time. The director needs to have some things quick, so they don't get in the way, and some things slowly, to build suspense. This may contradict how long things really should take. For example, in the X-Files, they often will bring a photo to the FBI Imaging Lab; the viewer doesn't want to spend 45 minutes watching the technician line up the right region of the image and trying a few hundred filters on it to extract a good image; they bring in the photo, give the guy a few directions on where to look, and bingo, a clear zoom of a poorly developed area of the photo. On the other hand, in Wargames, when Joshua was trying to crack the code to launch the missles, it took a long time as it solved the problem digit by digit; nevermind that any code that you can solve that way is inherently weak; the ticking down of the digits were used to build the suspense, the climax of the movie just wouldn't have worked if Joshua used standard cryptographic procedures on a strong code.
The fourth is capability. Look at Max Headroom; they managed to encode an entire human personality, including emotions, into a (presumably digital) computer. If they have that level of computing power, they surely would be able to do other magnificent things with computers, but they generally can't.
Basically, computer use in movies has been (IMHO) steadily improving, but they will never be perfect. Most movies, even by the most knowlegable moviemakers, will run into a point where they have to decide between art and reality. I don't think I need to tell you that art generally wins, and for a very good reason, it's just more entertaining that way.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I'm not sure what a good 3D visual programming environment would look like, but Jaron Lanier makes some interesting claims about the Body Electric 3D visual programming environment .
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
Sneakers was fairly good, with the main stress point being the plot device (a math function that can be used to break military-strength encryption, which isn't really all that unbelievable). The geeks use more social engineering tactics, and the computers aren't all that special or (in some cases) useful. Good emphesis on how the government is interested in reading our information while keeping their mail private.
Office Space showed the real underside of the computer industry: the intolerable management beaurocracy, the crappy peon work, dealing with moronic coworkers, and the brainlessness of downsizing tactics. Again, nothing unbelievable is done with the computers -- in fact, one of the programmers even writes (gasp) buggy code.
The Pirates of Silicon Valley. Again, the Industry (and in this case the industry leaders) gets a well-deserved working over. While this is a "TNT Original Production" and not actually an honest-to-god theatre movie, we'll count it in 'cause I liked it.
Contact had believable computers used for astronomy, and little subliminal niceties like a button that said "Unix Party" scattered around. The idea of HR Hadden breaking into the research computers seemed a bit far-fetched until I considered that he had actually provided those computers in the first place (and thus had ample opportunity to install Back Orifice). Again, not a really computer-heavy movie, but then again I don't think the more emphesis there is on computers the more liberties are likely to be taken with their abilities.
Clear and Present Danger used a lot of computer and spy tech that pushed the envelope without being unbelievable or unlikely, but I'd sort of expect that in a Tom Clancy movie. After all, if there's one thing that guy does well, it's research. The part where the computer dweeb guessed the guy's ATM PIN was funny, since I know how stupid users are with their passwords (while thinking they're being clever).
Anyhow, that's my "top of the head" list. The list for "bad use of computers" is easier and much longer, but I'm sure I've missed more than a few easy computer-friendly flicks. Anybody else have a good one?
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
What bites me the most on seeing computers in movies(anyone remember that awful NetForce?) was you always see the computer operator type really super fast, yet you see no reflection of typed text on the screen. Usually they are flying through some simulation or some Winamp Plugin.
I don't even have a floppy drive in my latest machine..
I never need to use one. I have a CD-RW drive and a CD-boot option in bios. If I REALLY need to write a file to floppy (hasn't happened yet, but who knows) I'd send it to another machine's drive.
The movie, Office Space, is a good and funny movie about computer programmers. However, it does not highlight computers or anything; its more about the office work environment.
Sumit
Just a few points to illustrate here my fellow readers:
1. Have any of you noticed that NONE of the movies ever use MicroShaft-Windoze as the *secure and reliable* operating system?
2. Ok..ok...maybe there's one out of a billion movies that DO... if so, have you EVER seen them crash with the blu-screen-o-death? NEVER right?
* The second point above, my friends, can be summarize why these movies are totally unrealistic. (I shall, from now on, refer it as an AXIOM...) *grin*
SewageMaster
Few enough people understand enough about computing to truly understand what coding is. My mother still thinks I'm BS-ing her when I say I'm coding. Unlike the work she's seen done in visual basic (gag), I do my work in C, with editor du jour: Vi. She refuses to beleive I do work.
This is the sort of mentality is what movies have to appeal to. It's amazing how slowly people believe a dull truth, but how quick they are to take to a flashy generalization or outright lie.
Movies like Hackers and The Matrix are direct results of this. Hackers was a failure, because it was so generic that it lacked any informaition.
At least The Matrix had spirit, it had style, it made the admission that computer code is pretty much incomprehensible to people who don't know it. That much was ok.
I suppose we'll see more lousy movies in the future. Grit your teeth and educate.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
perl -e "print join q( ), split(q.z.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Way back in the 60's the Brits (who can make a good movie without a happy ending) made "the Italian Job". Benny Hill is a hacker who is used to change the traffic control mainframe in some Italian city to create a traffic jam and a way out of it for 3 mini's loaded with stolen gold.
:)
nothing since has gotten close
I haven't had the chance to read all the comment. but i can't wait to add my own reply
First, movie is about entertainment. The correct potrayal of hackers/crackers will only make yawn on most people.
But that not really saying that there is no good stuff for entertainment for hollywood to use in potraying h/c. i remember reading a Marvel comics book...a story about a character named Micro-chip (i don't remember his real name...its real geeky). he is a character from PUNISHER line of books, he help punisher to get information on crime (where a lot of drugs been sold, where there is a meeting of crime czar). but on this particular mini series comics...it tell story about the beginning of M-c. it is really good (but i think only an indie film would like to film this). he is a CS student and got thrown-out. then to get money for food ...he sell information that he got from hacking and sell it to highest bidder. until he meet Frank Castle. he had to work with FC because M-c know that FC=punisher.
i thinks the plot of the story...and the reality of h/c does come thru' from this comics. it doesn't use the flashy heroic standing as what we usually find in most comics. and doesn't have 'beautiful' people as in "Hackers".
You're a cartoon of rebel! You're all like exaggerated version of yourself! - Gerard Jones
The movie "Enemy of the State" did a pretty interesting job protraying it's computer geeks.
Computers are a very difficult subject for the media to portray. A glitzy, hollywood approach with flashing screens and 3D GUIs will make those familiar with computers laugh with contempt, while a realistic view will alienate the rest, leaving them bored and perhaps confused. Since both groups will at least understand (if not appreciate) an oversimplified portrayal, that's what invariably is used. Also, a realistic view of computers might greatly impact the usefulness of hacking as a plot device. It's not programmers, after all, who write the scripts.
Sphere, in some scene (i havent watched it in a while.. but in some scene there was a linux login (2.0.36) i think... no idea what the name of the box was.. but its real.
(mental note to watch again)
It's worse than that. The pathnames have UNIX-style forward slashes much of the time (but if I recall correctly, not all of the time). And when Peter Gibbons is playing Tetris, it's the X-Windows Tetris (I'm pretty sure complete w/ Motif widgets). To top it off, the C:> prompt is missing the slash entirely, reminiscent of the DOS 2.x-era default PROMPT.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Such As:
We are loose cannons, we are freaky/funky hip dudes who forgot what that ball of gas burning up in the big bluey thingy we call sky is all about!
I say, let the masses have their 'Trons', their 'Hackers'. Me, I'll keep on watching my cubicle neighbor freak out because his session variables keep changing for no reason. And know, in my heart , that Hollywood creates it's own bizarre reality based on what 'looks cool'.
"Why is it in movies, when you see big ol' mainframe tape drives [you know, the big reels] they always seem to be rewinding?"
crazy dynamite monkey
I think it has much to do with who is writing it. How many screenwriters are programmers? How many even know what core dump is?
With that being said, one cannot expect these people to write decent scripts about things they know nothing about. For them to hire consultants is generally out of the question, as money is being spent on all those nifty special effects and other necessities (monitors exploding, Powerbooks, teaching Johnny Lee Miller how to type, etc.)
I also blame this on the film industry. Movies that do well tend to be superficial and lack ambiguity. Look at Titanic. It seems that a movie is doomed to do poorly if it has any literary qualities. So rent Smoke Signals, then read a good book.
I know that the intro to Office Space shows a brief clip of east-bound traffic on I-635 (LBJ Freeway) near the Dallas North Tollway. Also, Peter's neighbor Lawrence mentions his current construction job is at the McDonalds in Los Colinas (which is between Dallas and DFW Airport).
Now I know Mike Judge sets just about everything in Texas, and usually near Dallas. (For instance, King of the Hill is based in "Arlen," Texas, which does not exist -- but compare to Garland which is a Dallas suburb.) Does anyone here know where Office Space was filmed?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
And in it, they feature a Mac which, when shut down, reverts to a DOS prompt...?!
:)
Why do they always have to put together these obviously false screens for movies? Wouldn't Enlightenment be cool enough?
The geek in the steam tunnels in Real Genius was fairly realistic. The most accurate movie about a computer crime is probably "Billion Dollar Bubble", a British-made film (accurate enough to be called a documentary, but using actors) about a big Los Angeles insurance company that was about 70% bogus, fabricated by computer over 25 years ago. The programmer who perpetrated that one got his picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Worst was original Star Trek series -- the computers on the Starship Enterprise made teletype noises.
Setting: The basement in the house of a family (one with teenager(s)) at about 3AM on a school night; outside the house is about 3 acres of mixed field/woods, on the edge of town
Cast: three 15-18 year old guys
Props: a case of Mountain Dew (no, not the dinky 48-pk things - case, as in "forklift"), 3 average mhz computers w/ average hardware running The OS, a fairly decent sound system (run by one of the computers) with some variant of techno music playing, plenty of empty bags of pretzels/dorritos/fritos/popcorn
Plot: the geeks generally goof around, have weggie wars, play Quake, make jokes, talk about chicks that would never be seen dead with them, and talk about technology
They would then get the crazy idea (an effect of caffine) to go cruising with someone in the trunk, go outside and blow up/burn some green army men with a torch, shave one of the guy's head (the one that fell asleep), or go wake up classmates in town by knocking on their windows...
Throughout, they'd write an occasional html file, some perl, maybe some C, all the while having a blast.
Heck, throw in a chick or two. Three guys and two chicks would work OK... still geeky, but not so many chicks to make it another Hackers.
Realistically, though, I'd go to a movie with that sort of plot. it would be great - like /. radio, but in full motion picture. heck, it would be the depiction of my summer. :)
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Maybe it's not about crackers, but it is about a GEEK. A mega geek to be exect, one that finds unity in numbers and is able to predict the stock market.. Very cool movie, though.. in the end.. he drills a hole into his head (with a electric drill) and looses his mojo (aka intelligence) sigh..
--
Actually, I remember that 2.0.36 wasn't even RELEASED when I saw Sphere... and I think they used something more along the lines of SunOS or another true UNIX deriative, because I explicitly remember seeing them type 'cat /vmunix' to get the crap scroll past on the screen.
Then there's the fact that they seem to be using csh... most Linux boxes would use bash. I only saw '%', not '$'.
I commented below, but no one will ever read it down there, so... :-)
Did anyone notice the Macintosh GUI that reverted to a C:\ prompt when he shut it down? Sheesh.
There is an excellent indie movie called "PI" that deals with math. Not neccessarily programming or hacking but an example of how a "dry" subject can be dramatic.
What? I can't hear you.
-Max
I have to say that some Follywood movies are sincere, if unaccurate, portrayal of 'puter folks. Now take the fun movie hackers (please no groans). It attempts to portray hackers and computer users as skilled, curious people that can offer society a lot of benefits. Of course they spruced up some aspects of computer usage to make it more interesting for non-computer folks. Come on people, for you or I a command line interface can offer us some cool things to see. But that's because we know what we're looking at. Average Joe and Sally don't. Face it, these movies are not generally targeted at us... it's for the majority of the US and world population who are not computer savy. These flicks are trying to tell them about us in a entertaining way. So they take a few liberties on the subject.
- You can have my Mac when you pry it from my cold dead fingers
When was the last time that you saw them do a good job of sugery? Or heard a really deep Phililosy debate?
They only have two hours, and I don't know many people that can a)Stop the Bad Guy b) disarm the bomb c) have a romantic scene with the random girl that just shows up. in under two hours, yes they can play with time, but this stuff takes work, lots of it, months often as not. No one wants to see some poor schlub going to work every day, they want to see him chew out his boss and just take that five minutes and imagine it's them doing it.
Felix.
I'm sorry you didn't like TRON. It was one of my favorite childhood computer movies. It does a good job of keeping the computers abstracted through most of the "real world" scenes, and the "in-the-computer" portion is truly more a fantasy adventure anyway.
Granted, a full 3-D video game that isn't vector-based in 1982 is beyond unlikely, but still, the movie was pretty reasonable overall. Also, what other movie features someone cracking from an Apple /// ? (You read that right, an Apple ///, as in 3. You get to see it when Flynn is "talking" to CLU.)
BTW, for you TRON fans out there... There's a neat article in The Onion: Our Dumb Century entitled: "Reagan to Meet with Master Control Program". Yes, that Master Control Program. It even mentions Ed Dillinger and ENCOM. (On the previous page, a headline reads "Secret Pac-Man Patterns Fall into Russian Hands." Buy the book, darnit!)
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
This phenomenon is not unique to computers. How many "cop" movies actually portray police work accurately? Or war? The thing that made an Oscar winner of Saving Private Ryan was simply its faithfulness to real war. Hollywood usually doesn't get it right, but only those with technical knowledge specific to the profession that movies are distorting and oversimplifying know the difference.
Having some experience in the military, it is easy for me to spot glaring inaccuracies regarding military tactics, doctrine, etc. in Hollywood movies that might escape other viewers. However, I would have little understanding of just how badly the legal profession is distorted, since I have no experience in that field. So I don't complain about the way Hollywood depicts lawyers because I don't know enough to.
It's not that easy to capture the reality of a profession or lifestyle or philosophy or whatever. At least to do that and sell tickets. If a movie really got to the essence of hacking, would anyone but geeks watch it? And how much money does a wildly inaccurate but non-geek-accessible film make (such as The Net)?
Maybe that would make a great indie film - "Hacking the Hackers". Something only a dyed-in-the-wool, pocket-protecting-nerd would love. But also would something which lets ordinary people into the world of geeks - "Hackspotting".
What I hate about most movies like "The Net" and "Hackers", besides the fact that they are inaccurate, is the way they flaunt their technology.
Take Hackers for example. I first watched it recently on DVD. It is a must see movie, just because it's so funny.. anyway... they flaunt technology to the point where they are throwing out technical words and even making up some of their own. Pointing out the active matrix display and the 28.8kbps modem on the laptops wasn't necessary for hte movie.
A computer oriented movie should be sort of timeless. Don't specify out loud what sort of computer it is, don't say it has a 2400 bps modem that kicks ass over everyone elses 300bps modem.
The computer should be nameless, and the GUI should be generic. Not Windows, not MacOS.
If they're making a movie for geeks, don't do things like in Office Space... we notice things like:
A Gateway computer, that boots to the DOS prompt and runs Filemaker or Dbase or something in MacOS.
Making things more realistic wouldn't hurt at all.
But to be honest, why would I want to go see a computer movie? Hackers and The Net are good for people not in the industry. I want to see a movie like Fight Club or American Beauty! Sex and Violence is what I want.
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
I just read an article (sorry, hardcopy only) on
how the success of The Blair Witch Project is changing
the way Hollywood selects and produces movies.
Since every exec is now on the lookout for the
next low-budget, handycam sensation, I suggest
we create a GNU/Slashdot project and write the
script ourselves!
I can see the headlines now- "...following in the
footsteps of Linux, `The Cracker Project` the
first-ever screenplay to be written by hundreds
of Open Source enthusiasts over the Internet,
has become the breakout hit of 2001..."
Edges are for leadin' not bleedin'
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
PI was great, soundtrack kicked ass, and the way the number was being approached by a lot of people for different reasons really got me, especially
the yahweh stuff.
Listen, this is not a flame, but you are just displayed in your post the exact reason why Hollywood hacker movies have rediculously inaccurate details.
I loved Pi, but the whole "yahweh" thing was just a little too full of it and it hurt my suspension of disbelief. The reason is that the number for Pi was what, 216 or 256 digits long or something, and so was the ancient powerful name of God used by the Hebrew Temple priests in days of yore. However, if you know this sort of thing, that makes no sense, since the ancient hebrew number system assigns numerical value to letters, but not decimally!!! The last letters in the alphabet represent high-ish numbers, so that a number that is 256 decimal digits would be noticeably fewer as represented as an ancient Hebrew word.
So, this might seem like irrelevant trivia to you, just as the GUI running on a hacker's laptop would seem like trivia to a computer-illiterate. But I still would have liked Pi a little better if the religious-nut aspect had been more believable.
Marc
Wargames is the ultimate.
There's one scene where they're just starting the game and they've got cans of soda pop and some munchies and they're both feeling really good, and Ally points at the puter screen and says with a mouth full of whatever, "hey what's that?"
And Matthew issues that classic (which I wish I could quote exactly but I think it's):
"I don't know - BUT IT'S GREAT!"
radsoft.net
Wargames is the ultimate.
There's one scene where they're just starting the game and they've got cans of soda pop and some munchies and they're both feeling really good, and Ally points at the puter screen and says with a mouth full of whatever, "hey what's that?"
And Matthew issues that classic (which I wish I could quote exactly but I think it's):
"I don't know - BUT IT'S GREAT!"
radsoft.net
Jedi Mind Trick - jedimindtrick@mindspring.com
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It would normally be some kind of arty type person designing these movie UIs. I would bet on macromedia Director being the tool rather the relatively more complex Unix+E- -------------
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my blog: good times, man, good times
[Darn! It was looking for a while there like I would actually have a chance at making an original comment.]
Even though you could quibble that the details of "Pi" weren't purely technically accurate, it still suceeded in making programming seem exciting without devolving into stupidity.
I thought "Pi" was an incredible testament to the captivating beauty of mathematics, though I was rather irked by the person leaving the movie theater in front of me, whose response to it was "That's why I'll never take mathematics." Grrr! I didn't hear anyone use "Basquiat" as an excuse for not taking up painting, nor would anyone exit a film about Poe swearing that they'd never take up poetry.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. -- G.K. Chesterton
you know funny thing.. i was thinking about this same thing about a week ago after i watched hackers with some friends. now dont get me wrong i love that movie, its very entertaining... but the hacking is way off base (i want a full 3d unix operating system on a mac! :P). anyway why shouldn't we go and make a movie about hacking that is realistic... holywood is NEVER going to get it right, but independant films dont have the kind of artistic restrictions holywood emposes... seems to me that the technical details don't have to be screwed up to have a good movie..
;).
before i start rambling too much let me get to the point. i started writing a script about a week ago that does just this. its a low budget film about a small group of hackers and their personal lives. its coming together slowly but there is a little bit of law enforcement trouble, but its not really the focus. the film is hopefully going to try and explain why people become hackers/crackers/phreakers. It will be the kind of story that like "War Games" makes kids get curious and go out and start learning some things... not that i encourage trying to break into NASA's webserver
right now all i have is a general story outline, and a few scenes laid out in my head but its coming together. since this posting was up today i thought i'd see what you people think about it and give you a chance to throw some suggestions at me. im deffinatly interested in any hacker/cracker movie ideas and or information you would like to pass along. Thanks!
facelifter@usa.net
//Insert Meaningfull Quote Here
One example of hollywood barely approaching reality:
Look closely when they collect data from that final tornado at the end. They are using x-windows in a realistic scientific environment. Ok, maybe the data animation in the window was a bit much, but the table representation was good. Closest point in the movie to reality, anyway.
DECstations, when in console mode, initially, make little chirping sounds every time a key is pressed.
It's a good incentive to use X. =)
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Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I agree. Hacking is boring. Text consoles are not interesting unless they have 46pt animated fonts being sent realtime over a 1/2 baud modem a la Hackers. A file not being there is just not as interesting as Cookie Monster running across your screen eating windows, and a windowing system that looks more like a game of Quake than anything else is more interesting than text and/or boxes on a screen. If you dont have any idea what "mov ax 6" means, you just arent going to relate to a realistic potrayal of down and ditrty computer usage. Some movies do make a realistic potrayal of it, though. Sneakers was one that I respected for that - sure, it involved a microchip that could do things that I doubt would ever happen, and the guys in the movie got it plugged into their computer and working with a lot less trouble than it would take in real life, but the actual scenes of them hacking were a lot better than the way they were in real life. (I also loved the braille output system they had in it. Too bad that'll not work with most modern OSes any time soon.) And even though it did show hacking as a pile of text on a screen that was very mildly embellished when compared to Tron or The Net, the movie didn't have a hard time getting viewers involved. My mom even got caught up in it, and it took her weeks to figure out cut and pasting. But writing a movie that attracts mass audiences but lacks eye candy is hard, so I am going to say that it's possible, but not probable.
Lain creeps you out because so much of the future they portray is just so plausible. And for me it was more than just a little unsettling when I realized that I was sitting around waiting for the cable truck to arrive and hook me into the Wired... er... hook up my cablemodem. The 'net will become a dominant and integral part of everyday life before long. It already is for a lot of us today!
Go for the third Hackers soundtrack - equally good.
The up and coming move "Neuromancer" based on the William Gibson book of the same name, should give the current standards for Movie GC (geekically correctness) a run for their money. Check it out http://www.neuromancer.org/
Did the profession justice.
;-)
FYI: The ants in Pi represented chaos, ie: chaos tookover the machine :P.
There is hope, my friend.
Office Space is quite a good office movie. It even has a few geeks in it. While the focus of the movie is not completely on us, programmers and the like, the main actors are software engineers. I highly recommend it.
Note: This movie was written by Mike Judge. He is n't exactly a mainstream hollywood type. But there still is hope.
Seems to me that if computer oriented movies were more popular there would be a lot more clueless goons trying to break into the field. It's firghtening how many people have been in my programming classes that are only there for the money and truly have no idea how a computer works.
Well..think about it...
;) is not too enticing. So let's make a Shadowrun movie. Hell! Setup some Beowulf clusters to get the graphics going. Take the Average Joe into a black world where poeple live in the cracks between large corps. It could definately catch the action movie crowd. The computing-by-datajack is conceivable to many. Take a comp-skilled Shadowrunner , and givie him a deal gone bad w/ a corp. Think of it....putting the word out..roudin up a posse..
Dark, tech-noir movies are cool . I agree. Sitting in front of a pile of code, without the help of a neat screensaver
Damn....someone make this movie, please
Comments?
BTW--Pi == badass film.
-errittus
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
And it never was. In fact, Hollywood doesn't get anybody's profession right. They have certain favorites they do over an over, but really they're more about reinforcing our expectations of a genre than portraying real life. Doctors? Pick your stereotype, tired and edgy or preening and egotistical? Where are the golf addicts? Sorry -- not enough drama. Lawyers? Nothing like the ones I know. Policemen? No, buddy cop movies are not real life. Engineers? What engineers? I can't think of any movie (outside of star trek) that even features engineers. But architects! They're a dime a dozen.
... and to be honest, it's probably a good thing that Hollywood generally ignores computer geeks. Why? Because in all likelihood the alternative would be more of those "Evil hacker" stereotypes.
The fact that Hollywood does a clueless job at portraying geek culture is nothing special. They do a terrible job of portraying any sort of reality at all. After all, they sell escapism. What geeks do is harder to explain not very visible. It's harder to show than what doctors, lawyers and policemen do
While channel surfing one afternoon, I ran across an amusing little movie that was running on the Disney Channel, Just Like Dad. It was targeted as a family movie, and was a little thin on plot, but, amazingly enough, it had a hacking scene rang true.
It had Wallace Shawn (Vizzini in The Princess Bride) as a wimpy father whose son is embarrassed by him--the son gets a ringer to pretend to be his dad for the father-son picnic. It turns out the ringer is ex-Mafia, and they think the kid really is his son and they kidnap him.
The climax (if you can call it that) is where the wimpy father and the ringer team up to rescue the boy, and the father breaks into the Mafia-dudes' Novell NetWare system, loads some NLMs, and then uses ProComm (I think) to download a data file to his home computer (as security so they'll leave them alone or something).
It was quite refreshing to see something quite realistic, executed in a reasonably dramatic fashion.
My guess is quite simply that: No...Hollywood is not going to do any clear reasonable movie heavily involving computers in which the computers do not issue sounds with every character displayed to the screen or terminals that when hacked into display incredible graphics. As was mention, quite simply, they are just not that interesting to visually watch. However, I would say that in the coming years, we'll probably see more and more documentaries well detailing good computer related innovations, events, and similar. That's what documentaries are always so much better at than movies!: a) telling the truth b) making seemingly boring topics seem very interesting (nature shows, woohoo!)
personally, i think the general problem of misportrayl of geekdom in movies, while worse than most misportrayls, is part of a general underlying problem in hollywood moviemaking
;P) and i thought that was just absolutely PERFECT...it redeemed the entire movie for me...until she gets up and starts playing with a bird and the camera pans around to shoot her standing directly in front of the statue in the same damn pose as the statue. i very nearly threw up at that point. i don't understand hollywood's fascination with taking excellent moviemaking (that last scene up until the bit with the bird) and completely removing all the subtle emotive hints that make movies great and replacing it all with some moronic overblown in-your-face explanation of things that immediately sucks any and all life out of the movie.
;)
the problem, simply, is that they do not have a clue how to make a decent movie.
don't misread that. their technical knowledge is unparalelled and their ability to shoot and edit "correctly" is better than people generally can understand. my argument is with the general "feel" behind the movies they make. much like the train wreck that the latest star wars installment turned out to be, 99% of hollywood's movies are overly formulaic (sp?), dumbed-down (think jar-jar), and generally devoid of any kind of creative, emotional, or intellectual content.
a good example of this idiocy is the recent release "Stigmata". before i begin to lace into it, i'd like to state that i LOVED the idea behind the movie and i tend to enjoy the work of both patricia arquette and gabriel byrne. that having been said...there is a generic trick put into all horror movies that's fairly obligatory. you take the score, the dialogue, and all the incidental sound and slowly turn it down lower until there's barely any sound at all...and when the audience's ears have become used to the low volume make a REAL LOUD NOISE and everyone goes ACK! while this practice is, like i said, fairly obligatory...i do belive every horror movie should have at least one of these...stigmata had three of 'em and it got a little tired after the first one. a movie that had this much potential ingrained in the story and plot shouldn't have to resort to standard sophomoric moviemaking tricks to get a response from its audience.
another example, from the same movie, is the way they put together the references to st. francis. i believe he was first mentioned in the movie during the conversation in the church between gabriel byrne and the priest who had been excommunicated (i forget the character's name) then, at the end...when byrne brings patricia arquette out of the house wrapped in the blanket, they pass by a statue of st. francis which sits unobtrusively in the background (the statue of the guy with the birds, as st. francis is usually portrayed...we had a statue of him in front of the chapel of the college i went to
this is the same general problem that geeks have, only we're the only ones who know about it because nobody else picks up on it. how many of you who saw the movie knew that the statue was st. francis? it's the same general deal with geek stuff. what percentage of the population would know a unix shell prompt from a mac gui? while this annoys me...i would rather see hackers working on old unix or vax boxen (with real damn unix or vax interfaces, none of this gui crap) it probably won't happen anytime soon. what i'm really sick over is the rest of the problem...the utter lack of imagination, talent, and creativity in the moviemaking industry.
don't take this to be a complete generalization...there are quite a few movies that are absolutely perfect, but, for me, they are generally few and far between....most of the other stuff i can put up with as long as it doesn't really attempt to be creative, i can live with it being a stale rehash of some formula. movies like "12 angry men" which takes place entirely in the jury deliberation room during a trial, or any/all movies made by stanley kubrik or alfred hichcock who both knew exactly what to do, and more importantly, what NOT to do in a movie...these movies, in their perfection, are able to get their metaphors and subject matter across to the audience without beating them over the head with it, a practice which seems to be the recourse of every halfwitted hollywood director/producer/writer/marketing agent active in the movie industry today.
any spelling errors in the above are also the fault of the moviemaking industry, i swear...
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
I guess not enough /. readers grew up around blacks or something. Cracker is an old racial slur used by southern blacks to describe whites. I am surprised more of you don't understand this. Perhaps the reason hackers call themselves hackers is that unlike the morons out there who insist that they are the "real hackers," they are inteligent enough not to try to pull up and old racial slur and use it to describe themselves.
The people in Hollywood understand this as well, and they would never be able to get away with tossing the term "cracker" around in movies to describe their stereotypical white geet hackers, especially not to describe a small community or moronic old school computer geeks are mad that some of their ranks with less integrity use their skills for illegal activities with the same name. The deal is, nobody cares about the geeks that call themselves hackers and don't fit the popular idea of the term. Most of us are happy to just be geeks, and don't call ourselves hackers! What the hell do you even need the term for? Do you go to job interviews and call yourself a hacker, and then explain to the interviewer your warped truth that "hackers" are really "crackers"? Do you introduce yourself to friends and relatives as a hacker? Are you planning to sit around on Thanksgiving and tell gramma about all the hacking you do at work?
get a life you twits. just as other words change, hacker changed, and it will NEVER, EVER, go to cracker. you might be able to get popular websites or the SuSE manual to use the term, but the media will not do it, and you don't need the term hacker anyway, you need the term the hackers already use for you- lamers.
I have to post AC because I am at work.
supabeast!@-work
tghost13_NOSPAM_@earthlink.net
We look to movies to provide us with inspiration and hope. Our lives are played out on the screen not realistically but fantastically. No one want's to see who we actually are. People want to see who we want to be. If hollywood can find a story that presents coding a 30 million line project in a way that focuses not on the for(int i=0;iMAX;i++) but rather on the 50 people working in unison on a leading edge project who all have their own lives. Some with families others with pet goldfish but all with emotion, goals and aspirations the public would pick it up. While this would be executing if they brought on people who know what they are doing and would be able to get the actors to give the right lines. People in the programming industry would have something to look up to. People like the Matrix not because it's futuristic and has an ok story line and God knows it's not because of Keanu Reeves. People like it because it presents a lot of things that at least guys wish they could do: Superhuman strength Superhuman learning Ability to bend reality All very cool things. So if this programming story could walk the line of being accurate and giving a standard to others the public would probably enjoy it.
We look to movies to provide us with inspiration and hope. Our lives are played out on the screen not realistically but fantastically. No one want's to see who we actually are. People want to see who we want to be. If hollywood can find a story that presents coding a 30 million line project in a way that focuses not on the for(int i=0;i!=MAX;i++) but rather on the 50 people working in unison on a leading edge project who all have their own lives. Some with families others with pet goldfish but all with emotion, goals and aspirations the public would pick it up. While this would be executing if they brought on people who know what they are doing and would be able to get the actors to give the right lines. People in the programming industry would have something to look up to. People like the Matrix not because it's futuristic and has an ok story line and God knows it's not because of Keanu Reeves. People like it because it presents a lot of things that at least guys wish they could do: Superhuman strength Superhuman learning Ability to bend reality All very cool things. So if this programming story could walk the line of being accurate and giving a standard to others the public would probably enjoy it.
Don't ask Hollywood for computer related movies.
"23 - Nichts ist so wie es scheint" is a great
german movie with real people and real computers.
http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0126765
A few months ago in Wired reported that "Neuromancer" was being made into a feature length film:
I presume that Gibson would have heavy influence on the project, including technical and artistic input in the truest sense. Now I know Neuromancer is visionary and it can be technologically off-the-wall at some points - but at least Gibson touches base with reality.
Oh hey, totally tangential but Gibson is also in Wired 7.10, the digital video issue. Interesting... he's got a PowerMa c in a 5x00-style case sitting on his desk! (Doh! That's write - he's one of those damned artsy-litsy people, not a Linux hacker. Seriosuly though if I'm not mistaken, in the article he mentions that he's trying to learn Linux... not sure - the full text isn't on the Wired site yet and I'm too damned lazy to reread the article.)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Technology is GUI'fied and simplified not because the application of technology is inherently boring -- it's because the implementation is.
How often do we gripe as a 3D "File transferring....." status meter slowly creeps across the screen? But imagine what effect this would have on audiences if the file transferred at a more instantaneous rate. Blink and you miss the plot. Not to mention the loss of "perfectly-timed" suspense...
Along similar lines are giant fonts, telnet sessions that appear to run at 1200 baud, and viruses more complex than MS Office. The underlying applications are the same, but they're embellished to make them noticable by the audience.
I'm actually surprised how often filmmakers include technology in key aspects of their plot. IP numbers and whois (though both incorrectly) were mentioned in "The Net", which largely preceded Internet hype in media/commerce. Remember the writable optical discs used in Mission Impossible? These guys really love showing off applications, to the point where they can almost be considered visionaries. Yeah, they miss the details, but the applications generally remain realistic.
What we all need to remember is that we are talking about entertainment, and not education. You can nit-pick a movie to death on technical details -- or you can just sit back and enjoy the movie for what it's worth.
In all fairness, they were studying that ship in the bunker for forty years or so. They did mention that the ship didn't have power so the gadgets didn't work, but I interpreted that as meaning drive systems, artificial gravity, force field etc. In other words, things using exotic energies transmitted from the mothership. It seems plausible that the computers might use less exotic principles to operate. So the scientists may have had years to learn all about the alien computing platform. That leaves the question of why it was so easy to create a virus that shut down the entire mothership computer system. After all, whatever security holes it exploited was learned from an old example of the technology, so we're talking about a forty year old security hole that hasn't been patched. This is not neccessarily impossible. We don't know very much about the aliens, but what we do know suggests that their technology hasn't changed significantly since the time the Roswell ship crashed. All of the alien fighter ships seem to be identical to that ship, although it is possible that the similarities are only cosmetic. Anyway, the terrible security model of the alien computer systems (if they even have a security model) may be due to some aspect of their society. Perhaps all members of the society are completely law abiding, and not a single one of the aliens would ever try to breach the security of the mothership, making security a moot point. Given the telepathic abilities of the aliens, it seems possible that they could have an operating fascist government with no dissidents. Perhaps they normally only pick planets that are too technologically underdeveloped to use their own tech against them. Maybe our planet was just pushing the limit. That still doesn't explain why they needed to use the powerbook to transmit the virus. If they did understand the ships computer system, why didn't they just use it to transmit the virus? Well, sure, the reason is that Apple paid them money to feature powerbooks, but what's the reason that fits into the story? There are lots of other problems with the story of course. What did the aliens want with earth in the first place, for example? Sure, strip the natural resources like locusts, blah, blah, blah. What kind of natural resources? Obviously energy wasn't a concern for these aliens. If it were a concern, they wouldn't be dropping their huge ships down to the surface of the planet. Maybe the aliens had some sort of technology that allowed them to capture the energy released when the ships dropped out of orbit and re-use it to propel it into orbit later; sort of a delayed bounce. There would still be huge energy losses from air friction. Come to think of it, the blast doors around the central death ray probably took more energy to open than it would take to destroy a city. Why couldn't the aliens have just destroyed things from orbit? They could have just dropped bombs. Human beings are certainly capable of building bombs that will destroy a city while remaining quite small (relative to a spaceship bigger than all the cities of humankind rolled into one, anyway). If the aliens don't need energy or fuel or whatever, then what other resources do they need? Mineral resources to make more ships and repair those they have? Why not just mine from asteroids or from non-populated planets? It would save a lot of trouble. Or, did they want biological resources? They certainly didn't want human beings for anything. Were they going to use earth to grow crops? But, in that case, either earth can grow enough food to feed their whole population indefinitely, or it can't. There wouldn't be any middle ground. Either it was worth their while to come all that distance or it wasn't. In other words, these obviously were not very bright aliens. Obviously it was humankind's manifest destiny to defeat them.
oh look, I got moderated down for not agreeing with the status quo /. opinions. what a surprise. i hope they don't get paid much.
I remember "Prime Risk" as seeming pretty realistic. It involved a plot to screw with the prime rate by breaking into the com links. It was discovered and foiled by a cracker who was using a spectrum analyzer to break into ATM accounts.
I believe this movie is the best artistic representation of hacking I've ever seen. I've never seen any movie so real when it comes to hacking the gibson. I've hacked the gibson many times, simply by taking detailed sketchings of the psychadelic artwork on the monitors of the elite hackers computers. Does anyone know where I can get that totally k-wow virus with pacman eating up the files on the gibson?
Who was in both Short Circuit 1 and 2 who was also Middle Eastern? Certainly there was a character in both movies who was from somewhere in _India_ (although, didn't he say something about being from New Jersey or somthing), but that's not the Middle East by most people's definition. That's usually considered to be the Far East. I'm not really sure why Americans refer to them that way though. I mean surely, from the point of view of the US, those regions are to the West aren't they? Oh well, whatever.
I thought Pi was a good geek movie overall, but one notible gripe.
He really must have been schizophrenic not to realize his computer crashed because he stumbled across some kind of identity within his program that caused a divide by zero error. That part of the movie was like a roller coaster.
"No don't cry your on to something, the compter crashed for a reason..."
"No, don't do that, don't crumple up the paper, NO DON"T THROW IT OUT!!!!! YOU STUPID IDIOT!!"
Yes I do often talk to myself. No the doctors can't help me.
Did anyone else notice he looks a little like Linus Torvalds? Maybe it was intentional? It was made in 94'
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm just curious why in all of those movies the text on the screen is always at least an inch high? Who even cares that it only takes 3 clicks to break into the governments most heavily secured systems?
Just a suggestion; all these savvy minds out here, surely 10 or so of them could, say, get together and get a loan to produce a movie that could portray the culture better than it has, and still be dramatic somehow (picture japanese animation cut-to's of abstract or unrelated images intended to evoke a response in similarity to the actual event at hand). Surely some of you out there have good credit and some good film school buddies... not to mention a decent plot. Hit the independent/alternative film festivals and you're almost guaranteed a hit these days. Lorenzo
From someone who hacks code all day at work and comes home and hacks most of the night, I have this to say...
die "Eye strain imminent! Headache impending" unless !defined($monitorGlare);
--- -vex
-bay
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. -- J.R.R. Tolkien
-bay
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. -- J.R.R. Tolkien
On a somewhat related note, you could always write a screenplay.. or ongoing hacker saga and film it yourself.. utilize video and audio input to your computer and wallah... a true to your perspective hacker flick that might just be interesting. Maybe Hemos and CmdrTaco would be interested in being casted?
peace,
-bay
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. -- J.R.R. Tolkien
The only movie that I think is near from his epoch's reality is WarGames, it's quite good and it shows a very nice position of hacking/cracking.
May the source be with you!
They actually had the intelligence in that movie to realize that truly secure computers at intelligence agencies are not connected to the internet and have to be physically accessed (Ok, if they hadn't wanted to have a scene where the main character plays spiderman...) Then they go and make it completely stupid by making the physical 'security' systems laughable. For one thing, what's the deal with this laser grid inside the air vent? The duct was crawling with rats! They would have been setting off the alarm every hour. And how about the temperature gauging system in the room? If the temperature changes too much the alarm goes off? Oh yeah, like that's reliable. There is a computer running in this room after all. And they can spring for all this neat stuff but they can't spring for a simple detector, like the ones in every single school room in the country, that will tell them if someone is moving around in the room? Bah!
-bay
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. -- J.R.R. Tolkien
I've been using Jurrassix for years; it's great once you get the hang of it. For a while I found flying around between my file systems a bit tricky, and I had to completely restore my system about a year back after I hit /root at full tilt. But now it's second nature. The process scheduling algorithm works much better now that it can fly around all the processes on my system and bring 'em on in to the coral, and since I got the codes for unlimited ammo in my grenade launcher, we've had no more virus problems.
You've got to compare that to those old character based OSes. Remember how they used to display about 3 cps, beeping for each character? Then suddenly you'd get hex code scrolling up at lightning speed when the system was about to crash, you'd dive for cover, and *BANG*, the monitor would explode, the keyboard would explode, damn, I've still got scars from that. sed, awk, they were good, but they're just not worth the medical bills.
Anyway, I hope hollywood can catch up to the real world. Maybe whirling fractals, virtual monsters, zombies, self evolving viruses and mesmerism enabled super AIs don't provide the colour and movement that the average Joe is looking for, but please, the odd VR suit, or maybe telepathic workstations... a little reality is virtually too much to ask it seems.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS/IT/MU/O d- s: a? C++++$ UC/UL L-- E- W++ N++ w++(+) M- PS+++ PE- Y P
When you think that computers are displayed in a bad light, think about everything else that is wrong in movies. Let me explain: I could not even begin to rigorously prove the theory of special relativity, or even understand the language needed to explain it. Given this, I would much rather see a movie where some scientist dude spouts off something like: "the antimatter creates a temporal distortion beginning a slipstream ... and that's how we travel faster than light" (ok it is very good thing I don't write movies) instead of a 70 minute explanation of the math and the proof of how travel at the speed of light isn't possible. That just wouldn't be entertaining... even for me. So my whole point here is: Complex topics like physics and computers can't be explained to the masses... they simply don't care. They want to imagine that something cool could happen. Let them have their dream and be entertained.
>I don't have a phone phreak bone in my body, so I have no idea how silly that stuff was, but I enjoyed it all.
The problem is that the more your know a subject, the more films about the subject will appear dumb and silly.
Take films like "Enemy of the state", they probably make NSA guys laugh and every cop in NY knows that the stunts in "die hard 3" are completely impossible...
Well, whatever. The fact is that you don't need to be technicaly accurate to make a great movie.
StarWars : you can HEAR the SOUND of explosions in SPACE ?
The Matrix : you really think that they can see what's going on in the matrix just by looking their fancy screensaver with the letters falling down ?
>I don't have a phone phreak bone in my body, so I have no idea how silly that stuff was, but I enjoyed it all.
The problem is that the more your know a subject, the more films about the subject will appear dumb and silly.
Take films like "Enemy of the state", they probably make NSA guys laugh and every cop in NY knows that the stunts in "die hard 3" are completely impossible...
Well, whatever. The fact is that you don't need to be technicaly accurate to make a great movie.
StarWars : you can HEAR the SOUND of explosions in SPACE ?
The Matrix : you really think that they can see what's going on in the matrix just by looking their fancy screensaver with the letters falling down ?
forgot my AC postings are auto 0's... so used to posting from the house...
Of course, then he goes on to type at 500 words a second for about a minute and he's created this CAD file describing how to make transparant aluminum. He'd never even used the software before, but he still managed to do it. Why did they need plexiglass anyway? Why didn't they just use metal, like say non-transparant aluminum? They didn't have any particularly good reason to be able to see the whales, after all.
The mumbling is a gimmic and you'll find that it's not exclusive to explainning whats going on in the computer. How often do people in real life mumble what they are thinking like they do in movies? It's something writers have to do to avoid losing the audence or go into elabrate and boring explenations.
The other stupid things that happen in story plots are just the writers ignorence. This dosn't mean that a more tech savy writer can't make a good script just that there are more of "them" than there are of "us". If you have 100 scripts on viruses and only 1 by someone who accually knows what a virus is then you have a 100 in 1 chance of getting a movie with a clue.
Even if you DO get a good movie script then you have to worry about the producer who has pritty much spent most of his life in entertainment. Unless you can teach him what he needs to know in order to not blow the realism of the movie he will.
Then theres the specal effects people. As specal effects get computerised at least they will seem more and more realistic and have less computers blowing up and blowing smoke and flashing red lights when theres a software problem.
Basicly even if you get the script right there are so many computer illetrate people pawing over it that it'll come out dorky anyway.
Or you could write it with as many stupid refrences as posable describe viruses as life forms and get away with it....
I don't actually exist.
I think the 'Virus' was supposed to be based on a mathematical problem with infinite possible solutions that the alien ship's computer would be compelled to solve. Such a virus could simply be transmitted in the 'language of mathematics.' (A similar idea was used in 'Contact')
And OK there was the laughing skull that appeared on the alien consoles but, hey, thats hollywood.
I'm currently typing in a room with all the lights off, using only my monitor and assorted power lights for light. The reason? Easier on the eyes.
During the day, I keep the curtains closed and wish they were heavier to block out more light. The window is positioned behind me and I get a constant reflection off of my monitor, making it difficult to spot snipers hiding in dark areas of half-life maps.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Oh yeah, and the one scene in which a computer is prominently featured comes off like a really bad ad for J. Random Online Service. And any sympathy you may have for the main character (if you're able to get past her simultaneously flat and saccharine dub voice) evaporates when you realize, jeez, she can't even use a MAC. =)
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Whosoever moderated this is a fucking idiot.
I think the point was that Clerks does a wonderful job in portraying a proffession w/o dramatizing it or down-grading it...
e ...
But then again, Clerks is _WAY_ off your main-stream-hollywood-200$-down-the-washer-pictur
Although its a truly inspiring film, Clerks wasn't seen by many people and didnt even reach most theaters... too bad...
To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. ---Euripides
Show don't tell. I think it would be possible to create an accurate portrait of breaking into a system by focusing on the character and their excitement or whatever. If it's important to the character and the audience cares about the character they'll think it's important too. Whether they understand it or not. Without all the blinking monitors and bogus graphics.
Although I gotta admit, I have a dream of somehow getting a scene in a movie with a close up of some really cool looking Gnome or KDE desktop that will cause all the Windows users to wonder what it was and then having the actor go on Jay Leno and saying it was a linux desktop and it was downloaded from themes.org and it's only available for linux.
But I digress
Not that I wouldn't mind a flying 3d file manager, really. But I think I'll pass on the animated Dennis Nedry "You didn't say the magic word" error message.
Another movie comes to mind -- X (fvwm, specifically, I think) was on most of the computers in Patriot Games ... mediocre movie but rather accurate computer-ing.
I'm not sure what the problem is. Is it Hoolywood thinkin the genreal public is stupid, or are we stupid. (Judging by TV commercials, if it sell then we the people are stupid) The case is, every new movie is fast paced and action packed from beginning to end. (Unless if it's an European, then it's exactly the opposite. (Yeah I know I'm generalicing (It's just to make a point ok?))) And the point is, this fast pace kills of realism, kills of supsense and exitemenet. For example The Mumie. It could've been made scary if it was made longer and more care was shown to the story. Now it was just cool with cool effects. Trying to keep this short, I will end by suggesting you go watch some old classics. Like the 2 hour 40 min the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Or maybe 'The shinig' or 'The Omen'. Or to keep with the original subject' War Games'. The point is (again) I like to reflect a bit when watching movies, not just sit AAAaaahhhh on every one. Damned, I could write so much about why european movies are boring too... Has something to do with me already living an everyday life....
What makes you think they can do anything right. I bet firefighters say the same thing about Backdraft. You should be glad the get computers and keyboards involved, think about what the average cop movie that you all love looks like to real cops.
okay perhaps they are overreacting and they do emphasize on the *evil* side of the force, but if you believe that this story is (and will be) impossible to happen, then you are kidding yourselves. Have fun.
And at the end-scene of the Lawnmower Man Jobe tries to break the code...
Of course nothing of this looks like real hacking, but then again I don't think Hollywood (or better say the majority of movie-watchers) are interested in endless lines of coding and attempts to break anything?
That's why there's only one movie left: 23. It's the story of Robert Koch (who is also known as Hagbard), the german guy that Cliff Stoll tried to catch in Cuckoo's Egg. The story drifts from hacking/cracking to the Illuminatus-stuff (conspiracy theory), but still pays a lot of attention to the ways of hacking/cracking. It's a german movie so I don't know if it's already been translated or will ever be. It won some quite impressive prizes here (for best actor and so on).
There was a German film last year called 23, which despite a few technical inaccuracies gave a compelling portrayal of a notorious group of crackers in Hannover in the late 1980's. The story centers on the life and death of Karl Koch, who together with a few friends broke into some US military and intelligence computers and sold what they found to the KGB. Koch (played outstandingly by August Diehl) fell into a spiral of drug abuse and paranoia -- he was convinced that the Illuminati were controlling him (hence the title "23") and saw conspiracies all around. His obsessions eventually destroyed him.
Slashdotters might object that this sort of thing feeds irrational fears about the bad guys with modems. But the film made the point that the media wildly exaggerates this stuff -- the info leaked to the KGB was almost completely harmless, and yet was portrayed as huge data hijack. Also, some of Koch's friends served as technical advisers and evidently helped it get a fairly accurate "feel" of what they were doing.
I think most of you would like it a lot. But alas, the movie business being what it is, there will probably never be a version in English or any other langugae about a paranoid, drug-addicted suicidal hacker.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
There was a Harrison Ford movie I ran across on television a few years back while eating dinner that seemed to have a damn good representation of computer drama in it. I believe it was "Patriot Games"?? I'm not sure as I am no movie expert and it was a while back. Either way i remember thinking it was very cool because it wasn't like other movies, but actually correctly represented computers. I recall a scene where harrison ford is trying to figure something out and he gets into the network using DOS. There he is looking at the files(yes actually typing dir and whatnot) and is getting a listing of a number of .doc files. He is scanning through them quickly to see if he can find anything. All this time he is nervous because he isn't supposed to be in there, and at the same time the guy he suspects of the crime is in the room across the hallway from him or something. Either way he is scanning through these doc files. Then i think the other guy(across hallway) noticed another user logged on and saw who it was, so he got scared and started deleting his files. Now it was like a race. Harrison noticed this and was just at the .doc file with the evidence(whatever it was). Now harrison is frantically trying to download the file, but it is already deleted!! The text of the already deleted file is still on his screen though and harrison is hitting the print screen key like a maniac. Haha, the funny part is that his printer was out of paper so he is shoving paper into the printer frantically. Finally he gets the printout goes over to the other room and slams the document on the guy's desk as he makes some sort of accusation.
I remember thinking that it was very cool because of it's accurate representation of computers/networks/etc. I didn't watch the rest of it for some reason so i don't know if it is consistant(or if there even is another computer scene).
...that's displayed a couple of times somewhere half way through. One of the bytes is three hundred something... :-)
I watched the movie 'Hackers' last night on DVD (I actually bought it!) and while the story itself isn't too shabby, the hacking is. Here is a guy, in a dark room, wearing sunglasses at 3am in the morning hacking on a computer. The screen shows strange animations and the guy is typing away like there was no tomorrow. And it goes on like that through the entire movie. I mean, what is he typing? He can't know so he must be quite a good typist... another good example is the ugly smelly russian hacker in the James Bond flick 'Golden Eye'. He ONLY used IBM PC's through the entire movie and a couple of them ran OS/2...
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
TBS Superstation made a movie called "Fatal
Error". Talk about really bad movies. The
plot is a computer virus that has mutated to
a carbon-based virus and is killing people.
It's on this week I think. Check it out for a
few laughs.
In Copycat they had an SGI I still dream about.
Chen.
Ballerinas have fins that you'll never find
I just saw Wierd Al's video yesterday and it was hilarious. Parady of some rap tune but all the lyrics were about computers. Cameo by Bill Gates. Shows that it is not just Holywood portraying geeks but now even the music industry.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Drop the "I want a x86 with xxx megs of ram" , because its gonna be old lame before the movie gets out.
john
.se
I saw this the other day and I'm certain I saw
definite signs of FreeBSD. Also the quick
hacking of a decryption for the code there were
trying to decyper was done extremely realistically
in perl! This is the only film I've ever seen
where quick hacks and typing were done with shell
expansion and quick perl hacks. The % prompts and
X window system screenshots make this argue
against, all the other comments in this thread.
It can be done and has been in a main stream film.
It would be a fun job to act as technical consultant to a production using computers in the narative.
Personally I would make sure that my advice was very bad - specifically to annoy CompSci students.
I'd have voice operated Apple II's hacking into peoples brains, ZX81s that play full motion video & Commodore Pets indexing police databases. With extra bleeps, & zooms too.
BTW My favourite computer use in the movies, was Robocop displaying 'command.com' in his visor screen.
Stuff computing, we accountants have been harshly treated by hollywood media moguls for ages, give us a break, we're interesting!! honest.
(Making a profession look interesting is very difficult to do.)
I've been hacking. Cracking. Phreaking - you name it. I'm quite positive that it's possible to portray the culture in a movie that even non-nerds will appreciate. (This was some time back though, I think you could do a lot more cool things then)
Wargames is *great* - as someone already wrote, it used a wardialer. Another cool thing was that flick about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates - they had a truckload of blueboxes. That's cool. (I still have a working box in a drawer sometwhere - and yes, it was used to place real calls ;) Now - a bluebox is something you can explain and use in a movie.
In Sweden, you could place free calls from the public payphones using a neat trick with special numbers on the keypad and then a DTMF dialer - even my parents understood what that one did! Definitely something for a movie.
What else ... calling cards? Although they're not that known in Europe, I would assume in the US everyone knows what happens when that AT&T fellow calls and asks for your "last four digits. We need to trace who's been using your phone, and to validate the trace we need those from you. I'm just a technician, I haven't got that information here. Please Sir, this is important or you might be billed for calls you haven't placed".
Hacking into mainframes ... *thinking* ... ok, the real behind-the-scenes stuff isn't worth trying to explain. Show a wardialer finding interesting numbers. Explaing how it's possible to find out PBX codes (or even brute force them if the system is stupid enough). Explain that the 3 most used passwords are [insert info here since I don't have recent info at hand] and try those. The boss almost always use one of those .. *grin* ;) and then do whatever cool thing supposed to be done.
Display a website with "10 latest hacks for mainframe system X" - download the file - run the file - display a big fat ADMINISTRATOR prompt (no graphics!
Ah. I almost felt like being back in the 80's while writing this
Umm. I want more movies like Wargames .. I still like that one. Especially overloading the neural network (I guess) with tic-tac-toe until the back-propagation algorithm (maybe) reaches a state where no new knowledge is gained .. etc .. or something.
(And for the ones who hate people playing around like I did when I was young: I learned things then that I use in my day time job today, things that people benefit from etc etc etc - I think you know the drill. All things have a bad and a good side to them, really.)
it's in my head
Abou the only movie I've seen that was a good representation of hacking, was Sneakers, with Robert Redford. The very beginning, set in the sixties, with an old (I think) Kaypro was priceless. The fact that computers are boring to the general public, has to be made up for by the rest of the film. You can't have the computers being the centerpiece of the movie, without getting unrealistic and cheesey. Someone had mentioned that Wargames was pretty good. I disagree, the scenes with Daviv at his terminal were good, (the Altar and the 8 in disks were a trip down memory lane) but the learning-capable WOPR? Gimmie a break. I know Hackers will come up. While Hackers is a good movie to show the hacker culture, the technical aspect of it was pure bunk. Do you actually see a graphical representation (with fancy-shmancy graphics) when you look at code? Also show me a server room that was more for looks (big plexy towers, large unusable keyboards made into desks) that a real Network manager would use. Now the nerve center in Jurassic Park was about right. Stations everywhere, boxes (3 or 4) on desks, and the (hollywood needed) hackers station which is close rival to an EPA superfund site of pizza, jolt, coffee and/or twinkies. But alas, someone thought the graphic displays could use some jazzing up, and so ruined. In short, if they made a movie, that realistically represented computers, with would never make money, since the viewing sheep, er, I mean population are so obsessed with Armageddon/Phantom Menace fx in films.
I am. A Digital Monk.
The film "Hackers" is good for one reason, it made me laugh so much. If you need a good chuckle, this is the film for you. In contrast I liked "Sneakers" for some of the more simple things they did. For example, they want someones password, instead of trying to hack the box, they simply attempt to film the person typing it in. Of course the film is still unrealistic, but at least we didnt have to much 3d graphics and "wow thats elite" kinda shit in the movie. Right im off to use a very boring HP X Terminal, though im hoping to upgrade to "Elite Hacker VT3000 LSD Lightshow Term" in the near future. Brad "Im just a cook"
Discovery Channel can hardly be called accurate. They have shows which portray outrageous claims like UFOs, paranormal activity, etc. as completly believeable and true. If you want accuracy, research the subject yourself.
Hi,
I would have to agree that the depection of computers, the people who use them, and what they (the computer and the people ) can do with them is not realistic, but is is supposed to be realistic or entertainment for a non-technical audience?
The film "Hackers" had one thing right, for me anyway, in the depection the "Time Dialation" effect that happens when you are in "The Zone".
How many people have lost several hours of time while coding or some other computing related activity? Personally I have lost whole days that way!
Perhaps the opertunity exists for a good accurate documentary with real participants involved with the whole hacking, cracking, virus writing and other "darkside" of computing and the Internet?
Regards
Zed
--
I have seen the film "the Net" and Hackers and nearly all the other "apparently computer related films". It does sadden me to see how they tackle a subject which they clearly dont understand.
But do they want to understand?
Movies are a big business and would a producer/director want to show a true portrayl of a hacker ? will we ever get a film where they use the term cracker instead?
It is my opinion that people *do* know the difference yet they choose to ignore it because it doesnt make a good film.. They replace the facts with added fiction to attract people.. It's undoubtedly the film industry that spawns a 1000 or so kids who think that they can be hackers overnight.
I mean in all fairness most people who dont work with or use computers only know of hackers through the media and film, they have no other sources to correct their misconceptions.
Why would they want to know the truth when they are faced with excitement and intrigue in over glossed hollywood films made by people who dont know about hacking and acted by stars whose only contact with the computing industry is the fact that their agent uses a computer?
Yes! it would be nice to have an accurate film about hacking/hackers but unfortunately people heads are so filled with the idea of how "hollywood" portrays it that they may prefer to keep that preconceived idea than be faced with the more factual less exciting truth.
Its regrettably a fact that people want ficMion over fact.. maybe the film industy have made people think like this by offerning them bigger thrills and more excitemnt..
Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy!
Just another example of how cones are evil.
Did you mean 'hacker' or 'cracker'?
Do you know the diffrence? I don't think you do.
I'm sure everyone else who has seen the movie 'Office Space' noticed that the main characters PC displayed a Macintosh UI yet understood DOS filenames that used a forward slash instead of a back slash.
And also, later on in the movie the PC had a Windows App in one Window and Mac App in another. I do believe there were other instances of multiple different UI's displayed on the one screen as well.
I think this type of computer would be very handy though. Being able to run completely different OS's at the same time with no restrictions (ala VMWare) would be great.
Another Hollywood fubar on computers was a 'geek' T-Shirt in the Simpsons which read:
C:/DOS
C:/DOS/RUN
RUN/DOS/RUN
or something similar. They could have at least put the slashes in correctly. This is actually quite a common error on TV. I can clearly remember an instance of it in The Pretender as well.
Later
-- Oliver Jones - Deeper Design Limited
I always call 'em a MOS... Movie Operating System. Give up hope that it ever changes. :)
Why bother with a virus, Upload a beta copy of windows 2000 to the mothership !!!. Seriously, most desktop applications are composed of competing threads. This (at least in my experience) overwrites memory they don't own, and crashes the application. Duh, "I thought my processors disallows writing to protected memory". Microprocessors don't protect memory !!!, so why call it protected mode, if it does'nt protect anything. Alrighty then, I better stop tapping at Intel, we all know they've got security inside. Hold the phone, I got it Redmond, we know you were beta testing Winblows 1MILLION on those poor defenseless aliens. Seriously, I agree the alien genre is a little overdone in Hollywood. Maybe the aliens were pissed, when they received radio tranmissions of hitler from nazi germany. I don't know about you but I'd aim my phasor or death ray for any planet with that meglaomaniac. But then again, the same could be said about Bill $$Gates. I don't know, are movie suppose to be base on fact ? Let's be realistic, $$Hollywood is targeting young sexually obsessed zit-popping teeneboops who think that captain kirk is the only sci-fi character. I think "Screamers" was the last sci-fi movie that made me think. Although overdramatized it reflected Philip Dicks' stories. I'm tired of these action movies disquised are sci-fi, im tired of the emotional roller- caster that $Hollywood is running. I advise you to pick up a good book, no movie has ever been able to compete with the universe of your imagination. If you want a good plot for a alien movie, try Octavia Butlers Xenogenesis book trilogy. The aliens in the books, the Oankali interbreed with other species to maintain genetic and cultural diversity.
The main problem I see, with portraying computers/hackers/crackers in movies, is that most screenwriters, directors and producers don't know enough about computers to make it exciting or accurate enough on screen.
Even if some of us at
I really believe it is possible to make a cool Linux/hacker/Internet movie which is accurate and cool at the same time. But you need people with real hacking/computing knowledge to write the script, you need a director with real integrity, and I'm sure you'll need final cut over the finished movie.
- Thomas
Well, not all Hollywood flicks are dramatized. Sneakers was a VERY good movie and it was pretty technically accurate, although its model for encryption was pretty funny.
ahh fond memories ... that is really the only movie that shows "hacking" in all its glory .. and it doesn't use all them ...
... perhaps it just ain't really very
without them super intuitive guis and fonts the size of moutains
all to lovely "override" and "access secret files" lines
bah no watching this kinda activites in the movies
truely suck
intresting to people that arn't into it.
Sneakers was quite good to when I think about it.
You can tell a real computer person by the number of screws holding their computer together. The
fewer, the better! The case is never on, the drives are hardly bolted in, because they change
so often, etc.
This doesn't work well from a product placement standpoint, being hard to identify a computer by its guts.
the original title is "23 - Nichts ist so wie es scheint" (something like: '23 - nothing is like the way it seems') and it is about the german hacker karl koch (who called himself hagbard celine after the leading character in wilsons' 'illuminatus'). I doubt that there is a english version though ...
For instance, have you ever seen a Middle Eastern man
:)
in a movie who was not a terrorist?
BTW, that was a rhetorical question...
I guess I should have known better than to throw that in the midst of people who'd take it literally and dissect it apart, while providing voluminous data as to examples and historical origins.
Wargames is *great* - as someone already wrote, it used a wardialer.
The word "wardialer" is short for "WarGames autodialer".
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Can Microsoft make an OS that is stable.... and "just works"? No. Can pigs fly without any artificial or natural augmentation? No. So why ask if a movie can dramatize hacking and cracking without it being a pile of rubbish?
watch this movie!!!
read the comments on IMDB.
i've nothing more to say. very stunning movie!
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
240$ worth of puddin' ;)
The State rocked my nutz -Viva Variety wasen't have bad either
Johnny Blue Jeans and his Mall Tour, heh
-Kris
WarGames was quite well researched. So much so that searching for modems by brute forcing the exchange-space is now known as 'wargaming' But then we were back in the dayz when most folkz hadn't seen a terminal and still thought spinning reel-to-reels were the only visible signs a computer was doing anything.
-Legion
Yeah, Hackers was'nt the greatest movie but I did appreciate some of the things they tried to show. Like someone breaking into a system does'nt just guess the password or automatically know it. They actually did a scene where the hackers raided a dumpster outside the corp to get old printouts that had been tossed and might have usernames and stuff.
I almost wonder if the people putting up the money for the movies look at what is brought to them and say "Is it going to have this?" or "I love it when they do this, are you going to?" And if your butt depended on this guy giving you the $75 million, I bet you'd say "Yes sir! Right away sir!" I kinda wonder how much of the money in Hollywood is put up by people who didn't make it out of grade school, who really like the lowest common denominator ( I call it the Dumb and Dumber effect - that movie bugs me!) I guess that means the answer to all this is: one of us has to make millions, then sponsor a hacker flick, and make sure we are the technical advisors, and be damned about how it will do at the box office if it means making a "Hollywood" movie.
Ask about the alternatives. There's always alternatives.
Hollywood is a place that's always looking for something new to excite it's audience, to make lots and lots of money. Sure - we've seen time and time again the guy with big muscles take down a whole force of terrorists single-handed with elite karate moves and fast reflexes with a gun.
I think it's just Hollywood - Ask a karate expert on how accurate some of the fighting is, especially for how easy they can "take out" someone.
Same with computers. People must remember though, despite "The Net" I was always fascinated with movies of it's kind, like terminator and the matrix, both which show the human reliance on technology and the possible outcomes. Of course, you won't see anyone in the movie "hackers" exploit a linux system, it would lose the audience. Instead, movies like it make GUI's simply to show the computer illiterate exactly what they are doing without any technical jargon. (Like in Hackers when the kid is screwing the the school's sprinkler system). The more exciting they can create something, the better the outcome of people liking the movie, hense hollywood cashing in. It's simple - while I do think it's a bunch of bullshit, chances of creating a technically-correct movie when probably half the viewers use AOL is unlikely.
Took about 20 minutes :-)
The key in the reg (where else). Its encrypted so that character in the original maps to one in the result. Each character's encypted partner depends on the previous characters. So you can try for the first letter. Then when you have that go for the second, etc...
The real problem isn't that Hollywood is making computer interfaces look overly glamorous. The problem is that real computer interfaces are too boring. You just wait and see - in a few years time, all those old films will look dead realistic, because the UI design of the future will be based on those Hollywood effects.
Windows 2061 will no longer suffer from BSODs - instead you'll see really pretty Animated Psychedelic 3D Rotating VR Screens Of Death.
When the CIA release their patches to the Gimp, we'll all be able to take a 2D picture, rotate the subject through 30 degrees about the vertical axis, calculate the effect of dropping an item into a shopping bag, etc.
My favourite computer bit is the line from Jurassic Park: 'Ooh, it's a Unix machine' - implying that this means it's immediately obvious how to use the interface to the (pretty 3D rotating) security system.
-- Andrem
There has been a major scientific break-in
Except maybe when movies talk about well-known topic, movies doesn't even try to be acurate, they try to give you cheap thrills... (especially Holliwood movies?)
If you would believe what movies say about skydive, you would believe that :
a) you can talk to someone while falling
b) a freefall last 5 minutes when you exit a plane a 4000 meters
c) there is a low pull contest between skydivers
d) every skydiver is mad and dirty
.....
I'm sure that everyone who knows a particular topic is shocked to see how movies treat it.
Come on, you really think that policemen usually do what you see on the screen ?
No, but movies have created some kind of myth about the police and another one about computers.
You are more shocked by the latter because you are more knowledgeable in computers, that's all...
not the nuts and bolts of it all. That's always changing anyway. Check out John Brunner's Shockwave Rider or Stand On Zanzibar. His tech is off but the effects of tech on society is what is cool. That's what movies should be focusing on. Think of a paranoia pic (ala Hitchcock) where the guy is certain that others are getting ahead because they have access to more info on the 'net then he (Shockwave Rider). It doesn't have to be heavy handed like The Net movie (why is the goverment the only ones who can go after people using computers?). Sorry about the links but first place I could think of with reviews of the book. Notice that they aren't even available.
I drank what? -- Socrates
This is the first thing that needs to be fixed in Hollywood. People are not plugging in the monitors. I always laugh when I see that. Usually they have the cable, but no power cord. I remember this from Varsity Blues, but I can't think of any other ones off hand. TV shows do it alot too.
_Hackers_ was an embarassment to intelligent computer users. Sure, the girl was cute, and there were several amusing one-liners. The CG were not too corny. But that was absolutely it. Bad acting, bad plot... I mean, the super-vilain arriving on a skateboard?? "Flu-shot"?
Take a look at _Sneakers_. With the likes of Redford in the cast, the acting is definitelly on the level. Granted, the plot is a bit fabularized for the common Joe, but the concept is a Holy Grail of computing. It's an intelligent computer movie, that doesn't use the machine as a deus ex machina device.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Two good movies IMHO that show a way this problem could be addressed. Keep the computer work accurate, and make _other_ stuff resulting from it dramatic. Instead of trying to make "Login Complete" or some other low key affirmation earth shattering with ramped up music and flashing lights, the drama would show up in the board room on Monday morning. "We were hacked on the weekend- the entire source code to the Abraxas project is missing!" (Dum dum dum dum...)The real problem is the writing in the scripts, not the medium they are trying to portray.
They realized that movies needed something more "visual" to look at. So they came out with "Bob."
This movie had the most realistic computer representation of any that I've seen. But even it was a little mixed up. I seem to remember everyone having Sun workstations on their desks with an MS-DOS interface... but at least it wasn't some hokey 2048 pt. font on a monitor that they talked to.
^X^S ^X^C
In regards to #6 (Everyone uses Microsoft OSes), what movies have you seen? I've always seen Mac OS used, if it's an identifiable one at all. After all, Apple's product placement is one of the most unrealistic aspects of computing in movies. As if The CIA Mainframe (TM) really was a PowerMac with a big monitor...
HAL's capabilities are completely unrealistic as to what computers do. Therefore it was merely another dramatic element in the movie, perhaps the strongest element in terms of character change. See David Stork's recent collection of essays on what capabilities of HAL have been reached in the 1990s and what haven't.
As far as i remember the movie: ;-)
There was one reason why the virus coder was on that alien ship.
I remember he wanted to modify the virus as soon as he had conected to the mothership.
Since he only had one night to learn about the computer systems on the roswell ship,
he might figured it would be more usefull to have a qwerty keyboard instead of the alien controles the pilot had to use
Since the aliens looked like human beings(while they where not "born" anywhere near this planet?), why wouldn`t they use human warning signals.
And:
microsoft take a look at this, they "used" the "war of the worlds" concept to build a better movie, and they didnt turn it into "the same but this time useless"....
Is Sneakers that film where everybody wants to have that super-secret crypto box that can magically break any encryption method? That film was lousy... Worst scene: After applying the box to some console garbage text, every white-on-black character is 'decrypted' to a graphical street map in a really lousy puzzle animation kind-of effect...
What I find most interesting is that obviously, the studios don't have the idea of letting some computer-savy person check a script for basic errors. It would take about three hours, doesn't cost too much and would remove the most obvious flaws... Remember that IP with a number larger than 255 in it in 'The Net'?
BTW, you get to another level if you watch the translated version of such a movie - the translators obviously don't have a clue (with regard to computers) so they're using the wrong vocabulary for technical terms all the time and you find yourself guessing what the original (= English) meaning could have been! Just like Babelfish... It's at that point where it starts being funny again!
A friend of mine is currently in the beginning stages of producing a movie dealing with computers and communication as a student project. The movie has as its central focus a group of men and women that chat via IRC. We are currently in the process of writing the script so I can't give too much away, but our main goal is have no two characters EVER appear on the screen at the same time.
Our challenge is to make this appealing and interesting. As some of you have already said, one of the main difficulties with filming any computer related activities is that reading text/code over a character's shoulder is dull and tedious to the average viewing audience. And most of the time the actions of hackers are normally not rewarding on a level that your average movie goer would understand. Our hope is that by choosing IRC instead of hacking/coding, we can portray people as actually getting quite emotional while looking at their computer screens. The important thing to remember is that the computer is just a tool, the focus should be on the people and their interactions. This is what makes a movie lik Wargames great. Hacking still plays a very important role in the film and we hope that our portrayal of our hacker character is accurate and lives up to the strict criticism of the Slashdot audience.
If you want to find out more about the film, check out http://movie.sloth.org.
Has anyone ever noticed, that any one sitting at a workstation in a movie never seems to have a clue how to use the mouse? They just seem to type an outrageous amount of garbage to acomplish a seemingly small task, and they manage to do this at break-neck speeds. In the days before GUI's this was fitting. But now we are starting to see GUI's (none of which are ever real OS's, just some odd looking interface that sometimes bares a slight resemblance to "cough" windows) popping up on workstation screens in the movies. This is great, except that actors instead of using the mouse are STILL typing seemingly random commands at about 200wpm.
WarGames is, in fact, an interesting case, in that the term 'War Dialer' is a shortening of the term 'WarGames Dialer'. So, in that instance, the movie had the idea first, and it was reasonable enough that people went ahead and adopted it.
WRCT Pittsburgh, 88.3FM
While not technically, a programming/hacking/comp flick. I think that Pi is excelent at depicting a subject that normally is hard to express. I think that just with everythy thing else, if you concentrate on a person, and what it means to them, you can make anything interesting and intreagueing .
Anyway, who knows, eh?
Nicholas P. Bernstein
Sterling Network Group
UNIX Systems Engineer
nbernstein@sterlingnetwork.com
-- Don't overthrow the government, just think about it.
Hollywood appears to be generally clueless when it comes to technology. Of course, they tend to be generally clueless on any profession or lifestyle that exists outside of the LA metropolitan area. Its gotten to the point that when I go to the movies, I work at ignoring the stupidity and try to enjoy the general story line (assuming that isn't the stupid part). Hollywood's cluelessness probably explains celebrity support of inane or ridiculous causes with little regard for truly important issues.
After reading through a few replies, I figured I'd throw in my input and see how it fares. First off, I think we can all agree that Hackers was *not* a good example of a hacker, or even a cracker for that matter. They mentioned the manifesto, which in my mind is complete and utter BS. (Seriously read that thing sometime and tell me if Mentor is really making any point) They mentioned some of the colored books and stuff, but ultimately, the whole movie blew. Then take Sneakers. It's a good movie. I don't think that it portrays hacking/cracking a whole lot, but the parts that it does, it does a decent job of. I would have to say that while I liked the BBS-style approach they took to using that decoding machine, they made it seem like that encryption was all there was and no usernames and passwords were needed. But other than that mistake, the cracker/hacker display seemed authentic. Now, mind you, remember that the whole movie was *not* just about hacking. Finally, about ID4, Hackers, and basically every other movie having Macintoshes in them: That's the only way to do it with out racking up billions in royalties. Jeez people, I figured you Slashdot anti-Microsoft folks would have understood that right off the bat. I think recently Microsoft has eased up on Hollywood and allowed them to use their OS's in more and more movies, but think about it folks, if you are an ultra-liberal Hollywood type, what are you going to use in your movie? Big bad business? I'd think not. Those goons are into the latest new-age crap and I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't try Linux out for a few of those movies. Why didn't they actually use *nix in any of the flicks? Well, cause only recently has there been any decent GUI, and you need GUI to please moviegoers. It's a lot tougher to code all those neat "Uploading Virus" screens with *nix and Windows than with Mac. Plus, why use something unfamiliar when you can use a Mac, something nearly everyone has seen. I'm not making any statement about any OS being better than another, I'm just explaining that when it comes to movies, Hollywood will most likely go Mac. Now down to the actual person being portrayed as a hacker/cracker/nerd. Well folks, I'm sorry, but if you are into Babylon 5 and Star Trek, you got to expect it. :) How many hackers actually are clean shaven? I mean, think about it. How many of *any* guy in his late teens or early 20s is always "clean-shaven"?? It just so happens that while the 20-something college guy is portrayed as always clean and neat in movies, the hacker is always sloppy and unkempt (spelling) And about chick hackers. There aren't any. :) Basically, the stereotypes are true folks, if you are male and into computers, you are about 16-24, don't wash yourself more than you should, live at home with your parents (Like a lot of people this age) or live in a college dorm room and keep to yourself, shunning other people. If you are female, you are 18-26, overweight, living with other girls that don't share the same passion you do about IRC and computer guys, and most likely use your computer knowledge to impress guys. These are the stereotypes, and until the people that fit them move out, that's how it's going to stay, folks. Expect more of the same from Hollywood. (At least the actors that portray geeks will be good-looking) Flames can be directed to raize@softhome.net
Maybe few americans have seen clerks but that doesn't include us Europeans. It was indeed a movie which almost made me go mad. That kind of humour you don't expect in America, but then it was very low-b movie. i think people ought'a see and make more of these movies. Kapitalist America doesn't like it I guess??????? Could someone prove me wrong????????????
Circa 1994 there was a small Mac application floating around called Net Game, basically a cute text reader for a screenplay of the same name. (It had cute little popcorn pieces that you could click on.) Aside from a few spots where the reality of the computing / (cr/h)acking involved was sort of 'greyed out', it seemed to me like a decent computer / 'hacker' story, near to the leagues of Wargames.
Keep in mind that the golden calf of WarGames wasn't the most accurate or even believable movie in all places, either.
Romulus
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Are going to happen, or would necessarily be flattering. Let's face it, blasting out line after line of code is a fairly solitary passtime. Sure you stop to talk to others and maybe show it off, but to most people, even those who know what you're doing, it's BORING, since they're not doing it as well.
It's the difference between watching sex and having sex. No comments about my lack of a personal life here!
Also, I severely doubt that there are many supermodels (male or female) who sit behind a desk and knock out code not that I wouldn't like that. And lets face it, not many people are going to want to see the hacker/cracker/phreak community, warts and all. They'd rather see a bunch of attractive kids going through the motions and dropping buzzwords (Hackers). Or they want a plot where the passtime is only lightly touched upon and is used more as a MaguffinSP? in a large and complex plot (Sneakers).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That was also the fix for the Borg that Picard and Co. were going to put back in there through Hugh, if you remember that episode. At least that was the premise -- they would be forced to keep thinking about it or something.
That's one sorry-ass mothership that can be taken down by while-one-fork.
-S
As to the lighting issue... The answer lies at:
i d=-1
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=lighting&a
I would agree that the Matrix is the best of the bunch.
GRH
I remember my dad (a geologist) making a comment about how folks in rec.sci.geology (or whatever that newsgroup is) couldn't believe how inaccurate Volcano was.
Until computers in real life make those cool Bleep-Bloop sounds that they do in movies, art will never reflect reality.
The problem is not that Hollywood doesn't understand computing, Hollywood doesn't understand REALITY. Look at any movie, it's a fairy tale. They make hypnotism look like mind control, They make alternative religion look like satanism. The concept that any small piece of reality might be entertaining to us is completly foreign to the movie industry.
Unfortunatly, I find much the same attitude on the news.
CC
It's not the authors fault that these expectations turned out to be optimistic, any more than they can be blamed that the space race collapsed after the Apollo program, and we don't actually have a moon base.
When you write fiction which is trying to accuratly show the future, you have to make some guesses about what might happen. This is very different to fiction based in the present.
I just had to put this in here =P
.. and happened to catch a re-run of this flick on some channel.
I was up late last night
I laughed and laughed and laughed.
From the moment where Richard Prior just "gets" programming (part of it is just directory listing btw..) to where he operates a finance system by typing in "transfer all half cents to said accaount"
My personal take on good representation of hacking in film has been Doug Trumbull's _BrainStorm_. The conversations of Natalie Wood, et al while trying to hack into the giant corporation's computers later in the film felt very real. And Trumbull was smart enough to _not_ show what was actually on their screens--he just left it to your imagination.
Does this qualify as the oldest movie with real computer hacking?
The computer that controls all teh traffic lights in Turin has its tape replaced with a special programme - designed by Benny Hill of all people.
This of course is used to force gridlock on the city while our heroes escape in 3 (red white and blue) minis by driving on pavements and through buildings.
Of course, it's kind of scary calling James Bond even remotely realalistic.
I always thought the movie "Sneakers" had the best protrayal of 'hackers at work'. Excellent acting too.
"The problems are basic ones of the art of storytelling, and I guarantee you, that the further from mainstream experience something is, be it hacking, neuroscience, or astronomy, the more it will be altered in the art of storytelling. "
I read an article (can't remember where) about the differences between SETI and what was used in the movie. Sure it was dramatic to have her out there listening for aliens, but that stuff is actually processed in the computers (seti@home... aherm...)
It may be cool that she would call them on a dinky radio, but seriously, could anyone understand her with the interference coming off those dishes?
It makes the movies look good, but anyone who knows anything about the field they're portraying knows it's rediculous! My father is an attorney, and I went to a couple of land disputes with him in this small town called Moccassin, Arizona. I thought we were going to be involved in a big heated battle "Objection!" here "Overruled!" there, but after the court case, which was conducted as if they were all reading off stock tickers, the two attorneys and one of the clients got together for a dinner at the diner. The only reason the defending client didn't come is because he had to get back to his wife.
That kind of stuff happens in movies, but real life is a lot more boring than that.
Target Practice
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
I always thought the movie "Sneakers" had the best portrayal of 'hackers at work'. Excellent plot too.
A feature length version would be wonderful. brad
It isn't just Hollywood, and it isn't just {cr,h}acking. Ally McBeal is hardly a realistic portrayal of life in a law form. And come to that, Northern Exposure bears rather little resemblance to the 'small town Alaska' experience.
You are correct. Most movies are only interested in a set formula of action, action, action, the end. Films that require much thought are generally knocked down by something with a lot of explosions and CG. I'd like to see someone like David Lynch or Tim Burton do a film on hackers. They seem to have a better handle on creating tasteful stylizations of real life. I'm suprised you didn't mention the infamous 1995 film "Hackers". I have to say that seeing it for the first time with friends of mine we laughed repeatedly. The costume designer should have gotten an Oscar. However, while we in the community might find films like this humorous we have to remember that some people actually believe that this represents real life. Unfortunately the masses don't know any better.
It seems like it would be very difficult for a film to dramatize an industry/activity/whatever like ours without embellishing or blatantly making it up. For one thing, very few people understand what we do...as several posters have mentioned before, there's nothing in hacking that is exciting to the public at large...people won't pay $8 to watch 90 minutes of a teenager staring at a computer screen and pounding on a keyboard. Face it...hacking isn't very dramatic unless you understand the details, and even if you do, it can sometimes be very boring (the reason why we keep Jolt and Mountain Dew in business? hmmm...).
People want to be 1) entertained and 2) scared by hacker movies. as for #1, nothing in hollywood is portrayed accurately. For example, all the big-flashy-loud-orange-fireball explosions you see are specially designed to make lots of light and sound and smoke. The blast that really clears a building is over very quickly and not very entertaining on camera. The sound of real gunfire sounds dumb in a movie...kind of like capguns. That's why SFX and Foley artists have jobs.
On point #2, scared, we can blame the mainstream media for pushing us as monsters and vandals, and for portraying web-vandals and script-kiddies as hackers. They're getting better though. The hacker isn't always the bad guy anymore.
Real police work isn't like in the movies, real hacking isn't like in the movies. Couple that with the fact that movie audiences would be bored and lost if faced with the realities of hacking, and you have a genuine need for the movies to fake it, or else quit making movies about it.
Oh, one other thing...movies I recommend that show hackers and hacking in a good light:
Tom Clancy's Netforce (I saw that yesterday. very cool. it's unrealistic, but if you can buy the fact that it's set several years in the future, you'll be fine)
Real Genius (most people don't recognize is as a hacker movie, but watch it. it's one of the best)
The Matrix (the best. if it was real, it would explain why hackers get longer prison sentences than murderers and rapists)
I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...
So you say life sucks? Well, life is what you make of it.
so if your life sucks, YOU suck.
-----BR
Maybe we should make software that works the way Hollywood wants it? Maybe then the monitor manufacturers will make those screens that actually beam their display onto your face for that cool "Hey, I'm hacking" effect....
It's obvious to me that most filmmakers rarely play with REAL computers. Like, just ONCE, I'd like to see a Blue Screen of Death pop up at a dramatic moment. And what about these noises movie computers make? You know- those little beeping noises that accompany each character as it is typed on the plain ol' monochrome display (did I mention that most H'wood systems are antiques, too?) I NEVER hear a real HDD sound.
'Artificial intelligence' is anything a computer couldn't do 5 years ago.
my favorite part, and it's not just in 'The Net', is when a networked box starts making modems sounds. guess it's gotta look busy doing something...
One movie that impressed me recently in its portrayal of computers was Contact. Look at the computers...you'll see several different OS platforms running on a mishmash of hardware platforms. Product placement was obviously not a concern here. Whenever something was displayed on a computer it was realistic and not sensationalized. I realize that computers were not the point of this movie, but it added an extra touch of authenticity to me that the computers used in it were very close to what you might really find in the astronomy field.
...should you choose to accept it:
Make a good geek film! You only have a few obstacles.
The Studio:
You have one year to make a movie about computers/geeks/hackers. The plot is up to you, but I have to approve every last detail. Ill change what I dont like. Your budget is 35 million dollars. If you cant double that in the first eight weeks of box office reciepts, youll never make another film in this town again.
The Public:
Drooolll. We dont know the difference between Windows 97 and Office even though we use them every day. Honey look... my computer at home must be more advanced, that one only does text! Thats a geek movie, its all about computers, lets see something else.
Double Jeopardy gave away its plot in 30 seconds and has been number one for a month. This is the mentality that you have to deal with.
The Geeks:
HA! Like they really would run that version of Sendmail in 1999. They are just asking for trouble. And look he just recompiled his kernal in 3 seconds on that hunk of junk... Horrible film, OH the Inaccuracies!! Wait until my LUG hears about this. Ooooohh, Maybe I can post a review on Slashdot...
The Medium:
You have two hours to tell your story tops, youre no Kevin Costner after all. You want character development, but you dont have time to do it with every character. Break out the stereotypes. Everyone is on union payscales, and everything you do is going to be horribly expensive. No, you dont have the money to reshoot that scene showing KDE on Uberhackers laptop. Your deadlines are slipping anyway. Well, how about we just cut it short here? No, the audience wont understand, you have to show this and that to get the effect right. Remember, shots of a computer screen will get really dull fast.
Hmmm, how about some drivel with a strong merchandising angle? Enjoy your beachhouse!
-BW
(I'm working on a BS in chemistry and a BS in CS, so maybe I notice this more. (UT-Austin for you fellow texans out there...:) )) I think this galmour 'problem' extends to areas outside of computer usage. For example, most times you see chemical breakthroughs or whatnot in the movies, they're a bunch of white-coated people popping champagne (sp?) as soon as something turns green in a beaker. Umm...not! :) (Typically the booze comes out after the article is accepted at some journal and everybody is wearing clothes with lots of acid-holes in them at about waist height from bench-splatter. (--sure-fire chemist-in-a-crowd detection method) ) I remeber from a basic psychology class a few years back that there were several discreet levels or modalities of thought that people progressed through, with the formal logic and reason stage needed for scientific thought (be it programming or blithering about qmech). Most people do not operate at this stage, and very seldom do those who do acheive it all the time. Point being, most members of a movie audience would not relate to a character sitting around staring at a chalk board and them getting all excited and yelling "that's it!" as a plot point, or grinning like a maniac after typing 'root' at a login box... So most movies would rely on the 'lower' modalities of concrete action instead of the more abstract planes (the system breaking down is flashy and gets attention as opposed the the silent stop-working-and-cause-havoc we're used to) in order to give the highest percentage of watchers something to relate too. Yeah, the Net really, really, REALLY sucked. And what's with that computer-geeks-use-macs thing anyway! Not that a G3/4 with linuxppc wouldn't be cool, but I'd rather eat glass than have to use MacOS all day (sure its user-friendly but it is friendly to an entirely different class of users than me)
although not a "computer movie", "contact" was relatively accurate in it's science and technology -- up the the point where the science fiction kicks in. the gear, the antennas, the tech, the dialogue, all highly accurate. they did a lot of stuff right in that movie, not dumbing stuff down. granted, the realtime video feed from mir was a bit fantastical, but sstv from mir was relatively easy to receive with small handheld radios so it is still possible and very much a real, attainable thing. methinks it should have been the flagship of the new academy award category "technical accuracy in a motion picture". just my .02uF ;)
WAR GAMES!! That was a extremely realistic movie as far as the hacking was concerned and there weren't any goofy special effects to gum it up
The crux of the matter is that to get real work done, you need a command line. And command lines are boring. Watching some guy edit /etc/X11/XF86Config in vi is not really neato. Watching some guy write some perl to automate something isn't glamorous. Heck, even watching some 31337 haxx0r packet-sniffing really will only solicit yawns from anyone not into 'that stuff'.
So no, until the Gibsonian future arrives (and even then, you'll still want a command line. Your wrists would fall off if you had to gesticulate wildly and point at objects of URLs all day long) actually doing work on a computer is not interesting enough to film, unless you're making a Mitnik documentary. The results of all that boring typing, however, can be spectacular.
[remove Ranxerox's favourite expression if ya wanna write me]
Anyone seen the German movie '23' ?
I don't think Hollywood has a grasp on any level of reality. When I see movies about Hollywood, by Hollywood, I think "No, thats just stupid, people don't act like that!". But Really, they do! After having two family members working in Hollywood, I've learned that Hollywood is really like that. They don't care about how the REAL world is, they care about how good the movie is.
Sure, there are some directors and writers out there who can get it right, but only on subjects of global importance. The computer/hacking/wirehead community is too far removed from the rest of the world for Hollywood to care. So, for convenience they'll make it up to fit the story.
Look at The Matrix. Even though it is a truly cool movie(and has Anti-Microsoft undertones), it still doesn't really get it right. Lawrence Fishburn butchers the line "This is where we broadcast our pirate signal and hack into The Matrix."
I don't know how they got it right with War Games. Maybe it was because computer graphics weren't in terribly wide use yet. Maybe they actually had somebody on the set to tell them how it should work. But ever since then, it has gone WAY down hill.
Our only hope is for some independent film maker to make a documentary style film about his computer buddies. Either that, or an actual theatrical piece. I'm more comfortable with the former, as, actors try to bring drama to something that has no drama in speech.
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
Are lawyers always in dramatic court battles, doctors always in life-or-death cases, teachers always making connections to difficult kids, hookers falling in love with their clients... I'm not too impressed with those flashing inch high "Secret document" types things, but Meg Ryan's cyber romance or American Pie's chick cam seem to me to be about right.
It's been a while since I've seen it and I confess I'm not a hacker, and so I can't vouch for the reality of it, but I enjoyed Hackers. It has a good story, and while there was some bogosity in their visuals, I didn't think it detracted from the story too much.
Who wants to see a script kiddie anyway???
Its karma, Kramer.
Check out Sneakers. They did a pretty good job. Except for the GUI phone trace...
As for the "why must Hollywood always go overboard on effects for computer movies", and "why can't they be more realistic"? Think about the very questions we are asking here. Movies ( large percentage of the time) are ment as entertainment. To make money and recoup their loses in production costs, they need to sell tickets. And... I think you know whats coming next. Most of America would rather see flashing lights and 3d rendered landscapes than lines of PERL or C++ streaming accross a monitor.
As for when we'll have that chance to watch a movie that is well researched and challenges out minds... we may be waiting quite a while. As for cheap fluff and sensationalism, just wait. Miramax is supposed to be releasing a film based on John Markoff's book "Takedown" about Kevin Mitnick. So get ready for more "bunny virus" and Johnny Mnumonic, 3D rendered rip-offs.
"Experience the door to your mind, no matter how bizzare. You create your own brave new world."
Although the complexity of computers makes this worse, this problem is not exclusive to the field: Film is a primarily visual medium, and is generally bad at depicting anything that isn't mostly visual. Witness how various films have to grossly simplify politics (in part because the interesting stuff about politics can't be visually represented) or music.
This is a problem that seeps into journalism, too. I know, from my experience, that when I wrote an article about the Midwest hacker conference RootFest, I worried about what the photographer would come up with as an image. Beyond the demands of anonymity from various participants, what is there to depict? I had a really fun time at RootFest (though 90% of the talk went over my head), but I didn't see a single mediagenic image the whole time I was there.
Francis Hwang
Do domain names matter?
If Hackers the movie was supposed to be serious, why does Penn Jillet of Penn & Teller appear as a computer tecnician? Why does one of the supposed "virii" appear as a cookie monster? Why does "secret" appear to be the password to turn off another virus?
I personally like the movie despite some of the really stupid blunders (AI RISC chips?). It showed some accurate portrayals of hackers and phreakers but combined them with the night club scene. Any way, the movie was just trying to be entertaining and make computers sexy. Relax. If they ever make a Hollywood flic about Kevin Mitnic, I am sure thay would get some hunk to portray him and over galmourize his abilities.
Remember when the ploice thought that CONDOR could wolf whistle perfect tones into a phone and start WWIII?
The average person has no idea what really goes on in a computer or how networks interact. Tehy just want sex, violence and some willing suspense of disbelief.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
I just thought I would mention one particular episode of La Femme Nikita where Berkoff is giving instructions to Nikita on stopping a computer from running an automatic attack. I believe the computer was running X Windows and he told her to type ps -a to get a listing of processes, told her they were all standard processes except for one he didn't recognize (she was wearing her glasses that send a video hookup to their system) and told her to type kill -9 and then the process id to stop the process. Very cool.
I saw the Omega Code last night. It was ok, aside from the fact that it didn't really follow Revelations as to the end time, they screwed up the timing, and the explosions looked really fake (like gasoline explosions.....for dynamite).
Another think I noticed during the movie was the computer screen (an Apple, of course) which showed the computer searching for `the code' had a bunch of hebrew looking like DNA. It showed what also looked like a 3D array with Hebrew and, of course, anything else that made it look high tech (I do wonder why anybody would want to watch a movie with me beacuse I sit there and critizise the movie the whole time).
Anyway, I wish Hollywood (or, in this case TBN) would make a Movie with out having to make the computers really `cool'.
That's my $(2^4*3+1/7%3*2/100)
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Now, I fully agree. "The Net", "Hackers", even "Enemy of the State" portray computers and technology in an unrealistic light that would have the audience believing those who gain understanding over said technology gain "God rights."
But, truthfully, if anyone made a movie of what it's like to be a "real" cracker, who'd go? It'd be two or three hours of a bunch of people sitting in front of a computer screen typing and sucking down dew/jolt/tea/battery acid to stay awake. Not terribly exciting cinema.
Which is why in "Hackers", the insides of computers look like times square at night, in "The Net", all the computers are a weird, totally wrong mix of Macs and Unix machines, and in "Enemy of the State", a computer can "estimate" the shape of a bag on the other side of the bag from a camera's point of view.
Now, granted, there was a decent portrayal about technology's abilities, and people's attitudes towards it in the movie "Office Space", but it's not quite the same thing.
what i hate is when you see a movie that has all kinds off "really cool" hardware. I saw this one movie where there was a supposedly super sophisticated computer, and it had a hardrive on it that was completely exposed you could see that there was absolutely no cover on it and you could see the cylinders and the head moving around. (by the way, the computer was controlling a bomb and was supposed to set it off if anybody messed with the computer or the bomb) that movie really annoyed me.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
It wasn't really a movie about hacking so much as a hero-spy drama and had a bit to do with cryptography.
# for x in `find '.' -name "*.c" -print`; # do perl -pie "s/==/=/ig" $x; done
One thing I would like to see is more usage of the mouse for things other than clicking on "Send". I realize that most of the powerful things are still done with coding and command line inputs. However, how 'bout some script kiddies that just execute the programs using the mouse?
Case and point: when the half-demon on the new WB show "Angel" was searching for a news file, to show that he is very computer-savvy, he was shown typing away furiously. As far as I know, to do a good search, the only thing you need to type in is the search term. Everything else is mouse clicks, no?
One thing I would VERY much like to see go is those awesome 3D rotating graphics telling the user "You've got Mail". How come my Outlook only gives a ping, and a little icon in the taskbar? Even Mission Impossible has an awesome "Send Mail" graphic. . . within Netscape 1.0!!!
I wonder how many here actually watched that MTV special about "hackers". The people the show portrayed are okay, but the MTV editing department was really lousy. On the cuts between the segments they put in these screenshots to make the show seem more active. But most of the time you can totally tell that they just put up any 'ol stuff on a screen, and did action shots with it to make it seem dynamic. Kinda stupid.
The day they have a hacker logon to Slashdot to post a question would be the day when we know that movie is doing something right. =)
WB
I was watching The Sphere last night and there's this moment where they have to decrypt signals coming from the "the sphere" in the spacecraft. If you look closely you can see them typing real commands at a *nix terminal, redirecting stuff from devices and shit like that. It still has some cool graphics around the terminal but that could just be some cool hacked window manager.
I'm a fairly experienced bicycle racer and I can tell you that the only accurate treatment of the subject is when they use footage from actual bike races. And then, it's often made uninteresting by zooming in on someone's derailleur, or by having a camera in a fixed position causing the racers to come past in a blur. To some art director, this may have graphic interest, but to a cyclist, it's just boring, or cringe-worthy. "Breaking Away" made a few of these blunders.
Part of the problem is the fault of the actors. People who aren't bicycle racers don't look right playing bicycle racers. Years of conditioning causes changes in one's posture and the way one sits on the bike. I was once an extra in a commercial featuring a pack of cyclists. They hired several local bike racers and had a few SAG actors as well. After about 3 seconds of riding it was obvious to even the untrained eye who they were, as they were several yards behind the rest of us, fumbling with their pedals.
Print ads follow certain rules of thumb of graphic design - for example, the subject may be required to be looking towards the center of the magazine. Often pictures with bicycles are flipped to suit this requirement. To an experienced cyclist, this is very obvious, since the drivetrain is on the wrong side of the bicycle. It is analogous to ads for CD players that have the CD upside down, to show the shiny part.
However, even I can appreciate "Breaking Away" in spite of it's inaccuracies since it is a good story and is well acted, etc. Incidentally, the author of that screenplay, Steve Tesich (who won an Oscar for it), was an avid cyclist and captured the character of a young, obsessed bike racer.
Similarly, "War Games" told a good enough story that it's relatively easy to overlook the cheesier aspects.
As for the visual aspects - if you've ever seen the TV version of "La Femme Nikita", computer screens are often featured prominently and they've designed them to display well on TV - large fonts and controls, embedded video, etc. I think I once saw the hacker-boy character trying to crack some system at a good-old-fashioned terminal window, though. In my opinion, it's a reasonable amount of chrome to make it look high-tech, without detracting from the story (or Peta Wilson!)
Incidentally, did anyone ever see "VR-5" with Lori Singer? Or is that why the show was cancelled?
I'm sure I saw signs of FreeBSD not Linux in use in that movie. It goes against most of the other arguments in this discussion because it clearly showed unix savey people using shell expansion and quick perl scripts to decypher the code they had to crack. It was probably the most realistic thing I've seenin a film, X Window System/$ and %
prompt, and perl code to solve problems.
Perhaps their society had outlawed hacking, thereby holding ship computer vendors unaccountable to anyone, and leaving them completely vulnerable.
Math also deals with "manipulating abstract relations in a formal language", and also is sadly misportrayed and abused by ignorant Hollywood types who haven't had any higher math than basic algebra. "Pi" comes to mind...
Call me crazy, but I don't pick up a fiction book, or an adventure book and complain because I don't believe in dragons or magic swords. I've never seen a wookiee. So what?
I understand your position, there's a seed of truth in here and you think people will be misled? My reponse is that there is a seed of truth in all good fiction stories, and I think you are grossly underestimating the average viewer. Everyone knows it is not true. They know it because they saw it on the silver screen. They know because it's actors playing characters, not real people.
I don't think Hackers was one of the greatest movies of all time. I do think it was a lot of fun. I coul really dig computers like that. I might like the towers of information. I am not going to hold my breath but it's a cool fantasy. You can't deny that.
As someone else alluded to.. The movie is not GREAT, but if nothing else, it has a VERY attractive cast, a killer soundtrack, some cool ideas, nice graphics, awesome design, funny moments, and some of the best costumes I've ever seen. The cinematography was nice as well. It's not Sneakers but that's not the world I'm looking for anyway.
-- Mako Hill Standing up to an evil system mako(at)debian(dot)org is exhilarating. --RMS
Call me crazy, but I don't pick up a fiction book, or an adventure book and complain because I don't believe in dragons or magic swords. I've never seen a wookiee. So what?
I understand your position, there's a seed of truth in here and you think people will be misled? My reponse is that there is a seed of truth in all good fiction stories, and I think you are grossly underestimating the average viewer. Everyone knows it is not true. They know it because they saw it on the silver screen. They know because it's actors playing characters, not real people.
I don't think Hackers was one of the greatest movies of all time. I do think it was a lot of fun. I coul really dig computers like that. I might like the towers of information. I am not going to hold my breath but it's a cool fantasy. You can't deny that.
As someone else alluded to.. The movie is not GREAT, but if nothing else, it has a VERY attractive cast, a killer soundtrack, some cool ideas, nice graphics, awesome design, funny moments, and some of the best costumes I've ever seen. The cinematography was nice as well. It's not Sneakers but that's not the world I'm looking for when I go to the movie theater always either.
-- Mako Hill Standing up to an evil system mako(at)debian(dot)org is exhilarating. --RMS
Of course they were in a drone fighter inside the alien mothership, physically connected to the thing. This amounts to sitting down in front of the server with a user password. As to in place security, the alien society seemed to be hive-like, probably not a lot of free thinkers who would want to hack the mainframe anyway. They probably had great security for remote users.
The rest just passed out from the pain.
Im just glad they had a scsi II connector on the alien ship to connect to ... lol !!
- The Highlander
.)Just a little movie trivia now. Do you know what computer was used to save the midwest from
- Twister
. A SGI laptop. Now where can I get one of those?I noticed that Cliff said he rented Wargames and Tron. But I think there is an important hollywood picture that is correct. SNEAKERS! What an excellent movie.
Actually, last night while you were watching the sandra bullock thing, there was another movie on. It was called "The Timeshifters" or something like that.
In one scene, the camera cut to the father's kid whom he was talking on the phone with. Guess what the kid was doing? Playing Quake III! The real thing! And the sounds were even correct...none of the stupid pacman overlays.
"Jurassic Park" also portrayed (except for that last scene about 'I know this! It's UNIX!') computers pretty realistically.
So every now and then they get it right. Let's hope the trend continues. I was really astonished when I saw that quakeIII screen on last night's movie though. Wow!
In the days "Before PCs" (BPC), the computer was called a "mainframe". I work with real mainframes (both then and now), and I had to laugh at how TV and the movies portrayed them.
At that time (the late '70s through the '80s), all mainframe computers consisted of (according to the entertainment media) punchcard machines (a la 1950's census) and tape drives (with tape reels spinning madly around in impossible configurations). To my educated eye, this was ludicrous; a mainframe consists of much more than tape drives and card readers. And, they missed so much!!
Have things changed since? Not really. The entertainment media doesn't try for realism because realism is either boring or too complicated to explain in 30-90 minutes without detracting from the entertainment.
The important thing to understand here is that it's not just tech types who are offended by simplified portrayals of their profession. Imagine being a cop -- you spend all day crunching paperwork in the station house, and then you can't turn on the tv without seeing actors in cop outfits in 125 mph high speed chases!
Now, turning to our specific question of Why Can't Hollywood Get the Tech Right, there are really 2 types of inaccuracy about these things that show up in the movies. One bugs me alot more than the other.
Now, we geeks get the reputation for being nit-picky about this stuff because we go nuts when we see inaccuracy in presentation ("hey! that's not a Linux command line!"), even if the use of the tech is reasonably realistic. This is counterproductive. Filmmakers alter the presentation in order to quickly communicate something to the audience. If Our Hero is checking e-mail, the whizzing envelopes tell us that without us all having to squint at the title bar of his Eudora window. Inaccuracy in content, though, is much more offensive -- it indicates that the screenwriter and director have failed to do even the simplest research on their topic, and it undermines the whole impact of the story. Unless a story is science fiction, it can only be harmed by showing technology doing things that are completely implausible -- especially as the film ages, and people get more and more sophisticated WRT these things.
Take the example of "WarGames" -- it was inaccurate in presentation but accurate in content. Remember the end, where everyone's gathered at NORAD, and Joshua speaks to them -- in the voice that we heard earlier coming from Matthew Broderick's PC voice synthesizer? Or how he enters his commands in natural-language strings ? Completely implausible presentation, but it doesn't detract from the story. In content, though, "WarGames" is almost completely plausible - which is why it has aged so well. Nobody remembers old CP/M PCs with 8" floppies like the ones in the movie, but everyone understands the idea of data trespassing.
In short, don't get your shorts in a bunch if the tech looks real. Look at whether the story uses it in a realistic way or not. That's the true measure of whether the filmmakers "get it" or not.
-- Jason
Read my blog.
This point has pissed me off to no end, as well. The only movie that I ever enjoyed that centered around computers would be Wargames. Although they never get real technical, they did spend a large amount of the time throughout the movie on a computer, and they kept the stupid stuff to a minium. They even showed the lead character using a wardialer! Unfortunately, after seeing movies such and "Weird Science," "The Net," and "Hackers" (especially Hackers--what a steaming load of crap), as well as countless others that are too numerous to mention, I have little faith that Hollywood will produce any kind of movie that portrays computers and cracking correctly. It would take a linux hacker to write a story like that, and how many linux hackers do you know that would rather write screenplays than code? Not many. The producers would make him rewrite it anyway, 'cause it would be "too boring. let's add some neat effects to keep the audience interested!" Just my 2 cents :)
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Sneakers might have been more accurate about [whatever], but it was absolutely terrible as a movie! Look, if you want to see a bunch of geeks, just look around. They're not dramatic. They don't lead cinematic lives.
That's why Hackers was such a brilliant movie! They knew which parts to keep and which parts to throw away. It didn't fail to match reality because someone didn't understand what hacking was, it failed to match reality because someone did understand what movies are.
I don't know any hackers who look like Angelina Jolie. But that's not the point. Their portrayal of Joey shows that they did understand what ``real'' hackers are like -- and they had the sense to realize that a movie full of only that kind of character would be boring as hell.
(The Net just sucked on every level, though.)
Some of the nice (informed sounding) quotes from the lyrics:
It ain't a movie, but it's decent usage of tech-stuff in pop culture. I get the impression we have to take it where we can get it.
Greg
Have you gone through the ``special features'' on a DVD lately? The GUIs they use for such things look like computers do in the movies. They've finally managed to put it in people's homes and make it real.
Computers are eventually going to act like they do in the movies because people expect them to! This is the same reason cell phones look like Star Trek communicators.
IMHO, Jurassic Park did one of the best jobs of portraying computers accurately. They didn't slap some rediculous looking GUI on a monitor. They showed things like lots of text-based consoles, and they even had it running on UNIX. "Newman" (I forget the actor's real name) even deleted the keystroke logs...
The only thing I didn't like was when the little brat says "This is a UNIX system... I know this" while using that goofy SGI visual file manager that I've never seen anyone actually use.
Actually, I really liked Meept. He(?) was usually right on the money. Ivan the Terrible was a little much (although I could see his point).
/. and I'd like to add "complacent" to the list of faults you've found. Two years ago Slashdot was revolutionary. One year ago it was a real leader. Now it's a "market leader". And, like most market leaders, no attention is being paid to quality.
I didn't realize people even noticed my posts--a lot of them get no comment. Interesting.
I agree with your analysis of
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Pi
And your right, america doesn't produce many movies like this, but they are out there. Almost any movie by Kevin smith (the writer and director of Clerks) has the same sort of unglamorous edge as Clerks does (with the exception of Mallrats, which is still a good flick). Then there are outstanding movies like "American Beauty," "Schindlers List," and any number of other smaller "Art House" movies, you've just got to look for them, because these are the kind of movies that don't get $200 million advertising campaigns.
Just like in the US movies 555-something is always the telephone number...in order to avoid lawsuits they are gonna us a number that is impossible. 355 or something. Now they coulda used 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x but they were not smart enough to do that...but the large digit was done purposely!
see article by M. Crichton http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/283/540 7/1461
I've always been fond of the movie 'sneakers'. It's not all _computer_ hacking/cracking, but it holds the full mindframe.
And it didn't lose my interest for a minute.
ari
I haven't been able to get ahold of an episode of the state in awhile. Thanks for clearing that up.
It may be a movie that is stuck in AOHell, but it does an acurate job of portraying how the people using the computers actually use them.
Techy details that I'm sure people would like to gripe about. Gripe 1: boot time, Answer 1: these are laptops in power saving mode, I'm sure you've all seen recovery times this fast on laptops. Gripe 2: These people are using Mac's, Answer 2: These people work in the publishing industry which is still heavily invested in the Mac Architecutre. Gripe 3: Its all laptops, Answer 3: No fucking shit, its also NYC, where its actually a very large and costly detriment not to have a mobile computer (because you need access to your info wherever you are).
"May the luck of the Seven Pillars of Booloo be with you at all times!"
It took so long because Professor Falken spent all his time teaching the damn thing chess and tic-tac-toe, and didn't bother to play a single game of Mastermind! :o)
Almost every movie with computers in it at some business (e.g., newspapers, AD agencies) use SGI workstations! Gimme a break -- I sure WISH that were true...
No, hollywood will never give an accurate representaion of the box or those who would like to control it. What they do do is infuse people who know nothing about computers to go out and learn about them. Its not that their representations are false, its just that they're inacuate-but they're fun to watch. So to all of you would be judges out there....shut up and enjoy what computers might be like. Use the movies to excite your curiosity about new projects, etc.
The best portrayal of a hacker ive ever seen in a movie has got to be r2-d2 in starwars. We didn't know or understand exactly what he was doing and we didn't need to. We just knew that if he didn't get that door open soon they were all going to be banta fodder.
Hollywood should learn from this. It is impossible to make a realistic movie about hacking that is interesting to the general public, because the act of hacking isn't interesting to the public in general. Even to hackers watching someone hack is boring, just the readers digest condesed version of how they finaly got things to work is cool.
However, the implications of hacking are of interest to the general public. For this reason I think it would be possible to do a realistic hacking seen with in a movie. The purpose of probably any hacking seen would be to add tension most likely because of the time constraintes required to do the job. To make this effective you need to have a cool atmosphere for the hacker to be working in both the setting and music. He sits down at the console and begins typing. nonhacker friend: what are you doing? h: I'm checking his web scipts for syscalls. nhf: what? h: shut up and let me concentrate. Text flys. Inevitable doom progesses. Hacker curses. nhf: whats wrong? nothing. doom gets closer. snickers text flys. done. just as doom starts to wrapp his grimy fingers around their necks.
Or for those harder, more time consuming hacks show our fearless hacker working all night pouring though volumes of code. Most of the effect will come from her expression and body language. Intense at first. last bit of cold pizza gone. frustration. a glimmer of hope. disapointment. brew another pot. exaustion. still grinds on. clock ticks on. one last idea. then as light peeks though the window, the answer is found, the task is done. An answer that is meaningful to the audiance.
In short the big mistake that hollywood makes in hacker seens is it trys to turn them into something that the public understands, but if that were the the case then everyone could be a hacker. So the act of hacking in the movie comes out as beeing very cheezy and simplistic. But the public does *not* need to understand what the hacker is doing to make the scene effective. And the mystic will add even more to a movie than a gui hack will.
well thats my two bits that know one will ever see because i posted too late.
Yes all the movies seem to suck. Yet the first hacking movie ever is pretty good. "War games" gives a good view on hacking ain't stupid and still has drama and sh*t so check it out.
On the other hand, I'm sure that movie would have made anyone familiar with lasers cringe.
Does anyone know about US release dates for 23? I only know of it through a friend who saw it in Prague at the Karlovy Vary festival. It certainly isn't available in video yet.
As I understand it, it's the other side of "Cuckoo's Egg" - the story told from the German hacker's point of view. Can anyone confirm that?
Seriously. I read it in an interview maybe five years ago. Someone actually wrote down the rule that, if they do a product placement in a film, the computer can't be blown up.
I guess either the filmmakers didn't get paid for the placement, or they weaseled out of the rule because (if you look carefully) they pour the explosive into the monitors, not the computers they're sitting on.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Anyone seen (or heard of) Fatal Error? "TBS's first original film!"
:o)
It's about a computer virus that "escapes" from the computer, and then mutates into a virus that can attack humans.
I think that pretty much makes the computer scenes from Independence Day look like a Discovery Channel documentary. (I mean c'mon, the aliens COULD be running Windows NT or MacOS!
No, there would be no way the entertainment industry could make a movie that deals with computers even a little bit true. I used to work in the entertainment industry - music studios, post production houses, and a production company. I got the hell out because they are all self centered morons (and programming pays a hell of a lot better than being a diode head in the 'biz). It payed the way through college to the point where I could get out.
.5 hours before a trade show is to begin and says, "Can you transfer this 40MB media presentation from my laptop to this computer hooked up to the big plasma monitors?" (All I had was pcAnywhere and a serial cable for "emergencies only") "Why can't you get it done before the show starts?" Hollywood is on the level of making Excel documents while trying to apeal to an audience that could make an interrupt handler for breakfast and code an OO B+Tree library by dinner time.
A common factor among all places I worked in the 'biz is the proliferation of Macintoshes. When you see a Mac in a movie, it isn't because Apple placed it there; it is because they are making this stuff up from things that they know best. Another common denominator is they are usually AOL members. Does anyone see where this is going?
OK, I'm going to make a generalization here. If anyone doesn't like it, tough. People in the 'biz have Macintoshes because.....they don't really know what the computer can do to begin with! Yes, Macs are oversimplified toys for morons that just need a word processor, spread sheet, and graphical design tools. Don't get me wrong, a Mac in the right hands is as good a tool as any computer. I have always believed in using the right tool for the job, so the right tool in the case of a moron is a Mac. Lets face it, its simple as hell to use out of the box. Most Mac users throw away their OS disks and don't miss them for years.
So why can't Hollywood make a good computer movie? For the same reason someone comes to me
I refer to these types of movies as "netsploitation" in the tradition of black-sploitation, i.e. shaft, dolomite, blackula, etc...
they make me grind my teeth
...has already been written.
My favorite computer-related movie is Disclosure. I thought the computer interfaces for Email and the Database were pretty clever and highly appealing without being cheesy and stupid. They also have a hint of possibly being real some day. Jae
Jurassic Park was another completely hokey depiction of computers.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The reason the aliens were destroyed is because their network was Appletalk compliant. EOS.
I'm currently starting a screenplay about hackers entitled, "CRACKERS PHREAKS AND LAMERS" (playing on the jargon file entry and the fact that the actual cp&l movie was called HACKERS). I'd want it to be a black and white no star hundred minute about the kind of people that write elegant code in their spare time. They're funny. They're eccentric. They're smart as fsck, and they've got more inside jokes than a Monty Python Reunion.
Finally, the difference between great hacker fiction and bad hacker fiction is the background jargon. It can't be bs. It MUST be written so that IF you don't understand it, it doesn't really matter, but IF you do understand it, it makes perfect sense.
The example is M*A*S*H. Few of us are really sure what they were doing on those tables, but they were interesting, you didn't mind watching them, and the jargon made sense. That's all that's needed to make something that can be boring into good writing.
--
(sourceCode == freeSpeech)
First off, do we really want Hollywood to glorify hacker/geek/computer culture? Why not leave an air of mystery to the whole thing, and dissalusion (sp?) the general public about the topic? That could actually be fun.
But that goes without saying we still can't write movies along those lines. I love to write and most of my stories/poorly-written scripts involve computers/geek culture in a major (err, somewhat of a major) way. If we don't like the way things are going, why don't we all write a script? We could fund it early on by ourselves, or easily release it to an indie movie company or something (is that an oxymoron? INDIE movie COMPANY?).
Don't mock my ideas. I can dream : )
miyax
This may be bit off topic but did anyone see Fight Club? (if you didn't it's an execelent movie to see.) Well, I was just wondering, did anybody chuckle when Edward Norton's character, the main character, was told to imagine his "power animal". For those of you who didn't see it yet, it turned out be a penguin! Is David Fincher (the director) or Jim Uhls (screenplay writer) paying homage to linux? Or was this just something pulled from a hat?
-slams
-slams
... they probably went into the ship's computer's entertainment forum and used rogue php3 flags within their message to embed a x/0 error into the alien's computer. Then all they had to do was reload and bang - down she goes. Tch Tch.
Believe with me, my saplings.
Yeah, right. With all the major and minor flaws related to computers in that film, the invalid IP was done on purpose! I think that's unlikely, but even if they did it on purpose, that's not obvious, just a possibility.
BTW, no need to become insulting.
if anyone has seen this movie you know its the shiznit. Pi is the real deal and the director has the skills. I saw it mentioed here on /.
Actually I prefer to code in a darkened room with just my monitors to light it. It allws a clearer view of the code I am writing and also gets rid of any distractions, although I will admit I havent had the figures reflect in perfect accuracy on my face :) ------------------- Ross McNaughton Ross@McNaughton.com -------------------
The movie "Hackers" almost made me ashamed. I couldnt believe the lack of depth and challenge the movie had. hehe, they used virtual reality to break into a supercomputer. Though war games and sneakers was suspensful, this is only proof that a movie about hacking, cracking, programing can invoke suspense, awe, and still be realistic at the same time. Peopel tell me that i have to see that matrix, but i think ill spare myself the embarasment.
... we just happen to realize it when it comes to computers. If you are in the military and have even a basic knowledge of military weapons or equipment then you quickly realize just how ridiculous most action movies are.
:-)
:-)
Whenever a movie is made about an area that you specialize in, you will notice how outrageous the ideas are. Hollywood isn't about educating the viewer - it's about making eye and brain candy that keeps people coming back to pay their $10-20
Die Hard, for example, was an absurd movie. Didn't stop is from becoming my favourite action movie
Well, not to bash my fellow hackers or anything, but I sort of suspect a lot of us hackers are actually more anal-retentive and nit-picky with regards to what goes on in the movies than an expert in another field would be at seeing their livelihood turned into a live action cartoon.
For example, true story, when "True Lies" came out the local mob of BBS geeks myself included went out to see it. Of course we got a chuckle that the bad guys were running Windows (those wacky middle-eastern terrorist types...) but a few of us with keen ears were also paying attention during the interrogation scene, in which there was a PC which was repeatedly doing its boot up memory test, (the monitor was not visible on-screen) and asserted that the system had 16MB of memory. You just don't see that kind of psychotic attention to detail in much anyone other than the geeks.
Ja ne,
----GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
DO they have 10 fingers like us?
-+:*,()?
2+2=4?
Intel inside..
A race that superior (better than nasa anyway) would probably use organic computers, or dont use computers at all - how about a ship that is a living organism?
Lain is an quiet, lonely teenage girl in deep depression. Then she discovers computers .. Lain becomes captivated by the internet and acquires an incredible thirst for knowledge. She becomes friends with a group of hackers online and, among other things, starts coding in class on a handheld computer :) This is anime by geeks for geeks. There are references to C code, IPv6, etc. To preserve interest for the unwashed masses, everything technical is abstracted out, but in a way that remains plausible to /.ers :)
Even if you don't count the coolness of good computer-related television, Lain is still a great series. It has a unique surrealist atmosphere that captivated me from the first few minutes of the show. SE Lain captures the spirit of depression and loneliness in a way I've never seen before.
As any anime lover knows, even average anime tends to be way better than anything Hollywood can offer. Lain stands out from even the rest of the anime pack. I'd recommend to anyone who likes dark, thoughtful television (especially Eva fans who enjoyed eps 25-26)
http://www.animenation.com for a good price :). Get the sub! The final tape will be released commercially on nov. 23 I believe.
Broccolist
Lets say you went about trying to make a good hacking movie. You would need:
a) a machine that is not an apple (lets move
away from the trend.
b) a monitor that does not "project" its image
onto the face of the "hacker"
c) subject matter that in all truth, is boring
to most that would see it.
Now, to change this to a movie people would go see:
a) an apple
b) a projection monitor
c) a love intrest, some sort of action sequence,
and a techno soundtrack blaring in the
background the entire time.
Movies such as wargames and sneakers tried, but there is way too much thinking going on for a movie. Matrix was a good movie, but not on that subject. It really came down to a religious western that was much like star wars. (no offense.....I think these are some of the two greatest concepts every created.
To really make these movies good...I think there needs to be a form of media not availble right now, where your mind is linked directly to the story....or read the book. Personally, I would love to see Snow Crash as a movie, but I don't think it is really possible.
Sure, it has to be exciting and interesting for the audience. Although I didn't like the portrayal of computers in Hackers overall, it did have one thing going for it... There were sequences where the characters would be staring at a boring display, or a stack of printouts, and you would see what was going on in their heads, "flying" through a landscape of neon-type displays, seeing mathematical symbols floating and flying around, coalescing into patterns, etc... If you want to make it interesting, show daydream sequences. Show the imagination of the character.
A very interesting topic. I believe that the media is responsible for computer illiteracy to some extent, and it is not confined to movies.
;)
For example, all of DELL's commercials, when they show off their CD-Rom drive, show the CD upside down! If I were new to computers, this would make me think that's the way the computer reads CD's. I wonder how many technical support calls Dell has had that their CD drives don't work-- and it's their own commercials that's giving the customers the wrong idea of how to use them.
There is also a commercial for Excedrin headache medicine, where a woman taps a single key on her keyboard, and suddenly all sorts of warnings come up, and she gets a flashing message saying "You have just deleted all your files." Now this is pretty extreme, but new computer users are very cautious around new technology and these types of portrayals do nothing to prevent techno-phobia.
It would take very little to correct this type of misrepresentation. Why not hire a technical consultant, as a period film would hire a historian? I'm sure the Dell tech guys would appreciate if the commercials showed a CD label side up.
I don't want to go overboard, fantasy is o.k. too, but too few people realize it is just that. Educating the public would not hurt.
BTW- in TheMatrix "neo" tries to kill a terminal session by hitting 'control-x' i was so impressed.
keanu tried 'ctrl-c' a couple of times
There is a film on www.thesync.com titled "0's & 1's" (Zeros & Ones) that is about a computer science student who researches a female student, and from the "profile" he formualates about her, becomes someone he thinks she would like. It's got a "In The Company Of Men" angle to it, but more than anything it seems to make fun of itself, but is still pretty crazy at the same time. The guy who made it sent me a copy of the film; it's hard to really get a feel for the film when it's streamed online. The guy sends the film and the soundtrack for free at Reproductive Pumpkin. Anything to get seen, I guess. rmhta
Because of the evil "'net" (as we hip-in-the-know people call it) the very laws of physics and chemistry are changing all around us. *James Earl Jones voice* You think you know your computer, but do you REALLY? When Y2K comes, we will all become lunatics. Thank God Hollywood can say "I told you so..."
> I saw this the other day and I'm certain I saw
/kernel, not /vmunix.
> definite signs of FreeBSD. Also the quick
> hacking of a decryption for the code there were
> trying to decyper was done extremely realistically
> in perl! This is the only film I've ever seen
> where quick hacks and typing were done with shell
> expansion and quick perl hacks. The % prompts and
> X window system screenshots make this argue
> against, all the other comments in this thread.
Ah, but FreeBSD would have
Actually the correct term for 'Jurassic Park Unix' is Irix which is the standard SGI operating system.
And a Unix, of course. "I know this, this is a Unix system". The german translation is even better: "Das ist ein Unix-System, damit kenne ich mich aus".
The computer in Jurassic Park is definitely an SGI.
An SGI Indigo AFAIK.
Flying around your file system is actually possible with the
software that came with our SGI Indigo2 workstations. I think it is called 'File Flyer' but I'm not 100% sure.Flying around your file system is actually possible with the
software that came with our SGI Indigo2 workstations. I think it is called 'File Flyer' but I'm not 100% sure.
The Program's called fsn and it's available here at SGI. Sadly, it only works on Irix 5.3 and below.
Kirth
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Mayhap if Hollywood went about writing the plot in a different manner. I'm recalling the movie, "The Player," which was about a director(?) in Hollywood, and his (mis)adventures. For this movie, the writer was talking about something he knew very well, and (presumably) tried to keep it realistic. From what I remember, and what little I know about "real" movie writing, the details of the man's profession were pretty mundane--but not exactly boring, especially to those who are unfamiliar with that kind of life. It was the interwoven plots, the less realistic ones, that brought all of the action to the movie, even though drama managed to remain throughout most of the film. Maybe if Hollywood took this sort of approach to other professions? How acceptable to all would that be , do you think?
The proplem is time. It takes time to hack. Just as everything else takes time. Solving criminal mysteries or falling in love. Both are solved easily in movies. The hero finds all the clues in half an hour and the stars fall in love after 2 hours. The reason why for example a crime movie can be interesting, is that it looks cool. Though to a police detective it's a good laugh. It usually takes weeks to get forensics or interview all the suspects. So time has to be cut down. In "hacking" movies this is solved by letting the hero find the password at once. To make a realistic hacking movie, one would have to hire a french movie director who is tired of making movies about love and sit him in front of a computer.(If you've ever seen one of the looong-stretched french movies you know what I mean) The other solution is to accept the illusion. To reccomend a movie about hackers try "Hackers" from MGM.
"Yeah well
You noticed I used the Cone of Silence when I sent the message, and omitted even the Subject? That's Secret!